At Asahi Junior High School I do not have a set schedule. When a teacher wants to have me visit a class, they come up to me and ask me to help them. Normally I try to get my schedule set on Monday. I go up to the three English teachers and ask, “What classes do you want me to visit this week?” The first and second year teacher are good about giving ( Read more... )

The schools in the area (Ami, Kawachi, and Miho) have their sports competition today. This means that there are no classes so I will be sitting at my desk today. Luckily last night I remembered this and I ran over to Andrea’s apartment to pick up the next three books in the Anita Blake series.

Guilty Pleasure is the best way to describe this series ( Read more... )

Today has set a record for interactions with teachers who do not teach English. I just bonded with Nomura Sensei (third year Japanese teacher) over her cat. She saw that my calendar on my desk had a picture of cat and she told me that she had a cat. She said she had a picture and asked if I would like to see it. I said sure.

Oh, the cat is so cute ( Read more... )

Rain, rain go away. It started raining sometime last night and it was raining so hard that it woke me up. The sky is slowly lightening but I have a feeling that it will rain for most of the day.

In other news, the school music teacher Tomoko Miamoto Sensei cornered me in the tea room and we had a small conversation about my cooking habits or lack ( Read more... )

I went for a fast run yesterday. I think I ran around 1.5km or 2km. I need to step up my running if I want to make it through my 5km run on the 26th.

At the start of the school year all of the teachers have pictures taken and they are put in the teachers directory. Today, Kyoto Sensei took the picture of the third year Japanese teacher and put it ( Read more... )

I had a small victory today with my use of broken Japanese and simple English.

Kimura Sensei came over to my desk to collect the lunch money for the month and while she was there, I asked her about my health check. In simple English I asked for the paperwork that I needed to fill out and then in Japanese I managed to ask “Where is it at”, “What ( Read more... )

Time to sing the praises of Kimura Sensei the wonderful office lady at Asahi Chu! Tomorrow is the health check and I made a note to check with Tsukune Sensei today to see what I needed to do for it but before I even asked about it, Kimura Sensei stopped me to tell me about it. She spoke slowly, clearly, and made sure I understood what I needed to ( Read more... )

I got to school today and was told that I would be attending a teacher’s meeting at Ami Junior High School. Turns out that Dean and Samantha (the two pervious ALTs) attended all of the teacher’s meetings. Therefore, I am going to be attending all of these meetings. I hope that I will be able to pay attention and catch a couple of words every now ( Read more... )

I had good intentions last night, I really did. I made sure I set my alarm for 6:00am and I even went to bed early. However, when my alarm went off I could not make myself get up out of bed to go for a run. I am not a morning person, I like to sleep, when my bed is nice and warm the only reason I will get out of it is to go to work, and even then I ( Read more... )

Earlier in the week, the school office lady invited me to join the fourth year teachers at a welcome party. The fourth year teachers are the teachers without a home (a grade), they include the school office lady, the custodians, the librarian, the school nurse, and the ALT. This year the librarian, school nurse, and the ALT (that would be me) were ( Read more... )