So the first week is now done and I have been to five of the six schools. I will attempt to write about my first day at each school but it might take me a while. I’ll do this chronologically and continue with Tuesday.
So I went to Sundai Junior High the day after Minobusan (the Buddhist school). I will only be going there once every two weeks and to be honest, that’s a bit of a bummer for me. The teacher I work with is great, the students seemed to warm up to me quite quickly, and what’s more is that they really seem to understand English pretty well. Little shy about speaking it (most of them) but they are able to comprehend most of what I say, and they seem to be able to read the language very well. Makes me feel like an idiot in regards to their language.
I just bike to this school, takes about 35 minutes. A bit hot to be biking right now for that length of time in my nicer clothes so I am looking forward to it cooling off. But I am sure I will change my tune when the full force of winter hits.
Anyway, I taught three classes, all with Mr. Yamashita. He’s the guy I visited last Friday. He is great. I think he and I will be getting along famously and that my infrequent times in his school will be some of favorite times here. All three of my classes consist of 2nd year students, which, to us, means 8th grade. They tend to classify their students based on how many years they’ve been in that particular school. So there are Junior High 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year students (7th, 8th, and 9th grades to us). And there are High School 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year students (10th, 11th, and 12th grades to us). Each class has about 40 students which I agree may sound quite large but actually didn’t seem too much so. For each class I did exactly the same thing: quick warm-up game, self-introduction, bingo game based on my intro, and then passed around some pictures of my family. Doing the same thing over and over got slightly boring for me, but really every class was slightly different and I realize that the next time I go this school it will be completely different for me as every week’s lesson will change. So although I do have to do the same thing sometimes I don’t think that it will really ever stay the same for too long. Thus, I haven’t gotten too frustrated with monotony yet, and I don’t think that I will. Although talking about myself so much gives me the creeps (as I write this journal—ha ha). Anyway, all three classes seemed very smart and most of the students seemed interested in the foreign guy standing in front of them.
After the three classes I am supposed to be essentially done, but last Friday during our meeting Yamashita had mentioned that he’d like to take me out of lunch and also wondered if I could help him review some speeches the kids wrote for an upcoming school festival. Each level 2 class will send 2 representatives who will then be judged by various people, one of those people being me. So yesterday the task was to read through the 120 (!) short essays and pick out the best 6 or 7 from each class. Then I was to correct those 6 or 7 and give them all back to Yamashita. So that’s what I did when he and I got back from a lunch he treated me to at some Japanese restaurant. Good food, by the way: raw fish (sashimi) on a bed of rice, udon noodles, and miso soup. I am really loving the food over here. But anyway, I sat and read for a couple of hours during which time another English teacher at the school came over to me and asked (I had been introduced to her earlier in the day) when I was leaving. “I don’t know,” I said, “when I finish these papers, I guess.” Then she asked if I could help her with some of the speeches her students had written. So of course, what am I going to say? No? So I asked her how many she had to read. “About 100,” she said. Now I want to be helpful but I’m thinking, “Damn, c’mon, not another 100 essays by these kids.” I knew how long the first 40 had taken me and I saw myself sitting in the teachers’ office until late evening had I blindly said “why sure, I’ll help you do anything.” So I asked as politely as I could, “And how many of those do need me to read?” I had to be careful here, don’t want to seem lazy, don’t want to overextend myself. Then she answered me, “ten.” A great relief hit me like a nice breeze on a scorching day “Oh,” I thought, “yeah I can do that.” So I told her of the conclusion I had reached. She seemed happy, I was happy, and the world suddenly seemed a nice place to live.
So I read for quite a while longer and eventually was all done. Yamashita seemed happy with the essays I had picked, none of which were faultless but were overall much better than most of the rest. And after we went over his classes’ essays, I took the other teacher the 10 she had given me and told her about a couple of the notes I had written on some. She seemed grateful for my help and I left the school on bike thinking, “damn, I really am a nice guy.” (please don’t spread that around though)

Next day, Wednesday, Yuda High School. This school is only a short bike ride away, maybe 15 minutes. It is an all girls high school and specializes in music. Not sure to what capacity it specializes in music or if it has some genre of music it specializes in but this is what I heard from a teacher at another school. And I never heard any music during this day, so I don't know much.
I showed up at about 8:05am to find that two of the three teachers I will be working with were out in the hall near the main entrance to the main building looking out for me. I wasn’t late, so I can only assume that they didn’t want me going to the wrong building. Nice people and they seemed happy to see me.
As I was changing from my shoes to school slippers, Mr. Yazaki introduces himself and tells me that his is the third class I will have at this school. Ms. Chinami is the one who came to meet me all those weeks ago but it seems as though I will be more closely working with Mr. Yazaki. He is nice guy who seems highly interested in both teaching his students English and also improving his own.
So he shows me to my desk and then takes me to meet the vice-principal. The vice-principal was a really nice guy, spoke no English, and asked me various questions (translated through Mr. Yazaki). He asked me everything from “where do you come from?” to “do you like baseball?” to “how can the Japanese school system improve its English programs?” This last one threw me as I’d only taught two days up to this point. “What the hell?” I thought, “I just got here. I can’t be expected to know the finer details of the Japanese English program. I don’t even know the finer details of the American English program and I went to school over there!” But I threw some ideas into the air and he seemed interested. One thing’s for sure over here….you have to be able to think on your feet. Though, come to think of it, I was sitting down at this point. Bad joke, I know.
Anyway, we had a nice visit and after about 10 minutes we all stood up and walked into the teachers’ room. Now, I had been asked to prepare a short speech. They requested that I say a few words in Japanese and I had agreed, adding that I’d also say a few words in English as my Japanese is crap (and I’d been hired to speak English!). So in we go to the teachers’ room. We entered through a side door directly from the vice-principal’s office and all at once the teachers stand up, face us, bow slightly and the vice-principal starts talking. “Uh-oh,” I thought, “this is the meeting. And I’m gonna have to make my speech.” You see, the problem here was that when I’d been shown to my desk, I’d dropped my bag on it; the vary bag that contained the notebook that contained my speech. And that desk was all the way on the other side of this quite large teachers’ room. And now everyone was standing, the vice-principal was introducing me, and in a few seconds it would be my turn to talk. I didn’t know what to do. I’d make a major scene if I suddenly bolted to my desk. The path was blocked, all eyes were on me, and I had exactly two seconds till I had to open my mouth, out from which Japanese was supposed to spill. “Damn it,” I thought, “I’m screwed.” I had thought for sure I’d have access to my bag before the meeting would start.
So, alas, I started my speech in Japanese…from memory. I said, “Ohio-gozaimas. Watashi was Marcus Frame (“Good morning. My name is Marcus Frame.”). Watashi wa America no California...” and that was it. I couldn’t remember the verb for that sentence. I tried and tried for a solid and long five seconds but I knew it would never come. So I gave up, telling them that I really can’t speak Japanese (as if they hadn’t figured that out already) and continued in English with Mr. Yazaki translating. I did manage to thank them in Japanese which received a round of applause (“thank you for ending your speech, you stupid American”) and I left the room with Yazaki vowing never to let that notebook out of my sight again!
But after that, the day got better. Mr. Yazaki turned out be a great guy, Ms. Chinami is very shy and quiet but seems happy and grateful to have me in her class, and Mr. Tanoguchi…well, he deserves a bit more than a sentence.
After the debacle that was my speech, Mr. Yazaki and I snuck back into the teachers’ room through the door on the side of the room that has my desk. He takes me to my desk and tells me to have a seat while at the same time introducing me to Mr. Tanoguchi. But the meeting was still going on. So Mr. Tanoguchi looks at me wrinkles his brow and puts his finger to lips, “Later. We must be quite now and listen to the meeting.” Now, normally I don’t take offence to these sorts of things but this guy looked disgusted with me and I hadn’t even said a word. And besides, it was Yazaki that tried to introduce us. So I sat down and listened to the rest of the meeting, of which I did not understand one word and about five minutes later it was over. Yazaki had gone back to his desk but Tanoguchi was still at his (our desks are back to back). At this point he stands up and hands me a small piece of paper which read, “Yoshiharu Tanoguchi. 71 years old. Wednesday the 2nd class with you.” That is word for word as I have it right here. “Why’d he put his age?” I thought. And I’m still not sure. But anyway, we talked a bit and things seemed ok. Then, later I asked him if I could make some copies of my bingo game for the classes, to which he said “yes” and showed me to the copy room.
“How many copies do you need?” he asked.
“Three of each of these,” I answered showing him the different bingo boards.
“Only three? I think you’ll need more.”
“No, no. Just three. One for each class.”
“How about 5 or 8?”
“No really, just 3.”
“I think you’ll need more.”
So I tried explaining to him that not every student would be getting their own copy. I’d be putting them into groups and each group would get one, but only one of each bingo board would be needed for each class. I had made up eight different boards so that no two groups in the same class would get the same board.
“Maybe you’ll find you need more.”
“No, no. 3 of each will do.”
“I think you’ll need more.”
I had visions of us standing there until mid-afternoon with me saying “No. Just 3.” and him offering “How about 6? or 9? Or maybe you’ll need 12?” “No, just 3.” “17, you say?” “NO JUST 3!”
“This is getting nuts,” I thought after his final offer. But he somewhat relinquished and made four copies of each before any screaming on my part was needed.
After this, though, Mr. Tanoguchi and I got along quite well and when we went to class it was obvious that he and his students have a good time together. I think I am going to enjoy his class.
His was my first class of the day. His note, “the 2nd class with you,” referred to the 2nd school period. Although I heard Yuda is an all girls school Mr. Tanoguchi’s class did have one male out of 11 students. I’m not sure of the story behind that. Ms. Chinami’s class is made up of 24 females and Mr. Yazaki’s class has 27 students with two being male. So there are a lot of girls. And they seem to like me for some reason.
After the classes I came home, ate lunch, killed a couple hours, went to the Kencho for about an hour, and then went back to Yuda around 3:45pm. Mr. Yazaki had asked if I would attend what he called a “chat room.” It was made up of three female students who spoke pretty good English, Yazaki and me. We sat in the library and went over a short essay, me helping them with their pronunciation and explaining any words they didn’t know the meaning of, and them asking me about this and that. They were all shy at first but they came around. We spent about an hour together and then left. I think I’ll be joining them nearly every Wednesday, or at least I was invited to. Nice girls. And Yazaki took the opportunity to improve his English as well. So the day went well. Three for three so far. Not bad.