Random Rants and Ramblings, Post-Japan

Just got a chance to look over the last entry . . . sorry that it was so incoherent.

Anyway, I still feel rather exhausted from the Hokkaido AJET conference that took place this weekend. Even though I took yesterday off to give myself a break, I ended up doing a lot of little errands (like getting my tires changed from summer tires to winter tires and weatherproofing my house) — things that I would have done if I had Saturday and Sunday free. In the end, it wasn’t much of a break at all.

So, today was an overall bad day . . . one of those days that you’re physically at work but mentally gone. I tried all day to think of good activities for tomorrow’s class on Halloween. I even stuck around school to about 7pm . . . but no luck. It really doesn’t help that I really haven’t done much for Halloween ‘cept for trick-or-treating. And even with that, I couldn’t be bothered to wear a costume half the time. I didn’t really do stuff like carve jack-o-laterns or go to parties (though I don’t remember hearing about any) . . . rather anti-social, huh?

It was hard to explain to the Japanese English teacher here that I don’t know much about Halloween and that it is one of my least favorite holidays. What really sucked was that try as I did, I couldn’t come up with any good ideas for a Halloween lesson. It’s days like this that make me wonder if I could ever do teaching on a long-term basis.

Anyway, I’m going to try to get some well-needed sleep. G’night!

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Well, one more project finally over with!

Since July, I have been planning and organizing for the Hokkaido AJET Fall Conference. It has involved more meetings than I care to remember, long phone calls, hours of typing, rounds of shopping and lots of lost sleep.

Basically, this last weekend (Friday through Sunday), 93 JET program participants came to my tiny fishing village of 2100 people. We had various workshops, meetings and team-building activities. Like any event in Japanese, there was a big dinner party included, too.

As the hosting JET, I had vague responsibilities to make sure everything went smoothly. It went pretty smoothly for a gathering of almost 100 20-somethings trapped in a hotel out in the middle of nowhere.

The big headaches mainly involved idiots who didn’t bother reading the information in the initial registration packet. Several people (interestingly enough, mostly Hokkaido AJET officers) complained that the dinner party food was mostly fish and seafood and said that they can’t eat fish. And guess what? Right in the registration packet, it says that since this village is right on the coast dinner will feature FISH AND SEAFOOD . . . and that anyone with special dietary needs should choose the no-meat vegetarian course. ARGH.

Anyway, it was good to see the friends that came. It was also good to meet some new people. And, it was good that people in this village got some more exposure to foreigners.

Some interesting facts . . .

how much we paid (IN CASH!) at check-out: about $10,000 USD

how much we paid for drinks for the dinner party: about $500 USD

Anyway, I’m glad that it’s all over and that people seemed to enjoy themselves. I’m even more glad to have some free time again! ^_^ All last week, I was working on this until 7 or so at the office . . . then coming home to work on this some more. Now, it really feels like spring after a nasty winter . . . a nice change of season.

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To all of you who do check this page every once in a while, sorry for not updating this page in such a long while.

It’s been a whirlwind of a week . . . mostly related to the upcoming Hokkaido AJET meeting. ARGH!

So many little details to take care of! People often don’t realize what all goes into making a successful event. It takes a lot of time to do the little things like printing and folding handouts, compiling the list of attendees and replying to people’s questions.

The people who I’m currently most fed up with are two people who begged and pleaded to register after the deadline . . . and THEN decided to cancel right before the conference. *SIGH*

Then, amongst all this conference preparation, there’s also other events I’m involved with . . . the regional English teachers’ conference (organized by Japanese English teachers) and the regional English speech contest.

Actually, the speech contest is tomorrow, and I’m supposed to be one of the judges . . . so I suppose I really should get to bed.

Take care. Will write more after the weekend!!

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Well, it’s finally over . . . All the hard work (and overtime) put in over the last month finally paid off over the last two days when my school had it’s annual school festival.

As mentioned in previous posts, the is one of the biggest events on the school calendar here in Japan. Yesterday, the first day of the festival, was mainly to have fun. The student council organized different games and activities . . . from a school-wide game of hide-and-go-seek to a cross-dressing competition.

Later in the day, there was a talent show. I totally bombed with my solo karaoke entry (the photo on the right) . . . didn’t have time to practice, so I messed up big time. Oh well. On the other hand, our teachers’ a capella attempt (photo on the left) did pretty well. Pretty surprising considering we only had a few practice sessions late after school and early before school.

Today, Day 2 of the festival, was for the general community. Families and folks from the senior citizens’ center came to watch each grade put on a short play, a school-wide choral performance and a school-wide folk dance. I actually joined the students in dancing the semi-traditional Yosakoi Soran dance. It was really hard to learn, but it’s been something that I’ve been wanting to try for a long time.

At the end, after the public had gone home, the student council put on a nice closing ceremony with awards for the different games and activities that took place the previous day. They also showed a short video of clips taken over the last month during all the play practices and other preparations. It was a really nice ending to the whole festival.

Anyway, I’m glad it’s all over. It’s been a fun but extremely exhausting few weeks. From the looks on the faces of my colleagues, they shared the same mix of exhaustion, accomplishment and relief.

For me, there’s also a bit of sadness . . . Since I won’t be here next September, it is my last school festival here. Hard to believe I’ve been a part of 3 now.

Last, it seems that I won’t be really getting much rest. Just around the corner (in two weeks) is the big Hokkaido AJET conference in my small village. I have a lot of prep work to do for that. In addition, the clock keeps on ticking down for my grad school apps. It would be really nice if I can find enough inspiration to write a decent personal statement this weekend. Just have to take one thing at a time, I guess . . .

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Tomorrow is the first of the two-day school festival.

All the students and teachers here have been working on preparations every day for the last few weeks. Many of the students have been staying at school until 5 or 6pm. Many of the teachers have been staying until 8pm or so (we have to be at work by 8:20am every morning).

Today was a dress rehearsal day. We went through three short plays, a choir performance, a dance performance and a few other activities.

At this point, I’m very much looking forward to getting this all over with. So tired . . .

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Well, it looks like again one week is over, and another is beginning. Strange how weekends just fly by . . .

Most of this last one was spent working on graduate school applications. Yay. Fun, huh? Spent most of the time staring at my computer screen trying to figure what to write for my personal statement. They say it’s the one shot you have to speak directly to the admissions committee . . . the pressure easily leads to writer’s block. :( At least I got a working outline down.

The other thing I’ve been working on is finding some way to process surveys online. I’m in charge of doing an overall organization review for the Association for Japan Exchange and Teaching (the JET participants’ professional association). I plan to take a few surveys, but don’t want to have to enter all the data into a spreadsheet/database myself.

Luckily, I found a free PHP script on the web. So, I’ve spent much of the weekend setting that up on my web server and testing it out. I should take some time to really learn more about web stuff. Unfortunately, just don’t have the time . . .

It’ll just have to be put on the list of stuff I want to do better . . . cooking, photography, Chinese, Japanese, staying in touch with friends . . . ;)

Okay, it’s almost 2am here, and tomorrow’s a work day. Off to sleep . . .

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I’m writing this entry from work. Yeah, another night where I’m here until past 7pm.

Anyway, I had planned to take off a little earlier (I’m dealing with a mild cold), but then some of the teachers decided to start practicing for our entry in the talent show for the school festival. As mentioned below, we’re going to try to sing CHEMISTRY’s “Kimi o sagashiteta.” The one thing I forgot to mention was that we’re going to perform it a capella style. The festival is only a week away, and we haven’t practiced much . . .

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