Two classes today. The scheduling fairy has been working overtime trying to get all the classes to end at the same time so that we can properly have interview tests next week.
Unfortunately today I was teaching with Mr. Hayashi, and he got all confused. We were combining one class, but he thought both were combining, so he brought the whole class, much to the surprise of me and Mr. Yamamoto. By the time that we explained everything to Mr. Hayashi the bell had already rung, and so we couldn’t send the students back to the classroom because they would make lots of noise in the hallways and disturb the other classes. So, I taught the lesson, and twenty students had to listen to the same thing for the second time.
On top of that, Mr. Hayashi was a little frustrated, maybe about his mistake, and so when some boys were chatting while the lecture was going he walked by and hit them both on top of the head – hard, too. I don’t know when Mr. Hayashi started this violent streak. Especially after having classes with him since I arrived in Japan – for the longest time he just let everything slide. I don’t appreciate it happening in my classes, though. I don’t want students to associate English class with physical violence. I think there’s probably a middle ground in there somewhere.
I spent an hour and a half with my ESS students after school. We worked on the ESS bulletin board, and I noticed that the second year students are really starting to get comfortable around me. There’s more and more English being spoken these days, and I’m hoping that they’ll be talking up a storm over the next year.
After school I went over to Tsuji-san’s place for a Japanese/English lesson, and her mom told me all about some free Japanese classes that are going on at the city hall of Takasago on Wednesdays. Tsuji-san’s mom and Keiko-san are all networking together with who knows who else, and they arranged for me to sit in on a class next week. I think that Keiko-san is even taking me out to dinner next week as well. Should be interesting.
It was late by the time I was heading home, so I dropped in at a ramen restaurant near my house to have some noodles. A middle aged lady took my order and was all smiles and giggles over the fact that I ordered without a problem in Japanese.
After I finished my noodles I asked for a “kaedama”… a fresh batch of noodles that you dump into your soup broth. The nice thing about kaedama is that it’s cheap – only 110 yen. The whole bowl of ramen was 600 yen, so it was a great deal. The server was really impressed that I even knew about kaedama, and the chef came over and talked to me. It was good to try to speak and listen to Japanese with some fast-talking locals.
At around 9 p.m. Yasu came over to pick up the pictures that I took during our trip to the Tiger’s game. We chatted in English until I mentioned how I’m looking to speak more Japanese, and so then we switched to Japanese and talked about various things. It went pretty well, and Yasu was polite and didn’t point out my mistakes. It was good practice.
Tomorrow is Friday! It’s been a long week. Saturday Kuniko and I are meeting Inoguchi sensei and his wife for some Chinese food in Kobe, but other than that it’s a slow weekend. I’ll definitely get some sleep this weekend – I’ve been really tired lately. It might have something to do with the heat and the humidity. It’s been about 81 degrees F and about 80% humidity… hot and sticky.
