Tomato Icecream in Katamata
Here I am, 8.55am on a Sunday, exhausted but happy. We have had two very full on weeks of teaching. The speech competition is this Wednesday, thank God. We have done so much extra work tutoring after school towards this, to the point where even I question my own pronounciation of the words. I think I will be more nervous for them and guilty as I simultaneously cheer for 10 different kids!
We also taught Adult Conversation class at the City Hall, which takes so much preparation and gnashing of teeth, but the high I get at the end of a class is fantastic. Its my second lesson with them now and some of the people I thought couldn't speak English at all are coming up to me and saying how much they enjoyed my lesson. We have games at the end to lighten the mood and I even have a prize box of mini M&M's. This week we pretended to order Meat Lovers pizza on the telephone! The NZ$120 extra a week for community classes is also pretty nice. I'm gonna use it to fund my travelling whims.
In direct contrast to my fun language classes ... (Jaws music) Japanese language class. I went to my first one, the woman was prancing around gabbling non-stop in Japanese with a scary pointing stick. I tried so hard to keep up and I even picked up a couple of things. But in the end I just got angry because I could have learned so much more in 2 hours studying by myself at home. I was expected to do the exercises in the textbook, which were in hiragana. I can read katakana and a few kanji characters and thats about it. So choosing the correct answer and then writing it in sentences of hiragana was just very slightly above my level. I don't know if I'm going to go back :( Maybe I should just buy a copy of Japanese For Busy People ....
So after all that work drama, the crew decided to spend it up big time in Yamaguchi City. Saturday morning we got up and drove 30 mins out to Mutsumi in the wops to pick up Bren (Cal, US). As a tribute to Catholicism I rang Michelle beforehand and picked her up too. We went to Katamata, 20 mins up the road, yet more wops. The big thing in Katamata is growing lots and lots of tomatos. So they have a little store that has a novelty soft serve, you can get it plain vanilla or with a swirl of tomato syrup. Bren has had 3 of these things and said they were good. Hell I'm willing to try anything as long as it isn't offal. It looked like strawberry swirl, but it tasted like slightly sweet tomato, and it was pretty good. I did have a weird aftertaste for a while, but I'd get another one.
Sarah and Christine met us there and we zoomed off to the 'guch. Sarah and Dan went and picked up Victoria (NY, US) from language class and we hit the shops. We found some great stuff to send home, really good authentic Japanese homeware without the tacky feel. You could spend a fortune, but we all get paid this Tuesday sweet! John (Nelson, NZ) drove in from Hagi and we went to a good sashimi (sushi & raw fish) restuarant. Its on a conveyor belt but we order from the chefs to make sure its fresh. I ate sooo much salmon, they do it on little balls of rice with mayonnaise and onion, it just melts in the mouth. Each time I go I order something I haven't tried before and its the coolest feeling to be trying out so much new stuff. Also my confidence in ordering is so much better now, I try to keep a positive attitude towards how much I've learnt since I've come to Japan. Its difficult when most of the other JETs have studied Japanese at university. I work really hard to study and keep a positive attitude because otherwise the lanaguage barrier could really bring you down. That's why I was so pissed off I went to Japanese language class. It made me feel like shit and I don't think that was the intention.
So we have a long weekend, Monday is off as its Respect for the Aged day. We are expecting another kiwi, Anna Bishop, to turn up at our place to stay for a couple of nights. It will be fantastic to drive her around the Hagi sights and feed her Vegemite. Kirk in Tabuse (near Yanai) has promised to give us his extra TV/Video so we are thinking about driving down to the coast to get that. Maybe we'll take Anna with us. I just love having our car and being free to decide. The transition to driving in Japan has been so easy thankfully. My supervisor made me buy the Japanese equivalent of the Road Code, which came with a slip of paper to correct a printing mistake - apparently the word 'cramp' was meant to say 'clamp'. Need I say more?
We also taught Adult Conversation class at the City Hall, which takes so much preparation and gnashing of teeth, but the high I get at the end of a class is fantastic. Its my second lesson with them now and some of the people I thought couldn't speak English at all are coming up to me and saying how much they enjoyed my lesson. We have games at the end to lighten the mood and I even have a prize box of mini M&M's. This week we pretended to order Meat Lovers pizza on the telephone! The NZ$120 extra a week for community classes is also pretty nice. I'm gonna use it to fund my travelling whims.
In direct contrast to my fun language classes ... (Jaws music) Japanese language class. I went to my first one, the woman was prancing around gabbling non-stop in Japanese with a scary pointing stick. I tried so hard to keep up and I even picked up a couple of things. But in the end I just got angry because I could have learned so much more in 2 hours studying by myself at home. I was expected to do the exercises in the textbook, which were in hiragana. I can read katakana and a few kanji characters and thats about it. So choosing the correct answer and then writing it in sentences of hiragana was just very slightly above my level. I don't know if I'm going to go back :( Maybe I should just buy a copy of Japanese For Busy People ....
So after all that work drama, the crew decided to spend it up big time in Yamaguchi City. Saturday morning we got up and drove 30 mins out to Mutsumi in the wops to pick up Bren (Cal, US). As a tribute to Catholicism I rang Michelle beforehand and picked her up too. We went to Katamata, 20 mins up the road, yet more wops. The big thing in Katamata is growing lots and lots of tomatos. So they have a little store that has a novelty soft serve, you can get it plain vanilla or with a swirl of tomato syrup. Bren has had 3 of these things and said they were good. Hell I'm willing to try anything as long as it isn't offal. It looked like strawberry swirl, but it tasted like slightly sweet tomato, and it was pretty good. I did have a weird aftertaste for a while, but I'd get another one.
Sarah and Christine met us there and we zoomed off to the 'guch. Sarah and Dan went and picked up Victoria (NY, US) from language class and we hit the shops. We found some great stuff to send home, really good authentic Japanese homeware without the tacky feel. You could spend a fortune, but we all get paid this Tuesday sweet! John (Nelson, NZ) drove in from Hagi and we went to a good sashimi (sushi & raw fish) restuarant. Its on a conveyor belt but we order from the chefs to make sure its fresh. I ate sooo much salmon, they do it on little balls of rice with mayonnaise and onion, it just melts in the mouth. Each time I go I order something I haven't tried before and its the coolest feeling to be trying out so much new stuff. Also my confidence in ordering is so much better now, I try to keep a positive attitude towards how much I've learnt since I've come to Japan. Its difficult when most of the other JETs have studied Japanese at university. I work really hard to study and keep a positive attitude because otherwise the lanaguage barrier could really bring you down. That's why I was so pissed off I went to Japanese language class. It made me feel like shit and I don't think that was the intention.
So we have a long weekend, Monday is off as its Respect for the Aged day. We are expecting another kiwi, Anna Bishop, to turn up at our place to stay for a couple of nights. It will be fantastic to drive her around the Hagi sights and feed her Vegemite. Kirk in Tabuse (near Yanai) has promised to give us his extra TV/Video so we are thinking about driving down to the coast to get that. Maybe we'll take Anna with us. I just love having our car and being free to decide. The transition to driving in Japan has been so easy thankfully. My supervisor made me buy the Japanese equivalent of the Road Code, which came with a slip of paper to correct a printing mistake - apparently the word 'cramp' was meant to say 'clamp'. Need I say more?
posted by Rosie at
8:56 am
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