All Work and No Play Makes Carl.....something....something.

After reading Colleen's blog about work and whatnot I decided to follow suit with my own version of working in Japan. As opposed to the regular grind I had back in Calgary, (which consisted of 40 or so hours a week working and sleeping so rarely that when my head hit the pillow I would instantly pass out) things are rather different now. I work Monday to Thursday 5:00pm-9:00pm. That's right, a whopping four hours in which I teach five 40 minute classes. Then, get this, on Saturday I have to work eight whole hours in a row from 1:20pm to 9:00pm. For the first time in ten years I am getting eight or more hours of sleep a day, and...wait for it... I have been reading books too! In fact, if you look in that little bar on the right hand side of the page, I have even included a list of books that I have read while in Japan, as well as a list of the movies I have seen here, after all I am still Carl.

(Sidenote: Watching movies is somewhat challenging here. Going to the theatre costs about $20 Canadian per ticket and even then they are about 2-3 months behind North America. That's right, while the whole world is watching Star Wars on May 19th, Japan is the last country to get it in the theatres. Sometime in July I think! So our options are; renting movies, which also have the 2-3 month delay or watching them on tv on Friday and Sunday nights. These are the nights that English movies can regularly be found at 9pm. There is no guarantee that they will be good movies though, as I have mentiones in my previous post.)

Back to work. I have settled in quite nicely after an initially rough start (I was two hours late for my very first training shift. Schedule mix up. But, beleive it or not, I have not been late once since then). At Colleen's school all student files and text books are on the computers. At my school all files and text books are on shelves and there are constantly missing files, misfiled files or other teachers have the files that you need. At Colleen's school they have a break room on every floor. At my school we have one floor, and the break room is the same room as the file room, so while you are running helter-skelter between classes you are diving over people trying to heat up their leftovers. What I mean by "helter-skelter" is that we have ten minutes between each class to grade and write constructive comments on 1-4 students, then find the files for your next 1-4 students, review their past lessons, comments and personal files (age, interests), and then choose a lesson for them. Ten minutes can be a very short time. The students have a varying degree of skill ranging from level 7C to level 2 (it is assumed that if you reach level one you don't need lessons anymore, so we have no level one). Here is an actual conversation with a level 7C student.

Carl: (very slowly) Hello, my name is Carl. What's your name?

7C student: What your name.

Carl: No, no. (gesturing) I'm Carl. Who are you?

7C: Who are you.

Carl: (now writing my name on paper and pointing) Carl...me. You...?

7C: (now nodding) I Carl.

Carl: (pointing again at my name) CARL...(gesturing) This is me. (pointing at their file) You are Emiko.

7C: (now smiling in recognition) You are Emiko.

At which point I dive through the window and plummet 24 stories to my death. No, not really. I grit my teeth and continue. But to show the difference, here is an actuall conversation with a level 2 student.

Carl: Hello, how are you doing today?

2: Very well thank you. And you?

Carl: Pretty good. My name is Carl...

2: Nice to meet you Carl where are you from?

Carl: I'm from Canada...

2: Oh really, which part?

Carl: uh, Calgary...

2: Very nice, you hosted the Winter Olympics in 1988. Look before we get started I have a question. I was watching television and a McDonald's commercial, which I have seen many times now, appeared using the phrase "I'm Loving It". Have you seen this commercial?

Carl: Yes actually, we have almost the same commercials in Canada.

2: And they say "I'm loving it"?

Carl: Yes...

2: Really! I just assumed that they were Japanese made commercials because the english grammar was so bad. I thought that "love" couldn't be used as a progressive verb.

Carl: Well...it...uh (damn it where's Colleen the English major when I need her)

So you can see I teach a myriad of different students. Anyhow this blog has gone on far too long and I am still wanting to attach an old entry. This one is from April 10th when we went to see Sumo wrestling.

April 10

I've been meaning for some time to do a journally type thing of my daily event, but I was hoping to get internet first so I could download a better program than wordpad. No such luck yet, and I have done too many things already to not write them down.

Today we went to our very first live Sumo wrestling event. It just so happens that one of the big tournaments that they do every year is at Osaka Park, which is just fifteen minutes by foot from where we live. We got up early (9am for us) and dressed and walked down to see if there were Fukyu (cheap seats) tickets left, and as luck would have it there was. So for about 1000 yen (ten bucks) each we saw Sumo. There were two tournaments but we missed most of the first one because we were busy standing in line so we could get our picture taken with Sumo wrestlers. They are very big. and no not all of them are Japanese. In fact in the main tournament, when there was just four guys left, it was down to Asashoryu, who is the only current Yokozuna (highest rank for Sumo) and is from Mongolia. Ama, who at 113 kg was the smallest wrestler in the tourney (he beat four guys to get to the semi-finals, including Miyabiyama who outweighed him by over 150 lbs.) and is also Mongolian. Kyokushuzan, also Mongolian. And Kokkai, who won the tournament and 3,000,000 yen, is from Georgia (not USA, the formerly Russian kind of Georgia). Very cool.

After we came home and managed to catch The Mummy 2 on tv. We find about 2 or 3 American movies on tv a week, which is nice because anything that you can understand is better than nothing. They don't do a lot of dubbing here, mostly subtitles. even some of the Japanese programming has subtitles. Probably for the hearing impaired, or just those who like to read their movies I guess.

Cool, Carl out. Of my mind. For now. Bye.