The land of my name

Yes, it is true. I will be venturing to the land that has borrowed my great name... THAILAND THAT IS! (get it, Ty - Thai? eh eh ;)) I booked my tickets today and just need to run up to 7/11 (that was not a misread, I said 7/11 aka the convenience store - they seriously are convenient here) to pay for it now! The flight will be around 575-600$ CDN round trip so it is damn cheap.

I will be flying out of Tokyo on Dec 20, at 5:30 PM and coming back from Bangkok on Jan 2 at 11:55 PM. I'll be going with my traveling partner extraordinaire, Ms Amy Baker, and some of our friends. We are planning on doing 2 full moon parties (google it to find out some more) which should be amazing! Thats where I'll be spending my Christmas Eve/Day... IN PHUKET (I'm gonna miss you loved ones, but needless to say, some of you will be on my mind :))! I'm a little nervous since this is where the tsunami was a couple years ago, but what are the chances eh?

I have already been looking at flights to Phuket/Cambodia (we will see Angor Wat) and stuff there is DIRT cheap. TO fly round trip from Bangkok to Phuket will cost us a whopping 50$ haha! its awesome.

Just thought I'd up date you on this exciting info! More to come as the plans are set into place!

Its true what they say... they really do write funny shit!

Here are a couple examples of things kids wrote in their notebooks:

- "Fire is used carefully, so we played very excited." (talking about playing with fireworks)

- "My hunger was filled by the foods."

- "A pre emptive attack carries out by two points, and it doesn't move there." (A huh!?!?! pre emptive attack!? kid watches too much GI Joe i think! to give context, he was talking about a basketball game "comeback")

"The Process" gets thrown off

So, if you've been reading this blog regularly, you would have noticed me talking about the Process... EVERYTHING in Japan has a process, and you seriously dont fuck with it. You follow it, and if you step out of line then all hell breaks loose, some people might commit suicide, look at you like you have 3 heads or take their sweet ass time doing whatever you need.

SOOOOOOOO Today... OH MAN the process was out of WACK! So, I was sitting in the teacher's office doing my thing (which is usually creeping on facebook, practice makes perfect, you wanna know what's up in your life? ask me! ahahah jk) when this guy Kouhe runs in and starts spitting out words in VERY fast Japanese. Obviously something is up bc of the looks on people's faces and the "EHHHHHH, HUH, WAAAAAAAAAA" that are flying around the room (youd only get that last " " if you have heard Japanese people speak..."). THEN, all the teachers frantically run out of the room... So i'm like what the hell?! EARTHQUAKE!!!!!! To my dismay, there was no earthquake, but instead, a fight!

Apparently this one guy, Hirotome, was picking on this other guy, Yuu, because of his name... Yuu had enough and started to fight back, and when he realised he was the smaller of the two, grabbed has sculpting knife and slashed Hiro! hahah, the guy had to go to the hospital and get stitches in his shoulder!!! (he prolly deserved it, making fun of kids is no good!

So needless to say, in a pacifist country like Japan, everyone was up in arms with their heads cut off! OH NO, poor hirotome's arm has a slight wound to it! lets all freak out! hahaha it was so funny. and the process got really wacked out for lunch... So lunch here works on a rationing basis with everyone getting a certain portion. usually 6-8 people eat lunch in the teachers room, but today only 4 showed up... presumably the others had to deal with this incident. So people kept coming and going with trays of food, looking all confused who should get what! it was way funnier in life, and i thought it would turn out funny on a post... but its just too complicated to say.

Anyways, we ended up having an afternoon full of assemblies and meetings to try to figure out what happened and talk to the kids about being bad! all in all, an exciting day in BM

Bilingualism

I think being bilingual is one of the most enduring characteristics one can have. Phil is bilingual, Alex is bilingual, Sarah, Gemma, and Monic are all bilingual. Moe is fluently trilingual. Yet so many people actively reject the notion of bilingualism both in school and later on as adults. Its so hard to get people to want to learn another language, especially when its forced upon them. I saw it in Canada, and I see it in Japan.

Thats one of the reasons I think that JET is a good program. We are in the class to motivate students to want to learn English, make it fun, and take away some of the more serious aspects of education. If you're having fun, then you are more likely to learn, right? Well at least I think so.


That's why I think JET is a very unique policy instrument. Having natural language speakers come into local classrooms provides an awesome degree of internationalisation and exposure to cultures you're trying to learn about. For example, tomorrow I will be talking about the differences between Japanese and Canadian houses. Do I know all the differences? Hell no! But at least I can give the students my POV about what some of the more noticeable differences are (on a side note, the kids were absolutely flabbergasted that I had a pool in my backyard and two bathrooms in my house).


This is why I think Canada should also initiate some sort of exchange between English and French speaking Canada. For communities outside the larger cities, it has GOT to be difficult to attract qualified French/English teachers, yet students are still educated in that language. Is education in a second language even useful if the teacher teaching it isn't qualified, doesnt know how actual communication takes place or can only speak very basic French or English? By providing a 6 month or year long exchange between French speakers to English Canada, and vice versa, I think we would be able to greatly increase national unity and a common understand between our great cultures. Pay the teachers well, to attract them. Give them subsidized yet nice housing. Give them vacation time. These are all easy incentives to attract people recently out of university or in mid career who want to: A) explore their own country, B) take a bit of a break before starting on a career/refining their career or C) wish to spread bilingualism across Canada and make our country into what it claims to be - bilingual.

I'm interested in your comments on this... leave one on this post so I can see what you're thinking about the state of bilingualism in Canada.

If it can be done in Japan, then IT CAN BE DONE ANYWHERE!!

Typhoon

Btw - There is a typhoon rolling through Bandai right now! The wind just freaked me out a little... thought my roof could blow off or something!

Now I wanna see torrential rain or something! Wind without rain is no fun!

Hairy Arms

As many of you will know, I have very hairy arms. It isn't entirely noticeable since it's red/blonde but it's there, and there's a lot of it. Anyways, In Japan, they don't really have hairy arms... This becomes especially apparent at Kindergarten or whenever I met kids.

They say hey, say some random stuff in Japanese while I stand there and smile at them, and then BAM, notice my arm hair. They are literally mesmerized by it, and MUST touch it! LoL, it's hilarious, random and slightly creepy, but I guess thats part of the cultural exchange aspect... the introduction to hairy westerners! haha

What a weekend

Holy. Shit. I am SOOOOOOOOO tired!!!


This has been one crazy busy weekend. There was so much to do, and so little time for sleeping! haha, ill tell you a bit about it now!

Friday - So on Friday I left school around 12:30... I was at kindergarten for the day and the kids were absolutely amazing! They all seemed to have a lot of fun with me since my job is basically to play with them! pretty easy if you ask me! After kindergarten I went for a drive since I figured I'd get bored if I just sat around and did nothing... So I drove up to Bandai-san... aka the mountain that I will be skiing on every day come winter! It's actually really huge so I'm pumped to have a good sized ski hill about 10 minutes from my door (they also have night skiing!!!). Then I went over to Katie's and we had pasta and garlic bread.. It was AWESOME! We also tried watching Lost in Translation but everyone was so tired from the first week at school.

Saturday - This is nomihodai day!!! Freakin shiza man.... This shit is crazy! If you havent already picked realised, this is a thing in Japan where you pay for a certain amount of time, and get unlimited alcohol. Its awesome! Needless to say we got pretty trashed and then headed off to Red Ink (Wakamatsu's 1 "club"). The bar actually had food in it, so I think I spent half the night eating curry rice, and the other half drinking and dancing! It was hella fun! When we left the bar (there was a group of about 10 of us or so) one of our guys flipped his finger at a car driving by. The guys pulled over, jumped out of the car and tried to start shit with us! They were pushing us around (not me, I was like fuck that) kicking ppl's shins and just being pricks. That was all settled and we moved on... No harm done, apart from some bruised egos.

Sunday - Sunday I was up at 6:30 to head back to Bandai for SPORTS DAY! I was dreading this because I couldnt sleep in, but it turned out to be an amazing time! I was part of team 1 and our team coach actually spoke relatively good english! I was the guest of honour at this sports day and had to give the "opening speech". I basically said thank you very much for including me in your community, i really feel at home already! blah bla blah, let the games begin!!!! I got loud cheers and stuff, so it felt pretty rewarding!

I was then a member of the team for the 1000m relay race, and was given the longest leg of the race at 200m. Now, to put into perspective, I was pretty freakin hung over... So this was one challenging race! We ended up finishing first though, and we got some random price... An egg boiler, I think!? Lol... The cherry on the cake was, however, about 10 minutes after the race was over... Having walked around for a bit and begun to feel a bit quesy I was like, I need to get the hell out of here.... So I told my team leader that I was gonna go home for a bit and come back and while I'm walking through my school's parking lot, I BEGIN TO BARF!!!! Sooooo embarrassing, not to mention my students that could see me doing it! Oh well... then we were a part of the tug-of-war and lost pretty badly! This was one giant tug of war too - pretty fun! The day was then over and our team came in 12/16... Not great, but hey, it was fun!

I was then asked to come to an afterparty and did so happily! They were SO hospitible and loved everything I did! Hahah, they gave me this soup called ------- i cant remember... and they were ALL watching me eat it like it was poisonous or something! Anyways, it was really awesome that I was invited into a traditional Japanese setting.... The towns people here are really friendly and welcoming and definently made me feel at home!

Good weekend I'd say!

Btw - I LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEE being able to send emails from my cell phone!! I'm able to keep people updated on what I'm doing by sending emails, pics and even movies!!! It's awesome and SOOOO useful! ;)