Beer garden?

On Friday, Hunter and I went out for dinner with a group of staff from one of my schools. The venue was the beer garden of a hotel in town. I must admit that I briefly wondered at the idea of a beer garden in such a densely populated city, but I didn't give it much thought. It turned out to be the astro-turfed roof of a building... Not much of a garden, but there was a pleasant evening breeze, which also whipped away the cigarette smoke, and we had an enjoyable evening with some great food, and some pretty good conversation.

It's hot

In the 2 1/2 months since we got here, it has gone from so cold we were wishing we had down jackets (otherwise known as the tail end of winter) to hot enough that several times this week, I could feel the sweat running down my back and legs (otherwise known as the start of summer). Unlike a Toowoomba summer, this heat is extremely humid, and I'm told it's going to get a lot worse. The Japanese are still wearing jumpers, although they complain about the heat. Yesterday, Jess saw someone wearing a down jacket.

Fortunately, the past couple of days, the schools seem to have cottoned on to the fact that it's getting hot, and some of the classrooms are now air conditioned. Others aren't, and to top it off, some teachers keep the windows closed. Argh! I've taken to just opening windows and waiting for an objection, which usually doesn't come, although we sometimes have to deal with papers being blown about.

This morning at 9:00am, it was already unpleasantly hot and humid. It is now almost 10pm, and still unpleasantly hot and humid.

I hope you Toowoombaites are enjoying the cold!

Nampeidai - Ferrals and cuties

I went to the feral school again today. I'm in the process of losing my voice, which made things interesting, but overall, we managed that aspect of it quite well. Two of my year six classes were quite well behaved today, so last week's optomism wasn't completely unfounded. However, the middle class was still quite horrible. Several kids were openly reading books rather than participating, and the homeroom teacher didn't seem to mind. When we were playing pairs/memory with upper and lower case letters, one kid threw all the alphabet cards for his group on the floor. Instead of repremanding him, the teacher just picked them up for him and gave them back. Five minutes later, they were back on the floor again. Repeat scenario...

It wasn't all doom and gloom though, because my year fives were great, and my year twos were absolutely incredibly gorgeous, and were responding loudly and enthusiastically despite my reduced volume (I really love the littlies!) Also, one my year six students gave me a ring made out of sticky tape. It was really cool, had a sticky tape diamond on it and everything, and had the added advantage that the event made Hunter insanely jealous!

Which ring is which?

Sign sign sign

Today my Yr 5s and 6s were in exams, so I taught three classes of Yr 1 and two classes of Yr 3 instead. This was my first time teaching Yr 1s on my own. I have this to say. They are absolutely adorable, very enthusiastic and open, and very exhausting.

One of my Yr 6 teachers asked me how my day went, and I explained the above, and also mentioned the "sign sign sign" phenomenon. She went and grabbed a piece of paper, and brought it back for me to sign. I got her back though, by making her sign my book of lesson plans, and had her explain her name kanji for me.

Osaka castle

Today, after a wonderful breakfast of pikelets cooked by Hunty, we went for a jaunt to Osaka Castle. This is actually my second visit, we went to the castle park (but not into the castle itself) once before (without the boys) in cherry blossom season, but somehow I never finished writing that blog post, so the below photos are from both visits.

Look at the size of that rock!

Invader!

Inside the castle is a museum, and unfortunately, it all looks very sleek and modern inside. The castle has eight stories, and the "recommended path" is to work from the top down, so we decided that climbing eight flights of stairs in one go paid for the ice-creams we'd enjoyed earlier. On the 2nd floor (second last in the order we saw them), we decided it was worth the cost of $3 each to be able to act like clowns. As always, I lost the rock, scissors, paper game, and thus failed to achieve the horned helmet...

Hunter was not willing to die for the camera

New laptop working well

I have installed Ubuntu on my laptop and am thus far enjoying 11.04, which I hadn't previously had an opportunity to test. I even managed to not kill Windows in the process, although I don't expect to have much use for it.


Happy Lucy!

New laptop

While my little Eee served me valliantly, the 7" screen means horizontal scroll on just about every website, which is rather painful. It also had a way of freezing if I had more than a couple of programs running.

Last weekend, we went shopping in Osaka, and as I looked at laptops, I realised that I could get a pretty good one, as in equivalent to my desktop at home, for about $500. I thought for a bit, but gave in rather easily. The best deal I could find was a Dell inspiron (they sell Dells in store here). Also a major consideration was the size of the spacebar key, as many Japanese keyboards have an absolutely tiny spacebar key. Having decided on the laptop, I purchased it, and was informed that in would be delivered in a week.

Late last night (just 3 business days later) a shiny red laptop was delivered, which I am now playing with and trying to figure out. Windows has been convinced to appear in English (with a few exceptions), and I am adjusting to the slightly different keyboard layout. It is nice and fast, which makes Lucy happy, and now I just need to install Ubuntu, as soon as I've bought a DVD to back-up Windows to.

Pronunciation of "Three"

With my Yr 5 students, I've lately been teaching them to count to 20. With the Yr 6 students, I've been teaching them to count to 100. Either way, we end up with the pronunciation of the th sound, in either three or thirty.

While not being a Nazi on the subject, I am making sure to spend a bit of time explaining how to make the th sound, as I firmly believe that the younger they learn it, the easier it will be. My favourite routine involves poking my tounge out at the kids, waggling my hands up near my ears, and then encouraging them to do the same back at me. They're usually a bit shy, hesitant, and giggly, but a few will do it, and then most of the others will jump on board. Once most of them have their tounges poked out at me, I explain that to make the th sound, they need to have their tounge between their teeth.

This has had results. On their feedback sheets at the end of the lesson, I have had a significant number of children say that they now understand the pronunciation of three. Unfortunately, many of them still insist on using katakanna to show that they now understand the pronunciation, so I have ended up with a number of variations on "I used to think it was suri but now I know its shuri/turi/furi" with the odd kid who actually uses the roman script to show th. They do actually (mostly) get the pronunciation, it's just that their script is completely inadequate for representing it!

Fire drill

Last week, one of my schools had a fire drill, during which, I was told to remain at my desk. It's a little concerning that the drill doesn't include making sure that the AET (or any of the office staff for that matter) gets out safely. Fortunately, however, this time at least, I avoided burning to a crisp, so all is well.

Languages

Up until now, I've been qutie pleased to note that my Czech has not been mixing into my Japanese at all. On Monday, I called Dad and spoke to him for about an hour in Czech, and suddenly, I had problems. When I needed to tell Dad to wait, all that came to mind was chotto matte. When I wanted to say, "whatever's fine", dochi de mo ii was what I wanted to say. Then for the first few hours of Tuesday, I had Czech fighting with my Japanese, however, it sorted itself out after that.

Damp shopping in Kyoto

On Sunday, Jess, Andrea and I went shopping in Kyoto. With a Typhoon due to hit that night, the weather was miserable, pouring rain interspersed with periods of light drizzle. However, with the rainy season officially starting Today (and in realitly having been going for a while), we decided that we can't put off going out just because of a little rain, or we'd be housebound for the better part of 2 months.

Thus our Kyoto shopping expedition started with a Takatsuki based preparation shop, making sure we all had (reasonably attractive) gumboots and a good umbrella. I bought black ones with white spots, otherwise pretty ordinary. However, you can buy some pretty fancy ones, that look pretty much like ordinary heeled boots, except they're gumboots. When we first saw these boots for sale, we laughed at them, but we've changed our tune. In Japan, you spend a lot of time walking and riding, and in the rainy season, waterproof shoes are definitely advantageous. Of course, the fancy ones don't fit my giant Western feet. As it was, I decided that my new gumboots were not the most comfortable of shoes, but definitely more comfortable than walking around with wet shoes, which I would certainly have been doing otherwise.

I only ended up buying a few trinkets, but it was good to experience how life can be enjoyed quite well, outside in the pouring rain. Since buying the gumboots, I have worn them just about everywhere, because it is constantly raining, and it quite liberating to see a puddle, and then walk right through it, without worring about wet shotes.

Universal Studios

A bit of a week ago, wewe went to Universal Studios Japan, henceforth referred to as USJ, which is conveniently located in Osaka. Think Disneyland (or Movie World), except themed with Universal Studios movies, not as big as Disneyland, but a lot bigger than any Gold Coast theme park. We got ourselves a year pass (slightly more than the cost of two visits), and will definitely be going back a few times.

Were we getting on the right train? How cool are my shortrs?

Walking in, I felt like a little kid again. The music was all highly cinematic theme songs, and I started dancing down the street. It was so cool, and I must say it definitely outclasses any theme park on the Gold Coast.

The first thing we did was queued up for Shrek's 4D Adventure. The fourth dimention came from the fact that the seats moved, and they occasionally sprayed water at us. I was pleasantly surprised that despite the complete lack of any English in the featurette, it didn't pose much of a barrier to our enjoyment. Also, as it was just a short featurette, they wer able to play to the 3D really well, without it looking deliberately staged for 3D.

Then it was time for the rides. They varied a bit in quality, and I would say that the newer rides that relied highly on visual technology (3D effects, lots of pretty lights etc), were much better than the old fashioned type where a mechanised dinosaur jumps out at you. It was intermittently raining all morning, so the wait times tended to be between 15 minutes and half an hour, which was much better than usual. Another advantage to the rain was that I bought myself a cute snoopy poncho. At least, I decided that it was cute, the others laughed at me. At any rate, it had ears on it. Unfortunately, I didn;t get a photo.

All in all, we had a great time, although personally, I would have left an hour or two earlier. We didn't get back home until nearly 8:00, and I was exhausted, and felt it right through the next week.