Into the fire

Training in Tokyo was fun. The best part was that I met a bunch of other teachers and had a great week with them. This is us (not all pictured) for drinks after training.

The next morning I went off to my new home, Joetsu city in the Niigata prefecture. It's really pretty, the beach and the mountains are both in sight and not many people speak English, so my Japanese should improve quickly.
 

Here is the apartment. It's not as small as I expected it to be.

 

And my first attempt at miso soup. Miso hungry!

Today was my first day of school. The trainers in Tokyo were very skilled and helpful, BUT they made it look way too easy. They said that you can explain games/exercises to children by acting them out... WRONG! They said that you can pull activities from thin air if you have 10 minutes to kill... WRONG! They said that you would be teaching the same lesson 30 times a week... WRONG! 

I arrived at school not knowing was I was going to do. I quickly found out that each class had a specific lesson to do and that I should've known the lesson and been prepared. NOBODY TOLD ME THAT! If they did it must've been in Japanese, because I didn't get the memo. Luckily, they had the Japanese version of the lesson books and I was able to plan 4 different lessons with activities in the hour before my 1st class. To make things worse, the teacher before me made the schools a bit unhappy (I don't know what he did), so now it's in my job description to be extra charming.

The first class was a nightmare. Teacher didn't say a single word to me and I was trying to "explain" activities (with using simple gestures, as I was taught in training) to 20 third graders that were bouncing off the walls. Impossible. 

The rest of the classes were much better because the teachers seemed to have much more control. But I was still underprepared. This is definitely a challenging job.