Spring Day

Shima High School lays at the end of a block adjacent to the Jr. Highschool, of which is located next to the elementary school. I don't know if clustering school buildings together like this is customary or not in Japan but all three of them are at the top of a semi-large hill. As a result, every day I get to hike this giant walking here. Anyways, here in Japan the main bulk of cleaning is done by the students. There is a full-time custodian here but, he only does the major things like, paintin' where paintin' is needed, fixin' where fixin' is needing and more often than not can be found outside burning weeds with a propaine fueled flame thrower. Well, every day when the adjacent Junior High does its cleaning they play loud pop music through the school P.A. system and as I write this post, I am hearing that.

With school having had started one of the changes with occoured with it was the arranging of seats in the teachers office. I went from a lonely at the entrance to a nice seat near the window. Now I can open the window and feel a nice breeze while I bask in the spring sunlight.

Tuesday night we had our English conversation class. The year went from May through March with a two month break between March-May. We have had about 15 regular students who come on and off but, this past Tuesday we had 17 new students! That doubled the number of people coming to the class. I think someone has been spreading mistaken publicity about our classes. It should be fun, and I am looking forward to teaching it but, a little overwhelmed by the numbers. Oh well!

Dusting off the Website

I almost forgot that this blog existed. Sorry nothing has been posted on it for the past few months. It is not that nothing is going on but, in the event that there is something to write about I usually never find time to do it. Anyways, I'll take a few minutes tonight and write a few thoughts.

Things have been going quite nicely. The previous school year ended the first week of April and after a two week vacation (for the kids, not the teacher) we started again with the 2009 school year. This year I tend to be less busy at both my schools which is rather nice. It gives me more time to take time on my lessons. This year at Shima, I teach an Oral Communication class two times a week to this years newly come sophomores. I also teach a reading class maybe once a month, and a class on internationalism and different cultures(???) three times a week. That class is only nine students and we have a great time. Next week we are going to make pinatas with paper-mache. As with all my classes, I teach that one with a Japanese teacher and so far we have really enjoyed it. One thing we have started doing at all our classes is starting out the lesson by giving the students an easy English riddle. I'll write the riddle on the board, read it out loud and then the teacher will go over the vocabulary and explain any difficult words that the students don't understand. An example of the type of riddles would be something like, "What goes up when the rain comes down?" The answer being an umbrella. The students really seem to enjoy it. At Suisan I teach three Oral Communication classes twice a week to the first years and that is all that I do there. I am only a month into this scheduel but so far I am enjoying it.

A few months ago, at a karaoke party with some of my community English class students jokingly I mentioned that we should all run the upcoming half-marathon. I didn't think they would take me seriously but, the next time I saw them both, about two weeks later, they both had told me they had signed up. I reluctantly did the same thing a few days later. I have been running on and off the whole time I have been here. Deep inside I had wanted to sign up and this officially gave me a reason to do so. I signed up, upped my training and on the day of the half-marathon completed the run in 2 hours 1 minute and 59 seconds. I think I did great. Since about the week leading up to the marathon I am running about 5-6 miles a day, four to five times a week and loving it. Here is another picture of the big event.


You can only see half my face but the guy giving the peace sign is one of my students. We left the third guy in the dust miles before that! Really enjoyed it and this was an opportunity to level up my fitness. Recently too I have been following a program that in six weeks will have me doing 200+ sit ups and 100+ push-ups in one shot. Why you may ask? Why not, I say, why not? Actually, gives me something to do while the Mrs. is off at work. We'll see if I can keep it up.

In the Hall of The Mountain king

Making Pots

One of the cool things about living in the sticks is although not a lot is going on, when something does happen it is usually pretty cool. Over the course of the past year and a half I have made a lot of friends that are my senior by about 20+ years. Well, a few weeks ago Ayumi and I were invited to go with one of my English students to a friend of her's secluded mountain hideout where she and her husband hand throw pots and bowls. We were able to play around for a few hours and ended up making a flower vase and two mugs. Although they weren't much to look at being able to use something we made will be pretty cool when we get finally get them.

Friday afternoon they started the fire and Saturday night they invited us to come along and spend the evening with them adding wood to the fire, eating good foods and chatting. We left the house around 5 pm and ended up staying until about 1 AM. We intended on staying all night but, being the weekend a lot of people showed up to participate and although we were invited to stay our ride was wanting to head home and although fun that late in the night our own futons sounded like heaven.

Pretty much what goes on is they have this giant oven which they built about ten years ago. Over the course of three days they slowly raise the temperature inside of this kiln to 1200 Celsius (2192 Fahrenheit) where once the temp is reached they keep at a constant for a whole day. Everyone just talks around this oven watching a thermometer and adding fire every 5-10 minutes while we feast on seafood and Japanese deliciacies. Although outside is freezing cold the oven is encased in a barn which heated things up pretty nice where we weren't cold at all. I can't begin to explain the colors inside that furnace I saw but, tried to snag a few photos which turned out pretty cool.

At a point they reached into the fire and pulled out a few mugs with giant tongs. Immersing this in water (if it doesn't shatter) gives the pottery a rare color. I have a picture of that as well. Not a lot more to tell other than a good time was had by all, I singed the hair on my left hand and wish I had more opportunity to do fun things like this!

Peeze out!