Today is the big testing day for our new students to determine what level they will be placed at in terms of their academic ability. In 20 minutes, I have to cut off all contact with the outside world until 3:00 PM my time. How crazy is that? It was really neat to see all of the kids arriving this morning. They are all bright eyes and bushy ( Read more... )

This week has been an interesting one. I have been delivering my farewell lessons to my first-year students. Although I will be here for at least another 17 months, I won't have most of my first-years next year. I only help with oral communication classes, and after their first year, the majority of students don't take anymore oral communication ( Read more... )

It snowed two feet this weekend. That's right, two feet. Now some angel is wandering around in a wheelchair. OK, that was pretty bad. Anyway, I was shocked by all the snow. I woke up Friday morning to about six inches of snow and was impressed. On my way home that evening, it started snowing again. On Saturday morning, we had about a foot of ( Read more... )

This was a fun weekend. I visited Mandy in the Tokyo area again. I took a night bus to Tokyo this time. Theoretically, you're able to sleep on the bus, but my seat was so excruciatingly uncomfortable that it was difficult on the way to Tokyo. On the way back, it was much better ( Read more... )

This weekend was both fun and inexpensive: a rare combination. On Saturday, I went to an onsen with Scott. It was a really inexpensive one, but was still one of the best I have been to. We also had lunch at Sushiro, which is Kappa Sushi's big competitor in this area. I'm torn between which one I like better now. Kappa has more selection, and I ( Read more... )

I've decided to just sit back and enjoy the show when it comes to the exchange student. She seems to be having some difficulty adjusting to cultural norms. Her catchphrase seems to be becoming, "But it's not like that in Canada!" I feel an urge at times to shake her and shout that this isn't Canada; Canada is 11,000 miles away. *sigh ( Read more... )

This past weekend was fun. I finally went out with a lot of the JETs in my area again. It's been at least a couple of months since I've spent time with a larger group rather than just hanging out with Scott or Eric. We had dinner and then went to karaoke. The karaoke was ridiculously expensive though, costing a minimum of 2,000 yen for two ( Read more... )

Nothing terribly interesting except that I ate a lot of Oreos. Mmm. I've been craving fattening food lately. I think that my body has burned off almost all of its fat, so my calorie intake has been increasing to make up for the lack of stored calories. Luckily, my weight hasn't ventured away from about 155 in about three months. Amazing how ( Read more... )

This weekend, I did not do a lot. On Saturday, I went to my language exchange. This time, I actually had some questions! They were very excited to get to explain things to me. I wanted to know the proper usage of the suffixes -kata, -yasui, and -nikui. When added to a verb, they translate to "how do you (verb)," "easy to (verb)," and "hard to ( Read more... )

Our Canadian exchange student joined us for ICC yesterday. It was a treat for both my students and for her. The President of the club actually managed to get the courage up to ask her to join! I was very proud of him. It's the most forward that I've seen one of these kids be ( Read more... )