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Published: December 16th 2007
Lost in translation...
we enjoyed the brown font translation!!!Melissa, A fellow TESL student from Caledon near Toronto has been living in Osaka for a few months with her boyfriend Mike. She was going to be visiting Tokyo for a few days so she stayed with the two of us and we crammed a Tokyo sightseeing tour into a Saturday and Sunday. We met her at Ueno and went to the National Museum after walking around Ueno park and checking out some of the sights. Then we headed to Akihabara so she could get in some good people watching and check out the Electronic district of Tokyo. From there we headed to the throngs of people that make Shinjuku so difficult to navigate! According to one of our books, Shinjuku is the busiest train station in the world, with more than 2 million people churned out of its turnstiles every day! We met Simone, Kerry, Bob and Gabrielle at an English pub and continued on to a concert. It was a very full day.
Sunday we took Melissa to probably our favourite areas in Tokyo: Yoyogi Park, Harajuku and Shibuya. After a long stroll through Yoyogi Park, we headed to Harajuku for some people watching. From Harajuku we walked
Ueno Park
Tori gates along Ometosando - the posh, Parisian style street - to Shibuya, where we grabbed Indian food for lunch. From Shibuya we took the train to
Roppongi and got in a visit as the sun set. We enjoyed some cold stone ice cream and made our way back home.
The next weekend was quiet. On Friday we met David and Matthew at an English pub for fish and chips and a few beers. On Saturday we went to Round One in Machida. Round One is an 8-floor activity center with bowling lanes, batting cages, arcades, pachinko, karaoke, billiards, darts etc. Travis tried batting cages but "clearly something was wrong with the bat" since he only hit a few of the fastballs. Next we both tried bowling which was great. Apparently 5-pin is uniquely Canadian, or at least all of the people we've met from other parts of the world have never heard of it. From there the two of us decided it was time for Karaoke. I guess the people using the room before us were excellent singers since they had the "Judge" option turned on. However since neither of us are, we kept getting "gonged" and the song would
fade out. It was as if the karaoke gods were saying "you suck!". We finally figured out how to turn that setting off, and it was a good time from then on!
On Sunday we attended a rock music festival called
British Anthems . It was excellent. By far our favourite band was Los Campesinos whose energy and stage presence reminded us of Arcade Fire. Also at the show: The Enemy, The Pipettes, Blood Red Shoes, Lucky Soul, Eight Legs, Ripchord, Monobright and others. It was a very fun day, with 3,000 people - mostly Japanese - filling the concert hall. A very different experience from a big concert back home. We were essentially in the middle of the mosh pit for some of the show, but we weren't being bumped and bashed around - it was great! Just polite dancing with healthy consideration for your fellow audience members! We saw Los Campesinos interviewed on MTV a few days later saying it was the greatest audience they had played for! Good Times!
The following week was sadly our last week teaching. As things started to wind down we both became sad about the idea of not seeing our students every
Ueno National Museum
The original Stampin' Up! This is one of the first stamps ever made!! day. They were easily the best part of our jobs. We learned so much about Japanese culture from them, from KY to Otaku, from Kaiten-Zushi to Roppongi, from San, Kun and Chan to ichi, hitotsu and ikkai. We are really going to miss them.
Here's the story of Travis' last few days:
For the last few days I taught a lesson about Christmas and it was good fun seeing how much or how little each student knew about the holiday. To wrap up the class we sang Frosty The Snowman. I had the secretaries (that don't speak English at all!) help me prepare a farewell speech in Japanese which was about 1 minute long. After each of my classes I said the speech to the students and thanked them sincerely for making my experience teaching so memorable. The secretaries suggested I end with the term "O Pa Pi" which I had never heard of - I tried it in the first class and the students all burst out laughing. They explained that it was a popular joke and was short for "Ocean Pacific Peace". Ok, at least it's a guaranteed laugh for the speech! I then used it in
lieu of "cheese" for picture time and it went over splendidly! For my last class we had a Christmas/Farewell party with many activities such as Musical Chairs, Candy Cane Relay, Candy Cane Hockey Shootout, Twelve Days of Christmas singalong, Christmas Trivia, and Who Am I (one student is blindfolded in the middle of the circle and they spin and point at someone who then has to disguise their voice and say Ho Ho Ho, if their name is guessed by the person in the middle, they have to switch places). We had a blast and a lot of good laughs! It was tough to say sayonara to the students, and some of them teared up a little! Many students gave me parting gifts! One student presented me with his ceremonial kendo cloth, and another with a handmade scrapbook that every student had signed, filled with pictures of our term together. At the back of the book she had hand written the lyrics to a Japanese song that I like in Hirigana, Romaji (phonetic alphabet) so I could sing along to it, and then in English so I would understand the meaning. What a lot of work and thought! Some of
the messages from the students were great, saying "my favourite quote say each day is better than last" or "please remember always, the pain of parting is nothing compare to the joy of meet again" or "I know I am not good at English, but you praise me and make me feel so good about speaking English". It was an incredibly beautiful present, and although difficult to say farewell to the students, meeting them has been one of the best experiences of our lives. We have already been in contact with a few of them over email and look forward to meeting them again soon!
Here's the story of Michelle's last few days:
We actually had 2 farewell days. On Wednesday, Simone and I had Christmas parties together for the students. We had a lot of fun and laughs - singing and playing games. Wednesday night the students had organized a party for the teachers in the cafeteria. We had dinner and drinks together, which was great. It was so much fun to be in a social situation with the students...except maybe a couple of them had a few too many drinks and things got a bit crazy. One
of my students, Takashi, got on the microphone and said "Michelle, I love you" and then sucked helium out of a container and did a comedy routine in front of everyone. He is one of my crazier students (obviously!) and always provided lots of laughs in class. I actually have a video of this, so I'll have to show it when I get back. After dinner, they asked all the teachers to the front and our students presented us with gifts. I was given a beautiful red scarf with cherry blossoms on it (you can see me wearing it in the farewell pics!). They also gave me 2 really nice ceramic beer cups with a cherry blossom design. It was so nice! The other teachers and I had prepared a poem to read - which went over quite well. A few more students came after with small gifts or note cards...I was so overwhelmed. Thursday was my last day teaching and it was hard to say goodbye to everyone during the day. After our last class the students asked all the teachers to stay in one room while they went into a different room. Eventually they brought us to the
Ueno National Museum
The caption under this artifact said "ancient pillow". Say what? Ouch! why not just sleep on a painted rock? room and each class was making a tunnel for us to walk through. When I came to the end of the tunnel one of my students was holding a beautiful bouquet of flowers! I couldn't believe it. All of us were shocked. Again, they asked Simone, David, Matthew and I to make a speech. We took some more pictures and said our final goodbyes. Some of my students gave me some nice notes and as I started reading them my eyes starting welling up...once they started crying I couldn't hold it in any longer! It really was sad and I will miss them a lot - but we've already been emailing, so we can stay in touch that way and maybe see them again for lunch when we're back in Japan in May.
For the next few days we are sticking around Tokyo to see some of the things we've been too busy to squeeze in. After that we'll head to Nagano, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, Kobe, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka. We'll fly from Fukuoka to Bangkok and begin the next leg of our journey.
As one of Travis' students wisely said "please remember always, the pain of parting is
Ueno National Museum
Whoa, I'm sorry I called your forearm veiny! nothing compare to the joy of meet again." We're so glad to have met all of our students and they've made our experience in Japan so wonderful.
love michelle & travis
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Kevin
non-member comment
So Sad
Awwww. *tear, tear* It's so sad you guys are leaving already. Im happy you had such a wonderful experience, and theres more to come! I think we should get Wii Fit for our Wii Trav. Did it look fun? You should probably get it. It might help with the lovehandles and beer gut. JOKES!!! Have an AMAZING trip....well.....rest of trip, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!! Love ya both.