Let's Japan Blogging: My Job

The title of this blog is "Let's Japan Blogging," as you may or may not have noticed. This conjugation is known affectionately by JET assistant language teachers (ALTs) as the present japanified continuous. I believe that is the technical name. For whatever reason, Japanese people very often say "Let's ____ing!" "Let's eating!" "Let's going!" "Let's singing" are all common phrases out here. Unfortunately, they are not English. We ALT's recognize this and get a kick out of it when we hear it, just like Japanese people laugh at us when we murder one of their words with poor pronunciation. We enjoy the present japanified continuous so much in fact that we use it amongst ourselves. "Let's drinking!" "Let's passing" (on the road) "Let's burnable trash combusting" are all staples of the ALT's language. But please realize that I am only using this poor English to understand the nature of the beast. I must first get inside the mind of Japanese learners of English in order to know how best to teach them the correct way. ("Let's combust our burnable trash." etc...) And that is the essence of my job. I must pull up my sleeves and get my hands dirty with pronunciation and verb tenses and gerunds and similes and metaphors and all that good stuff. Hopefully, when I am done, no one in Kitakami will say, "Where going?" or "I eating lice every day." I will tour the country side exterminating poor English everywhere. I also teach high school English on the side...

I work at

北上翔南高校

which means Kitakami Shounan High School. Shounan is represented by the two kanji (Chinese characters) in the middle. They literally mean "soar south." I work there Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. It is my base school. Even though I work at another school on Mondays and Tuesdays, Shounan pays me and handles all the administrative stuff. I do things with them on weekends and my supervisor (the fantastic Megumi Sensei who translates important things for me like setting up my utilities and making sure I don't get lost) works at Shounan. Shounan is a fantastic school. It is not a specialized high school or trade school. While it is considered academic, meaning that most kids have higher education aspirations, it is not a top academic high school. The education is much more liberal and there are all sorts of extracurricular activities available that are not generally available at other schools. At true academic schools, like my other school, the kids are very serious about their studying. They are students first and foremost, and do other things on the side. Shounan students are much more well rounded in my opinion. There are many more students with 'personalities.' They are very interesting to talk to. That is why their school festival, an exhibition for parents put on by the different home rooms and clubs, is a fantastic showcase of their non-academic talents.

Every homeroom decorates its classroom with a theme. One homeroom turned its classroom into a haunted house. Another one had an apple bobbing pool. Another one had a crystal ball and the students would predict your future through palm readings and horoscope charts and the like. Also, all the clubs put on demonstrations. The tea club held a fantastic tea ceremony, there were traditional Japanese dances, music, and food. There were also three student rock and roll bands that played a couple songs a piece. One band played "American Idiot," by Green Day. When parents picked up on the words American Idiot, they looked at me nervously, trying to gauge if I was offended or not. I imagine they don't know Green Day or the context of the song. They probably just thought their children were calling Americans idiots.

There was also a fashion show. A girl asked me, the day before, if I would judge the show. I said sure why not. I generally just agree to things and let it all sort itself out later. I assumed it was a serious fashion show. It was not. In fact, it was a comedy fashion pageant, with much cross dressing. I'll leave out the details, but it was hilarious. The winning 'outfit' was a kid dressed like a cigarette, and all he would say was 'Tobacco bad!'He made an encore appearance later with one of the bands . The whole festival was amazing. I certainly never had any experience like that in my high school, and it was inspiring to see how hard everyone worked and pitched in. EVERYONE helped. Even the kids who do nothing in class and seem like they don't care. Even those kids were hanging balloons and running around with a spring in their step. Pictures.