Phots of us!

And we have access to the world now!

Hi Everyone! Yesterday heralded the end to our long wait for internet access. This is a joyful occasion - finally we can chat freely to everyone! This is also cause for concern as i will no longer have a reason to head to the all you can drink soft drink bearing 'Popeye's Internet cafe. A weekly ritual for me, I am sad to see it end. Im seriously considering reading manga and sitting in their little booths watching movies.....oh to be able to show you all Popeye's! So we have officially started to really settle in now and are more accustomed to the rhythm of Japan and our lifestyle here. We have regular schools that we attend five days a week (with Fridays and Mondays off) and we work at each school for about six hours. No marking, barely any planning (just for group classes, of which I have two per week and am given time to plan), its a very restful way to teach actually. The teachers i met here who have stayed a long time (some even ten years), i ask them what keeps them in Japan. They always refer to liking the 'lifestyle', and i can definitely understand why. Many of them are bankers or lawyers or office workers or waitresses or whatever from back home in Canada or the USA or Australia and coming to Japan they are paid pretty well to effectively just chat to Japanese people and act like a wiggle in kids classes. The days of work are short, the pay is reasonable, Japan is an incredible place to live...I can see why they stay. I think for me, the hardest thing to adjust to has been the style of teaching that is done here. I am a bit of a perfectionist and I like to be part of both the planning and the execution of classes I teach back home. I really love plannin lessons! Here in Japan, lessons are pre planned for you - there is freedom in the way you conduct them and what you choose to do but the essential lesson plan is the same for all teachers at all ECC schools. This is great for standards, since all teachers are teaching the same structures and vocab to their students and the lessons are really quite good, but its hard because i find it hard to teach lessons sometimes that I didnt plan myself - it can become more of a challenge to 'remember what Im meant to do next' than what my goal is for the lesson. But, as i said, a lot of the time we are just sitting in rooms, talking with students who are eager to meet us and eager to chat with us. Its a really relaxing way to spend a day of work! We started kids classes last week. They are very fun and hysterically funny. All the staff and parents think the kids are 'so cute' and they sit outside the classrooms watching as we sing and dance and practice the alphabet with their children. The kids classes have students aged from 1.5 - 13. Yep, 18 months old and they come into an English emersion classroom where I sing and dance and operate a puppet for them! Its actually really fun and the songs are cute. I love doing ones that are familiar like Heads, shoulders, knees and toes.....but I also like the new ones 'Hello, Hello How are you....clap your hands....stamp your feet...flap your arms...turn around...." (and yes, there are actions! Kids classes are great, you just sort of act like a member of High 5 for bout 40mins then the next group comes in. Most days i have 2 or 3 kids classes. Ross has more than me though. We also teach free time lessons and Junior High classes and I have two regular group classes too. Free time lessons are where people come to the school and book in for a lesson (max 4 people per lesson) that goes for 40 mins and could be about any topic in the current textbook that we all have. They could also get any teacher that is there on the day. We talk about shopping, sightseeing, family, friends and we practice situations like booking a hotel room or using the telephone in English. Its definitely small talk, but if you get good students who want to chat then the classes go really well. Regular classes are ones where people are booked in for a year of weekly classes with one teacher. The teacher gets a little bit of planning time and we use a textbook that is npt made by the company, its one they could buy at a bookshop and is more widely recognised. Those lessons are pretty fun, they have a range of activities like listening to tapes, chorusing new vocabulary, watching movies, reading news articles, etc. They're longer too - 80mins. I really enjoy planning these lessons (there are no pre written lesson plans so its up to me - yay!) and teaching them. Junior High classes are a bit nutty pbut have been ok so far. We only teach them for 25mins (after a Japanese teacher has taught them) and we are there just to check pronunciation and intonation that they can only get from a natice speaker ("do you" becomes "do ya" and stuff like that). A couple of weeks ago we met this lovely Japanese girl Rumi at a Hanami (a cherry blossom viewing picnic). Rumi lived in Canada for awhile so here English is really good and we chatted for ages. We have kept in touch and ended up going out for dinner with her last weekend, then the following day her and her husband took us out to Nara for the day. We went to Yoshinoyama which is a less common place on the tourist route. Its farther from Tokyo tht we'd usually go if we were heading to Nara, but the Cherry Blossoms bloom later in the year there because its a mountainous area and the blossoms are shielded. We went hiking up the mountain, ate good food and took in a spectavular view - it was an awesome day of sightseeing. We felt so worn out but so proud of ourselves. Rumi also took us to this great Italian restaurant (very hard to come by in Japan, I promise!) with wood fired pizzas. It was delicious. Today is our day off! Hooray, we're meeting with Yoshimi for dinner but i think we'll head into Umeda earlier for a little shopping too. Much love to everyone. We'll try to keep this blog updated from now on. Cheers! Allie xo

Finally...a blog entry!

Saturday March 22nd 2008 OK so I have decided to start a bit of a diary so that I can keep our blog updated even though right now we still don’t have internet access in our apartment. It’s frustrating but I think the simplest thing to do is keep this diary updated then upload any entries on to our blog when we get net access at home. So, an update on our time in Japan thus far. We’ve been here just over two weeks now – the time has absolutely flown so Im sure the rest of tis year will too. People here say that the first year flies (the main reason people end up staying on for a second) and it take months to feel like you’re part of this place. We definitely feel that each day we get more and more into the ‘rhythm’ of our local neighbourhood, our daily duties, our home life, etc. It’s hard to explain but it takes so much adjusting here…from adjusting to the streets and landmarks so you know where you’re going, what’s the fastest route, etc to adjusting to which grocery items are which, how they’ll taste and what to do with them, to important stuff like how to catch a train or ask where the toilet is to the more strange stuff like how, when and where to put our rubbish out, how to use the toilet (which is the big flush?! Where is the flush?! What’s that music for?!), how to turn the hot water system on, how to wash dishes when Japan doesn’t have plugs in their sink (a mystery but we’re getting there) and of course, how to shower in a very bath driven society. In the early days we were a bit mad. A bit unhinged really. We were working on what felt a bit like auto pilot. We slept a lot (to get rid of the tiredness of travel and to get over the culture shock that really wears you out), we showered as best we could, ate out most of the time because grocery shopping seemed all too complex, and wandered around our local neighbourhood and nearby city trying to figure out most of the time a) where are we? and b) where are we going again?! They were a strange few days….. It was great to start our training at ECC. We were surprised by how exciting and refreshing and relaxing it was to meet other ‘foreigners’ and become friends. We felt for those of them who were alone here and had spent the past few days to a week meandering around, settling in and generally being ‘unhinged’ by themselves. At least Ross and I had each other! There are some excellent people in our training group, some who we feel we’ll keep in touch with in the long term. There is a great couple, Leigh and Chris who crack us up with their sense of humour (similarly keen on humour that goes off on wild unrelated tangents…love it). We’ve made a great connection with a lovely sweet British girl and an insightful guy from Ireland. The others are lovely too. There is this great energy in our group and it feels like we’ll really take care of each other. There is another training group going through at the moment that seems really nice too but its funny how things work out and seem to have such a plan behind them…we just feel like we’re in the ‘right group’ for us. Training is so exhausting. It generally starts around midday each day and goes for seven hours but included one hour for lunch. The training is intensive, which is great because you feel like the teaching you’re going to do is serious and the company really seems to care about providing a quality education to the students, but frustrating because it is so exhausting, is followed up with about an hour of homework each night and is consuming…which is hard to balance with a new lifestyle and homelife to adjust too as well. It’s an intensive few weeks for us, but I think that’s a good thing. They put you to the test, like ‘make or break’ stuff and if you can get through it then you’re probably much better cut out for the job than those who give up during training because they find it too intense. We have bought bikes and are loving the distance we get under our belt. Ross cruises around looking for options for our home laundry. He has become quite obsessive about it! People here keep washing machines on their balconies then dry their clothes on hangers that are also on the balcony. The balcony is tiny by the way – there is literally just enough space for the machine, the person operating it and the drying stands. There is not enough room for our recycling bin, but what can I say, we’re ambitious! In the early days here, Ross responded to some kind of calling when it came to our washing setup. We had these two circular hanger things that appeared supremely steady when you hung things on them, were the picture of might and serenity as you left them on the balcony, looked strong as you closed the sliding door, then promptly toppled over as you turned to walk inside. They were evil, no doubt about it. Ross spent lots of time wistfully looking at laundry hanging systems in department stores, 100 yen shops and supermarkets. As we walked to work each day he would gaze up at other people’s apartment, critically analyse their drying systems and mentally catalogue the pros and cons of different options. Today, HOORAY! Ross found a hanging system at a secondhand store in our local neighbourhood. With any luck the market research phase has ended; but I feel there may be a new stage which involves less of Ross muttering and measuring and more of him sighing and gazing at his ‘masterpiece’. We use our bikes all the time. We actually bought them on our second day. We had been grocery shopping and were carrying heavy bags home for blocks and blocks when suddenly Ross dropped the bags on the ground next to ‘Don Quixote’ (yes…more on that later!) and said ‘That’s it, let’s buy these bikes’. He pointed to the red and white ultra cool racers next to us and the rest, as they say, is history. I use the term ‘Ultra cool racers’ loosely of course…our bikes are actually the ultimate in dagginess. They are old school, big handlebars, space on the back for your next door neighbour to be dinked, cruiser bikes. Everyone here owns one just like ours, or very similar to ours, which makes it much less embarrassing to ride them but much harder to find them when we park them outside Yodobashi camera! We ride the bikes to the station each day, park them and ride to work on the trains and subway. We ride them all around on the weekends and we can get into Umeda on them in about ten minutes, riding straight across the river. So, now for some info on our home and on living in Juso, our area. Our apartment (or manshon, as they call them here) is in an older style building that to me looks like a a mexicn villa, but uglier. Photos should explain the rest. We’re on the bottom floor, which is good because we get to point and laugh at other people as they climb the stairs with their groceries. Older style buildings like ours with four floors don’t have elevators. Our apartment is small but cosy. It’s actually quite spacious by Japanese standards and is known as a 2DK. We have 2 rooms (a tatami bedroom where we sleep and another room which is our lounge with a small couch, ridiculously huge low table and our TV) and a third ‘room’ known as a DK. It’s a combination of a kitchenette and dining area, our entrance and genkan – where you take off your shoes, and has our bathroom sink as well. The doors to our toilet and our shower room are off this room. It seemed cramped at first, and I don’t know how the Japanese live in theirs when they fill them with so much clutter, but we’re really happy in ours now. It’s spacious and cosy and really ‘homey’, the longer we’re here the more we love it. The only complaint is that we can’t find an unsecured internet connection to steal net time from….. We actually live in ‘Yodogawa’ ward but our closest station is Juso, which means when people ask where we live, we say Juso. This however, gets a bit of an interesting response. We live about a five-ten minute walk from Juso station and the centre of Juso’s more famous district, so where we are is quite quiet, has a nice park, a huge high school and very little noise. We are pretty much right on the river too, so within 10 seconds you can feel like you’re right out in the open as you walk along the river front. It’s a really nice place. We’re really happy. Juso is actually very well known for (and gets a bad rap for) being a bit of a nightspot for men. People call it a ‘red light district’ but by Western standards its very tame. Pretty much, you get off the train and walk across the road straight into ‘Sakaemachi’ a brightly lit arcade style road with a concentration of love hotels, pachinko parlours, cafes, and entrances to strip clubs. I have to admit, when I was told where we’d be living I was concerned but its so tame that I have to laugh when my Japanese friends freak out that I go to Juso station each day. It actually makes the area really cool at night (heaps of great, brazenly lit up areas, funny signage, gorgeously tacky love hotels, etc and fantastic, cheap restaurants) and tame during the day. Some of our friends at training are living in Abeno (in the south, a quiet residential area) and some are in Hanazanocho (a very blue collar area which gets an even worse wrap than Juso). We think we got the best deal. We are so close to Umeda too, which means that if we head in for dinner or a movie or something we don’t have to worry about the last trains home – we’ve got bikes! J Umeda is the main hub of Osaka in the North and Namba is the main hub in the South. They’re only four train stops away but both are huge metro areas. Umeda has two massive stations, sprawling networks of undercover, undergroung and above ground shopping arcades, several different malls and many department stores. The main three department stores are Daimaru, Hankyu and Hanshin. I am still yet to go anywhere other than Hankyu! Just haven’t had the time! My favourite little bits of the city thus far are Hep 5 Navio, Hankyu Department store food hall and KiddyLand. Hep 5 is a multi floor shopping and entertainment centre with a massive indoor/outdoor ferris wheel on top. It’s great for buying foreign stuff (like Cadbury chocolate!) and for eating awesome food, particularly desserts. Ross and I headed there on White Day (an extra Valentine’s Day where boys buy girls stuff, as opposed to Valentines where here in Japan girls buy boys stuff) and had an amazing Parfait dessert thing…hard to explain but suffice to say that Ross now wants to always eat icecream with cornflakes or frosties on top. We actually went to Hep 5 one morning early in our time here and got a real shock, in a nice way! We arrived just as they were opening and were thus privy to the ‘opening ceremony’ where the shop owners and service people all line up in the entrance and bow to you as you enter. This goes on every day at the start of the day’s trading. Amazing, but not that much of a shock when you start to experience the extent of the Japanese peoples’ dedication to brilliant customer service. They are completely and consistently committed to excellent customer service. Every time you pass or enter a store you hear the call of ‘Irrashaimase’ (Welcome! Welcome!), every time you purchase anything it’s gift wrapped until it’s almost unrecognisable (this includes the one donut Ross bought then had to unwrap tediously from Mister Donuts on out first day!) I feel like our expectations will be really high when we head anywhere else….. or maybe it’s just Australia where you feel bad when you ask to buy something! Ross and I went to the Hankyu Department Store Food Hall on our second day in Osaka. It was something I had read about and was really excited about doing. In all the department stores there is a floor dedicated to fresh produce, where you walk around and can have free tastes of everything from Ghana chocolate soufflé to crayfish to green tea to Japanese pickles to crumbed prawns to croissants. You name it, they’ll want you to try it! It was so much fun and I headed back there today to pick up some goodies to help us have our own little Easter celebration – chocolate soufflé, hot cross buns (at least I think they are…) and easter eggs (yes I found some!). KiddyLand is awesome – you would love it Stef! It’s a whole shopping centre with multiple floors and multiple stores all devoted to character stuff – Hello Kitty, Doraemon Miffy, Bad Batz, Snoopy, Moomin, The Hungry Caterpillar….etc…..everything from handbags and diaries to pens and pencil cases, hand towels, lollies, stuffed toys, tiles, clothing, etc. It’s really cool. Interestingly, you don’t see nearly an many children as teenagers and young adults and KiddyLand! We have started to feel more part of the rhythm of our local area. People dodge us on our bikes as opposed to the other way around, we’ve signed up at the local DVD/Video/CD hire place (yep, they rent CDs here!), we’ve ordered an inrernet connection, bought phones, found a favourite ramen noodle place, found all the local places with the cheapest and freshest produce (with help from one of our neighbours) and have worked out which are our favourite supermarkets for different purchases. We even found this cool Bento (lunchbox) place where you can buy all the bits and pieces to make your own Bento for lunch (or buy stuff for dinners) like pickles, crumbed chicken, potato croquettes, roast vegies, fish, sushi, rice, salad, etc. They close each night at 9pm and if you get there about 15mins earlier you get everything half price, so we enjoy going along and fighting to locals for the last chicken teriyaki. Very amusing. We also located a supermarket that seems to be the Japanese equivalent of ALDI, and Don Quixote, a crazy bargain supermarket/variety store at the end of our street where you can buy everything from Cartier watches to $1 loaves of bread to………..drum roll please…….cadbury chocolate!!!!!!! Yes! They have an import section! I can buy Cadbury chocolate at the end of my street! (I can feel you applauding David and Nola!) We have spent each Sunday since we arrived with my old host sister, Yoshimi. She’s ben so good to us. On our first Sunday here we met her and she took us to my old house in Kobe where I stayed ten years ago. We saw my other host sister Fumiyo and my host mother, Mama. It was such a strange, yet beautiful and comfortable feeling to be back in that house again. I loved being able to share that home and that family with Ross. Fumi and Yoshimi were so good to us. We had lunch then they took us shopping at Koonan – which is not unlike Kmart, but a lot bigger with massive variety. They helped me buy shampoo and conditioner and soap that I’d like, helped Ross go over options for his clothes drying (he he he) and answered all our curly questions. (Which one is the bigger flush? How do we wash our dishes with no plug for our sink?) Then last Sunday Yoshimi came over and took us to Costco. Australia is getting Costco soon, right? Well, get excited cos it’s awesome! Everything comes ultra cheap cos it’s in bulk, which makes it hard when you have a teeny weeny apartment, but Yoshimi said that most Japanese people come in groups with their friends and family, shop together, then split the cost and the groceries. Makes sense when you see the size of Japanese houses versus the size of 24 texas size choc chip muffins. Tomorrow Yoshimi and I are heading to the theatre. She has a backstage pass for a huge theatre here and we’re going to watch a musical rehearsal for a new Broadway show that is going to be showing here in Osaka first before heading overseas. It’s a sixties style musical called ‘Trip of Love’, written by a Japanese guy. I’m very excited. We have been told we’ll have the same two days off, which is a massive relief and we get our schedules in a week, at the end of our training. We started Kids training yesterday and spent the day chorusing dialogue (“Which shape is this? This is a circle”), singing songs (“Whoa, the Hokey Pokey!”) and playing games. It was fun, but again, mentally and physically exhausting. It will be so challenging and confronting to be out in the schools but also such a relief to have a schedule and some sense of regularity and order to our lives. Alright. This is the longest blog entry ever! I just felt the need to write and capture a lot of the stuff we’ve been doing lately – it’s so frustrating to not be able to put this straight on a blog with pictures for all of you guys to look at. We really miss being in touch with everyone. But, our irst two weeks have flown by so Im sure the time before we get our internet connection will fly too! Yay! Until then, have fun and be safe everyone! Love you. xoxoxoxo Allie