Can you tell that I like simple costumes? 

I Flop at Kindergarten

Okay, I didn't quite flop but I wasn't my usual smash hit.
On Fridays, I always go to the Elementary School and Kindergarten. I have three lessons at Elementary and two at Kindergarten. The Kindergarten lessons are pretty short since I have to fit both of them into one hour so with set up and everything I really only get 20 minutes with each group. Kindergarten here is actually two grades so it kind of combines Preschool and Kindergarten. The first class is made up of the four year olds, and the second is the five year olds.
So, since Halloween is Sunday I figured I'd base my lesson around that. I borrowed a really simple English book called "What is Halloween?" and combined that with a short explanation of Halloween in Japanese.

Now, the four year olds were pretty happy to look at the pictures and listen to the bits of Japanese translation I used as well as the assistance the teachers gave so overall that went pretty well. The enjoyed chanting "Trick or Treat" whenever it came up in the book and seemed to follow it.
But the five year olds were more caught up in trying to follow the English and got frustrated because they didn't quite understand it. When I finished the book several of them announced that they hadn't understood anything so I had to convince them that they caught the important bits, which was basically just that you wear costumes, say "Trick or Treat", and get candy. They understood all of that, but still felt like they hadn't understood what had happened. Then our time was up and I had to leave. Felt kind of like a failure.

But then back at the Elementary I got back in the swing of things and we enjoyed some rousing games. Pretty simple but the kids loved it. I just introduced six words having to do with Halloween :bat, pumpkin, witch, moon, ghost, black cat. I showed pictures of them, then gave each kid a piece of paper with all six of these images on it. Then I would call out one word and they had to cut out that picture as fast as they could. They were pretty competitive anyhow, but you throw in the promise of stickers for prizes to the first couple of kids to finish and they go nuts! Then, when we had finished all of the pictures they got into groups of four and we played a game called karuta. This is also pretty simple. They take one group of six images and place them in the middle of their desks. I call out a word and the first kid to get their hands on it wins. After we do all six, the kid from each group with the most cards wins and then they get a sticker. I was happy to see that different kids won this part. Especially this one fourth grader. She is pretty smart and a really cute kid, but her left arm ends just below the elbow. Doesn't seem to phase her a bit, but it made it impossible for her to cut out the pictures nearly as fast as the other kids. I hadn't really considered that when I decided to do this. However, her right arm is apparently pretty quick because she dominated her group in karuta. And she got a sticker of Mickey Mouse who she apparently really likes (she told me so after class) and I felt much better about the whole thing.

So there. Teaching and stuff.

Oh yeah, and check out the pic of me in my costume up above. First person to post a comment stating who I'm supposed to be will get... umm... something. From Japan. And it'll be, you know, something.

I'm alive, But I'm stupid

You may have heard recently about some really terrible earthquakes over here in Japan. Here are some facts:
-Honshu is the name of the main island here.
-I live on Honshu.
-The earthquakes centered around Niigata.
-That's, like, 100 miles from here.
-I'm fine.

We did have an earthquake here last Saturday, but it only lasted about 4-5 seconds and barely rumbled at all. Still weird, but it was over before I knew it.
That's the part where I am still alive.

Here's the part where I'm stupid:

So, last time I went to New York to visit with my dad, stepmom, and wee little brother my pops was kind enough to install McAfee on my laptop so I would have the double protection of a virus scanner and a firewall.
Well, for a couple months now I've been using Yahoo BB (BroadBand) here and I must say that the virus protection has been working like a charm. Yet, the popups were getting out of control and my internet speed just didn't seem to be what it used to be. I was beginning to think some spyware or adware had found its way onto my hard drive, and that was pretty well confirmed when half a dozen new icons appeared on my desktop suddenly. Sure, it's convenient to have a direct link to online gambling on your desktop but I thought the temptation would be too much. And the irony of having a spyware buster placed there by a piece of spyware was not nearly funny enough to leave it.

So, off they came and the very next thing I did was to download and run Spybot which eventually finished and let me know that there were something like 120 pieces of adware and spyware slowing me down. I got rid of them and things got much better but I was still confused. How did all of this get through that firewall? I mean, aren't they supposed to stop things like that? Hmmm...

So, I popped open McAfee and checked the firewall out. It gave me a cheery option screen and began guiding me through the process of setting up the firewall FOR THE FIRST TIME.

DOH!!!

As it turns out, I never bothered to turn on the firewall. I saw that Virus Scan icon in the system tray, knew they were the same program, and just assumed that... well, you know.

So, now that the firewall is on and working like a charm everything is working great. And since the earthquake didn't destroy my laptop I'm back to downloading movies and TV shows in a perfectly legal manner! Whee!

Adults are Funny

So, today was the Kurihara-gun kokugo benron taikai. Yep. Oh, that means the Kurihara county Japanese speech contest by the way. See, what you just experienced by not being able to read that is somewhat equivalent to what I felt for three hours today while fourteen kids from all over the area gave speeches in Japanese. Three years in college and then three months of living here and the best I could do was basically understand the general gist of what their speeches were about. Ouch. On the upside, the kid from our school got second place. He seemed good to me, but really I didn't understand a bit of it.

The interesting thing is how these contests go. I was st the English recitation and speech contest a few weeks ago and it was the same way. They announce the winners in much the same way we would. They started with the honorable mentions, then 2nd place, and finally first place. Then they give them their awards (mostly certificates) after that. It's not one thing where they announce 2nd place and then give that kid their trophy. They tell everyone exactly who won, then make them all come up on stage so they can be presented with their trophies and certificates. And they work backwards that time so the 1st place kid gets their trophy first, then 2nd, then honorable mentions, and finally everyone gets a certificate. You know, those ones that are supposed to mean something to you but they really just say that you were there that day. They always give those to kids thinking that it helps make up for losing, but of course we all know that it's really just putting the fact that you lost into writing which really isn't that great. And your parents wanting to put it on the wall or whatever doesn't help either.

Anyhow, tonight I had my Eikaiwa (English Conversation) class at the Social Center here in Semine. This is where I teach adults English. But since it was Halloween I decided to do it on holidays. I looked up the history of Halloween, simplified it, translated it into Japanese, got another English teacher at school to fix my translation and gave that out. Now, somehow one of my students had gotten the mistaken impression that today was my birthday so we had a couple of cakes as well as the candy and whatnot. I enjoyed it. Not much of a class, but we had a good time. I took my laptop to show them pictures of Halloween in America, which consisted almost entirely of my younger brother Liam. They loved it so much that I just ended up showing them most of the pictures I had. Not sure how much English we learned but I got some cake and stuff. Even got a birthday present. It's a coaster for a glass. But it's made out of fabric. It looks like those boats you make out of newspaper, but then you open it up and put your glass inside it. Really nice. Almost makes me wish I hadn't stolen this rubber coaster from Mos Burger last time I was there.

Almost.

Sendai is awesome

As I said in my last entry, I went into Sendai today for some shopping. See, Sendai is a really big city. It's number ten in Japan I think. And anyone who lives in a big city or has been around one very much knows that they not only have all of the big, main stores that everyone sees but that they also have a great number of secrets.

So, it really shouldn't have been a surprise that Sendai was the same way and yet it was. Today was really the first time that I had spent a whole day in the city wandering around by myself and I was much more free to head into any store that caught my eye. It was pretty cool. There are little clothing stores and toy stores and media stores and all kinds of stuff that are not at all obvious. You have to check out the little signs and head up an elevator to get to them, at which point you may stumble into a store that sells all kinds of cool figures or DVDs or who knows what. I found a little clothing store off the beaten path called MASH which sells American clothing. Not particularly cheap but some pretty cool stuff and somehow I had never noticed it before.

I guess my point here (and don't expect me to always have one) is that it was nice to realize that a big city in Japan is just like one in America, with all kinds of little secrets hidden away just waiting to be discovered. Who knows what I may find next time I'm there. Maybe there's a Godzilla store hiding somewhere. Oooh, I hope.

I Killed Someone Today

Yeah, I took someone out. See, here in Miyagi Prefecture we have an organization called MAJET which stands for Miyagi Association of JETs (JET stands for Japanese Exchange Teaching). MAJET's main purpose is to set up social events for us so that we'll have chances to hang with other native English speakers and just have fun. We had a bowling tournament a couple weeks ago which was really fun. I made it into the playoffs. There were fifteen teams of two and the top five had a playoff as well as the bottom five. My partner, Ben, and I were in the bottom five. But we won out of those teams so it could have been worse.

The point here is that the current MAJET thing is the Assassin's Life game in which everyone who wants to play is given a mark. This is another Miyagi JET that we are supposed to kill using a water pistol. If you manage to take your mark out then you take on their mark and move on from there. Eventually only one person will be left. Well, my mark was a girl named Heather who I know but I wasn't sure when I would have a chance to see her. I was hoping she would just show up in Sendai for a night out and I could shoot her then but it hadn't happened.

But today I headed into Sendai on my own to do some shopping. I had to finish off my Halloween costume (of which I will post pictures once it is all done) and I also needed an external hard drive. I've been downloading a lot of movies and TV shows, ummmm, legally. ;) So, I'm on the train coming back home and I realize I need to move into one of the first couple of cars. The train splits at Kogota and if you're not in one of the first two cars then you head off in the wrong direction. But as I'm walking up, wouldn't you know it? There sits Heather with a bunch of luggage. She had just returned from a trip to Hong Kong tonight and she was a bit tired. So, I sat down and chatted. She seemed happy to see a familiar face and of course never saw it coming. I rooted about in my backpack while we talked, pulled out the gun, and shot her right in the shoulder (anything is a killing shot). She couldn't believe it.

So, yeah, I'm a successful killer now. And I have to move on to my next mark. Hee hee.

Me and my favorite Elementary student, Ranna. 

Metal Gear Solid 2

Okay, so this may be a totally pointless post since it deals with a video game that came out over a year ago. So, people that don't care about video games won't care about this, and people who do probably played this one a while back. But I'm always a bit slow with these things and I just now got around to actually finishing it so I'm going to write this anyhow. Besides, isn't pointless stuff what blogs are all about?

So, I have been playing Metal Gear Solid 2 off and on since I moved to Japan. At first I was just messing around, then I got serious, then I got the Internet and pretty much didn't look at it for well over a month. However, a few of my English students would come over occasionally to play video games and they were interested in MGS2 since it was also popular in Japan, but was slightly different. Eventually this got my interest worked up again and about a week ago I got back into it with a vengeance. Finally, tonight, I finished the game. And I have to say that it was great. I know some people (Kevin Savage) didn't like it because you spent as much, if not more, time watching the game as you did playing it. But that was part of what I really enjoyed. This is a different type of game and if you are expecting an action-adventure Mario type game you will be sorely disappointed. This is better described as an interactive movie. It's like watching a very long mini-series on TV, one which is even longer than Shogun (which is saying something). But this mini-series has two big differences.
1. It's on when you want it to be on. It starts when you feel like it and ends when you feel like it. If you want to watch for 30 minutes, an hour, 3 hours, whatever, that's how long it's on for.
2. You have to work for it. Instead of just sitting back and watching, like you would Roots or Shogun, you have to earn the next chapter. When it comes to the action bits you don't just watch the character sneak through the room and surreptitiously tranquilize the enemy, you have to do it yourself.

So, you end up becoming more involved with the characters than you might in a movie since you ARE one of them. And honestly the plot was great too. Complicated enough to keep you guessing and thinking, but not too hard to follow. Great graphics gave you people with facial expressions that made it easier to watch, and the voice acting was good too.

So, yeah, I really liked Metal Gear Solid 2. And since it took me so long to play it, Metal Gear Solid 3 is about to be released. Maybe I'll get that one in some time during 2005. We'll see.

Kevin

First one?

Right, so I guess I should write something for everyone to read when they first come here. As of now, I have little idea where this blog will go but I intend to simply type in the things that I'm thinking about at the time. If you have any responses please, please write to me about it. I'd love to hear from all of you and it would be closer to having a conversation than normal e-mail has been.

So, I find myself in Japan teaching English to all ages. Although I speak Japanese all the time, I still get in plenty of English time. At school, I usually speak English to the other English teachers since it is more comfortable to me and they honestly need the practice. There are three English teachers and the best of them can not understand English when it is spoken at normal speed so I am trying to break them in. Other than that I try using English with the students and while a few of them like it and try to converse with me, I usually end up reverting to Japanese. Then there's English Club. One of my 2nd grade JHS student's (8th grade in America) mother is a private English teacher and she wanted to have me over from time to time to practice her English skills. So, on Saturdays I get together with her and two other private English teachers from the area for a couple hours to discuss whatever in English. This is fun since it's the only time I get to talk about things like politics and religion with Japanese people in English. Afterwards she tutors me in Japanese for about an hour and a half. which is good because I can ask her actual grammatical questions in English.
Then, I typically head into Sendai on the weekends. Sendai is the 10th biggest city in Japan and it's only about an hour from here by train. Usually other JETs (Japan Exchange Teaching) are there ready to go drinking and whatnot. This is great because I get to not only speak English, but these people actually understand my humor. They might not think it's funny, but at least they understand it.

So, I'm getting a great deal of practice in Japanese but at the same time I am still getting to use my native language plenty. I love my job because the students are great. I'm at the Junior High Monday-Thursday and then on Fridays I go to the Elementary and Kindergarten. That's pretty much just fun and games so it's a nice break. The teachers are all super nice and they make me feel like a real member of the staff. The students make me feel both like a real teacher and a friend which is fun. In fact, just today six of my 2nd graders (8th graders) came over to watch a movie and play video games. Great fun.

So, that's my introductory blog entry. From now on it will probably be a lot of just whatever I'm thinking at the time. So be prepared.

Later ya'll.