The End of Initial Training!

So this past week I finished with initial training! We went over the two main categories of adult English lessons (one focuses on a situation and we teach multiple ways to communicate in that situation. The other focuses on grammar and multiple ways to use a specific grammar point). On  Tuesday I taught a full lesson of the first type, then on Friday I taught a full lesson of the second type (to teachers-acting-as-students, of course).

What was really fun was Thursday evening when real AEON students from around the area visited the training house and we each got to teach a 20-minute mini-lesson to them. It was awesome getting to talk to the students and learn about where they're from, why they want to learn English and how long they have been studying. I had a great conversation with one student about festivals in Japan and in America. Speaking of that, Happy (belated) 4th of July everyone! Teaching real students was a lot of fun and having that experience makes me much less intimidated for when I go to my branch school in Fujisawa.

Our "Jazz Hands" Group picture after we all "graduated" from the training facility. We took a more professional one, but this one is much more fun.

I learned about my schedule before the end of Friday as well. I'll be teaching right at the beginning. I have two classes on Tuesday, mixed in with some observing other classes, and then I slowly teach more classes each day until I'm running on an "actual" schedule. On my list for today (other than laundry) is to go ahead and take a look at the lessons I'm teaching Tuesday and Wednesday so that I'm not entirely lost when I get into the classroom.

Friday night after training was over we all went out for dinner and drinks. After that, we went to karaoke and spent a little more than three hours singing and drinking (responsibly, of course) there too. I got to impress everyone with my rendition of One Week by Barenaked Ladies...I knew I memorized those lyrics for a reason, haha. It turned out to be a pretty fun evening. The only hitch was when we were paying at the end. At the restaurant it had been made clear from the beginning that the total bill was going to be split evenly (as is the Japanese way). Unfortunately the same wasn't done for karaoke (in fact the opposite was implied), and some people that didn't order any drinks didn't want to pay more than their share of the room fee. That made it even more expensive for people who also didn't order any drinks but decided to swallow the equally-shared bill anyway (like me). I was OK with it, but others weren't happy, so I'll give a warning to all people who want to visit Japan some day: The default when going out is almost always to split the bill evenly, and it can be considered pretty rude to expect to only pay for what you ordered. It doesn't make much sense to foreigners to pay this way (I still don't really like it to be honest), but once you can make the cultural switch you'll learn to let go a bit more and end up having a lot of fun. For me it just means that I'll be going out to eat only on rare occasions, at least until I have a steady income. Ultimately I think Friday night was worth it though, since everyone had a great time.

Joel and I (the other guy is also named Joel) singing JET's Are You Gonna Be My Girl. I tend to choose this song a lot when I got to karaoke since I know all the lyrics and it's a song everyone can enjoy XD

Lighla and me posing for the camera. For some reason everytime someone tells us to do the peace-sign pose I'm either the only one doing it or the only one not doing it...

Yesterday (Saturday) a few of us went to Akihabara  the "Electric City" in Tokyo. There I learned the true scale of the Manga industry in Japan, haha. One anime/manga place had 7 floors of nothing but books, CDs, and DVDs. We walked around a lot of different shops and game centers. I kept myself on a budget so I didn't buy anything, but I did have fun just walking around and seeing what was there. We got doughnuts at Mister Donut which were a tad pricey compared to doughnuts in the states but we had a good time. We made a brief stop at a department store in Shinjuku (a nearby city) since some people needed to look for specific items, then returned to Omiya.

That pretty much sums up the week. Today I'm preparing to leave the training facility and tomorrow morning I hop on a train to Fujisawa! There I'll be escorted around by someone at my school to set up a bank account and get a cell phone (or hopefully just get a new SIM card for the one I brought. We'll see how that goes). I'm also going to look into getting Internet set up at my apartment. That way hopefully I'll finally be able to video-call through Skype. The Internet here at the training facility can't quite handle video calls, especially when it's one router for 13 people. So I'll sign off for now. Look for another post in about a week! Oh, and I'll leave you guys with one more picture. This one is just to make my parents and sister jealous :D

Chocolate chip melon bread!!!