Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Beautiful lunch

Sitting on my desk when I arrived this morning:

Welcome Lunch Party for Thomas-Sensei
Welcome to Noheji high school, Thomas-Sensei!
Let's enjoy beautiful lunch at Cafe R, the most popular restaurant in this areas, and become better acquainted with each.


It was amazing.  Ate a ton of food and the other teachers wouldn't let me pay.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

First Day in Japan

So, first day in Japan consisted of running around town trying to get my alien registration card. When we got to the government office, they asked if I had any passport sized photos, I did not. So Nishidate-sensei (my awesome supervisor) took me to this little one room picture studio. Inside was a very nice lady of about 50. I get to the step and see that there is no way their sandals will fit me, she apologizes like 15 times and I insist that walking in my socks is fine.

When I get to the picture taking area of the room, two boys pop out (they happen to be Noheji High School students and will be taking my classes) and they start speaking in their awesomely accented english to me. Unfortunately they exhaust their english knowledge after ''herro, how are yuu?'' Then they resort to speaking to their mother, my supervisor and each other in Japanese. I'm sitting there for about 5 minutes and finally say ''pokemon wa ski desu ka?'' (do you like pokemon) and they laugh a lot and a good time was had by all.

Obviously the lady owned the store and her two kids were just hanging out there. But it was the boys who did their best with hand gestures and nodding to get me to look just right so they could take my pictures. I find out later that I was the boys' first client and when they gave me the photos, I opened up the wallet expecting a 10 dollar charge, but they insisted that it was free since the boys took the pictures. I gave them an american dollar and they were amazed. I bowed a lot, they bowed a lot, and we headed back to the government office to finish my registration.

Then the next day (yesterday) Nishidate-sensei showed me around town and took me to a grocery store. On our way out of the high school parking lot, the two boys were walking to school (most kids come to school every day during summer vacation to take classes, participate in clubs, or play sports) and they started screaming ''oooooh Tomasu-sensei!!'' and they took lots of pictures of me and nishidate-sensi as we were driving out of the parking lot. To gain extra cool points with the kids, I gave them the asian-two-finger-peace-sign thingy and they got a kick out of that.

And today, as I'm walking back from a teachers meeting (yes teachers have to come to school every day during summer vacation). I see the boys again! 3 times in 3 days...awesome! And one of the boys runs over to me and says ''good morning, here you are'' and he gave me an awesome picture of me and nishidate-sensei riding in the car. When I get internet at my home (probably 2 weeks from now) i'll be sure to post the picture.