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Japanese Blog. Work date 5. 10. 7.. Sometimes I write the GOP date for the work date. Can't confuse the paperwork. Well, my paperwork isnt that important, anyways. This post is long, so I will divide it into Headers.

BEFORE WORK:
I suppose I might as well tell you what I do. Let me do that by describing a typical day. I wake up and go online. Usually in the morning I will download music. I drink coffee and if work starts late enough I have lunch. Here is my schedule:

Sunday = 10Am -- 5.20Am. Monday = off. Tuesday = off. Wednesday = 5.00Pm -- 9.00Pm. Thursday = 1.20Pm -- 5.40Pm. Friday = 1.20Pm -- 9.00 Pm. Saturday = 11.40Am -- 7.20 Pm.

It takes 3 minutes to walk to the train station and literally 4-5 minutes on the train to get to work. Of course, I might have to wait 12 minutes for a train, but you can plan these things on time. This isn't Italy. The trains run on time.

So you can see that I don't have to wake up early (usually,) and therefore can usually have lunch instead of toast breakfast. One more thing to mention, is that I need to wear a shirt and pants. Pants are no problem but shirts are often wrinkly. So I have a couple shirts that are not wrinkly right now and have been wearing those most of the time and then hanging them up and hoping they don't turn wrinkly overnight. If I can only find wrinkly shirts, I have to iron, which eats up time. In fact, due to reasons such as these and the fact that the trains don't run every 5 minutes only between the hours of 12.00Pm and 2.00Pm, I was "almost" late for my second and third days of work. "'almost'" because I probably wasnt late technically. Technically I showed up exactly on time, exactly on the bell (or 2 minutes before) for my first lesson. But, that is essentially late or borderline, as my boss explained to me during our first night drinking together.

WHAT I DO AT WORK:
I arrive about 10 - 20 minutes early to prepare my first few lessons. I look at the schedule and see who I am teaching. I locate their file by their assigned number, pull it out, and pick a lesson to teach based on what they and their classmates have done. I can pick anything for their speaking level, but I should avoid repeating lessons they have done recently. Repeating older lessons is fine, they often repeat lessons up to three times.

The lessons come neatly packaged for the instructor and I suppose the student. My book is twice as thick as the students', because opposite to each of their textbook pages, I have a fairly detailed plan of how the lesson should/can proceed. The lessons come in units based on topic, (which includes a language goal.) Some are: Problem Solving (talking about being lost in the wilderness,) Talking about Medicine, (traditional versus modern medicine, and skepticism.) Urban Renewal And Development. (Universally important topics ;) Telling funny stories. I havent done the last one yet, but I hear its hard. The Japanese don't get the GOC's humor. OK let's move on to the actual lesson! The lesson is 40 minutes long and broken down into a few parts.

TYPICAL LESSON:
Introduction/Assesment. Let's break the ice, warm you up, you can talk about how I'm from Boston. Please talk about how I'm from Boston, because I have nothing else to talk about except the weather today, and we talked about that yesterday...;). I also try to forshadow the lesson. "It's rainy out today. Do you get colds being in the rain? Should you use acupuncture to treat a cold... OK open your books to page E-13! we're talking about medicine"

Main Language. Look at the vocab. Go over things, ask for questions, listen and repeat, and stuff like that. ("So... I think that urban development is good, because they build a casino and there will be more money, and stuff like that" I love this one guy who uses GOC ~colloquialisms?~ to an absurdley large degree, he says "and stuff like that" every other sentence.)

Ok lets move on to the listening. I'll read them a dialogue test their understanding. Have them read a scentence and then show them how a native would say it. Ex: "What are you looking at" becomes "Wha are you looking at."

Activity. Important part of the lesson. Takes 10-15 mn. Do an activity, have them work in groups if more than one. To go over the structures and phrases we just learned.

And now let's do Applications! Applications are the wrap up, the most important thing, test the students' skillz, and let them practice using what they learned. I base the lesson around what App I do. (I could make it up, but usually I just choose one of the options given to the teacher.) An example of an App would be, in partners, one has an ailment and is seeking treatment. The other person offers what they think is the best line of treatment, then switch.

Bell rings, 4o minutes are up, and I quickly go over one mistake they did to correct them, tell them (and throughout the lesson,) that they are doing a good job, and then leave. I got 10- 15 minutes to see who Im teaching next, figure out how I'm going to run the lesson, and then go and do it all over again.

The easier ones to teach are the high level practically fluent ones. We have alot of those at this branch.

One other aspect of my job is Voice. Voice is basically you sit in a room with the students, and you speak English. They stay and go as they please all day (same price for them,) but usually they come and go and stay on regular class intervals. You don't have a lesson or anything. You just gotta keep em talking. You can elicit ideas based on a topic or play a game or just have a free conversation. First case, I had Voice today and had them each give me 3 emotions, which I wrote on the bored. Then I said to each in turn "please tell me about a time you were sad/happy/confused" etc. It ate up the 40 minutes so I was happy. For the second one, games similar to Peruvian Hat Game work... one of these days I'm gonna bust that out!

I had chibiko (preskoolers) training today. I might not ever do that, one girl at my branch doesnt, but sqrt(-1) still trained for it. If i do thats fine. I realized that being overjoyous and overenthusiastic might look sarcastic and feel incredibly uncomfortable in real life, but I can just pretend I'm acting, acting enthusiastic, and get the job done. Could be fun, "GREAT JOB! HIGH FIVE HIGH FIVE HIGH FIVE!!!" etc...


AFTER WORK:
After work I get home sometime in the evening. As my roomate Matt said, Nova messes with your schedule. So it is not abnormal to not start cooking dinner until 10 PM, and then maybe go to bed at 2. Simply cuz ur 2 tired 2 cook aftr gettin home till you have a rest surfin tha net.

I have been studying for the GREs alot, i feel not bad. Its about 5 -8 hours away so I am gonna try to take a couple days off and make my trip there into a long weekend/ vacation. (its in Kobe.) But I have not been getting much sleep staying up late (studying and watching 24) so I am very tired. I will try to update this blog every Moday (I got Mon off,) so stay tuned on Mondays. This post probably counts for my monday entry, so try again in 9 days, (or sooner, who knows what the future will bring?)

SOCIAL SITUATIONS:

2 happened recently. Last Sunday, in time for my first "weekend" me and my boss and 2 coworkers, in addition to my 2 roomates, went to a Japanese pub basically. You sit down (cool seats, you sit on the floor, but below the table is sunken in, so it feels like you are sitting on a chair) at a table and they serve both food and drinks. GTs. My boss is a nice guy. He's interested in physics philosophy and silversmithing which I can appreciate. He can slag witcha but you still gotta do your job proffesionally which I respect. My coworkers are chill and so are the roomies.

Sitch 2. Next day coworker (still wonderin if I should introduce names into this blog) who was at bar had a party at her apartment, well actually at the guys' next door who are also at Nova. That was a nice time, good amount/mix of people. The ubiquitous "cut -- it -- out" of Joey Gladstone was introduced. GTs.

And that's all he wrote.