So I finally have a moment to update you all on my life in Japan thus far. Sorry for not being more on top of this Blog. I am sure some of you are curious, but as my mom mentioned in her comment (thanks for having my back Mom), training has been a bit more than I have expected so this blog had to be put on the back burner for a little bit. I do appreciate your curiosity though. It is nice to know this is actually being read, and not just floating out there in cyber space unnoticed. My plan is to post once a week at the least. Some of you might remember that was my initial plan when I was in Chile as well. Hopefully I can hold true to this commitment a little better. One of my goals for this year is to become more organized, more specifically not procrastinating and showing up to things/getting things done on time and on schedule. Working for a Japanese company will most definitely help me with all of these things. These people don’t mess around, and if you are late or act unprofessionally it will be noticed and you will be notified. I am looking forward to the challenge, and the opportunity to improve myself.
Last Saturday was our first day of training. Luckily it was only a half day since they knew we would be jet legged. That day was just an introduction to what would be expected of us and what our schedule would be for the coming week. From the very first day they warned us it would be a VERY exhausting week both mentally and physically. I scoffed when they first used the words “boot camp” but looking back now I understand why they might use that term. I think it was more like “Pledge Class” but that may not be a relatable term for all of you GDIs (: After the half day on Saturday we had the day off on Sunday. We took advantage of the day off to do some homework and walk around town a little bit. I use the term “town” very loosely. Osaka is the third most populated city in Japan with a population of around 2.7 million people. It is way more city than this country boy really needs, but it is all about the adventure and I am enjoying the change. There are massive office buildings everywhere, and a few nights on the way home from training we were LITERALLY being shoved into the subway cars. Thankfully I am 4″-6″ taller than almost everyone so I really thought it was kind of funny. However, if that was going to be my daily routine for a year, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Luckily I am moving to Nara on Tuesday, which many people have described to me as “way more country” than Osaka. They said it like it was a bad thing, but it is exactly what I wanted to hear. I am so excited to get to my apartment, learn my way around town and make some friends.
Nara is about 30-40 minutes by railway from where I am now, in Osaka. My fellow trainee and roommate, Greg, will be working and living in Kyoto which is probably the same distance from Osaka and about an hour from me. Greg is from around Boston, we have been getting along very well. He went to UMD and also graduated as a super senior. He worked at the beach in Cape Cod last summer to save up for this trip to Japan, just like I did in the OBX. He had a few miscommunications with the recruiters before leaving just like I did which made me feel much better about my dilemma with flying into the wrong airport. We have both been putting forth extra effort to try and get back in everyone’s good graces this week, and I feel like our trainers and bosses notice that.
Last Sunday, in between homework and catching up on sleep, we got out for an authentic Japanese sushi experience. We went around 2pm to a restaurant not too far from our hotel which one of the trainers suggested we check out. From the moment we walked in the door it was madness. The restaurant was so busy we could barely make it in the door. We went to the counter to try and figure out how to get a table, and had no idea what the woman was saying so we just smiled, bowed and went to lurk in the corner to watch what other people were doing. We eventually got a ticket from the machine, and debated for about 15 to 20 minutes over whether or not we were doing it correctly until we saw our number on the screen. The nice lady working there led us to our seats and gave us an instruction card which luckily had the English translations for everything. On the other side of the countertop were 2 levels of tracks. The bottom layer had little plates of sushi with bubble covers over them going around and around on a conveyor belt that seemed to go through almost the entire restaurant. There was everything, from sushi rolls, to deserts, lots of sashimi (it seems that is most popular here) and plenty of other things that we were unsure about and were debating over until we got one to try. On the top conveyer belt there were plates being shot out like a little sushi train with whatever people ordered from their touch screen menus at their seats. We were so thrilled watching all the plates shoot out. They would come out, up to 4 plates at once with 2-4 pieces on them depending on what you ordered, and stop automatically in front of the seat of whomever ordered them. It was so amazing, we were laughing the whole time, and probably looked like complete fools but it was awesome. There was so much going on and it was such a different experience, like nothing either of us had done in the US. We were there eating for about a half hour to 45 minutes, trying everything that looked interesting, and the better things more than once. Then we hit the button to say we were finished and a lady brought us our check. It was so cool how the restaurant worked, there were no servers and all of our food came out very fast so we were in and out very quickly, considering the crowd. After we gorged ourselves on sushi, for less than $25 total between the two of us, we went home to hang out and watch Sumo wrestling on TV for a little while.
After digesting we decided to venture out to see Osaka castle park. It was less than a 10 minute subway ride there, then we walked right out of the station into the park. We saw the actual castle on top of the hill when we got out of the subway station and headed straight for it, hoping to get there before it got dark. The whole park was pretty big. There were walking paths everywhere and lots of little fish pools that ran into one another. We saw several fountains as well, and all of the trees were perfectly smooth and manicured like huge green sculptures. The park was not very crowded but we did see a good amount of people. I think we were fairly late, the castle museum closed at 5, about a half hour before we got there, so we couldn’t go inside. We did take some nice pictures though. The castle was on top of what seemed to be the highest hill around so we could see all of the city. The Osaka skyline is pretty cool at dusk. The entire place was surrounded by a huge moat which was about 60 feet straight down from the top of the wall where we were taking pictures. As the sun went down, huge spotlights came on and lit up the castle. As we headed back down the hill we looked back and it was standing out like a star on top of the hill, all lit up above the pitch black park. We were very happy to have gotten out and explored at least a little bit. We knew it was going to be a long week.
When we got back to the hotel we finished up some homework and went to bed. Training started at 12 the next morning, but we were told to be there 15 minutes early, as is the Japanese standard. They said if we showed up even a minute past 1145 they would have to notify our bosses. We made it with plenty of time to spare, despite taking the wrong exit from the subway station and having to walk around the block to get to our building. The first day was definitely hard, our trainer kept rushing us to write bits of the lesson plan he just went over, but never gave us much time to finish, then had us present, then moved on to the next thing. It was so frustrating, and reminded me of pledge class, but like pledge class I learned a lot in a very short amount of time. That night we were assigned a Unit to make a lesson plan for, and we were to present it the next day. In the morning we presented to our trainers and were criticized, then in the evening, real students came in and we did it again with them. The trainers said I did very well and they were impressed how much I seemed to genuinely care about the students. For all 3 of my demo lessons they told me it seemed like I wasn’t nervous at all and that I did a great job speaking clearly and thinking on my feet when problems did arise. Obviously I was very happy to hear this. I automatically thought of my fraternity pledging experience yet again. I honestly believe that if it weren’t for that pledging for the MD Sigma chapter of SAE, I wouldn’t be able to get in front of people and present like I can today. I wouldn’t be the man I am today in many aspects. I know you most of you are scoffing at that statement and probably don’t care about my fraternity life, but SAE has been catching a lot of heat lately about matters of pledging, especially my chapter, MD Sigma. I am sure some of you have read the article we were featured in in Bloomberg. Sorry to waste your time on this subject but I feel like the benefits of pledging are never publicized, and that there is tons of information that many of these news articles omit when they bash Greek life, (i.e. the article I referred to earlier). Now SAE has abolished pledging forever, and no one else will ever realize the benefits I was able to realize…. (By the way, I was never paddled nor did I ever see anyone get paddled, I do not condone hitting pledges.) Thanks for bearing with me through those last few sentences, this topic has been on my mind and I had to get that out.
The rest of the training week went pretty similarly to the first days, although once we got through the first demo lessons the rest went much smoother, and it was less of a chore to plan them. The difficult part is that AEON has a VERY VERY structured way of teaching English, it is their own strategy, developed in house. They have their own textbooks and materials and every thing we do in the classroom follows this structure. Every section is to be done in a specific manner, order, and time limit. I was even criticized for standing on the wrong side of the whiteboard during my children’s lesson demo. It is very different from the much more improvised way I taught in Chile, but I am sure it is a much more effective system. Although training has sucked, I am sure it will all be worth it when I get to my school and am able to plan for and present my lessons with much less stress. I am given the framework and I just have to input the information from the unit into that framework instead of drawing up a whole new lesson plan from scratch for every class. I have no where near mastered it, but I am thankful for this week of training, I know I will be a better AEON teacher because of it.
I am sure this blog post hasn’t been all that entertaining thus far, but neither has my life for the past week. Last night Greg and I wanted to go out for a beer so we looked online for an Irish bar close to our hotel. We went to one the Saturday before and met a lot of English speaking foreigners, so last night, we hoped to find the same fun but at a different Irish bar. We ended up going to a place called the Blarney stone, when we walked in we realized that we had totally forgotten it was St. Patrick’s Day weekend, or maybe we just weren’t expecting any celebrations in Japan. There was a raging party going on, almost everyone was foreign (gaijin) and spoke English, it was a welcome site. Before I was even able to order our first round of beers I heard someone behind me call out my name, which I found very odd. I turned around and Rob Burdon, whom I graduated from high school with, was standing there asking me what I was doing there (he used some extra words that I wont mention) we were both completely shocked. I knew Rob was stationed in Japan with the Navy, but I had not talked with him about where he was or if he wanted to get together yet. He told me he has been stationed in Tokyo and that he and a friend had the week off and were in Osaka for the weekend to party and go to the Sumo wrestling tournament. What are the chances?! We both somehow ended up in the same bar on the other side of the world from our home purely by coincidence, I am still in disbelief. So naturally, we took that as a reason to celebrate. We got another beer or two at the Blarney stone and then headed to try and find another place to hang out. After wandering around and asking several people for directions we made it to a club called “Bambi”. It was on the 8th floor, and as soon as we got off the elevator we were met by lights and loud club music. It was awesome. We were there dancing and partying until early in the morning. We were the only non Japanese people there and they all loved us. We were dancing and all of the Japanese people were following our moves. They seemed to think we were the coolest people ever. Rob’s friend was a very big guy, jacked and 6’7″. I was dying laughing because all the Japanese guys kept coming up to him and grabbing his arms to feel his muscles. He just kept looking at us with a confused face as we were all cracking up, and they were all touching him. I had a guy offer to get some girls to kiss me which was really awkward. We had a great time despite sticking out like a sore thumb, everyone seemed to like us and be genuinely interested in what we were doing. The ladies just kind of stared at us as we danced they would smile if we made eye contact with them, a few came up and joined us, but I felt like most were very intimidated by us. Whatever though, we had an awesome time. I still cant believe I ran into Rob though!
It was so nice to go out and actually have fun last night. As we were leaving the room last night to go out we were talking about how weird it felt to be leaving the hotel in comfortable clothes to go have fun, rather than in suits to go to training. I was so happy to be able to blow off some steam. I feel much happier this morning. Today we will work on preparing for our final lesson demos tomorrow morning, and hopefully get out to walk around this afternoon. We are planning on going to that sushi place again, and I also want to buy a watch. I think we are just going to walk rather than take the subway so we can see everything along the way. I will let you know about that in my next post. Also, I am going to try to link my Flickr account to this page so you all can see some of my pictures. I hope everyone is doing well! Thanks for reading. As always feel free to contact me. I am always happy to chat in between/during homework, I love to get updates from home. Much love to everyone. Happy St. Patty’s Day!!