Dartboard

Thursday I brought Mama to class! We taught three classes. One with Hatakeyama-sensei and two alone. They weren’t actually very exciting classes, but she enjoyed getting to meet and talk to some of my students.

So this is what it’s like for me everyday.

Teach those kids!

My cute little class of five students!

I rarely teach this group, but I’m okay teaching them irregularly. They are very smart, but they are VERY quiet. Especially because my mom was in the classroom. They didn’t want to say a single word!

Today’s class was a listening class. They wouldn’t raise their hands to answer my questions so I made them write them on the board. Sometimes getting them to speak is like pulling teeth!

The team-taught class with Hatakeyama-sensei was mostly just passing back the students’ letters from America. I started a high-school exchange with some students from my high school in Oregon, Hilhi, and this is the second letter from them. Sometimes there are pictures and artwork inside the letters. It’s really fun—and they WANT to know what the letters say so they try hard.

Additionally, most of the American students are studying Japanese too. They try to write letters back in Japanese, but usually it’s just a few sentences and they don’t make any sense. It’s fun for my students so see Americans trying Japanese though. (…as if listening to me butcher Japanese daily isn’t enough!)

This letter obviously had something good in it—everyone wants to see.

Explaining to Maya what “squinting” is. Her friend sent a picture of herself, but said she was squinting.

Helping Megumi translate her letter.

Hatakeyama-sensei trying to read some hiragana written in Yosei’s letter. No one can figure it out!

This letter for Masumi is really long… but all in English! Akiko gives the double peace sign!

Mama took a bunch of pictures of my students. They turned out so well! I love this class so much because they were the first class I taught and they have always been genki! Here’s the lineup.

Keisuke. He lives near me and rides his bike to school everyday. Mom thinks he’s hot. (Mostly I’m just saying that to get a reaction out of her. Did it work?!?!)

Junya is one of my favorites… okay, they almost ALL are favorites, but he’s really energetic in class and tries SO hard!

Maya’s great. Captain of the volleyball team and about 4 feet tall. Adoooorable!

Mizuho loves to draw. It comes before all other studies.

Now Muso’s handsome!

Megumi. They just don't get cuter than this!

“Who, me?” Yusaku asks.

Then we got some shots around the school. The view from the classroom.

The gym.

The lockers where the students put their outdoor students.

A flower in the garden.

Some art hanging in the hallway.

For dinner tonight we ate at Mizuno. Yakiniku, Korean-style grill. The waiter is really cute too. He started to tell us our bill amount in English and then stopped because he was shy. So I encouraged him to continue and he said it all, then even counted our change back in English. People seem to try English a lot more around my mom. That’s cool.

Later,
Sierra

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I’ve been so busy that every time I think of post on the blog, I just think “Post pictures!” We’ve put down the camera enough now that I can actually write a few things though.

It seems as though lots has happened, especially at work.

As you know, I have a new supervisor, Sasaki-sensei, and that’s a story all of its own, but there are also a few other new teachers in the staff room. In particular, the new art teacher, Tajima-sensei. He works only two days a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, and is at the other high school, Kamigoto, the rest of the week. He’s 30 years-old, unmarried, pretty large, and really friendly. He worked in Omura (in Nagasaki-ken) at a school for the deaf for the last year. He’s been teaching me Japanese sign language and it’s awesome. He’s not afraid to talk to me—he just came right up and introduced himself last week. That kind of bravery is cool. His English is alright, but at the enkai last week I spoke to him mostly in Japanese. He said Peter, at Kamigoto has very good Japanese. He’s been here for a year longer than I have, and I want people to say that about me in a year too.

He only teaches two classes each day, but he is a full time teacher so he must stay at the school all day. So he said he wants to hang out a lot and talk. I’m willing! It’ll be nice to have some company who’s also in my position. Lots of free time, but an obligation to be there.

Another new teacher is sitting directly across from me now. Her name is Yamaguchi-sensei. We now have four Yamaguchi’s at the school, and three are teachers that all sit near to me. It gets confusing. The Yamaguchi in front of me is a Japanese teacher, and she speaks to me. I always find it great when people just start talking to me in natural Japanese and have complete confidence that I will understand and respond. Many people are too shy to do that—or they assume I will not speak Japanese. So I think she’s great. The Yamaguchi-sensei behind me is the school nurse, an then Koichiro (also a Yamaguchi) sits next to her. Because I’m facing the opposite direction now, I can’t stare at Koichiro anymore. Consequently, I feel like everything is happening behind me. Everything I used to look at is going on behind my back. I’m getting used to it though.

I’m not sure how things will be this year. It looks like I’ll be teaching 8.5 classes a week, plus a few extra once Norimura-sensei arrives. I got that .5 of a class today; I finally talked Hatakeyama-sensei into sharing half a class with me. It’s 2-2A, my wonderful, wonderful college-bound students who I can’t bare to give up. I’ll teach the first 25 minutes listening and he’ll teach the last 25 minutes grammar. We don’t know if we’ll team teach or teach alone yet. We’ll play each class by ear, depending on how busy we are each day. I can stay for the second half of the class, but it’ll be in Japanese and I usually won’t get to participate at all. That’s fine with me though. I’ve BEGGED for this class for weeks and even 25 minutes with them per week is absolutely splendid.

I’m hoping to keep busy this year—I’m starting English notebooks with all the first years. Every first year in the school will write to me once a week in a notebook. Just a short paragraph or so and I’ll write back to them. It’ll be a lot of work, but I’m excited. I want to get to know them really well, especially the commercial students, because they are who I will really work with as the advanced students advance. They won’t have time for team taught lessons, even though I love the heck out of them. I can learn to love the commercial students too. Some of them are really great.

I’m avoiding it. Partly because I feel like the more I think and talk about it, the more real it will be, but at the same time, it’s really important to me and I think evaluation—just writing it down can really help you see the situation more clearly, and perhaps more honestly.

I’m worried about my relationship with Sasaki-sensei. She’s… first of all, she’s brand new and really busy and stressing out and things might (hopefully) change in just a few weeks when she’s in her rhythm and all. At the same time, I understand a good relationship with your supervisor is very important and I want to get off on the right foot.

Basically, I don’t get along as well with other women, especially women who are about the same age as me. I tend to intimidate and overwhelm my female peers, especially when they are quiet, shy or insecure. I guess this is no secret. I have very good relationships with many of the men in the office, and am not too close with many of the women. It’s not like I can’t—Masami and Satomi were two of my best friends last year, and I loved Chikako and Kyoko at Wakamatsu, but I do tend to get along better with men.

And so, yes, I feel some tension between Sasaki-sensei and me. I just already think she doesn’t like me very much. And I can’t understand her very well. I know that doesn’t help. She hasn’t had a whole lot of practice speaking with natives, I guess. And it shows. I guess this is the plight of many ALTs in Japan. English teachers who don’t speak English, but I never thought it’d be a problem for ME! To be fair, I may just need to get used to her way of speaking, and I’m sure that’ll happen. But she prefers to speak to me in Japanese, which sometimes I understand better than her English. She relies too much on this little electric pocket dictionary. I don’t think it’s healthy.

She’s also just a little control freak. I told her I was painting my kitchen and she about had a heart attack. She asked me if it was okay, and I said, “Yeah, it’s great. A fresh coat of paint is so nice, don’t you think?” [Enter pink pocket dictionary] She wanted to know who gave me permission. Well, Hatakeyama and I discussed it last year and really I’m not supposed to, but he said so long as it was a neutral color and I did a nice job, it would be okay. I told her it was white and looks a lot better than the previous job which was peeling and had stickers and crap all over them. She scurried off to Koichiro, who came over last night and saw it, and he said it was puro (like a pro) and kirei (beautiful). He told her many times that it was fine, it looked great and my mother was doing very well. Not satisfied, she hurried off to Hatakeyama-sensei, who said again so long as it’s white (which it is) and I don’t paint any designs it is fine. I’m not the first ALT to paint it—the green was from a predecessor James—and he knows how badly it needed it.

I guess this isn’t a great example of “tension” between us, but there’s just no trust there yet. I knew painting wouldn’t be a problem, that’s why I did it without telling anyone, but this is her first real job and so I'm sure she wants to do everything right. I’m just afraid she won’t be very forgiving and lax about the rules.

I guess Hatakeyama was just very lenient with me. (Or so my mom says as we were discussing this today.) He’s much older and understands not only how to be a superior and compromise, but also the rules and attitude of the school. Everyday he was telling me, go ahead and do that, just don’t tell anyone because you’re not supposed to. Whether it was painting my kitchen or teaching class alone or going home a little early when I had nothing else to do.

As I wrote in an email to Peter yesterday, “This may be a year of learning to accept when I don’t get my way.” And if that’s the case, I will accept it, but I may have a harder time being happy about it, because I know how it COULD be if Hatakeyama were still my supervisor. Like giving me half a class with 2-2A because he knows how much I love them and how happy it makes me to teach. He is awesome.

Today, however, Sasaki-sensei did let me grade tests! I was shocked and pleased. She gave me three classes tests and let me have at ‘em. It took up about an hour of my day, and even though it was nearing lunch time and my stomach was growling, I graded them all before I ate lunch, for fear she might take them away from me if I left the project early. I wanted to show how pleased I was that she was letting me help her. And I wanted to show dedication. She may be letting me grade tests because yesterday I said to her, “Don’t be mad at me if I am never busy,” when she refused to let me teach 2-2A next week. (That’s all worked out now—I do get to teach them, but I had to go through Hatakeyama to do it. I didn’t want to undermine her, but I did want to teach them and Hatakeyama knew how important it was. So he offered me part of his class (in an example of compromise) and then she came through and said I could have half of her class time after all. Hatakeyama carries that kind of weight! Did I mention—he’s awesome!)

And things are going great with Koichiro. Some huge awkward-weight has been lifted and we now have a relaxed and friendly relationship at school again. It’s really relieving because I feel like I don’t have many friends there anymore. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but everyone is really busy right now and I just stress about the situation with Sasaki-sensei when I don’t have anything else to do. Koichiro and I spent much of the day talking on Monday, and he even came to the school assembly and sat next to me for it. (He usually never comes and when he does he’s alone in the back corner.)

We talked about Golden Week (when I’m doing the hitchhiking in May with Peter) and there’s a possibility we will meet up in Nagasaki to go to a Renshikan Karate convention at the end of the week. He’ll be in a sparring competition and I want to cheer him on! It’d be the first off-island experience we’d have together and for some reason I’m really looking forward to that. It validates things somehow. He’s been spending more time in my apartment lately—and he always INSPECTS it when he comes over, looking at food, books, mail, whatever’s laying out—and he’s getting to know my mom a little bit. I’m proud of the English he uses around her. He’s far from perfect, I realize, but when he concentrates he can speak with her. It’s swell.

I think I just may have a friend again.

Nice.

Well, it’s really late. Mama’s already sleeping and I want to be there too. That’s all the gossip from me!
Love, Sierra

P.S. Watch for back-posting. I have some pictures to post from the weekend, but I wanted to get this up since I wrote it already.

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Me, basking in the final minutes of sunlight, as the orange ball sinks into the mountains beyond the ocean.

Tuesday night Yuka invited us to her shuji (calligraphy) class. (Okay, we actually invited ourselves, but thanks so much for having us, Yuka!) On the drive up north, we just had to stop and enjoy the setting sun.

I have this obsession. Not the obsession with finding my way to the top of 山王山.

There’s another one.

This obsession is with another mountain. It’s in this picture. The last little peak on the right—just before the landscape dips down, nearly merging with the water. Can you see that little peak?

I love to look at it. I love the shape of it. It’s sharper than the other peaks off to the left. It’s smaller, but somehow it grabs my attention more than the others. I get a really good view of it along the highway to the north. I have to be careful to watch the road because I want to stare at it—see it from every angle—as I drive by.

There is a road on it. You can't see in this picture. When driving I can barely see it etched horizontally through it’s width. It slopes up to the right. Part of me wants to find the road and see where it leads. Another part of me wants to keep its mystery shrouded.

Besides, being ON the mountain isn’t the same as looking at it from a distance. It may not feel right. For now I’m satisfied with looking at her from across the ocean bay.

I named her Hatsumomo.

It’s kind of a villainous name. I don't think of her that way, but at the same time I think it suits her.

…

Enough about my mountain. Calligraphy class was a lot of fun for my mom. Here are the pictures.

Here’s the wife of the teacher lending my mom her brush and supplies for class.

Starting with some easy lines. Marking a white sheet for the first time is always hard… Just get that paper wet!

She did really well with the straight lines. Steady hand.

Let’s move on to something more complicated. The teacher gave her this kanji, which means “spring,” to write in script! Talk about difficult!

Mama’s first attempt looks a bit like a child’s scribbles.

But it has more feeling than mine…

My work is more angular and stiff. Shucks, this is hard!

Another member of the class.

Second, we try something a little easier. Yama and kawa (mountain and river). Here’s Yuka teaching Mama some basics about how to start.

Let’s doing! She looks promising…

This is really good, and it's only her first!

Getting critiqued by the sensei. He said she was great!

What a fun evening! Mama did a really good job—we were all impressed. I hope she can find a class in Detriot and keep practicing!

Love, Sierra

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