I wrote a speech

What a busy week. Last week was a 6-day school week. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were half days however, so I had time at home to make new flash cards. School is fairly normal. I spend my time memorizing kanji, reading, writing, occasionally paying attention. It’s very difficult to find any motivation to pay attention in class. I can’t understand, I receive no grades, I get no homework, and I take no tests except for those I want to take. There is zero external motivation to pay attention. The benefits of being in class are that I listen to Japanese all day. I do try to figure out what is going on sometimes. I can understand a bit more each day; but usually I get so bored that I dive back into my book or flashcards. It seems pointless to be in school but it’s not. The benefits far outweigh the downsides. I’m surrounded by other　kids, I get to practice my Japanese, and I am learning a ton. My favorite class right now is Calligraphy. We’re just finishing our stamp unit. We’ve been carving stamps out of some sort of soft stone for about two months. I think mine look really cool. That’s the kind of souvenir you can’t buy. In Math we’re learning about probability. The problems are very difficult. It’s not the math I have trouble with, it’s the Japanese. Geometry is easy enough to figure out; triangles look the same all over the world. But questions like, “If ten students are placed into three rooms with four chairs a piece, how many ways can they sit down” are very hard for me to read. My other favorites are gym; we’re still on basketball, and home Ec. I like cooking, and eating. I can’t decide which part I like more. Probably the eating part.

Saturday was an extremely busy day for my school. In addition to regular classes in the morning, there was a soccer tournament and a basketball tournament being hosted. The tiny parking lot was jam packed. I had a quick track practice after class. We couldn’t use the track because it runs around the soccer field. So we used the training room instead. I really appreciate the ETHS training room, locker room, field house, being heated. Unheated rooms are not fun in winter and almost nothing is heated here. Individual classrooms, the library, offices, that’s it. Even at my house there is one room with a heater on. Everywhere else, including my room, gets very cold.

After practice I watched the basketball tournament for a while. They play differently here. There’s hardly any driving to the hoop. The teams are very good at defense and hardly anyone can get inside to do a lay-up. Instead there’s a lot of pushing and attempted drives, but mostly they just pass around the three-point line looking for a hole. There are many more three point shots than games in the U.S. And the games were very high scoring. My team got crushed 70 something to 100 something. I’m not used to seeing scores like that at high school games. It was still fun to watch, even if the gym wasn’t heated. I sat next to my principal. He’s a nice man but I don’t see him very often. He certainly doesn’t wander the hallways the way Smiley did.
I finished up Saturday by heading home and finishing my speech. I entered a speech contest for foreign residents in Japan. I took me a while; I hand-wrote it at school and typed it up later. I’m really proud of it, even if it is horrible Japanese. This is my first crack at writing something of value in Japanese, so it’s not very good. And it’s riddled with grammatical errors. But it’s just a draft. If I get into the contest I have until February to finalize it. I used Garageband to record myself and attached the recording to my application via email. My plan is to upload the speech to my blog somehow so that everyone can hear me speak in Japanese, even if you can’t understand it. I think it sounds pretty cool. It’s on the way.

Sunday I went to Church for the first time in a long while. I’ve been doing other things the last few weeks. Last week was my test, the week before the Tsukuba Marathon. Oh well. But being back in mass and seeing all the Christmas and Advent stuff made me wish I had gone more. I like being there, and it’s my last time since I’m moving. My plan is to attend the Lutheran service next week to say farewell to the family that hosted Thanksgiving. They’ve been very kind to me. Anyway, I mentioned] to the priest that I was moving and the first thing he did was look up Catholic churches in my city. There are none. But there are in the cities on either side. I want to go on Christmas so I’ll have to find those fast.

I walked home in the miserable weather after mass.　It was cold and raining, a lovely combination.　Then it was off to the train station to catch a train for Mito.　I was meeting an English teacher named Jason who contacted me through Rotary. He heard that I was having trouble meeting other foreigners and asked if I wanted to hang out. I said yes, of course. So we decided to meet in Mito, near where he lives. I was on the train when who should walk on my car but Jason. Funny coincidence. Jason is an English teacher in the Mito area. He teaches English-immersion kindergarten classes at six or seven schools. That seems to be the way it works. There is a shortage of foreign English teachers in Japan. All the teachers I’ve met teach at multiple schools, usually spending a day a week at each one. It’s just so that kids can hear what English should sound like; the Japanese typically have awful pronunciation. Jason was a very interesting guy, very sociable. He’s lived here for two years and is about at my level of Japanese. I guess that’s what happens when you speak English all the time. He had a lot of cool stories about living here. It was nice to talk to someone who’s been here longer than I have. His advice to me was to try to make friends at colleges, and join as many activities as possible. I had a lot of fun chatting and hanging out.

We went to Mos Burger for lunch, which is the Japanese burger chain. They were nothing like American burgers. Not bad but not as good either. After lunch we went to a mall where I got Christmas gifts for my host brothers. Then back to his apartment for some Wii. I beat him at Mariocart. Then I caught a train back home. Overall a very fun day. I didn’t learn a lot of Japanese but I figure a day of English now and then won’t hurt.

This week is another full week of school. I have to start packing, I move next Tuesday. The plan is to send a suitcase to my new house ahead of time. Then I have to manage the rest of the bags on the train. “WhWhat a busy week. Last week was a 6-day school week. Thursday, Friday and Saturday were half days however, so I had time at home to make new flash cards. School is fairly normal. I spend my time memorizing kanji, reading, writing, occasionally paying attention. It’s very difficult to find any motivation to pay attention in class. I can’t understand, I receive no grades, I get no homework, and I take no tests except for those I want to take. There is zero external motivation to pay attention. The benefits of being in class are that I listen to Japanese all day. I do try to figure out what is going on sometimes. I can understand a bit more each day; but usually I get so bored that I dive back into my book or flashcards. It seems pointless to be in school but it’s not. The benefits far outweigh the downsides. I’m surrounded by other　kids, I get to practice my Japanese, and I am learning a ton. My favorite class right now is Calligraphy. We’re just finishing our stamp unit. We’ve been carving stamps out of some sort of soft stone for about two months. I think mine look really cool. That’s the kind of souvenir you can’t buy. In Math we’re learning about probability. The problems are very difficult. It’s not the math I have trouble with, it’s the Japanese. Geometry is easy enough to figure out; triangles look the same all over the world. But questions like, “If ten students are placed into three rooms with four chairs a piece, how many ways can they sit down” are very hard for me to read. My other favorites are gym; we’re still on basketball, and home Ec. I like cooking, and eating. I can’t decide which part I like more. Probably the eating part.

Saturday was an extremely busy day for my school. In addition to regular classes in the morning, there was a soccer tournament and a basketball tournament being hosted. The tiny parking lot was jam packed. I had a quick track practice after class. We couldn’t use the track because it runs around the soccer field. So we used the training room instead. I really appreciate the ETHS training room, locker room, field house, being heated. Unheated rooms are not fun in winter and almost nothing is heated here. Individual classrooms, the library, offices, that’s it. Even at my house there is one room with a heater on. Everywhere else, including my room, gets very cold.

After practice I watched the basketball tournament for a while. They play differently here.
There’s hardly any driving to the hoop. The teams are very good at defense and hardly anyone can get inside to do a lay-up. Instead there’s a lot of pushing and attempted drives, but mostly they just pass around the three-point line looking for a hole. There are many more three point shots than games in the U.S. And the games were very high scoring. My team got crushed 70 something to 100 something. I’m not used to seeing scores like that at high school games. It was still fun to watch, even if the gym wasn’t heated. I sat next to my principal. He’s a nice man but I don’t see him very often. He certainly doesn’t wander the hallways the way Smiley did.
I finished up Saturday by heading home and finishing my speech. I entered a speech contest for foreign residents in Japan. I took me a while; I hand-wrote it at school and typed it up later. I’m really proud of it, even if it is horrible Japanese. This is my first crack at writing something of value in Japanese, so it’s not very good. And it’s riddled with grammatical errors. But it’s just a draft. If I get into the contest I have until February to finalize it. I used Garageband to record myself and attached the recording to my application via email. My plan is to upload the speech to my blog somehow so that everyone can hear me speak in Japanese, even if you can’t understand it. I think it sounds pretty cool. It’s on the way.

Sunday I went to Church for the first time in a long while. I’ve been doing other things the last few weeks. Last week was my test, the week before the Tsukuba Marathon. Oh well. But being back in mass and seeing all the Christmas and Advent stuff made me wish I had gone more. I like being there, and it’s my last time since I’m moving. My plan is to attend the Lutheran service next week to say farewell to the family that hosted Thanksgiving. They’ve been very kind to me. Anyway, I mentioned] to the priest that I was moving and the first thing he did was look up Catholic churches in my city. There are none. But there are in the cities on either side. I want to go on Christmas so I’ll have to find those fast.

I walked home in the miserable weather after mass.　It was cold and raining, a lovely combination.　Then it was off to the train station to catch a train for Mito.　I was meeting an English teacher named Jason who contacted me through Rotary. He heard that I was having trouble meeting other foreigners and asked if I wanted to hang out. I said yes, of course. So we decided to meet in Mito, near where he lives. I was on the train when who should walk on my car but Jason. Funny coincidence. Jason is an English teacher in the Mito area. He teaches English-immersion kindergarten classes at six or seven schools. That seems to be the way it works. There is a shortage of foreign English teachers in Japan. All the teachers I’ve met teach at multiple schools, usually spending a day a week at each one. It’s just so that kids can hear what English should sound like; the Japanese typically have awful pronunciation. Jason was a very interesting guy, very sociable. He’s lived here for two years and is about at my level of Japanese. I guess that’s what happens when you speak English all the time. He had a lot of cool stories about living here. It was nice to talk to someone who’s been here longer than I have. His advice to me was to try to make friends at colleges, and join as many activities as possible. I had a lot of fun chatting and hanging out.

We went to Mos Burger for lunch, which is the Japanese burger chain. They were nothing like American burgers. Not bad but not as good either. After lunch we went to a mall where I got Christmas gifts for my host brothers. Then back to his apartment for some Wii. I beat him at Mariocart. Then I caught a train back home. Overall a very fun day. I didn’t learn a lot of Japanese but I figure a day of English now and then won’t hurt.

This week is another full week of school. I have to start packing, I move next Tuesday. The plan is to send a suitcase to my new house ahead of time. Then I have to manage the rest of the bags on the train. “Why not use a car”, you might ask. It would be a good question, one I don’t have an answer to. After I move I have all of winter break to explore my new city, check out the local colleges, and enroll in a martial arts class, all that good stuff. At some point I’m getting together with the kids from the English club again, either to go to Disneyland, or an actual amusement park with roller coasters. My vote is for the second one.y not use a car”, you might ask. It would be a good question, one I don’t have an answer to. After I move I have all of winter break to explore my new city, check out the local colleges, and enroll in a martial arts class, all that good stuff. At some point I’m getting together with the kids from the English club again, either to go to Disneyland, or an actual amusement park with roller coasters. My vote is for the second one.