Let the (school) games begin…

September 3rd was the first day of school. I was a little nervous because I had to give a little speech in front of all the students – in Japanese. Luckily, I was able to copy a sample speech out of the JET Diary we were given at orientation and my supervisor went over it to make sure it sounded ok. I actually did the speech twice, once in front of most of the students and then again for the students who were being held in a classroom for not meeting the dress code. There were no classes scheduled for the day so I bummed around the rest of the afternoon. At night, I cooked a beef stir-fry and continued to watch Dragonball, which I had been doing since I bought my hard drive. There wasn’t much else to do without internet or a decent set of TV channels.

On the 4th, I went to my visit school, Miyashiro, which I go to on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s about a 15-20 minute bike ride from my house. That’s at an Eric pace, which is about twice as fast as the average Japanese pace. I also did not have any classes at Miyashiro that day, but I gave the same speech for the 1st year students.

In Japan, high school is divided into Junior and Senior High. Both my schools are Senior Highs and the students are 15-18 years old. So first year students are 15 or 16 and third years are 17 or 18.

On Wednesday the 5th, I had my first set of classes. My first class was a first year class and was a bit disorganized. The periods were shortened because of something and then the English teacher took some time doing administrative stuff and I was left with under half an hour to do my Self-Introduction lesson. (Periods with the first years are 50 minutes and double for the second and third years). But I survived my first lesson. On to a third year class. I gave the same lesson for the first half of the class and another activity to fill the second 50 minutes. During the class, the teacher asked them if they had any questions for me. The most memorable questions I got were, “What is your blood type?” “Can you demonstrate some karate?” and the classic “Do you have a girlfriend?” that they warned us about in all the orientations. Of course, all these questions were asked in Japanese and then translated by the teacher. The students’ level of English at both my schools are a little low compared to the academic schools.

Maybe I should talk a little about the schools. Sugito Nogyo High School is my base school and it is an agricultural school. The students mostly study gardening, plants, animals, fruits, vegetables and such. Most of them will probably become farmers or gardening specialists or something like that. My visit school is Miyashiro. The students there seem slightly more… gangsta. Their level of English is higher than that of the students at Sugito but still not at the level of an academic school.

Thursday, I had two first year classes at Miyashiro. Nothing too interesting to report. Friday I had a second year and a third year class. Thursday night and early Friday morning we were hit by a typhoon so on Friday classes were postponed about an hour to let the kids get to school. Even so, I had 4 out of 8 kids in my third year class and 6 out of 9 in my second year class.

I see my second and third years once a week, and each first year class about once every three weeks. But I have 9 first year classes at each school. I will have to give my Self-Introduction lesson 22 times between the two schools.

Week 2 of school was pretty much the same as the first week. I took a few pictures on the way to Sugito on the Monday.

At Miyashiro, one of the English teachers gave me a small gift.

I also took a few pictures on the way to the grocery store after work one day.

I bought eggplant for the first time over here and was surprised how small they were. It’s so weird how some things are so huge compared to those in Toronto and some things are so tiny. Like their grapes and pears and cabbages are massive, but their eggplants and potatoes are tiny.

I’ll write about the weekend in my next post.