I began writing this back in November… back when I was experiencing a super short autumn. Winter came so fast!

Well, I never finished the post, so today I just did a quick edit, and I’m throwing it up. There aren’t any colorful pics, but it feels a bit like spring cleaning. Making room for a fresh new post.

My School Tries Pulling a Fast One?

Many months ago I was informed by my school that they wanted me to pay for the parts purchased to install my washing machine before I moved into my apartment. “Sure”, I thought. “$30 or $40 for some hoses and fittings, no problem”. Then they showed me a document they had written up, and the sum came to nearly $200! So, of course I asked to see the receipts… I had to see these $200 hoses and fittings!

On one the receipts there was an item that said ガステーブル (gas table) for about $150. I asked about it, and it turns out they wanted me to pay for the gas range (it has 2 burners and a grill) they bought for my apartment back in August before I arrived. But, the catch is, I was given paperwork, and explicitly (verbally) told when I moved in, that the gas range, refrigerator, air conditioner, curtains, tables, and various other stuff already in the apartment, belonged to the school, and I would have to keep them in my apartment, and I could never sell them or throw them away. So, why did they want me to pay for an item that belonged to the school? Here’s where it gets good…

They said they “changed their mind”. They wanted to give me everything in my apartment, except the gas range because it was new. (Everything else is used). The reason being that they don’t want to pay to fix or replace something if it breaks down. Somehow, I think if I hadn’t inquired so closely about the cost and receipts, they wouldn’t have even told me this. They would have just let me continue to think I was paying “washing machine installation costs”.

The interesting thing is that in the minds of the school staff I didn’t have a choice. I had to pay, and accept all of these items. So, you can imagine their surprise when I told them “I’ll think about it”. I had to explain to them that I had paperwork stating these items belonged to the school, and therefore they could not force my hand in this situation. I said I would let them know my decision about the gas range and other items at the end of the day.

In the end I agreed, because for basically $150 I was getting not only the gas range, but the refrigerator, the air conditioner (they are expensive, like $1000 expensive), and everything else. Now I can keep, sell, or throw away whatever I want.

100 Year Ceremony Blunder

On October 20th, my main school had a ceremony to celebrate its 100 year anniversary. While part-time teachers are not required to attend, I was an exception. The entire ceremony was conducted in Japanese, which of course I don’t understand. But, I’m able to recognize the words for “stand” and “bow”, since my students must bow to me and the start and end of every class. The first time the school staff and students were asked to stand and bow, I was caught off guard at how quickly they stood, and then how quickly they sat down again. My shining moment of awkwardness occurred when, apparently the emcee said “students, stand up”, and I was the only teacher to bolt upright to the standing position.

Holiday Lessons

Usually, especially at my main school, I teach my lessons based around the particular government required textbook that my school chose. In this case Birdland. Honestly, I really don’t like the text. Most of the textbook vocabulary is useless, and the vocabulary exercises are terrible. The book is about 90% listening, and almost no speaking. And, it’s boring.

Halloween

I really enjoy when I have the opportunity to make lessons without the book. My first one was a Halloween lesson. I made a prezi about Halloween with lots of pictures of monsters, children trick-or-treating, and jack-o’-lanterns. The students really got into it, exclaiming about various pictures and asking how you make a jack-o’-lantern. Afterwords I gave them a “mad-libs” style ghost story . They had to fill in 23 blanks with nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs of their choice. The story was also translated into Japanese to help with their understanding. I gave the students a Halloween vocabulary sheet with words like corpse, cemetery, spider, gory, revolting, rotten, to scream… you get the idea. These aren’t the typical English words they are used to learning, and they loved it. It gave me so much satisfaction to hear the students laughing and talking while writing their ghost stories.

Thanksgiving

First the students watched a prezi I made about Thanksgiving. It was simple, and covered the basic origins in America, the Macy’s Parade, Football, Dinner, The President “pardoning” and Turkey, and Black Friday. I told the students to try to remember as much as possible.

Next, the students in 5 or 6 teams played “Thanksgiving Jeopardy” using a PowerPoint I made. They could earn points for correct answers, and lose points for wrong answers. Each team could make their own team name, and there were some interesting ones, including Hanakuso (the Japanese word for booger) and CaribbeanCom (the name of a porn site, apparently). I didn’t find out until after the lesson.

Shouted at on the Train

Haruka and I were taking the train to Osaka, just relaxing, sharing my headphones to listen to music, and browsing the internet on our phones. Suddenly a man behind us leans forward and starts talking loudly in Japanese. At first I was startled because it seemed directed at me, but a fraction of a second later I stopped paying attention, because:

  1. I don’t know this man, whom I hadn’t noticed until now
  2. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, anyway

He began shouting in Japanese… The gist was, he wanted all passengers around him to turn off their phones… And I got shouted at because I couldn’t understand him.