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Omiyage are gifts given when invited to dinner or a party or, in the case of everything I've shot, food stuffs brought back for your co-workers after going on a trip. The teachers will usually bring back a box of small packaged sweets that can easily be shared amongst the others. Omiyage was overflowing my first couple weeks of school due to summer vacations and long school sports trips.
Most of what I tried was mediocre. The Japanese seem to love sweet bean desserts, but I can't say that I'm a big fan. What I didn't try involved seafood, including cookies made with "delicious clams," as my co-worker said. Cookies and seafood never occurred to me as a good combination, but I guess I have been proven wrong.
Below are some of the things I sampled (and some I didn't).
Above is banana cake that wasn't bad. It was one of the better cakey things I've had here.
Above is something that reminded me of a dry English muffin filled with sweet bean paste. It was OK, but not a favorite.
The cracker above is something I didn't try as it contained the previously mentioned delicious clam.
The leaf shaped cakes above contained sweet bean paste like the "English muffin," but the outside was more like cake and was therefore better, in my opinion.
The gelatinous bean thing above was packaged really beautifully, but wasn't a love.
The orange gelatinous ball (above right) was amazingly good. It tasted like pumpkin and was therefore great. Anything that tastes like pumpkin is good in my book. The green rectangle tasted like sweet potato and was not as good, but still enjoyable.
The best sweet I've had here by far is the ginger cookie pictured above. It beats ginger snaps and gingerbread by miles.
The cupcake above did not compare to cupcakes from home. I was slightly disappointed. And the cookie to its right was just OK as well.
The sweet rolls above were really good. They were filled with some sort of cream and packaged really nicely. (As all omiyage sweets are.)
I didn't try the cookies above, but thought they were really cute.
Last, but not least, is the mandarin flavored sweet. This was really very good. It's sitting on top of my Japanese text book, which has not been getting very much mileage since school started. Also pictured is a fan, which is a necessity in the summer.
I have been starved for good vegetarian food since I arrived and am tired of going to restaurants and having to explain what I can and can't eat, only to be served something with pork or shrimp. People here don't get it. Pork is not considered to be meat by some, which is ridiculous. It runs around on four legs and has to be slaughtered like other animals, doesn't it? That is my rant for today... All of my frustration was disappeared for a while yesterday after 2 bus rides, 15 minutes of walking around lost, a phone call to the restaurant for directions, then finally getting PICKED UP by one of the owners, only to realize during the very short car trip that we had walked pass the restaurant and not noticed it because it is nondescript and off the beaten path. The restaurant in question is macrobiotic, vegan and serves amazing food. And I could eat everything on the menu without fear of pork making an unwanted appearance!
I went with two friends—one a fellow veggie and the other a carnivore. Below is a pic of our meal. It consisted of miso soup, organic brown rice, soy chicken, daikon salad (daikon is a yummy Japanese radish), seaweed salad, and some other stuff I could not name. It was all delicious... But it's too bad (or maybe a good thing) that it's a pain for me to get to, because I could easily go there several times a week.
Sorry for the boring post, but I had to share the joy :)
I've been teaching for 2 weeks now and I can't say whether I like it or not. It's not bad, but in the long run it may not be for me. It's really up and down and some classes go really well, while others do not. This could happen for many reasons: the students could care less about me or the material, I could be doing a better job, and/or the students are just having one of those days and the class won't go well no matter what I try to do. Overall the students are cool though.
My first lesson was a self-introduction where I spoke about myself and showed pictures and objects. The students also made name cards to help me learn their names. That in itself will be a great feat if it ever happens because I teach about 450 students per week and their names are difficult for me to pronounce, let alone remember. The name cards are really cool though. Most of the cards are really colorful and fun, especially the girls' cards. Below are pics showing the front of the cards with the students' first names and the back of the cards showing their class names. (Students are divided into 4 main classes or courses of study: architecture, civil engineering, information something-or-other which includes video editing and animation, and machinery.)
My second lesson was about greetings around the world. I told the students about different greetings and showed pics or demonstrated as necessary. Then we played a version of jeopardy that included questions about the material we had just reviewed as well as questions about languages (What language do people speak in France?) and countries (I showed the students maps and asked them the names of specific countries). The sample questions might sound dumb, especially if since my students are in high school, but you have to remember that English is not their first language and the questions were a bit difficult for some of them. They had already learned the names of countries and the languages spoken there in English, but that had been a few years ago, so they had to dig deep in order to answer the questions correctly. Some of my classes did well and the students were participating and got into the game. Others classes did not and some of the students just stared at me like I was an alien. It was all I could do to get them to participate and answer questions.
My favorite classes continue to be the ones that are all boys, as well as two classes of 6 students each, which are mostly girls. My largest class is 36 students with boys and girls and it's sometimes hard to control—mainly because the girls like to talk, even when I'm speaking.
School has been more work than I thought it would be and last week I had to work on my lesson plans almost every night after work. Hopefully this will stop happening after I become better and faster at making the lessons. I also spend more time then is probably necessary designing handouts—not that I would put them in my portfolio, because they're not that great. But they are better than the stuff my predecessor put together and I couldn't still call myself a designer if I didn't care a little bit about how they looked.
This weekend was a much needed long weekend. Monday was "Respect for the Aged Day" and a day off. Long weekends mean that most ALTs travel, and I wasn't an exception. My weekend was super busy and started with a big welcome party thrown by my school. It was at an Italian restaurant and the food was amazing. The only problem was that the staff didn't understand that vegetarians do NOT eat fish, so the first plate that came my way had a big piece of fried fish on it. It wasn't obvious that it was fish, so I took a bite and then realized what I was eating. It wasn't horrible, but I still have no desire to add fish to my diet. My supervisor had to speak to one of the waiters to ensure that the rest of my meal was, indeed, vegetarian.
About 28 teachers, including the principal and one of the vice principals, came. It was so much fun and I regret not being able to speak Japanese because I wasn't able to have real conversations with most of them. Below are some pics, including one of an all veggie dish prepared especially for me.
After dinner a small group of us went to a hostess bar where we had whiskey and water (horrible), some snacks (not bad), and did karaoke. It was my second time karaoking in Japan, but my first time doing so with Japanese people. It was fun to watch and listen to them—even if I couldn't understand what they were singing. I sang a couple of songs with two of the teachers. One was an Elvis song. The other was Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl." I was terrible and got into a laughing fit for that reason during "Uptown Girl." The teachers on the other hand all had great voices and took karaoke very seriously. After every song, the computer gave the singer(s) a score and most were very good.
Saturday I met up with four friends and went to a town about an hour south of Kanazawa called Fukui. We spent Saturday and Sunday going to a dinosaur museum, a Buddhist temple, and come cliffs where an evil Buddhist priest was supposedly thrown to his death by angry villagers in 1182. Below is a pic taken from the top of the cliffs. (Click on it for a larger view.)
Other pics can be viewed on my Flickr site by going to this url:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/90319390@N00/sets/72157602052275177/
So that was my weekend. Tomorrow I begin teaching some new lessons. Wish me luck! Next weekend is another long weekend, which I am looking forward to because I will be in Kyoto with friends :)
Thankfully today was so much better than yesterday! I had two classes of all boys, which I was worried about, that ended up being really good. The second of the two was especially good. That group of students may end up being my favorite. Things ran more smoothly. I kept modifying my lesson plan after every class to make things better... And the day is going to end really well since I'm having dinner at an Indian restaurant. Keep your fingers crossed that the rest of the week isn't horrible. I have 4 classes tomorrow and 3 on Friday....
Well technically I've been going to school for the past 4 weeks, but today was my first day teaching. I taught only one class today thankfully. It was so stressful and if you thought that the stereotype of a Japanese student was true, including paying close attention in class, being respectful of their teachers, studying constantly, etc., let me shatter that impression forever. It's so not true!!! Not at my school and not at some of my friends' schools. The kids are just like American students, except that there doesn't seem to be a problem with violence here. Other than that their attitudes are the same, their behaviour is the same, and I could go on and on. And the class I had today was supposed to be pretty good...
I hope it gets better, but I have the feeling that some of my classes are going to be hard to control. Two of my classes have 31 boys each and the other female teachers have told me that they have problems controlling them at times. That means the students don't listen to them, etc and are therefore difficult to teach.
Here is a summary of my first class:
The kids remembered who I was as well as my name, which was good, but then it went downhill a bit. I began by telling them to listen carefully because I was going to tell them about myself. I said that twice. Blank stares both times. The Japanese teacher repeated what I said in Japanese. Stares not quite as blank, but there seemed to be little interest. I told the kids about myself using simple sentences, pictures, and objects. Blank looks most of the time. They seemed somewhat interested in the picture of me and my siblings making crazy faces. A few kids kept laughing and talking off and on. Couldn't tell if they were making fun of me, but I can probably assume that some of them were, since mimicking me was involved.
After I finished, really blank looks. I asked them if they understood, as did the Japanese teacher. Really blank looks from most of the kids, but one did answer yes. We played a gambling game with true/false questions based on what I had told the kids. The Japanese teacher asked them to get into groups, which took a bit of time. I wrote sentences on the board to help them answer the questions and tell me how much they wanted to bet like "I bet $40 the answer is true." They didn't like repeating the sentences as a class. It took several times to get them to repeat the sentences audibly and somewhat clearly.
The actual game went better and they seemed to get into winning money. One kid told me "Give me money! Give me more money!" But the game took so much longer than I had expected. I had come up with 9 true/false questions and we only got through 2. Maybe 3. Can't remember. And I ran out of money (photocopies of a $20 bill) because the kids were really into betting as much money as they had. It was mostly the boys who were betting as much money as they could. If the kids won their bet, the money doubled, so on the last question the boys were betting $200 - $400. Maybe the kids understood more than I thought because most of them got the answers right, although cheating may have played a part. Japanese students also cheat! Not true you say? Wrong!!!!
Next I asked the kids to make name cards to help me remember their names. The girls really got into it and included patterns and many different colors. Most of the boys just wrote their names in plain pencil. You can definitely tell whether the card belongs to a boy or girl by the style. (I will take a picture because some of the cards are great.)
Those two activities took up the entire class. I had a third thing planned—a handout so the kids could tell me about themselves—but there was no time. So that was it. The Japanese teacher said that I did well, but I kind of disagree. So does my head, which aches. Tomorrow I have two classes. Hopefully they will run a bit smoother since I have some idea of what to expect now and have revised my lesson plan a bit.
I'm sure I will have more teaching stories very soon...
