October Summary

Heyyyyooooo  hope everyone is doing well. This month was pretty interesting, to say the least.
At the end of this month I officially have 4 full months left on my contract then it's time to move on!
Weather in Kyushu is still hotter than NY; mid 70s, sunny, and relatively dry weather. The weather here is super extreme.
There are at least 5 seasons in Japan:
Winter (cold, snow here and there)
Spring (warm, mostly sunny, sakura and other flowers bloom)
Rainy (HOT,HUMID,RAIN)
Summer (as humid as Rainy Season, without the rain) but hot as HELL everyday)
Fall (warmer than Spring, fall colors change)

*With a little bit of flooding, tsunami's, earthquakes, volcanoes in between.

Kyushu doesn't experience much earthquakes, nor too much flooding during the rainy season, but the southern part (Kagoshima) experiences ash showers from the nearby volcano and Kyushu tends to be more humid than Honshu (the big island).

You know, before coming here, I was free to choose almost any location to work in Japan. Since I had never been to the western part of Japan, I figured it would be a cool place to check out. Sasebo was the first offer I received, and as "advertised" my house was a 5min walk from the water, in the beautiful, warm prefecture of Nagasaki,  surrounded by numerous small islands. The thought that instantly came to mind when I looked at a map was, "Wow, giant tropical island! Can't go wrong with this!" ......well SOMEBODY didn't do their research. The so-called 5min walk to the water did in fact lead me to a waterfront, but not quite the image I had in mind. As I anxiously approached the waterfront with a beach ball in one hand and SPF Bronzer in the other, I started to hear a rather loud boat horn in the distance. I didn't think anything of it and continued on my jolly trot. Just when the words "Surfffsss Uhhhhhh.......... *****WAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUU*****" my voice faded into the depths of a battle ship's horn. Yea, I found water all right. Happened to be the same water the nuclear powered-supercarrier U.S. Ronald Reagan sailed in. NICE.

I have no intentions of complaining behind the anecdote, because it's been a solid 8 months here and for the most part I have been very pleased to live here. The town has a homey feel to it, it's easy to stay healthy, the people are fantastic and super friendly, and there are enough things to do to pass the time. There is a bit of a lack of nightlife here in regards to clubs, style, and music, but if you're a bar person, it's right for you. As a big drinking culture, it's quite easy to socialize at bars or izakaya, so it's not too hard to make friends wherever you go.

Last weekend I went to Fukuoka and met my friend to go out and get a little more than the Sasebo action. I got there late Saturday night and we headed straight over to my buddy's bar. His bar is always hoppin' at any hour of the night, and he serves great takoyaki along with decent priced drinks. As my friend and I were just getting settled in, we started talking with the group of people next to us. One thing led to another, and these ladies were pinching my friend's cheeks, telling her how cute she was, and asking for contact information. We hung out there for a while and eventually when it was time to head over to the club, I turned to one of the guys who I maybe spoke to for about an hour or so, and was like, "Hey do you want to come with us?" The guy paused for a second, and was like, "Yea! Let's go! I trust you." So we dropped money on the tab and the 3 of us headed to the club and danced and made friends with some Singaporean guy and his girlfriend. Afterwards we ate some delicious post workout champon, then headed back to the hotel for the night.

The next day we called the guy from last night and hung out with him all day in Fukuoka. We got Mexican food, went to two parks, did some shopping, and I oddly got selected out of the group of 3 of us to participate in this survey for a Japanese TV show. The survey was about how much men and women spend on average for a meal. I put about 10$ and made my little explanation why. The day ended great and I headed back to Sasebo.

Monday I climbed the mountain that I climbed the first week I got here in February and once more with Maro last April. Little did I know that the fall is the season of the GIANT WOOD SPIDERS (Image displayed here: http://www.richard-seaman.com/Insects/Japan/Spiders/GiantWood/ ) and snakes. This trail was nothing like it was 6 months ago; it had transformed into a jungle with literally spider webs everywhere. I just grabbed the biggest stick I could find and ran as fast as I could swinging the stick violently at the spider webs and screaming like a girl until I reached the summit. Thank god only the spirits of the woods saw me at probably my all time low. The view was well worth the journey, though.

2 weeks ago one of my kids student's father took me out for drinks. As an experienced Sasebo nightlife native, this guy knew what was up. Did rounds at about 5 different places and finished at a bar eating takoyaki half drunk. The evening after that our futsal team trained at the local gym and played about 7 or 8 10min games against another 2 teams.

In regards to the job, my head teacher left to get married at the beginning of the month. We had a going away party for her with about 25 students and myself and my manager made a little speech for her at the end. It's really a shame to see her go because she is one of the greatest individual's I've met here in Japan. She really helped me get settled into life in Japan. We still plan to remain friends in the future, and I look forward to hanging out with her and her really cool husband.  With the teaching, it's still enjoyable teaching students of all sizes and ages. Sometimes the kids can be a real pain in the ass, and sometimes the adults can too. But of course it's important to keep the emotions balanced and just remember that this experience won't last forever, so take full advantage of the time that's left.

The stories do no justice to the things that are observed and experienced daily, but anyone who has lived abroad can surely understand what I'm trying to express. If you have a place in mind, I suggest going there when the time is right for you.

Sorry, I always have to throw a cheesy motivational sentence in each blog, perhaps to prevent me from feeling sorry for myself after I click the "publish" button haha. I swear I'm having fun! lol...

I hope everyone is enjoying life back home or wherever you are! Take advantage of every moment : )
Speak to you guys soon. Thank you for following!

Special Lesson at School

Hey guys, we recently had "Special Lesson" week at our school, in which all the teachers were free to make up their own lessons and teach it in however manner they wanted to. My approach on the lesson was finding your own motivation and exposing it; particularly in English. In the lesson, I tried to touch on a couple things:

1. Basic differences between a "professionally written" article and an article written to a friend or family member. For example, the usage/lack of punctuations, full sentences, smiley faces, etc. when writing each one.

2. I also wanted the students to put their own thoughts and emotions at that time on to paper then hear themselves read it aloud to their partners. It may be easier at times to express yourself, particularly a random topic like "What's your motivation?", on paper than in words. So this exercise was targeted towards taking advantage of the diversity of English and expressing your true feelings through physical words and body language.

3. Carrying on a conversation, regardless of the personality of the person you're talking to. In this part, with the motivation topic in mind, I had the students work in timed intervals. One person said one thing they thought motivated them in one sentence. The other person had 3 minutes to ask as many questions about that reason (imagining the other person is extremely reserved). Then I switched partners and expanded it to 5-7 minute interval in which the students shared their own ideas reciprocally like a natural conversation. Then finally I had each person state their motivation in front of the group, to not only help with a public speaking voice, but to bring the conversation to a more group-like scenario.

4. And Most importantly, finding your own motivation. Sounds lame, but since it's my class and I had a free lesson, I figured why not be as lame as you can get and do a topic like motivation : ] .


It turned out to be really enjoyable, and hopefully the students enjoyed it as much as I did. For whatever time I have left here, I just want to help the students as much as possible. Let's face it, they see me once a week for an hour, then they're alone the rest of the week. It's obviously up to them how much they will progress in their studies, or life for that matter, but if I can say or do something that will spark their desire to take their minds to the next level, then that's what I'll aim for....