The Students

Ok, welcome back to another blog, sorry this ones so late but I have not had the time to sit down in front of the computer in a long time.

This week has been relatively uneventful so I will pepper it with some random pictures of my environment here, including my appartment, my local park, the linimo (hovering computer controlled monorail thingy) and my favourite café across the street-The Yeast Paradise.

On Sunday Ayae came back from her parents so I met her at the station. We went to a tofu restaurant which I was apprehensive of at first, not being a big tofu guy, and the fact the prices were twice that of the average Japanese restaurant. I was however pleasantly surprised, as once more it was an awesome meal! The dish I chose was basically some pieces of Tofu covered with Miso (traditonal in the Aichi prefecture I live in), as well as sashimi, some meat and loads of variations of tofu dishes. It also came with free top ups of rice and Miso soup. Sweet.

After this we decided to go to Sakae to see what was going on. It was pouring with rain however so there wasn’t the usual choice of live bands in the park. There was however the `World Festival` which was a festival with lots of stalls, most asking for charity for various African and Asian nations. There was also a big stage featuring world music and dance artists. Im not a huge fan of world music, but there was some ok stuff on, and it was quite interesting.

On Monday I went into work to observe some classes I would be taking on the following week. The president has recently decided to give me twice as many classes, which is obviously both good and bad. The day seems pretty long though with 5 and a half hours of classes crammed into a 6 hour shift.

On Tuesday I went into work again to cover for a teacher off sick. This was quite good fun as most of the kids were really well behaved, and enjoyed learning. It’s a shame Im not taking over these classes!

Wednesday and Thursday I pretty much chilled out.

Then Friday I went to work to do some more cover lessons.

On Saturday it was a new Dragons Sale. The Nagoya Dragons won some end of season tournament (presumably the equivalent to the F.A cup), and so nearly all the shops in and around Nagoya had sales on everything. I headed to Sakae (the center) after work, and stumbled upon a visual arts festival. There were a few stalls exhibiting photography and stuff, but my attention was drawn to the stage where a J-Pop band called `Cherry Blossom` were playing. I cant claim to have heard of them but they sounded pretty good, and apparently they’ve got singles and stuff out so fairplay.

Unfortunately this day I forgot my camera so I cant provide any photos or movies . Sorry!

Anyway after watching them for a while I blazed the shops, but couldn’t find anything decent in my price range so headed to Osu Kannon. Osu is kind of the more bohemian shopping district of Nagoya. I had only been their once before this and that was a very short trip.

So I was a little shocked to discover how unbelievably huge it was. When I got there I went through all the tiny market stall stlye shops to look for clothes, but despite the number of them (their must have been 100s), pretty much everything was catering to the more extreme Japanese tastes (lots of ridiculously shiny and/or ludicrously tight (even on a skinny boy like me) garments), and anything relatively normal was too far out of my price range (even with the Dragons sale!)so I ended up not actually buying anything!

Still, seeing Osu was enough in itself to make the trip worthwile. As I said before its huge-possibly as big as Sakae (which is twice the size of the average UK city centre). So big that I have no idea how much I actually saw of it. I just know I got lost and there was still plenty more to see.

So that was pretty much my week. However I realise this blog does seem a little short so Ill talk a bit about some of my more interesting students. One of my adult classes every Saturday is 3-5 women in their 20s and 30s, one of whom is the girlfriend of one of the Nagoya Dragons players (which I guess makes her a WAG!). She always gives us insights into the players personal lives as well as adding a touch of glamour to proceedings. These ladies always have plenty to talk about, so the class pretty much teaches itself.

Another class I taught on Friday featured 2 older women (late 60s), one of whom has been married for 32 years, all the more surprising being that it was an arranged marriage. She said “At first I didn’t like him cos he was short and fat but I later realised he was very kind and now I love him and Ive never thought about divorce”. Quite interesting that shes so happy, when you think of the divorce rate nowadays.

In addition to this shes also one of the many people to be affected by the recent Nova collapse. For those that don`t know, Nova is the biggest school in Japan, and it recently went bankrupt leaving hundreds of teachers penniless and out of a job. Anyway this student of mine had paid for lessons in advance which obviously she will never get now. The company president totally screwed people over, having a bar, double bed and even sauna in his massive office whilst not paying teachers wages for 2 months. Needless to say this has been quite a talking point among the English teaching community.

Most of my other students are kids, and most of them are quite well behaved. One of the classes Ive taken over on Monday features this really obnoxious kid but I find shouting, or slamming my hand on the table usually gets his attention. Its funny going straight from being a student to being a teacher (altho in a year Ill go back to being a student again!).

Anyway, that’s about it for this week. Ill try and do something awesome this week so I can write a really cool blog but until then,

Take it easy

Jack