The exhilarating experience of life

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May 7th 2007

Published: May 7th 2007

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Lanz

My town-Anjo

I’ve been part of the Aeon team for about a month now, and I’ve already had a 10 day paid holiday. “Golden Week”, oh how I love you. Japan has an unbelievable amount of public holidays, a lot more than Australia that’s for sure. And 4 of those public holidays happen to fall around the first week of May, therefore most companies give their employees the days off in between too, and Aeon is one of those wonderful companies. So I’ve just had since the 29th April off work, but I have to go back tomorrow. I’ll give you more info of my Golden Week further down.
So to update after my last entry, I have finished all my training and have had a week and a half of actual work in my school in Nishio. Kids training was a lot of fun actually, we had to learn about 15 or so songs and a whole heap of English based games that Aeon use during their lessons, and of course all the textbooks and materials again. It was a busy 3 days but like I said a lot more fun cos we had to run around the classroom and sing

Anjo

The view from my back balcony

songs and play games etc. And for all the trial lessons that we taught, all the other trainees had to be our pretend 3/4/5/6 year old students, which made it interesting. So after our 3 days we are now fully fledged adult and kids English teachers, and we were promptly sent off to our schools to begin work. I did 3 days of crossover training with the teacher I replaced, which was good and bad. Good because I got to observe all of his lessons on the first day, and a few over the following 2 days, but bad because the ones I taught he had to observe, which I suppose you could argue is only fair and he did give me heaps of great advice. But it’s so much more nerve-racking to have someone watching you teach. And then the next week he was gone and I was on my own, at first of course I was a bit nervous, but I feel a lot better about teaching now and each lesson seems to go too fast. Most of my students are great, they love to talk and are really participative in class. However I do have a few

My Apartment

students who are extremely shy and not confident in their English at all, so those lessons can be tedious to teach as I feel like I am constantly hauling and yanking the English out of their mouths. Those students tend to be high school students, who are used to staying quiet in class and respecting their teacher, so it’s hard for them to break the mold I suppose. I pretty much teach all levels of English, from the mid-beginner to near native, but I have to say that one of my favourite classes is the top level class with a Japanese guy who is only about 5 years older than me, and he has lived and worked in America and Australia, so he pretty much has perfect English and he has an unusual English accent. Most Japanese have American accents as they learn American English but this guy has a mixture of British and sometimes Austrlian accent, which is the weirdest thing. So those classes usually end up just being an hour of discussion, and since he has a fascinating life, that’s great, it doesn’t feel like work at all.
Then there are the kids. 90% of my kids classes

My Apartment

The livng area/Bedroom. That's my fold-away futon in the corner.

I love. There is a lot of running and singing and dancing and games involved so I always come out exhausted, but they’re a lot of fun to teach. Even though more work is involved than the adult classes. And most of the kids are great, they want to learn and have fun and they’ll listen to your instructions. But then there are the other students…no, really they’re not bad, just very energetic and harder to control. One of the classes is with three 6 year old boys, and they run around the room and wrestle each other and they particularly like to play “opposite day”, so if I tell them to sit down they’ll stand up, that sort of thing. The other class is a group of 11 year olds, boys again, who basically just don’t want to learn cos talking to each other is much more fun than listening to a strange looking lady who is speaking a strange language. So really nothing that a little discipline won’t fix. 😉
I’ve moved into my new apartment which is great. And I have finally unpacked all my belongings, which is so nice after living out of a suitcase for

My Apartment

The entrance

the last 5 months (as I didn’t have a wardrobe in Niseko, and then I was back and forth between places, and living in hotels etc.). And for the first time ever since I have lived in Japan I do not have to share a bedroom, or a kitchen, or a bathroom, or a toilet, nothing! Hallelujah!!! Sweet, sweet privacy. My apartment is actually bigger than I thought it would be, although it’s by no means a mansion. Apart from the bathroom and hallway/entrance/laundry it’s just one big room, which doubles as my lounge room and bedroom and kitchen. But I actually really like it, of course I wouldn’t have complained if it was bigger, but how much room does one person really need? It’s cosy and there’s less to clean. I’ve added some photos for you to see. Keep in mind that this is Japan, and honestly some of my Japanese friends in Hakodate live in apartments a third of the size of mine.
Although my school is in Nishio I actually live in a town called Anjo. It means I have to commute to work every day (and I thought I had escaped that), but the train ride

Asuke mountains

In the autumn these mountains turn all shades of red and orange. I'm told it's a sight to behold.

is only 25 minutes and Aeon pays for my tickets, and the station is literally across the road from my apartment and across the road from my work too. It also means that I live in a bigger town, as Nishio really is quite small, and that I am only half an hour away from Nagoya, the city. So I actually prefer it this way. And Anjo is quite pretty, they have pretty trees and flowers lining the streets, as I pleasantly found out during a walk around my new town this past week.
So Golden Week…so much to tell. It’s surprising how much I fit in to one seemingly short week, but here’s a little bit of a summary for you:

G is for gorgeous green mountains in Asuke. Kumiko, one of my co-workers took me to the mountains that are about an hour away from here, and we walked amongst the trees and visited an old style Japanese village where you could make all sorts of traditional crafts;
O is for Okazaki Shopping Mall. It’s only a 5 minute train ride away and is just like one you’d see back home, needless to say I had a

Asuke mountains

field day and bought a heap of new clothes and stuff for my apartment;
L is for long lines at the movies on a public holiday. Kumiko wanted to see Babel but when we got there we found out that the line to buy tickets was 2 hours long!!! We didn’t see the movie (surprise, surprise) but went to a place called DenPark instead, Denmark inspired gardens close to my home where we had a nice BBQ lunch;
D is for Dragons!! The Chunichi Dragons that is. I met Lauren and Kyle in Nagoya for the day and we went to see a Japanese baseball game. I wasn’t expecting much but it was so much fun, that I was converted and am now the Dragons’ newest fan! I even bought a cap and have my favourite player!!!
E is for English book store Maruzen. It has a whole floor of English books and magazines, which is an all new experience for me in Japan. In the past I have been limited to a selection of 20 or so books, now a whole floor. I was in heaven for at least an hour, and spent the rest of the afternoon curled

Dragons game

up on a sofa in Starbucks reading my new book and drinking coffee;
N is for Nagoya Aquarium. I met Lauren and Kyle in Nagoya again for a trip to the Aquarium on a rainy, wet day. I was tempted to take one of the penguins home but was reminded that they don’t look favourably on that;
W is for worst movie seats ever! On that rainy day in Nagoya we also went to see Spiderman 3 at the movies. Japanese movie theatres assign seats, and as it was a last-minute decision the only seats left were in the front row, the last 3 seats in the row I might add. The consequence: a stiff neck and little bit of epilepsy;
E is for early morning visit to Atsuta Jingu shrine in Nagoya, again with Lauren and Kyle, the morning before we went to see the Dragons play. Very pretty, peaceful place;
E is for empty bank account after a week of shopping and baseball games, and visits to the Aquarium, and eating out. Oh well, it was fun;
K is for Ku-chan, Kumiko’s Japanese miner bird who I met when she invited me over for dinner one night. It

Atsuta Jingu shrine

is possibly the smartest bird I know, and even speaks better Japanese than me! Well, not quite…

Golden Week turned out to be a lot of fun for someone who had no plans at the beginning of it.

The other day I bought a new mobile phone, and I did it all on my own. I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to understand all the details of the contract and that I wouldn’t be able to ask all the questions I wanted without a Japanese person there helping me with the translation, but I thought I’d give it a shot and was utterly surprised at how smooth it all went and the lack of problems I had. On my way home I had an overwhelming sense of…what would you call it? Achievement? Realization? Independence? Self-sufficiency? I don’t know what I’d call it actually…but it was a feeling of “Look at me, I’m doing it”, if that makes any sense. I’m living in a foreign country, I have a full time job, I have my own apartment, I pay all my bills on my own, I shop and cook and clean for myself, and let’s

Asuke mountains

This is the view out of the window of the restaurant where we had lunch...so Japanese.

not forget I have a brand new mobile phone…I’m independent and loving it. When I was a child this is what I would imagine when I thought of myself as an adult, well maybe minus the living in a foreign country thing, I never really thought that would happen. And now look at me, 23 and an adult. It’s exhilarating, and I love it. Who ever said life is dull? Life is what you make it.

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