As promised, I will begin this post with tales of my Japanese lessons. A friend of ours gave me my sensei's (teacher's) name about a month ago, and I've since set up a regular lesson schedule with her. I take the 150 yen train ride to her home on the other sideo f Tsu for an hour-long lesson. We meet once a week and have now met three times - twice for official lessons and once for an interview of sorts. First of all, I have the sweetest teacher anyone could ask for. She is patient and kind and has a great sense of humor, which you can imagine comes in handy when teaching someone with absolutely NO familiarity with the language. Each day when I get there, she has a cup of water and a couple of cookies on a plate waiting for me. Of course, I'm usually too busy trying to keep up with her during my lesson to eat them, but it's the thought that counts. And boy, oh boy, do I have to keep up with her. I took French classes for 5 semesters between high school and college (and know far less than that number implies), and the learning there was very progressive: get introduced to some new vocab, review it, play a game, do a worksheet, use it each day in class for a week or so, and then take a quiz on it. Not so much with sensei. We read through new vocabulary once, and then she excitedly exclaims "Okay, now you know the days of the week (or numbers, or cities, etc.)!" We then proceed to practice questions and answers that I stumble through because I can't tell her that, hey, it takes me more than a read-through to really learn the vocab! In our first lesson alone, I learned the numbers, learned how to tell time, learned how to ask the time, and learned how to ask when someone's holiday is. She even made me call Matsubishi, the local department store, and ask their hours of operation and when their holiday is. "It's good practice!" she said with a smile. Yeah, good practice. And crazy.
In all seriousness, though, I really couldn't ask for a better learning environment. My primary goal in taking these lessons is communication, which I told her when we first met, so I am learning everything in Romaji (roman letters phonetically). I have a separate practice book with which I can study the Hiragana and Katakana (two of the three sets of Japanese characters) on my own. It's fun to learn the sounds and recognize some, especially in my own name, but first and foremost, I want to be able to speak to people and understand what is said when I'm spoken to. But learning numbers has already helped me understand a lot more. Plus, I haven't been studying that much lately, and it's a really low-pressure lesson. She constantly tells me to learn things "little by little," so I know she understands that I'm not really staying up late into the night studying. Luckily, the lessons are fun for me and a good way to relax during my now-busy days.
And what am I busy with? HALLOWEEN! As some of you know, I have been super busy planning for the OBC Halloween party. They don't celebrate Halloween in Japan, but since OBC is an American English conversation school, the Halloween party is the biggest event of the year. We started planning it in August, and we haven't stopped since. Right now, as you can imagine, is crunch time, and in the past week I have spent every free moment cutting letters, gluing pictures, painting boxes, and generally constructing what will be the OBC Movie Theater. That's right - each of us teachers have a room to decorate and create a game in, and I chose a movie theater theme. It has actually been a lot of fun seeing all of this come to life, but it has been time consuming and more than a little stressful. The plan alone for my room was 5 pages single-spaced, with details about game rules, decorations, theme, and a way that the students will be challenged to use new English words while still having fun. The party is next Saturday, the day before Halloween, and I can't wait to see it all put together. For a taste of what's to come in my next update, check out the sketch of my room:
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| Complete with a red carpet, box office, gold rope, and "Coming Attractions." |
This past Sunday, Sarah, Peter, and I went to Iga for their festival. We had heard from the past teachers that we really needed to go to this one. It's called the Ueno Tenjin Festival, and it is famous for its Oni-gyoretsu, which is a demon procession. Yep - demons. A number of people dress up in terrifying masks and walk around (seemingly) drunkenly and literally scare the hell out of little kids. The demons get rid of bad luck and illnesses, and also make kids scream and cry while their parents laugh and take photos. Well, their parents and the Americans.
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| So they had super scary demons and super cute kids. I don't get it. |
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| Loved this kid. He just crawled behind everyone, sat down, and missed the whole thing. |
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| This guy got less scary because when he scared a little kid before this picture, the kid freaked out and knocked him to the ground! This was during the random break they took during the parade so that parents could make their kids sit on the demons' laps and take photos. |
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| She was so scared. |
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| I can't help it. The tears are kind of adorable. |
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| The parade consisted of several Shinto shrines. These are very famous and normally kept on display in the Iga Museum. |
Before the parade, we visited the Iga Castle. It is surprisingly beautiful. It is full of ninja pieces, because Iga is the ninja city of Japan. This is the top city where ninjas used to train. We didn't make it to the ninja museum, but the castle gave us a good idea of the history of the city.
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| Ninja armor (Is that what it's called?) |
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| Can you spot the ninja? |
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| Beautiful ceiling in the castle. |
The title of this blog post is the numbers 1 through 5, by the way. I'm pretty proud of my new number knowledge.
I hope that you all are reading this in good health and with plenty of that great Midwest (and elsewhere) fall weather soaked up for the long winter ahead. And don't forget...it doesn't get as cold in this part of Japan as it does in Minnesota, in case you're thinking of traveling!
Slainte.
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