My Schools - 私の学校！

I thought it was time that I told you about my schools, without giving away any identifying details of course...


So, I have TJHS on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. From the central bus station in Hamamatsu, it takes 15 minutes to get there. As you walk down by the river and the often-flooded fields, the school comes into view. Now, I always thought that my secondary school in Wales was small, with its 450-odd students, but these schools are TINY...
One reason for this is that Junior High schools in Japan only accomodate three grades (the equivalent of year 8, 9 and 10 in the UK, ages 12-15). Another is that each class (each year is divided into 3 groups) has their own room, in which they have all their lessons. Consequently, there are only 9 necessary classrooms, with a few extra rooms for art, science and perhaps music, a gym, a dojo... and no cafeteria, as they also eat lunch in their homerooms. As I walk past the gym and tennis court into the hallway, where each member of staff has an individual locker for keeping their shoes*, I am greeted by students shouting "Hello!" and "Good morning!", which wakes me up on those slow mornings.

Golden Week - part 2 - Hamamatsuri!

Hamamatsu Matsuri = Hamamatsuri... it's one of those wonderful combined words that I'm hoping will catch on!

So, I'm FINALLY updating this...

After Tokyo, I spent three days enjoying Hamamatsu Matsuri (festival!) with some of the lovely friends that I've made here in Japan.

Day 1: After returning from Tokyo relatively early the previous night, I organised a meet-up for Monday morning. A bunch of us made our way down to Nakatajima sand dunes, where the kites were being flown. It took slightly longer than anticipated to get there, seeing as there was a MASSIVE queue for the special shuttle bus. We managed to squeeze onto the regular service bus in the end, but it was reminiscent of Tokyo's sweaty sardine feeling. When we got there, we had to walk a fair way before any actual kites were in sight - however, we were at first greeted with food stalls and taiko drums! We were allowed to try beating the drum, so to speak...


Yeah, apparently I'm a pro, but I bet they say that to all the girls...

Golden Week - part 1 - Tokyo!

What is Golden Week, I hear you cry? Yes, yes I do. Of course, if you're one of my fellow gaijin in Japan, you will know - but for everyone back home, I shall tell you. Golden Week comes but once a year in Japan... when three national holidays happen to fall on three consecutive days (3rd, 4th and 5th of May) which just so happen to be after the weekend... the 28th is also a national holiday, so we had last Thursday off, worked one day on Friday, and then had 5 days off! Of course, this is a good time to do something interesting like travel or drink a lot.

I had heard that travelling during Golden Week was pure madness, so had decided to stay in Hamamatsu for the festival that happens here every Golden Week. However, on the Thursday, I met Jessica (a fellow ALT) who told me that she and some girls from training were going to Tokyo on Saturday morning. Deciding to be a little bit spontaneous, I decided to go with her to the station to buy a ticket! We would have to take the slow train, which would take nearly 5 hours... but it was half the price of the shinkansen. The night before, I booked a room at the hostel that the girls had booked in at - it cost 4200 for a "luxury bed", which was all they had left.

Teaching!

So, it's been a long time since I posted anything here.

I've been teaching for two or three weeks, now! I say "teaching"... what I mean is doing my Self Introduction Quiz for 15 minutes or so, taking questions of varying strangeness from the class and then letting the main teacher take over while I read out some passages, perhaps choose children to answer a question or set a question.

The self introduction goes something like this....

Good morning, everyone! My name is Gwyneth Jones... you can call me Gwynnie! OK, we're going to play the Gwynnie... Quiz!... So, first question, where am I from? Hmmm... am I from - America? Am I from.. Britain? Or am I from... Japan?
This is of course accompanied by a lot of smiling, acting like an idiot and holding up colourful cards with pictures of the options. I then tell them... Britain! - and get them to clap themselves if they got it right. I then tell them about Britain... including getting out a world map and getting them to guess where it is... then asking - "so - who likes soccer? Do you know... Manchester United?" - showing them a picture of Old Trafford stadium and pretending that my house is right next to it. Well, technically I lived in Old Trafford for a while, but the picture I use is of my house in Wales....

Update! - Starting Schools!

Hi!

I realise I haven't updated this for a while, I'm sorry. Sooooo..... since the last time I wrote, I actually left Hamamatsu - to visit Fukuroi, a whole 15 minutes away on the train, with Saba. We strolled around, got bored and then took a bus to a place called Hatta-san temple. We walked up a delightful path littered with restaurants and market stalls, and tried the local delicacy - dumplingy bean paste things on sticks! Yum.


Eventually, following a group of giggling Japanese schoolgirls (calm down, boys) who seemed almost as confused as we were, we reached a million stairs. There were little shrine stop-offs everywhere, where people prayed and gave donations.


At the top of the stairs was a big temple, which I failed to take a photo of because I decided it would be disrespectful. We walked around for a bit, cleansed our hands and wafted incense towards our faces (basically copied whatever the other people were doing...) and hoped that we didn't look TOO much like tourists!

Ham sweet Ham

Here is a picture of Hamamatsu taken from the top of ACT city tower... where I went with Andy and Jenny, after buying some beautifully cheap alcohol (chuhai) from BIC Camera (yes... an electronics store).... it was very high up, and a lot of school children shouted "HELLO!" at us...




That circular thing is the bus station. It looks a lot prettier at night, I'm told. But there we go.

Below, you can see the Denny's which is very near my apartment.


And here is my block of flats. Very modern-looking, eh?

LeoPalace!

So here is a video I made of my LeoPalace. I forgot to include the toilet... but, there is one, and it has shiny shiny buttons... and the water flowing into the tank goes via a small tap-like thing at the top, so you can wash your hands in the clean water entering the toilet... very "green"!! It's cosy, here, although the only places I can go are chairs at a desk and my futon/bed.