Valentines Day

This year for Valentines Day I made chocolate cupcakes for the men in the BOE. When girls give men chocolate in the office on Feb. 14 it's called 'giri choko'or obligation chocolate. To help me make my cupcakes I enlisted the help of Michiko, my tutor!

Junko, Me, Kyoko (Junkos daughter), Ryoko, Mikako

Breaky!
Starting from the top left hand corner- spinach, black natto (fermented bean curds), onsen egg (egg boiled in hot spring spa)
Second row- salmon with wasabi potato side, ginger pork, rice and seaweed

The owner making soba!

That's my fish!
He was cooked over the fire in front of where we were sitting.

Yummy!!

Mikako, Junko, Takeshi (Junkos husband)

This past long weekend some of my adult class members and I went to Inawashiro and went skiing!! We stayed at a quiant, Japanese style inn. It was run by an older man and his wife. The food was very traditional and delicious. While we ate the owner made buckwheat (soba) noodles in front of us and we ate them as the last course! It was a fantastic weekend even though after trying to speak Japanese for 2 full days straight I was exhausted!

Double Word Score

The theme of 2007 in Iwaki for me so far must be scrabble and dinner parties. A while ago I had some friends over for a traditional Japanese winter meal, nabe (a type of soup) and shabu shabu ( a meat dish). We followed the dinner with red wine and scrabble. We have been taking turns hosting nights such as this one. Dinner parties and Scrabble are wonderful cold weather activities! Thanks friends!!

I’ve also got into playing against people over the internet! A great Scrabble website is Scrabulous.com!

Scrabble tip of the day- know all the two letter words you can!

Uchigo 1st JHS Class 3-5
(twin boy is third boy from the right in the front)

Yesterday Once More

I never believed that time would go by faster in my third year on JET. Past third year ALTs told me it would but I didn’t really believe them. Well, I was wrong. It hit me today just how fast this year has gone so far. I was at Uchigo First JHS in class 3-5 (3rd year, class 5 equivalent to grade 8 in Canada). They are probably the most outgoing class that seems to really enjoy my presence. They were making an English poster with goodbye messages for their upcoming graduation in March and I was helping. I was standing there, surrounded by 15 year olds, Carpenters playing in the background (have I told you how popular the Carpenters are in Japan? This particular Japanese teacher loves them) and realized that it was the last time I’d see them. These are students that I’ve known since they were in first year of JHS (grade 6) when I started. It made me realize that now it’s only two more weeks of JHS until graduation and March Vacation. I also feel that maybe my presence in the class did make a difference, if only a small one or only for a day or two.
It all started as the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English) and I were walking into the room. The students saw through the door window that I was coming to their class today and I saw the most outgoing boy (one half of a twin, so lets call him Twin Boy for sake of the discussion) smile and kind of cheer and clap. In the last class I had with these students, they were performing skits and Twin Boy’s group did a skit about buying baseballs. At the end of class Twin Boy wanted me to sign his baseball. At the time I felt a little weird about it but I signed it anyways. It is popular in Japan for students to want our signatures. In today’s class, after about 10 minutes, from my spot in the back of the room I noticed that Twin Boy had put the baseball on a little stand on top of the blackboard with my signature facing the front and in English on the board it said “ look at this”. It just made me laugh inside and be thankful for my experience here. I am actually going to miss these students. I've never felt like I got satisfaction from Junior High School visits but now I know I do. I only have two more schools where I teach the 8th grade so I’m going to remember to carry my camera so I can catch these little moments in time. Maybe I should’ve got that students signature. His grad message for the poster was “Watch for me on TV, I’m going to be in the Major League!!!”Good Luck Twin Boy!!

IIA Kids Day

This past weekend The Iwaki International Association organized an English Kids day at the Washington Hotel Learning Center in town. 5 other ALTs and myself volunteered to run activities for the kids. There was about 40 kids in groups of 10. They rotated around to different areas of the room and participated in different activities that we planned. Claire, my friend from England, and I had our own station. We made a Canadian/British version of Twister where instead of colours, the dots on the twister board were either Harry Potter, The Queen of England, Niagara Falls or a Moose. So the game was something like “ Right foot Moose” etc. Hehe we played this with one group then played our own version of SPUD. But instead of having to spell spud, when the students got out they had to spell JAPAN. It was fun and the kids seemed to have a great time. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morn!