It’s been a while since I’ve blogged! Things are picking up work-wise, and we’ve got some guests coming in for a couple of days, so I thought I should get this thing up to date.
First work – I started a new gig working at Shin-Caterpillar Mitsubishi last night. I’ll be teaching an advanced English course there once a week, and yesterday was the first lesson and orientation for the students.
The factory mainly makes what the students call “hydraulic shovels” – which look like this. The factory is huge – probably because the products are huge. I’ve often seen them being carried off by truck to ports around the area for shipping overseas.
I’m not sure what the business relationship is between Caterpillar and Mitsubishi, but because there is so much international emphasis at the company they want their employees all to have a solid grounding in English. There were three beginner English classes taught by Japanese instructors (who were too scared to chat with me in English) one intermediate level class taught by another foreign teacher, and an advanced level class.
My students are the top level students, which makes the class much easier for me to manage and prepare for. The students can generally communicate in English, so now we are working on making presentations and discussing issues. Almost none of the usual games and roleplaying. The first day we just talked and got to know each other a little bit.
Towards the end of the class we could hear some rumbling noises outside, and I figured they were closing the doors to the big factory buildings and getting ready to go home. As it turned out it was the sound of thunder, and by the time I left the rain was coming down so hard that you could barely see outside. The students pointed me towards a company bus that took about 60 people back to the nearest station – the company bus runs every day and is a nice convenience especially during the heat and humidity of summer.
Tonight Haven and Kerry will be coming into town to visit. They are on a business trip in Japan and they are going to stay with us for a couple of nights before heading off to Osaka on Sunday. We’ll probably cook dinner for them tonight, and since Kuniko has a school party tomorrow I’ll take them to Denya for yakitori. Hopefully we can squeeze in some sightseeing between all the eating.
