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Published: November 15th 2009
Shibuya Club!
Neil (training buddy), his head teacher, me and Dave (other teacher at my school from Burlington) celebrating after an all night dance party in Shibuya.Story Time!
Wow, I was looking through my pictures that I have taken and I realized that in one week there are enough to tell at least 100 stories already. So instead of selecting just a few I decided to post a whole bunch of them to give all of you a great view of all aspects of my life here in Japan! I put details under each picture so be sure to read them to get the story behind each one. I hope you enjoy them!
As for an update about the past week I can say that it was a great one and a hardworking one at Aeon. It was counseling week at school which means I had individual meetings with all of my adult students that take my classes to discuss progress and to provide extra help and materials for our ‘Self Study’ program. I thought I was done with sales but it turns out it is a very intensive program and taken very seriously at all of our schools. So it was my job to learn about the 50 or so books and cd’s that we offer to our students to do at home or
Clubbin
Friends at the Club anywhere outside of class and make recommendations for each student. After about thirty meetings lasting about thirty minutes each I was pretty exhausted towards the end of the week. I actually do like a lot of the materials so selling it to my students wasn’t very painful at all. I ended up with a lot of sing ups and finished with a high percentage, enough to get some praise from the managers and head teachers at Shiki so it went well. The best part about the counseling was the fact that I took the opportunity to really get to know my students. Not only to learn about their goals with Aeon but to discover a lot about their personal lives like their hobbies and family details. I focused on making a personal connection with each student and I really saw them open up and enjoy having a discussion with me. I wanted to show that I really do care about their progress and I think this past week really helped create a trusting atmosphere that should extend to the classroom during lessons. It’s actually really enjoyable to see how much in common I have with my students and it’s made
Business Card
Check out my new business card me realize just how much I am going to learn during my time here!
Even with all that work and extra time I had to put into studying the materials I managed to fit in a little fun outside of work. Last weekend I started to learn more about my surrounding area in Niiza city as I went on a sightseeing walking trip along the streets. I saw an amazing temple that is famous in our area called Heijin-ji temple, about 15 minutes away from my apartment in a huge park (huge for Japan, about 5 city blocks), which I will be visiting regularly to see something green every once in a while. I will get some better pics when I go back next time for sure so you can see how beautiful it is. I found a soccer field too which is great since I bought a soccer ball and had no place to play! Well, I guess it’s not really a field, but more of a tiny rooftop field turf pitch on top of a eight story building beside the train station. It’s tiny and enclosed by a net so a similar size to an indoor soccer
Classroom Panorama!
couple of pics stiched together to show you my tiny classroom. Fits 5 small people. field in Canada. But I’m going next week to see if I can join the ‘Footsal’ league, which is what they call this kind of soccer. So getting to know my surroundings and checking out the shops and stores around my place was fun. During the week I got to go to an amazing Korean barbeque restaurant after being invited by some of the ‘badminton crew’ from school. The students in that group are a lot of fun and they love hearing about English slang outside of class. After eating raw salmon slices a few weeks ago my boldness has increased, and this time I tried cow intestines, tongue and even raw liver sliced up into little squares topped with ginger and soy sauce. Not bad to tell you the truth. The students loved getting me to try all the dishes and were proud to see me eat some of the stuff that evens makes them squeamish. I met a few more students and some older students that ‘graduated’ from school and are still a part of the social club that was started at Shiki. It’s great to be able to be myself in front of them outside of class
Buddies
Me and my buddy Shota (full time teacher at Shiki school) and show them how Canadians really act!
So those were the highlights for this past week. Be sure to check out all the pics of my school and all the friends I’m making here in Japan. Oh and I figured out how to watch sports for free on my computer so if you ever want to talk football, soccer, basketball or even hockey hit me up because it’s one thing from home that I will be keeping up with. Speaking of football it’s Tad’s playoff game this Sunday at 1:00pm so check out the BC Lions battling the Hamilton Tiger-craps in Hamilton and watch for #3 getting in the game on defense. If you don’t get the game on TV you can watch it for free online at www.myp2p.eu and click on the live sports button and then follow the easy steps to pick the Lions game. It’s playing at 3am for me on Monday morning so I hope to watch at least some of it. I have an extra day of work on Monday for kids training so I’m going back to Omiya where I had my initial training and I will be working with my training buddies
Fro!
A Fro in Japan? No way, I had to chase this guy down to get this pic. from a few weeks ago. I see some of them on weekends but it will be good to hear how classes are further north and to hear stories of their first few weeks. But I have to prepare for the kids lessons I’ll be teaching at training and my busy week of classes at school too so I’ll sign out and see you next week for the next issue of the famous ‘Chronicles of the Happy Dragon: Adventures in Robot-Land’!
Safe,
Sloaner
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AmericanDetour
Bruce Northam
Love Tokyo!
Wonderful, your pictures bring back lots of good memories, I was just there in September. Thanks!