Walking Around Kawanoe

I've been taking a lot of walks on the weekends, both for exercise in fresh air and to get to know the secret gardens of this place that is temporarily my home. Kawanoe does feel like home, though not in the same way as Ridgewood or Vassar does. Perhaps because I'm living alone for the first time, I find a need to define it as home, since the usual loved ones who make up a home are not there, save in a few pictures and endless conversations.

I've encountered many dogs, children, elder walkers, many of whom stop to chat. Dogs recognize a dog lover and fawn on me. Children recognize their occasional English teacher, who comes in one day like a rock star and then disappears for a few months, but now magically reemerges as a neighbor; they invite me to play with them or watch their jump-rope skills. The elderly, who doggedly take long walks everyday despite their creaks and pains, always say hi to me, but rarely more. Today was the first time an older lady spoke at length with me, walked part of the way with me, and shared stories of our neighborhood like the seasoned resident she is.

Here are some pictures I've taken while walking around.

My apartment building:


My neighborhood:





A random park about a kilometer away from my apartment:






I can never resist taking pictures of the adorable warning signs they have here, particularly of the two varieties below: picking up after your dog and not drowning.

Mochi Tsuki Party in Saijo

Yesterday I went over to my friend Audra's place in Saijo for a mochi-making party. We didn't actually make the rice dough the traditional way, with one person wielding a mallet and another flipping the dough; one of Audra's Japanese friends, Kako, brought a mochi maker that does the hard work for you. We just made them into balls, flattened them, and added the delicious inside. Traditionally, the inside consists only of red bean paste, but Audra's fond of strawberry daifuku, which is also popular in Japan. (Note: daifuku is another word for mochi with red bean paste in the center. It means big luck!).

Normal people might have stopped at the strawberry bit, thinking it innovation enough already, but with over 5 foreigners there, we of course had other shocking ideas. Peanut butter + red bean mochi was recommended by Daisuke, a JET in Niihama who had tried such a combination in his home state of California. I tried it and found it delicious, but then you all know my penchant for peanut butter. I particularly liked peanut butter, red bean and half a strawberry with a dusting of kinako, soy bean flour, on the top when finished. A bit over the top, you may say, but wonderful! Some of us also dipped pieces of mochi into soy sauce, which is another traditional way to eat it.

I hope to try making mochi again sometime and discover new and wonderful combinations!

Book Club Success!

For the past few months I've been leading a book club once a week for advanced English learners. We had our final session last week, and a party last Friday to celebrate! We read Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster, a wonderful little book that is unfortunately not well-known in America. It was written in 1912 by Webster, an American who attended Vassar College, where the book is supposedly set. I first read it during my senior year at college, and it's become one of my favorite books to stop and reread when I need a lift.

Fortunately, Daddy-Long-Legs actually better known in Japan than it is in the US. Many members of the book club knew the story; some had read it themselves, and all of them had heard of it before. Due to the time period in which it was written and the creative writing style of the main character, it was a challenging read for them, but I am happy to say they all worked hard and excelled! The book club had about nine regular members, including Local Nate, who provided indispensable backup help with his English skills and his iphone, on which he looked up stuff neither of us knew.


I wouldn't want to spoil the story for any of you who may want to read it yourself, but the basic premise is as follows. Jerusha Abbott, an orphan who just finished high school, is given the opportunity to go to college by a wealthy Trustee of her orphanage. He will pay for her tuition, board, and even give her an allowance, but in return, she must write him a letter once a month. She is not to know his name or really anything about him, but is to address him as Mr. John Smith. Jerusha, who shortly becomes known as Judy, begins her first letter by reprimanding him for his boring choice of pseudonym and decides to call him Daddy-Long-Legs, since the one glimpse she got of his silhouette gave her an impression of tallness. It's great fun!

Since I like the book so much, I was fairly sure I'd enjoy the book club. In fact, I had a fantastic time and looked forward to our sessions each week as much (if not more!) as any other part of my job. For each session, I prepared a worksheet with reading questions, vocabulary, sentences to evaluate, and occasional assignments. We also did some warm-up activities, pair and group work, and we even evaluated a poem that Judy had to write an essay about. Though several members complained vehemently about the incomprehensibility of the poem, they came up with some great ideas!

While I made sure to get through the reading questions each time so that everyone was clear on the content, I wasn't too concerned with hitting every item on the worksheet during our sessions. I asked questions and solicited opinions in order to keep the conversation flowing, but when a discussion took off, I just let it go. Our topics of discussion included such gems as the nature of happiness, American and European literature, raising and disciplining children, philanthropy in America, and socialism. In the process, we had a ton of fun and learned a lot about the English language, and that goes for Nate and me, too!

We finished up with a Book Club Potluck Party at Nate's place, where I received many encouraging comments from the book club members. I'm hoping to do another one in a few months just so that we can all hang out again! But in truth, the book club was an awesome experience which really helped solidify my future plans. Thanks to everyone who helped out!

Here's a picture from the party, which all of the regular members were able to attend. Japanese people don't always smile in pictures, but I assure you that we had a grand old time!!

Team Teaching: A Sample Lesson (2nd year)

For those of you who may be interested in what I actually do at work, I thought I'd start providing some examples. How many classes I teach and how much I contribute to each class varies greatly by week, school, teacher, lesson, etc. However, I am never alone in the classroom with the students (except if the teacher's late to class!), which is why I am an Assistant Language Teacher: I assist! I assisted with the same lesson at two different schools this week and last week with two different teaching styles, which is not uncommon for me, but I thought I'd tell you about it for a change.

All of my schools use the Sunshine series of English textbooks. It's one of a few options for English textbooks in junior high schools here, but as far as I can tell, all of the textbooks are colorful, thin, and lacking in grammar explanation. Here's a sample page from Lesson 5 in the second year (eighth grade) textbook, which I know well from a few months ago and seems to be the only one online:




The next part goes: "Do Americans always say nice things to each other?" "Yes, it's a kind of greeting." I could go on; I know that lesson by heart, thought I don't know if we Americans always say nice things to each other....

The lesson we taught recently is Lesson 8, which is about comparisons and soft tennis (a variant of tennis with a softer ball, played by junior high school students and possibly adults as well). The reading passage in the textbook has sentences like "Which is lighter, a soft tennis ball or a normal tennis ball? A soft tennis ball is." There's also the superlative: "I'm on the tennis team. It's the largest team in our school." How well I remember learning the equivalent grammar in Japanese class!

At one school, the teacher started by going over the grammar with sample sentences on the board. We practiced adding the er-ending onto adjectives, and I worked on the pronunciation of the "er" sound with them, as it's really hard for Japanese people and most of my students still say "raita" for "lighter." The teacher went over the construction " ~ is adj + -er than ~" and then the superlative "~ is the adj + -est of them all/in my class, etc. Then she told the class I would give a speech using this grammar and handed the class over to me.

I showed the students a picture of my family, the same one I showed them during my self-introduction, and made comparisons between my family members. "This is me. I am 25 years old. This is my sister. She is 28 years old. She is older than me. This is my brother. He is 32 years old (well almost, Brad!). He is older than me and older than my sister. He is the oldest of the three. I am the youngest." I also talked about our respective heights with the same sentence construction.

Then I said, "Now, I have some questions for you!" I held up a picture of Dogo Onsen, the famous hot spring in Matsuyama, and a picture of Tokyo Tower and asked, "Which is colder, Matsuyama or Tokyo?" After some prodding to get them to raise their hands for one or the other, most students guessed Tokyo, which is correct (and very easy for them, which was intended). "Tokyo is," I responded. I then traded the picture of Dogo Onsen for the Statue of Liberty and asked the same question for Tokyo and New York, and most students knew that one, too. "New York is colder than Tokyo." Lastly, I asked, "Which is taller, Tokyo Tower or the Statue of Liberty?" Most classes split pretty evenly for this one, and I admit my picture of the Statue of Liberty is a little deceiving, but it's Tokyo Tower by a rather large margin.



The teacher went over some of my sentences again and then we turned to the textbook. I read the passage on soft tennis once through and then phrase by phrase and sentence by sentence with the students repeating after me. Then the students got a few minutes to read through the whole thing on their own, which they did with varying degrees of success and enthusiasm. Next we did some practice conversations from the textbook:

A: Which is colder in December, New York or London?
B: New York is.

A: Do you know this mountain?
B: Yes, I do. It's Mt. Fuji. It's the highest mountain in Japan.

The teacher and I did an example or two, and the students did the rest in pairs using the textbook's graphs and pictures. We also did a listening exercise of a similar nature from the textbook, and that just about filled the period. Not exciting stuff, but the teacher did manage to include reading, listening and speaking in the lesson, and plenty of writing homework. My lessons with this teacher usually run along a similar vein: she's glad to have me in class and has me do a lot of reading, but she doesn't really do games or have me plan out anything other than short speeches.

In contrast, the second year teacher at this week's school really likes me to do a warm-up game with the students. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the day's lesson because its purpose is really just to perk the students up and get them in English mode. Anyone who's talked to me in recent months knows I have the most trouble teaching second year because the students are difficult to engage and not excited for class. Warm-up games help improve any class, but they really make a big difference for second years.

We played The Ladder Game in this class, which I actually remembered from Mme Richert's French class in high school. I drew a ladder on the board for each row of students, which became a team, and one student from each team came up to the board at his/her respective ladder. I said an English word from their textbook which they all had to write, and if they took too long the teacher and I started counting down from ten in unison. Then I'd go through and check the spelling, erasing misspelled words as I went. Whichever team reaches the top of the ladder first wins. I tried to pick words that are difficult but that they really should know: learn, children, difficult (most of them knew this one real well for some reason :-), thirteen, interesting, smile.

Since this was a new game for the students, I explained it to them in English, occasionally asking for Japanese translations of difficult words like ladder. After my explanation, the teacher asked if anyone could explain it to the rest of the class in Japanese, and one student was able to. Sometimes if no student is willing to do so, the teacher will break in into parts and ask, "so what do we do first?" "then?" "who comes to the board?" "and if the word is wrong?" etc. So even though this was a spelling game, the explanation became a listening exercise.

The rest of the class was devoted to reading aloud after me in parts and sentences, to the same conversation exercises as the other class, and then to answering the textbook's two lame questions about the content of the reading passage. I have serious issues with the textbooks we use, but I'll save that for another blog. The main difference with the rest of the class was that the students, though not quite genki, were more vocal and more participatory than last week's bunch. You see the difference the warm-up game can make! It's a good thing, too, since coming up with games is the vast majority of my contribution to lesson planning.

I hope this was a mildly interesting insight into my current profession: first and third year lessons to come!