Week 3 - Kindergarten and Rice Cutting

This week we attended our first Kindergarten classes in English. It was very interesting to see and participate in kindergarten classes. I was really surprised at how much the kids know! The kids are quite an excited bunch. We did and exercise with answering "How are you?" Instead of the usually, "I'm fine thank you, and you?" that most are taught to saw, we were practicing phrases like, "I'm happy, I'm good, I'm hungry". For "I'm great" we do a little dance and the kids follow along. This makes the kids laugh lot every time our supervisor does a little dance while saying, "I'm great!"

On Saturday morning we went to harvest rice from a farm 30 mins away from school with the 8th graders. The night before, at the apartment, we had our first experience seeing cockroaches in our rooms, which was a little terrifying since it was my first time to see one. It was really big and flat. They move really fast and kind of in a strange way.

 

I sat on the bus with one class and we talked about their favorite Disney movies. We got to the field and they gave us a tutorial on how to cut rice. You hold a bundle in your left hand and cut the bundle with your right hand, with the blade facing towards the ground.

We started to cut the rice for about 5-6 rows. Many of the girls were getting freaked out by all of the bugs. I had a couple of spiders fly on my when I was cutting the rice but it was actually funner than I thought it would be. I cut the rice almost too fast compared to the rest of the group.

After we finished cutting, we watched as the farmers fed the rice to a machine that separated the rice grains. Later, they would give us some of the rice we harvested it after it was processed and cleaned.
 On the way back from the farm, I sat next to two girls and we chatted for 30 mins in English! I was very proud of them and I know they were trying very hard!

Week 2 - Getting Used to School

The first week of school I felt nervous in the class room but by the second week I started to feel much more comfortable being in the classroom. There is a really good group of kids here and I love when they try to make jokes in English. 

This week we started our first Japanese calligraphy lessons. We get to participate in two lessons a week. I have taken calligraphy in my past study abroad experience in Japan but it was quite short and simple. I have never been very good at it and I have a lot of room for improvement! We gave an self-introduction in English and in Japanese. The calligraphy teacher is a really nice and friendly. He doesn't know much English but luckily he is easy to understand in Japanese. He likes to tell a lot of stories and life advice in Japanese. Also, his calligraphy is beautiful and he is so skilled! Just watching him write something on the board inspires me to want to write that beautifully. 

We started out learning the basic strokes styles involved in calligraphy and we practiced a writing a character combination that means heaven and earth. It was kinda nerve-wracking as our teacher kept taking photos of us while we practiced. Suddenly he gave us a fancy paper board to write our final attempt on at the end of class. I wish I would have had more time to practice it before I made a final piece! I really enjoyed the class and I was glad we would be able to go to this class every week from now on.

This week instead of bringing my own lunch, we tried eating at the cafeteria at the high school. We had tempura, rice, and miso soup. It's not bad and for a reasonable price! (450 Yen)

 Also this week we had our first Japanese lessons. There were no advanced Japanese textbooks at the school so at first we were not sure what to do for lessons! Since I have been taking Japanese for awhile, for the first few classes we had Japanese conversation practice.

After two weeks, I noticed there are some class at the middle school that are focused and quiet and some that are a little chatty. I decided to look more into what are big motivators in class for Japanese students learning English. There are many words or simple phrases they sometimes have trouble understanding, such as, "Are you finished?" or even mixing up words such as "Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How". In the study, "Students' self-determined and integrative orientations and teachers' motivational support in a Japanese as a foreign language context" by Maya Sugita McEown, Kimberly A. Noels, and Kristie D. Saumure, it mentions, "Students who report more self-determined reasons for language learning tend to have less anxiety, more positive attitudes toward language learning, and increased feelings of self-efficacy". I definitely agree with this statement and you can observe this among the classes.

Week 1 - Arrival

(I apoligize for the long blog ahead of time!)
Friday, August 22nd - Packing Day

The day before I left for Japan I was very nervous. I could barely sleep the night before. The nerves were not because I was going to Japan but more about riding in an airplane. With recent events, riding in an airplane has become more nerve racking for me than it has in the past.  The entire day I felt sick to my stomach but I tried to ignore my nerves to get through the day. 

I went to the store with my mom to find "work shoes" for Japan since Japanese shoe sizes only go up to 7 usually for girls and I wear size 9. We got to the store and mom immediately got very excited to shop. Surprisingly, I found suitable shoes quite quickly.

Came back home and I packed until late at night! I was surprised how hard it was to try and pack suitable clothes and items that would work for 4 months in Japan! It was a struggle and quite stressful. After I was almost finished, Dad and I went to Sam's club to get some last minute items. We went to the grocery to get food for breakfast and then we had a really nice dinner in a nearby Italian restaurant.

                                          (My cat accompanied me while I was packing)

Afterwards, I packed again and had trouble figuring out the weight of my suitcase and also found out that my suitcase zipper had ripped so Dad helped me tap it up with duck tap. My nerves were crazy and I couldn't sleep at all. I finally slept at 1am.

Saturday, August 23rd - Flight Day

 Since my flight was around 6am, I had to wake up at around 3:30am... I was only able to sleep maybe for 3 hours. I got up, got ready sluggishly, and loaded the car with my 1 suitcase, carry on, and backpack. We got to the airport around 4:30 and said goodbye. My suitcase weight was exactly 50.0 lbs! Hopefully I can still manage to be under the weight on the way back. I think the only reason I didn't have any tears saying goodbye to my parents was because I was so sleepy. It always makes me so sad to say goodbye to them. I feel like you really don't realize how much you like it at home until you go off for college with no car and no way to go home easily. I took a photo with my parents and they waved at me behind the glass separating the gate and the lobby area until we could no longer see each other.

I walked around the airport for an hour with really heavy bags at the airport in San Francisco. I tried buying chocolates there to bring as a souvenir but unfortunately they were very expensive. I changed some money into Japanese yen and of course the exchange rate was unfavorable. Currently the dollar is stronger than yen but you get much less for the amount you have.

I searched for the gate for a long time and suddenly a man asked me where another gate was. We laughed about how "strange" the airport was and he helped me find my gate after he found his. There were mostly Japanese at the gate and I started to feel more excited. San Francisco is kind of different as some gates are found on a downstairs level while others are on the top floor.

Soon I met up with the other intern joining me to assist English teachers at the middle school in Japan. We went to search for food and came to try a store famous for sour dough bread in San Francisco which I was unaware of. After an hour or two, it was time to board the plane. (After our flight we found out that a big earthquake hit San Francisco about 20 mins after we took off O_O) My nerves got really bad again as the international flight scared me much more than the domestic one just for the fact that we fly over the ocean.

We got on the flight and I sat next to an older Japanese woman and a small Chinese boy in the center row (I have always been next to the window or side aisles before). The entire flight, the flight attendants spoke to me in Japanese and I was able to speak back to them in Japanese the whole time, which I have not been able to do before. Also, the Chinese boy spoke no Japanese or English so there was often a communication issue with him and the flight attendants (some could speak Chinese though) and his parents were sitting in a couple rows in front of us. The Chinese boy watched Chinese dramas on his ipad the entire flight as well as playing a fighting game very intensely for hours at a time.  The Japanese woman slept almost the entire way. I could not sleep at all since we left about at noon in the pacific time zone (when it is red eye flight, I usually have a much easier time sleeping).

 The flight attendants came around with warm towels to wipe our hands and a small rice cracker treat. After we were quickly given "dinner" and I had the Japanese style dinner with fish, rice, potatoes, soba, spinach, egg, fruit, Japanese pickles, and edamame. They also served us miso soup, green tea, and vanilla ice cream. Since I could not sleep, I decided to watch movies instead. There were many times during the flight that got quite shaky and it was a little difficult to keep calm. I watched Princess Diaries, which was a favorite of mine as a child. After, I picked out a movie called "The Grand Budapest Hotel". It was a very funny movie and very different from what I am used to watching. I would definitely recommend this to anyone.


To watch all of these, it had been more than halfway through the flight (10 hour flight). I decided to watch an episode of Project Runway, and it was funny that 2 months ago I watched the first episode of this season on the flight to Japan and now I was able to see the second episode. After that it was time to eat breakfast. I ordered the meal with "beef stroganoff", bread, fruit, and yogurt. I decided to watch an episode of the Japanese drama called "Hanasaki Mai Speaks Out!" It did not have subtitles but somehow I was able to understand most of it. Afterwards, I fell asleep for maybe 30mins to an hour and it was about time to land in Japan. I started to get very nervous again for the landing into Japan, especially since I couldn't see outside the window since I was sitting in the middle of the plane (seeing outside the window makes me feel better somehow). Eventually, we landed in Japan and the relief hit me as soon as the plane was on the ground. I was extremely tired but so grateful that we had a safe flight.

Sunday, August 24th - Landing in Japan

I immediately noticed the humid weather and the familiar smell of Japan. I searched for the other intern and eventually found her in line at the immigration. We got through immigration with no problem but there was quite the long line. We grabbed our luggage and went to the main lobby area and found our internship supervisor and the school vice principal who were very nice and welcoming. I was able to exchange a little bit more money and we headed off to the car to make our way to the apartment.

This is the first time I came to Japan without having the initial shock of how different everything looks to me. Perhaps it was not as drastic since I came to Japan 2 months earlier.The ride to the apartment was very enjoyable. I loved looked out the window at all of the farms on the way from Narita airport. It was different for me to see a more rural side of Japan as most of my experience in Japan has always been in very urban areas.

We took a drive around the area we would be staying and saw the school. We arrived at the apartment and moved our things inside. I was pleasantly surprised at the apartment and although it may be small in "American" standards, I much prefer the smaller size. There is a lofted bed, tv, phone, small table with two chairs, a small bathroom, a closet, a small refrigerator, washing machine, small stove top, and a sink. Afterwards, we were taken to the nearby grocery store so we could get some food to start our adventure with. I got soy sauce, "pre-washed" rice (which I had never heard of before), sesame oil, brown eggs, curry rue, potatoes, carrots, onions, green tea, water, and cucumbers.

                                                                    (The Apartment)

After we got back, there was something wrong with the cord and the wifi passcode was missing so I was not able to set it up >_< I was a little stressed out as I did not realize how far the apartment was from the main parts of Tokyo.  I was really sleepy so after putting everything away out of my suitcase and showered, I fell asleep very quickly.

Monday, August 25th - First Day of School

That night I had a very tough time falling asleep and woke up every couple hours. I woke up around 5am (jet lag) and I just started getting ready for school. I dressed up in a blazer and business skirt and at 7:30am, we met our supervisor outside to take a walk to the school together for the first time. At first, I was so disorientated with the lack of sleep that it was really hard for me to remember the roads to school. When we got there, we first changed our shoes from the outdoor shoes to the indoor shoes and we had our own lockers to keep our shoes in.

We headed to the main English building called Ambition Hall and we met the other English teachers there. We saw the photos of all the past interns from 2001 to now and it was quite amazing to see that we are now a part of this as well. We got a little tour of the rooms and soon we were off to the middle school teacher's room to give a short introduction speech (in English). Afterwards, we did a short tour and visited the conbini nearby (convenience store) and then we went to the high school teacher's office to give another short introduction speech. This time I did the speech in Japanese which was a little nerve-racking.

We met many people and it was hard to remember everyone with my memory already having trouble from the lack of sleep. Next, there was a welcome back assembly for all the middle school students since it was their first day at school. The students sang the school's song and we watched as student's received awards for their performance last semester. The sound of the cicadas was very loud from outside in the gym where it was being held as the doors were open and I got many mosquito bites which made it a little difficult to stand still as I wanted to itch them so badly! It was interesting to note that the students brought up to the stage would face towards the back wall rather than to the audience and then later face the audience at the end since in the U.S. students called up to the stage are usually always facing the audience.

Us interns were called up to the stage to give a short introduction speech and some students read us a very sweet letter that they wrote in English and handed us a cute gift with a small Disney stuffed animal on top. We had another short tour around the school and then we went to our first class, a 7th grade class (first year). I gave another introduction speech and the students learned about how to say the names of family members. At first I was quite nervous, but after awhile, it became fun to try and help the students out, even with their limited English. 

Afterwards we went with our supervisor down the hill from school to an obento place called Fujiyama. The inside of the store was very charming and I ended up getting a salmon obento (lunch box). We ate lunch together and the vice president was also there where we were eating lunch.

Then Mr. O (one of the Japanese teachers) asked for a favor for his English club and so we recorded a reading of a story in English for the upcoming reading contest at school.We got another tour of other parts of the school and we were allowed to go home early since we had just got here only 24 hours ago.

After I got home, I headed off to Yokohama by train (over an hour ride) to watch a documentary I had been wanting to watch for a long time. I learned where the nearest train station is and it is about a 30 min walk. The documentary is called Hafu which refers to those who are "Half" in Japanese. The documentary follows 5 "half" people in Japan and their daily lives and experiences growing up "Half" in the relatively homogenous population of Japan. It was very interesting but I must admit, it was hard to watch a movie with strong jet lag.

Afterwards, there was a dinner gathering at the restaurant next to the movie theater having a "Brazilian style dinner". We had dinner with a bunch of people we didn't know who had mostly enjoyed watching the movie, some of which were half Japanese and half Korean, Thai-chinese, and others. The dinner was yummy but also very meat heavy. There was also Brazilian Cheese Balls and Salad. Since I my mother is Thai and my father is Irish/Scottish it is always nice to speak with others who grew up in a home with a mix-up of cultures.