MatthewMeyer.net

Well I’ve finally arrived in Takefu! I took a train ride from Nagoya on Thursday morning (a 2 hour trip!) and got here just before noon, and the first thing I noticed is that the weather is just so much better here! It’s still hot, but it’s a lot more like home, rather than Nagoya which was just horrible. Read more »

Tonight we finished our last day of training! Woohoo!!!

Afterwards, we all went back to my kushikatsu place for drinks and dinner, and had a great time. The old man from the other day recognized me, and we started up another conversation, and after I told him that we were having our “Sayonara Party,” we ended up having a huge drinking party. It was awesome, and there were two of us in the group able to keep the translations going fast enough for good banter. We kept buying rounds for eachothers’ tables too. The old dirty workmen here kept hitting on the one girl in our group (poor Becky). Still, it was definitely an awesome way to end our 10 days of really intense training.

So we all said our goodbyes, and hopefully we’ll all keep in touch (hopefully we’ll all send each other our photos too, and I’ll be able to post more up here…) as we head to our separate schools.

Good luck everyone! 明日から、福井に行く！ I still can’t believe we’ll all be teaching from now on!

Uuuaah….. today we did children’s lessons. We only did 2, but I am so exhausted. I even got enough sleep, so I can’t blame it on that. They’re just so tiring! Looking at my schedule, I have to do 7 kids classes every Saturday! O_O They’re really fun, but just so, so, so wearing.

Tomorrow is my last day of training, which means another party night… and then on Thursday, off to Fukui! Wish me luck! Now… sleep!

I guess it’s my own fault for not taking a nap yesterday afternoon, but I am really wiped out today! We started our kids training today, and it’s pretty tiring. Tons of singing, tons of jumping and running. It’s actually really fun — partially because we have a huge silly group of people — but I think it will be really fun teaching kids. About half my classes each week will be kids classes (12 per week), which is more than anyone else in my group. But it should be very fun as long as I can keep my energy up. Tomorrow we are presenting lessons to each other for review.

(I just noticed the really crappy logo that I still have on my website. Wow! I meant to change that months and months ago… pretty much right after I put it up. It was supposed to be a placeholder for a few days while I made a nice logo… and I just never got around to it I guess. Shame on me. I’ll start thinking about replacing it ASAP.)

But yeah… everyone’s pretty tired today. In fact, I think I still have the most energy out of anyone in the group. Nobody was even willing to go out for food tonight, which really disappointed me, because it’s no fun to eat alone. So I ended up just getting some various noodle dishes and octopus salad on my own, and then took a bath and watched TV. Tonight’s TV is not all that interesting…

Wow I really thought I might have had something interesting to say tonight, but it melted out of my brain as soon as I started writing. Anyway, that’s really all I can say for now.

I haven’t written in a couple of days because I’ve been really busy. I wrote about my first lesson with real students… well, the next day I had to teach another lesson to my classmates. It was super hard, since I had to prepare everything from scratch (I was the lucky one in the class who didn’t get any pre-prepared materials). I though I would bomb the lesson, but it ended up okay… however, I did get called out on my poor preparation. It was good to find out what I was weak at and what I did well. We also had our “otsukaresama lunch” where the trainers treated us all to a nice lunch. I had omuraisu… so tasty! That night, we went out and I got another misokatsudon. As it’s one of Nagoya’s specialties, I’m trying to eat as much of it as I can while I’m still here. Nagoya’s special foods — misokatsu, unagi, and kushikatsu — are very, very good! I hope that Fukui’s specialties (mainly crab?) are just as good.

Yesterday was our “graduation,” even though we still have children class training next week. We taught another lesson to Japanese students (this one went okay, too, but I ended up being too fast and had to improvise and vamp for about 10 minutes… even so, it worked out alright). At our graduation, we received our official AEON pins, and our business cards. We also got even more news about our branch schools, such as what students we’ll have, the sizes of our apartments, and more. I think we’re all really excited to see our real schools, as well as move out of the hotel!
Read more »

Today was so awesome. Class was really fun, as we got to teach our first lessons to real Japanese students. We were all really nervous, but the students were so much fun, very eager to learn, and after getting into the lessons, everything went pretty comfortably. We have more lessons to do tomorrow and the next day, though, and that means I have to prepare one now even though it’s passed midnight. >_<

Oh yeah, and we all got letters from our branch schools today. They were all so cute, covered in smileys and bubble letters and little pictures, with really sweet messages for us. I think we’re all really really anxious to see our coworkers soon!

The best part of today was tonight though! I just came back from the local kushikatsu place I’ve been going to almost every night here. The waitress recognizes us now, and is pretty friendly. But today it felt like a real bar… as soon as we went in, an older man noticed Erik’s Japanese Soccer Jersey and started pointing it out, trying to get our attention. They were really curious and sort of testing the water to see if we were chatty, and since I was able to speak enough to tell what they were saying, and Erik and Sara also spoke a tiny bit, we were able to start up a chat (I think I whined last night about how I really wanted to chat in Japanese). The older man was with a younger guy who was crazy hilarious. He started messing around, kicked a stool, and got in the waitress’ face, but she got right back in his. It sounds pretty bad, but it was definitely one of those he comes here every night kind of things, as everyone was laughing. Then a pair of young girls at the table next to us started talking to me, asking me for Erik’s shirt. One of them really *really* wanted it. So then the old man started telling her to buy us drinks, and his friend got in on it, and we were all gambling prices for the shirt. A couple businessmen at a table nearby joined in. The whole scene was hilarious; it could have been taken right out of a movie! We were talking about tons of things, and the craziest thing is that I was actually able to have a really detailed conversation… Hell, we were there for 3 hours. We told them we were English teachers and everyone in the bar said, “Hhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?!” And then we said we were from AEON and they all clapped that we weren’t NOVA teachers. The girls kept begging for the shirt, and finally Erik gave it to them for buying him a few whiskeys. Eventually it was just the 3 of us and the 2 girls left in the bar, but since we have homework to do (and since they have to wake up at 6 to do nursing shifts), we all left. Holy crap though… that was what I was dying for and more!

We took lots of photos (I think they took even more), which I will be posting this weekend along with the others. Man… at least I’m excited enough that I won’t be sleepy while preparing my lesson for tomorrow. Anyway, I’d better go now!

So it turns out the next disaster was a radiation leak at a nuclear power plant that took place after a fire caused by the earthquake! Seriously, all that’s left is for Godzilla to come by and flatten Japan.

Today was fun, but very tiring. Work ended at around 9:30 pm, and by then most of the dinner places closed. But today I got to teach my first lesson. Granted, it was in front of my coworkers and trainers, but I felt like it went pretty well. What’s more, tomorrow I get to teach the same lesson to actual students! That makes me really nervous, but doing it once today really helped. Also, the fact that that means it’s already Thursday really excites me. I like it here a lot, but I’m really in the mood to get to my branch school… I really want to be able to speak more Japanese, and I end up talking only in English with my other trainee teachers, since none of them really know any Japanese at all. I’ve had a few brief conversations with locals in Japanese, but the necessities of belonging to a group of 12 people are keeping me from exploring at the rate I’d like to.

AEON really seems like an awesome company to work for. They’re really concerned about being professional. They’ve got a great reputation, but what’s amazing is that despite their reputation, they haven’t gone off on any “AEON is so great” spiels, or ranted about how bad other companies are. I would have expected trainers to be all gung ho about how much better we are than anyone else, but they’ve just been focused on the task at hand. So the professionalism really shows in how our own trainers act. Maybe that’s a weird observation to make? But I often do think about weird stuff like that.

I don’t feel homesick, but today I do feel a bit lonely… I really want to have a good conversation. In Japanese would be preferable, but even in English at this point. With the other trainees, we just talk about work, or conversations are either very superficial and silly, or just about whether Denny’s or McDonald’s has better lunch. It’s fun and also useful talk, but doesn’t feel all that satisfying. Well, I’d better not complain any more. I’m having a monkeyload of fun, and thinking anything negative isn’t going to help.

Well, wish me luck tomorrow! I teach real students! >__< Ganbarimasu!