This is me with the Track and Field club members who are 9th graders.
This was taken on Tuesday, June 20th, at the conclusion of the tournament. My kids did allright, but didn't take home any of the big team prizes.
I went back out to support them after school that day, and luckily didn't get any of the sunburn I got when i was with them all day the previous Sunday.
I spent most of Sunday, June 18th, out at Hamayama park watching my JH's track and field team compete against other area teams.
I had a great time talking to the kids and cheering on the runners and jumpers.
This pic is of the silly and funny socks all the girls on the team seem to wear. Click on any pic to see many more that day.
-JCH
I get cool hand-written letters from some of my kids - one of the benefits of low-tech Taisha living - most can't email me unless I owned a Japanese cell phone and I've refused to get one so far.
So they write me and include cool drawings and little stickers and sometimes they write in both Japanese and English, which is good practice for me, but a few of the really smart girls just write me in English. More than any omiyage I could buy in a shop, these letters and drawings are what I'll treasure when I leave Japan.
-JCH
My band chicks are the greatest girls. More than any other group of kids at my Jr High, they try to talk to me in English and chat about regular stuff - so much of my conversations with kids are still limited to "Boy, Jason, you sure are big" or "Do you have a girlfriend" or "Do they have rain in America?"
So I try my best to support them and go see them perform whenever I can. This day was a Sunday, but I went anyway, and I was the only staff member there other than the main band teacher - Sakamoto sensei.
Turns out the place was a retirement community, but that didn't stop my band from playing and dancing and singing to the "Matsui Ken Samba."
-JCH
Every month I now make three 4-page English newsletters at my Jr High. One for each grade level - 7th to 9th.
I include English word puzzles, interviews with teachers, contests and pictures.
Yuki and Hiromi have asked me to NOT use this picture in the 9th grade English newsletter. hmmm......
:)
On June 13th and 14th, my Jr High basically shut down while members of the various sports teams at my school went off to compete in city wide competitions.
I'm not kidding about the shutting down part - that Tuesday and Wednesday, the kids that did have to come to school (the kids in the band or chorus or not in a club for instance) got to go home both days after third period, and there were no classes to teach as the first three periods were basically study hall periods.
What's funny is how much complaining you hear here about the declining academic performance of Japanese students and how they should go back to a 6-day school week, but then you have days like this where everything stops for sports. Hmmmm....
Anyway, these teams from my school were competing:
Kendo, judo, baseball, soccer, volleyball, tennis, and track & field.
So I had to go to shogakko during the day both days, but after lunch I was free to go and cheer on my kids. Last year I didn't have my car yet, but this year I was mobile, so I headed over to the local sports ground (Hamayama Park) on Tuesday to watch Tennis, and then I caught the end of the volleyball competitions at another local Jr High.
It was really fun seeing my kids compete and cheering them on, since I was the only one shouting encouragment in English.
What's kinda sad is as I go to more and more of these special events, how little I see other ALTs. I know many don't have just one base school like I do, but some could make the effort and support their kids, cuz they love seeing us there.
On Wednesday it was more volleyball (we lost), a little soccer (we won), and the girls tennis finals (we won).
Track n Field was actually happening that Sunday, and I went to that too (pictures soon).
Click on the pic here for more pics of the various sports.
Go! Fight! Win!
My younger brother, Paul, is a soldier in the American Army and currently he's serving his one-year rotation in Iraq.
He sent me this pic recently to show me how hot it is where he is. He said it's actually closer to 130.F, but the thermometer stops at 120.
I guess it's hard for me to complain now about getting sweaty after singing and dancing to "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes" with fifty-five 9-year-olds at one of my shogakko, that has no air-con, when Paul is out there with a 50-lbs pack and lugging an M-16.
Paul will hopefully be back in America in November and I'll get to see him when I go home to San Diego for Xmas.
-Jason
In early June I took the ferry from the mainland and went out to Dogo island in the Oki chain off the coast of Shimane. Four JETs live on Dogo, the largest island in the Oki chain.
My friends Liz & Eri, who came to stay at my place over New Years, are both going home in July after two years on the island. So I wanted to say good bye and see Dogo, as I'd never been before. (I've been to Nishinoshima and Chibu in Oki, but never Dogo)
Donna, a first year ALT, is also leaving Dogo, but she's staying with the JET Programme, she just transferred to the mainland.
I arrived on Saturday afternoon, after missing my scheduled ferry. So I had to pay a little extra and I took the Rainbow ferry, which makes it out to Dogo in just over an hour, instead of the 2 1/2 hours the normal ferry takes.
We hung out on Saturday, chatted, watched a flick, had dinner at a Chinese restaurant and then sang some karaoke.
Sunday Liz and I did a fair amount of walking as she showed me around Dogo, then we went bowling and had dinner at a brand-new Italian restaurant, the only one on the island.
Monday I went to one of Liz's school and then we attended a local festival that's a pretty big deal apparently.
Had a great time and Liz was a great host.
-JCH
click on this pic to see other pics from my Jr High's summer sports pep rally.
I'm gonna try to upload about 100 pics in the next few days so there should be plenty to look at soon.
-Jason
I added about 10 pics of kids in one of my 9th grade classes and their pencil cases - some real interesting choices for something to hold your pencils.
Check em out by clicking on the this pic.
Enjoy,
Jason
I love American comic books!
All types, including romance stories, suspense, gothic horror, humor, and of course Superheroes.
My kids really don't know American superheroes that well, despite the plethora of recent film adaptations.
So I set up this display in my Language Lab classroom, which is used almost exclusively for English teaching, with some actual comic books in bags pinned up around the two large posters.
I bought the posters on eBay, and they were pretty cheap to send folded - much cheaper than buying a poster in a bookstore here. And I still get comics shipped to me every other month from the fine folks at the Comic Gallery in San Diego, where I used to work long ago.
Most Japanese manga (comics) are in B&W - so my kids are always interested in the full color monthlies and the difference in art styles.
It was just Free Comic Book Day in America, so I have some nifty free comics coming in my next shipment to give away as prizes in my classes.
-Jason
My local video store sells off it's overstock VHS rental tapes for about 300 yen (about $3) after they stop renting as much. I've been able to get some great titles for my kids to watch - all in English with subtitles.
My school is gonna have quite the cool library before I leave.
-JCH
My cool stateside friends and my relatives (both in England and America) send me care packages with food I miss.
So I decided to put the packaging to use and created a small display at my JH. The signs say, "These are some of Jason's favorite foods." and "What is your favorite food? Please tell me."
So thanx to Uncle Terry, Michele, my Big Sis and my Mom for sending the packages! I savor every mouthful!
-JCH
This is my schedule board on my desk at my Junior High.
I use it so my 5 JTE (Japanese Teachers of English) can sign up to have me come to their class.
I also write in my visits to Elementary school so they know when I'll be gone and unavailable.
Last week was a drop dead busy week!
There was no 6th period at my JH on Monday or Thursday, so out of 28 possible periods, I taught a class in 22 of them!
1-# means 7th graders
2-# means 8th graders
3-# means 9th graders
san san and iki iki are my special needs classes
Opt means my special elective English classes
and the red entries are my shogakko (elem school) visits
They are getting they money's worth out of this ALT, that's for sure.
-Jason
But I can't really complain because I talk to ALTs (especially High School ALTs) that teach 5 classes in a whole WEEK! I'd rather be super busy than super bored.
Last Tuesday, May 2nd, was the last day of school before the Golden Week holidays - a series of 3 national holidays in a row that give many Japanese about a week's vacation each year in early May.
Since I was not going anywhere this year, I went to work on Monday and Tuesday - many JETs take those two days off in order to have about 10 days off in a row (including the weekends).
Tuesday was a mellow day although I taught all 4 classes that day, so I was busy at first. But we ate bento lunch early that day, at about 11:30, and then cleaned the school in preparation for the visiting parents. That's why I'm wearing a tie - I taught 4th period in an ichi nen sei class where the parents could come and watch their students being taught. After 4th period, at about 2pm, the parents and most of the staff went off for various PTA meetings, and the kids either went home early or went off to their clubs for daily practice.
Having nothing to do, I decided to wander around and chat with the various clubs and snap some pics. You can see some more pics by clicking on this one.
This upcoming week I've promised myself that I will start working out with the kendo team again - I had stopped during the very cold winter months, but I need to start getting some decent exercise again. But today is the start of the May Sumo tournament, so my desire to rush home each day to watch sumo for the next two weeks may supercede my desire to get sweaty with a big bamboo sword. We'll see. :)
-Jason
PS - what do you think of the tie? I just bought it. I'm so fashion-challenged - I need to know if it will go with any other color shirts other than the white one I'm wearing here.
| You Passed 8th Grade Science |
 Congratulations, you got 8/8 correct! |
My Jr High has an annual event each April - the entire school hikes up the coast from Taisha toward Hinomisaki and each grade camps out and BBQs for the day.
Last year it was windy as hell, but this year the weather was slightly better - not great but at least it didn't rain the whole day.
The kids all bike down to the local beach and then we all set out by grade up the coast road to a "beach" (really just a rocky place with lots of trash) where the kids break out all kinds of pots and pans and wood and make fires and cook yakiniku, yakisoba, okonomiyaki and other tasty Japanese foods.
It's a fun day and it's also good exercise.
My kids are always more open to chatting with me in these relaxed situations and it gives me a good opportunity to hang out with them outside of the normal school routine and rules.
This year my desk in the staff room is with the 8th grade teachers, so I'm assigned to them when we do group activities like this. My 8th graders this year are a good group overall - and the 8th grade class is slightly smaller than the 7th and 9th grade classes with only 4 homerooms whereas the other two grades each have 5 homerooms.
Marching home after the BBQ I was teaching some of the kids to chant, kinda like when you march in the military. Silly stuff like "We are Taisha Chu - yes we are! We're gonna walk cuz we can't run far! Sound Off! 1-2. Sound Off! 3-4" that kinda thing.
So they asked me to get up at the end of the day and lead the whole class in the chant - so I just had them say the numbers and clap. It was funny and the head teacher for the whole grade was really happy they all did something together. So it'll be interesting to see if they invite me to go on the 8th grade school field trip to Osaka and Kyoto this year.
Anyway - click on this pic and you can see all 23 pics from that day on my Flickr site.
-Jason
I just added 24 pictures from my field trip with the 9th grade class to our local shrine - Izumo Taisha.
Every year in April my whole Junior High leaves school for the day and goes off to draw somewhere. Last year I went with the 9th graders to IzumoTaisha and I had a great time - this year was no different. The 7th graders went to the local winery and the 8th graders went to an historic old station, but I chose to go with the 9th graders to the shrine.
Mostly because the shrine is really pretty this time of year and it's one of the best opportunities for me to walk around and chat with the students in a relaxed way. I had some really great conversations on everything from what teachers I like, to do I like girls with big boobs or no boobs to my favorite song at karaoke.
We left the school just after 9am, walked up to the shrine, then the kids picked out random spots to sit and sketch until lunch at 12:30. Then they sketched some more and we all headed back to school at 3pm. We got really lucky because it was crappy weather all week, but that Wednesday was GORGEOUS, and then it rained all day Thursday. So lucky.
I sat down by myself to enjoy my "sack lunch" when some of the 9th grade girls saw me sitting by myself and came over and asked me to join them. So cool of them - a really good group. Still so interested in my life despite having known me for almost two years now. But I seem to be able to get to know the 9th graders best each year - and this year's class will be a good class to get to know better. They'll be the last class I see graduate - but it'll be a nice full-circle type thing since they had just started Junior High as 7th graders when I arrived in 2004.
Anyway - click on the photo to see more.
See ya,
Jason
The calm before the storm - Nyuugakushiki means "entrance ceremony for new students." The first day for my new 7th graders is a big deal here - there is a whole ceremony with a reading of their names and speeches and songs and most of the new students' parents attend.
For me it's an interesting day - i get to see all my old 6th graders - some wearing a school uniform for the first time - all serious and nervous about starting Jr High. The cool thing for me is that they all know me from my coming to their elementary schools - so other than their friends who are upperclassmen - I'm the one familiar face. Great group of kids this year - I look forward to teaching them.
click on this pic to see many more from this day - i posted comments on Flickr this time instead of blogging about the pics.
Enjoy,
Jason
I send out pics to my parents in England and my sister in San Diego separately because neither of them read this blog - what'cha gonna do? :)
So sometimes I forget what I've blogged and what I've sent round in an email to my folks and sis.
I realized that I hadn't posted any of this set of pics I took back in early February since I had a pretty full beard at the time.
I kinda liked the beard but it grows really gray now, making me look a lot older and it's way too hot to have during the hotter months coming up.
Konomi (on the left) took great pleasure in explaining her last name, which is Okuma, to me in English one day - telling me it means "Big Bear." So after that day, every time I'd pass her in the hall and say "Hi Konomi" she'd point at herself and say "big bear," almost guaranteeing that she is one of the few students whose full name I will remember.
I've posted my last batch of pics of my just-graduated san nen sei at my Flickr site - just click any pic to see them all.
I think I get to know the san nen sei the best over the course of the year - so I hope I can get to know some of my new san nen sei as well as I did this super group of students.
I recently uploaded about 30 new & random pics from the past few months to my online photo album.
So hop on your nearest tiger and head over to my Flickr site to see some of the fun I'm having here in Taisha.
You can now simply click on the nifty Flickr Badge on the upper right at any time and be taken to my latest photos. (That idea and the YouTube site link stolen from my friend Nathan's blog - Cheers Nathan!)
-JCH
Ohguni sensei got this whole day (See post below about the ALT Invasion)organized and kept it running smoothly. A big thanks to him for the fun day and for a great year in his class.
A big thanks to Yano sensei for a great day and also for a wonderful year with her 5th graders. I hope I get to teach with her again next year.
The two classes of soon-to-be 6th graders at Taisha Elementary will be going to Hiroshima on a class trip in late April. So, just like last year, I gathered together a few of my friends and local ALTs and we all converged on Taisha Sho to joint-teach a lesson and help the kids practice their English.
As part of their trip, the students have to go up to foreigners in the Peace Park and ask them a few simple questions in English - "What's your name?", "Where are you from?" etc. Not tough stuff per se, but daunting for 11 and 12-year-old Japanese kids.
So to get them used to meeting new foreigners I brought with me Mark (England), Ang (England), Chris & Susie (America), Mark (Ireland) and Rusty & Lisa (America). No Aussies, Canadians or Kiwis this time, but I did try.
I'm sure for many of my small-town students, this was the largest group of foreigners they've ever encountered in one place - you have to remember I'm the only non-Japanese person in my town - No Chinese, No Koreans, No Brazilians - just me.
And the kids had a great time - we did a we short self-introductions, played an easy warm-up game ("Cowboy Showdown") and then all got in a big circle and sung and danced "The Hokey Pokey." After that we split into groups and practiced the target dialogue before turning the kids loose to go up to all the adults in the room (The 8 foreign teachers and the 2 Japanese homeroom teachers) and practice the dialogue and gather signatures. About 3 kids were able to talk to all of us and get all 10 signatures - earning them a much-coveted SpongeBob sticker.
I wish these two classes the best of luck on their trip to Hiroshima and I hope they have nice weather, so there'll be lots of foreigners milling around the Peace Park.
Click on this pic to see more pictures from this day.
-Jason
Here is Nagami sensei, one of the 6th grader teachers at Taisha Sho, my biggest elementary school, and some of his 6th grade graduates.
Since Taisha is a bigger school than Yokan Sho, their graduation ceremony took a little longer than Yokan's, so I was able to swing by and see the kids leaving the school for the last time.
I had a great time with both 6th grade classes at Taisha Sho this year, and that is in no small part because of Nagami sensei, who is a fantastic teacher and really devoted to English education. I hope I get to teach with him a bunch more this upcoming year. His daughter, Wakiko, was one of my speech contest winners at Taisha Chu this past year and his younger daughter, Kanoko, was in my English club at Yokan Sho. Both are great kids and their English is leaps and bounds ahead of their peers.
Click on any photo for a few more pics from Taisha Sho.
Here I am with the other 6th grader teacher - Maejima sensei. She wore traditional clothes to the graduation ceremony - not a kimono as such, but hakama - the same type of pants I wear when I play kendo and a crossover top.
We got lucky with the weather and it was relatively nice that Friday so we could take pictures outside.
I'll miss those scenic mountains in the background when I leave next year.
This is the somewhat small class of 6th graders who just graduated from my 3rd biggest elementary school - Yokan Sho. Yokan has only one class per grade, and no one class has more than 30 students, so it's relatively smaller than Araki and Taisha Sho - my two biggest elementary schools.
They were a good class and I'll be happy to see most of them everyday starting in April as they start Jr. High.
I attended Yokan's graduation ceremony this year, since I went to Taisha's last year, and will attend Araki Sho's ceremony next year - that way I would have been to all three of my bigger elemnetary school's ceremonies during my tenure here. They all have graduation on the same day at the same time, so I can't do more than one a year. Although this year I was able to swing by Taisha Sho and see some of the graduates as they left the school for the last time - I'll post some of those pics soon.
Yokan had an interesting wrinkle in their sotsugyoushiki (graduation ceremony) - after the graduating students received their diploma they exited the stage and then went into the audience to find one of their parents and handed the dipolma off to them.
The student would bow and say something along the lines of "Please hold on to this for me" and the parent would bow back and say "Omedetou Gozaimasu" which means Congratualtions.
A few of the Moms wore ceremonial kimono, such as the lovely one pictured here. And most of the Moms cried at some point during the ceremony.
Here is Ago sensei, the 6th grade (roku nen sei) teacher, and three of his 6th grade graduates (sotsugyousei).
Ago sensei was a cool guy, so it'll be interesting to see what grade he teaches next year, as this year was his first at Yokan Sho. His daughter is one of my students at my Jr. High.
Most of the elementary school teachers advance each year with their class - so, for instance, when I first arrived Sonoyama sensei at Yokan Sho - one of my favorite Elem teachers - was teaching the 2nd graders. This past year he taught the 3rd graders and next year he'll teach the 4th graders. Not sure if this continuity is good for the students overall, but this system is very much in keeping with the social dynamic here in Japan of group harmony and the importance of the group.
These three girls will be with me everyday at Taisha JH starting April 10th. They didn't have to wear a school uniform at Yokan Sho, but they will at Jr. High.
Here I am with the Kocho sensei (School Principal) and the Kyoto sensei (School Vice-Principal) at Yokan Elementary. The Kocho sensei always gets spiffed up for these occasions, often wearing a tux coat with tails.
Luckily we had decent weather and were able to pose outside for pictures.
In addition to the cool students from my optional English class (see pics below), the other group of kids I'm gonna miss is the small group of girls who hang out with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays after lunch in the language lab.
We watch movie clips, music videos, short cartoons or listen to music and play cards and eat snacks and chat about whatever - it's often the best 20 minutes of my day.
While I'm sure the new 9th graders next term will be just as fun and genki, these girls have been so nice and cool to me they'll be a tough act to follow.
They are clockwise from the lower left: Nobuko, Anna, Ruriko, Masako & Yuki.
Students like the ones pictured in these posts are the reason I decided to stay a 3rd year - they make all the other crap bearable.
Here are (left to right): Maki, Manami, Mako & Risako
All super-smart and really fun to chat with - I'll miss 'em all after they graduate in a few weeks.
My elective English class for the 9th graders finished last week.
It was a tougher class this term, with some strong persoanlities making it difficult to simply teach, but as always, the girls in the class were a delight - enthusiastic about English and willing to play just about game I threw at them.
Here are 5 of my favorite people in Japan (left to right): Kana, Manami, Marina, Konomi & Yuka.
Unfortunately two of the girls from this class had to miss the final class for interview test practice, so Chikako and Yuri are not in any of the pics.
We braved the cold of the hallway outside the language lab and I snapped a few pics of all the kids in class that day in small groups. Click on any photo here and you can see them all at my Flickr site.
Ask Japanese girls to pose or simply count down 3-2-1 CHEESE and this is the photo you'll get. Peace sign every time. So I asked them to try something different and got a few interesting pics, like the pics below...
So when I asked them to "pose" they came up with this design all on their own. Not sure what it's supposed to be - the Japanese Wave?
It was too cold to go outside like I did last term, so we did the best we could indoors. I tried to get them to do some interesting poses, and a few of those pics turned out well.
This is back to front: Anna, Sayako, Miho, Yurie and Kaori.
Great gals - I'm gonna miss 'em all.
With a little coaxing I can get the boys to pose beyond the normal "Peace" sign too.
I had some problems this term keeping the boys in line, and since they outnumbered the girls 2 to 1 in this class, it was tough going at times, but a good learning experience overall.
BTW - not the 5 boys pictured here - these guys are all some of my best students.
"Kyuushoku" means school lunch and in my schools, all the kids eat the same lunch everyday. On a few occasions every year the kids bring their own lunch ("obento") to school, but most days they prepare the trays and distribute the food and eat together with their home room class. There is no cafeteria.
Kyuushoku for me is a roll of the dice everyday. Since I don't eat any fish, and fish is a huge part of the diet here, it oftens means I eat very little at lunch time.
Here is a typical school lunch - some kind of soup or stew - notice the tentacle in today's offering - rice or bread, and some fruit for dessert - today a mini orange called a mikan and then some main dish and salad - today a whole fried fish. So this day I ate the plain rice with some soy sauce I keep stashed in my desk and the orange and drank my milk. Milk is the only beverage offered and many of the kids don't drink it so I guess they go thirsty, since there are no water fountains in the schools.
I pay monthly (about $3 a day) for school lunch and I pay it because it's really just more convenient overall - altho I would estimate that I only eat about 45% of the food.
You can click on any of the pics and be taken to a few more examples at my Flickr site.
One week this year I'll take a picture every day from Monday to Friday of the lunch and you can get a better feeling of a typical week's offerings.
Are you hungry?? :)
This is a decent meal for me - bread is good for filling me up and the bread is usually really tasty. They give a small packet of jam to eat with it since it's seen as a dessert item. So I always get some funny looks when I eat with my kids and I tear off pieces of bread and dip it into my soup or in the case of this meal my pea-soup-like stew.
Some deep-fried chicken nugget things and a slice of watermelon. As for the "salad" on the side, see the post below. An almost fish-free lunch day.
We never have rice and bread on the same day, even though bread is seen as a dessert most of the time. The good thing about bread too is that many of the kids don't like bread, so there is usually some left over, which the teachers can take home. With some Hokkaido cheese, they make tasty after-school snacks.
This might be hard to see, but if you click on the pic you can go to a larger version at my Flickr site.
In the salad from the above meal, they put these tiny fish - can you see them with the tiny black eye spots? *shudder* I don't go anywhere near this stuff.
It's so hard being a non-fish-eater in Japan - they sneak it into everything.
This is actually a decent school lunch for me - this time at one of my elementary school - Taisha Shogakko.
Curry and rice, with a kind of egg omlete and then a crepe for dessert with a creamy yogurt inside.
A good "Jason lunch."
Today is the last day of the New Year sumo tournament - and my favorite wrestler, Asashoryu, lost yesterday meaning that he can't win the whole tournament today. It'll be the first tournament he's lost since September of 2004 - he won the last 7 tournaments in a row - an amazing achievement that set a new Sumo record.
Fellow ALTs Mark D and Rusty and Rusty's girlfriend, Satoko, and I went to Fukuoka last November to watch live Sumo and it was great.
I finally got some pics that Satoko took with her camera and here's one of her, Mark and I outside the stadium with two rank-and-file rikishi (wrestler - which literally translates to "strong man"). You don't quite get a sense of scale on just how big these guys are until you see a few up close - for comparrison in this pic I'm 6'1" (182 cm) and I weigh about 115 kgs - these guys are BIG!
Click on this pic and I've posted a few other fun ones to my Flickr site.
See ya,
Jason
TKC stands for "Taisha Kids Club" and that's where I spent an afternoon entertaining an audience of 2, 3 and 4 year olds and their Moms as Santa San.
The costume I had to wear in my 5 appearances as Santa at various day cares and kindergartens was pieced together from 3 seperate esembles and I bought the hat myself. As you can see it barely fit, but it made quite an impression on most of the kids who have never seen a non-Japanese person as Santa.
And yes, that's a woman dressed up as Mickey Mouse on my left and the other woman was my reindeer. I "ho-ho"ed and shook hands and passed out presents and this day we even danced the "hokey pokey" while singing the Japanese lyrics. Ahh... Christmas memories. :)
-Jason Claus
So in my 2nd year here I've made a concentrated effort to learn more of my students' names.
For instance, the three girls in this picture are named (l to r) Mako, Risako, & Sayako.
You might think there's nothing that remarkable about me learning their names, but let's look at Mako's name as an example -
I have 9th grade girls named Mako, Maki, Mika, Miho, & Maiko. It's tough.
But adding to the difficulty is the fact that one rarely uses someone's first name at school. All Japanese say their name last name first and teachers call on students by their last name followed by an honorific such as "kun" (for boys) or "chan" for girls or "san" for either. So Sayako here isn't ever called Sayako - she's Moriyama san in class and to most of her peers - only her close friends call her Sayako, and then even they would possibly abbreviate the name into something cute like Saya-chan or something along those lines.
But wanting to introduce Western styles, I've tried hard to call all my kids by their first names. It only makes sense since they all call me Jason, although I still have teachers and students that call me "Mr. Jason" which is one of the few things that irritates me in Japan. I doubt some of them even know my last name is Harris.
So, being bored the other day and taking an idea from my friend Emily, I decided to look thru my Jr High "face book" and see which last name is most in use at my main school. My town is small and close-knit, so I know many of the families in town are related and I'm sure many of the students with the same last name are probably siblings, although not always.
What's a face book, you ask. It's the item that's allowed me to make some progress this year learning my kids' names. Every year, in April, the school takes passport-size head shots or mug shots of all the kids in every class and then compiles a book listing their class, student number and their name and picture. So I made a xerox of each class's page and with the help of some of my students i wrote out all the kanji names in romaji. So now I have a face to go with the name and it's helped immeasureably.
So I went through the face book the other day (I had to go to work to save using a vacation day even though there are no students at school until Tuesday - Monday is a holiday here - "Coming of Age Day" - a special day for young people turning 20 this year) and just made a list of which last names appear in more than one class.
Just like "Smith" or "Jones" or any other common name in the West, there are names which are very common in Japan and like I said, my small town probably has a higher instance of some names due to long standing family ties to my region of Shimane.
My very unscientific research found 19 names that are shared by more than 5 students. Taisha JH has roughly 480 students.
Here are the names followed by the number of students that share that name:
MORIYAMA - 17
KAWAKAMI - 11
ITO - 10
SATO - 9
KATO - 9
YAMASAKI - 9
SONOYAMA - 8
KANETSUKI - 8
MIHARA - 8
YAMANE - 8
AGO - 7
IITSUKA - 7
NAKAYAMA - 7
OMURA - 7
TEZEN - 6
ODAGAWA - 5
SOTA - 5
AOKI - 5
OCHIAE - 5
With 4 appearances are these names:
Ueno, Hino, Takahashi, Nagami, Watanabe, Ishida, Iijima, & Fujihara.
Many of these even with practice are difficult for me to pronounce and whenever I hand back papers in class and have to call the students' names it's an endless source of amusement, but I'm getting better.
I have 4 students named Moriyama in one class, but luckily 2 are boys and 2 are girls, making it easier to keep them separate in my mind.
So when I see my kids outside of school. like at the grocery store or at the shrine on New Year's Day I count it as a small triumph if I know their name, and if I don't then I try to make a mental note to learn it. Of course, anyone who's taught in Japan can tell you how disconcerting it can be to see your students outside of school in regular, everyday, street clothes. 95% of the time I see my kids in the exact same outfit - either their winter/summer uniform or their gym clothes - even when they have to some to school on the weekends or on a holiday or during a vacation period they wear their school uniform. Which means that another thing that helps you keep track of your students' names in a Western school - their individual fashion style, whether that be a hoodie and jeans or slick and preppie or jock casual - is removed from my situation - it actually throws me when I see my kids in jeans and a t-shirt - i simply don't recognize them.
So I call Moriyama Sayako "Sayako" and perhaps I'm one of the only people that does - but I think it's good for them to get used to because in any western setting they'll be known by their first name. In Sayako's class there are also girls named Sayaka and Ayako and Aika and Ayaka. And just as I've finally got a grasp on my 9th grader's names - they'll be graduating in March and I'll have a whole bunch of new 7th graders to start on.
-Jason
That's Mr. Harris to you :)
PS - Mako, Risako & Sayako all are fantastic students - 3 of my favorites who I will miss then they move on to high school in 2 short months.
Did I mention it's cold??!!?? It snowed again today - perhaps even more than when I took this photo.
One of my New Year's resolutions is to update this site more regularly - so check back throughout January for more content and pictures, and as always you can click on any picture and be taken to my online album which has more pictures than I post here.
-J
Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu!
That's Japanese for "Happy New Year!"
I had some friends come and stay at my place over the New Year's holiday - Donna, Eri and Liz, who all live out on the Oki Islands off the coast of Shimane.
In this picture we're joined by British ALT Ang and her friend Fran, who was just visiting for the holidays. Eri & Liz are Canadians and Donna is from New Zealand, so I was the only American.
We had a good time hanging out and Eri even cooked dinner for us both nights. Yum!
We went to my local shrine, IzumoTaisha on New Year's Eve at about 11:30pm and joined the literally thousands of others waiting for the New Year to arrive. There was a small countdown - go, yon, san, ni, ichi - "HAPPY NEW YEAR! and then not much of anything else - unless you were willing to wait in the HUGE line waiting to get into the inner shrine to pray and make a wish for the new year. The line was hundreds of people long and it was cold - so us gaijin decided not to wait.
Many of the Japanese around us were a little suprised to see us Westerners walking around, but Ang, who teaches at the local High School, and I saw lots of our students and their families. All the Japanese people were buying good luck charms and writing wishes on tablets that you can leave at the shrine for luck. The tablets have a picture of a dog on them, since 2006 is the year of the dog.
I did buy some nifty hashi (chopsticks) at a vendor stall that were lining the long walk up to the shrine. I also had a tasty sausage on a stick.
We walked back and got back to my place around 3am - and we all crashed as it had been a long day for all of us.
I hope that everyone reading this had a warm and wonderful New Year and that 2006 brings you all that life has to offer.
Cheers,
Jason
