The New Teachers in Town

Here we are, back in Sasebo. It`s funny how a place can become your `home away from home` so quickly. After only a few days we were truly happy to be back in our apartment, and sleeping in our own futons. Eating out was getting a bit expensive, so cooking at home will become a frequent thing for us. Never before have we been forced to choose all foods based on the picture on the package. Really, I mean in Titusville or Orlando we can read `A B C` but here most everything is in one of three Japanese scripts. So, here`s my homework assignment for everyone: Next time you to the grocery store, focus only on the pictures and see how easy/hard it is to decide if something looks edible or not. You may be able to see a frozen dinner of vegetables and meat in a cream sauce. However, without knowing the language you`re left wondering what that white cream sauce is even made of. Let`s just say we`ve liked about 1 out of every 4 things we`ve bought at the grocery store.

Alright, enough about food. Let`s talk about what has made the first week of our job so enjoyable. . . our students! They are amazing. . . so studious, so dedicated, and so much fun! The classes are taught 100% in English (obviously), so much of the time is spent going over new vocabulary, practicing pronounciation, and creating much more typical conversations than they are used to. You see, most of our students have a good vocab and grammar foundation from school (English is a required subject in Japanese public schools). What they haven`t been taught, however, is how to truly speak the language. That`s where we come in. For now our students fall between the ages of 13 - 70. However, next week we will begin training for teaching `KIDS` classes, where the age range is 2-12. In addition to practicing speech, many students enjoy simply learning about foreign cultures. There has been a good amount of interest in both the U.S. and Florida, so we`ve had fun teaching them about things familiar to me.

The other night we went out to a local Japanese restaurant here in Sasebo with some of the other teachers. It was a fairly small restaurant with low tables, tatami mats and cushions to sit on, and a friendly serving staff. We weren`t hungry, but the other people in our party ordered a number of different types of `yakatori` (kabob). There was chicken, pork, beef, squid, green onions, and tofu. We just ordered a couple of bottles of beer (Kirin and Asahi). They were approx 24 oz bottles and cost ￥500 ($5). On another note, here`s some interesting info about beer in Japan. At the store, beer is often sold as individual cans and sometimes bottles. The price of an average can at the convenience store equates to between $1.50 and $2.00 each. Therefore, 6 packs are often $10 or more. Those interested in dark beers (Aaron) would be happy to know they enjoy dark beer in Japan. You can find dark and light beers domestically from companies like Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo, and Suntory. The most common imports have been Budweiser (no american light beers, sorry Dad) Corona Extra, Heineken and some foofy drinks like Skyy, Zima and B&J. If you have any specific beer questions (Aaron, Dad, Paul, Ron, Joe, Dan, Tim, Sam), please ask away. You know I love beer. But enough of my babbling. I`m passing the torch to Steph now.

Well, so far Nick and I have had similar experiences with the students and with our co workers. However one thing that sets me apart from the other teachers is that I am from Puerto Rico and they have never had a teacher from there. Most teachers at the Sasebo branch are from Australia and Canada (The teachers at the Nagasaki branch that we went out with were British, Scotish and Australian). Therefore whenever I mention to the students that I`m from PR they are very curious and eager to learn about the little island in the Caribbean. Most of the students have never heard of Puerto Rico so I just point it out to them on the world map we have on the wall. In addition to the standard lessons we also do "VOICE" sessions. The VOICE room is where students can go in before or after the lessons to practice their English. Each teacher chooses a topic to discuss during the 40 minute session. So far Puerto Rico has come up at every session that I have done. The students can tell that I am American because they say I have an American accent but they think that I look a little different. So, most of them are not surprised when I tell them that I`m not only from continental US, but also PR. In my VOICE session today we were talking about Puerto Rico and then somehow we began talking about games children play (that`s what happens in VOICE you start at point A and end in XYZ). I was explaining to them a game that I used to play in PR when I was younger called "1,2,3...FISH" (this is a literal translation from the actual Spanish name: "1,2,3 Pescao`") and to my astonishment they played the same game here in Japan except they call it "Damarasunga Koronda" but it has the same rules. It was funny how I was explaining to them how everytime I mentioned this game to someone in the US they had never heard of it. And here on the other side of the world Japanese kids have been playing the same game. It truly is a small world!