- 806: minutes until I am officially past the quarter-century hump. (not excited) I think looking forward to and then enjoying my birthday is a thing of my past.
- 2,200: average number of steps I take every day at school. (not bad considering it is the bare minimum for just going to and from class, making copies, etc)
- 5: bruises I have from trying Judo last night. One of them is on my spine from trying to learn how to fall properly. The fact that I have a bruise there means I did not succeed.
- 3: books I have read in their entirety since Saturday (50 Shades of Grey...yeah I read them. And I liked them. And I just admitted that I liked them on a public blog)
- 2: kanji tests I took yesterday (don't know if I passed yet)
- 21: days of school where I will actually teach at least one class (!!!!!!)
- 43: days until I leave Iiyama
- 44376: 43 days in hours.
- 2662560: 43 days in minutes
- 56: days until I board a plane to return to America
- 5: members of my favorite J-pop group, Arashi
- 23: days until my last kanji test (probably not going to pass!)
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
some numbers
Thursday, June 14, 2012
well...
I lied. I know. I was supposed to write posts for last Thursday and Friday and I didn't!! But I am posting now, so...
Just a quick post about one thing in Japan I will not miss...bureaucracy.
I had to renew my driver's (drivers'?) license on Monday. I hear you thinking "what is so hard about that? send in the form! or go stand in line at the DMV and bam! done!" Well...no. In Japan, you have to sit through a lecture. If it is your first time renewing a license, then the lecture is 2 hours. After that, just one hour.
Let me walk you through the whole process.
Paperwork hours are 1-2. I got there at 12:50. There were already 30 people there. You get in the first line...they scan your license in this cool machine which prints out a paper that has your license (front and back) and then things to fill out. Then you pay (it costs 4000yen) and they have stamps for this, so when you pay, they stick stamps to a piece of paper. Usually they give you the paper and you go to a different window, but in this case, they stick the stamps on the paper, you write your name on the paper, and give it right back to them. What a waste of a piece of paper, eh! ok...proceed to tables where you fill out a form about medical stuff (I did it in japanese and they were all very impressed.) go to room to get eyes checked. that was fun. NOT. Last time I was there, I had some help explaining about my eye, but I was on my own this time, so it was a bit of a mess. but she let it go, thankfully. Go to a window and turn in all the forms filled out up to this point. receive another form and a colored tag. Go to a room to get new picture taken (No smiling!!) turn in form after taking picture. Go upstairs to classroom and sign in. OK STOP for a moment. I am not sure you are getting quite how hectic the process was. Also, please remember that this was all happening in Japanese and also that there were people everywhere at all the different windows and stations. It was really overwhelming.
Ok, let's proceed upstairs. I was the first one there, so I sorta wandered around a bit, took a picture of the projector cause I am weird, bought a bottle of tea and went back in. The lecture was the biggest waste of time ever. We started with a video that just showed accidents and how/why they happen. It broke down reasons behind accidents into categories: ignoring traffic sings (running a red light for example and hitting someone who had the right of way) or driver negligence? (there is a better word, but it was like the driver was texting or looked down to do something). After the video, the guy talked for an hour and a half. Besides the fact that I was the only foreigner suffering through it, the information itself was just irrelevant. It was all statistics about accidents and numbers of people who have licenses in all of Japan and then Nagano specifically. It was the kind of information that should be in a pamphlet for people to read while they are in the driving center waiting room or something. It is not something that they need to waste time saying out loud. I know there were people sitting behind me who kept falling asleep because the lecturer kept waking them up. It was seriously boring. But this is Japan. They have the power to make people sit through things like that, so they do. I am not sure what I think would be a good use of time, but not these stupid statistics. Oh well. It is done and I can now legally drive in Japan until July 21, 2015!
Just a quick post about one thing in Japan I will not miss...bureaucracy.
I had to renew my driver's (drivers'?) license on Monday. I hear you thinking "what is so hard about that? send in the form! or go stand in line at the DMV and bam! done!" Well...no. In Japan, you have to sit through a lecture. If it is your first time renewing a license, then the lecture is 2 hours. After that, just one hour.
Let me walk you through the whole process.
Paperwork hours are 1-2. I got there at 12:50. There were already 30 people there. You get in the first line...they scan your license in this cool machine which prints out a paper that has your license (front and back) and then things to fill out. Then you pay (it costs 4000yen) and they have stamps for this, so when you pay, they stick stamps to a piece of paper. Usually they give you the paper and you go to a different window, but in this case, they stick the stamps on the paper, you write your name on the paper, and give it right back to them. What a waste of a piece of paper, eh! ok...proceed to tables where you fill out a form about medical stuff (I did it in japanese and they were all very impressed.) go to room to get eyes checked. that was fun. NOT. Last time I was there, I had some help explaining about my eye, but I was on my own this time, so it was a bit of a mess. but she let it go, thankfully. Go to a window and turn in all the forms filled out up to this point. receive another form and a colored tag. Go to a room to get new picture taken (No smiling!!) turn in form after taking picture. Go upstairs to classroom and sign in. OK STOP for a moment. I am not sure you are getting quite how hectic the process was. Also, please remember that this was all happening in Japanese and also that there were people everywhere at all the different windows and stations. It was really overwhelming.
Ok, let's proceed upstairs. I was the first one there, so I sorta wandered around a bit, took a picture of the projector cause I am weird, bought a bottle of tea and went back in. The lecture was the biggest waste of time ever. We started with a video that just showed accidents and how/why they happen. It broke down reasons behind accidents into categories: ignoring traffic sings (running a red light for example and hitting someone who had the right of way) or driver negligence? (there is a better word, but it was like the driver was texting or looked down to do something). After the video, the guy talked for an hour and a half. Besides the fact that I was the only foreigner suffering through it, the information itself was just irrelevant. It was all statistics about accidents and numbers of people who have licenses in all of Japan and then Nagano specifically. It was the kind of information that should be in a pamphlet for people to read while they are in the driving center waiting room or something. It is not something that they need to waste time saying out loud. I know there were people sitting behind me who kept falling asleep because the lecturer kept waking them up. It was seriously boring. But this is Japan. They have the power to make people sit through things like that, so they do. I am not sure what I think would be a good use of time, but not these stupid statistics. Oh well. It is done and I can now legally drive in Japan until July 21, 2015!
 |
| Picture of the screen. Cause I know you were curious. |
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Wednesday, June 6
Wednesday...hump day.
Another relatively unexciting day.
I had 3 classes.
The first class I ended up teaching alone because the JTE was not feeling well. he came in at the end, but did not really do anything, so... what was interesting about this is this particular class of first years is usually loud and hard to manage, but with just me, they were angels! I don't know why, but they listened to me, and even enjoyed the class, I think. I did a word search, which you think would not be that fun, but they were really into it. It was their first time doing a word search, so that could be part of it. Either way, I was happy with them. for the last 15 minutes of class, I taught them hangman, which also went really well. It was funny, though, because to explain it, I just sort of start a game and let them figure out the rules themselves and finally one kid got this expression and then shouted out "OH! So we want to SAVE the person!!!" It was hilarious, and he was essentially right. So now I have change the name of the game to the equivalent of "save the person" game.
Since we are on the topic of hangman and I have nothing else to really talk about in this blog entry, I will tell you a story. One time, an ALT played hangman in his class and some of the kids wrote down the gallows thing and the dead person. And then one of the kids decided hanging himself would be a good way to commit suicide, so he did. And the parents of the kid found these random English class notes with people hanging and talked to the school and sued the ALT for giving their son the idea. true story. Anyway, I like hangman, but I always have to be really really careful to emphasize that it's just a game, just for fun. sometimes i hang a teddy bear instead of a person, just to be extra safe.
In other news, nothing else really happened!
We celebrated Megan's birthday after work with Korean food and ice cream cake. Those of you friends with me on facebook, can also watch the video and enjoy the fact that the chicken dance was also a part of the celebrations.
There was also a sing along to Disney's "Be a Man" from Mulan, probably due to the fact that 5 of us ate an entire ice cream cake.
the end.
Another relatively unexciting day.
I had 3 classes.
The first class I ended up teaching alone because the JTE was not feeling well. he came in at the end, but did not really do anything, so... what was interesting about this is this particular class of first years is usually loud and hard to manage, but with just me, they were angels! I don't know why, but they listened to me, and even enjoyed the class, I think. I did a word search, which you think would not be that fun, but they were really into it. It was their first time doing a word search, so that could be part of it. Either way, I was happy with them. for the last 15 minutes of class, I taught them hangman, which also went really well. It was funny, though, because to explain it, I just sort of start a game and let them figure out the rules themselves and finally one kid got this expression and then shouted out "OH! So we want to SAVE the person!!!" It was hilarious, and he was essentially right. So now I have change the name of the game to the equivalent of "save the person" game.
Since we are on the topic of hangman and I have nothing else to really talk about in this blog entry, I will tell you a story. One time, an ALT played hangman in his class and some of the kids wrote down the gallows thing and the dead person. And then one of the kids decided hanging himself would be a good way to commit suicide, so he did. And the parents of the kid found these random English class notes with people hanging and talked to the school and sued the ALT for giving their son the idea. true story. Anyway, I like hangman, but I always have to be really really careful to emphasize that it's just a game, just for fun. sometimes i hang a teddy bear instead of a person, just to be extra safe.
In other news, nothing else really happened!
We celebrated Megan's birthday after work with Korean food and ice cream cake. Those of you friends with me on facebook, can also watch the video and enjoy the fact that the chicken dance was also a part of the celebrations.
There was also a sing along to Disney's "Be a Man" from Mulan, probably due to the fact that 5 of us ate an entire ice cream cake.
the end.
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