How to Run a Community English Circle (Eikaiwa)

Before coming to Japan to teach English, I was TEFL Certified at Hamline University in Minnesota, one of the leading programs out there. TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and the certification is generally used to instruct abroad, much like the Spanish, French, and German classes are conducted in American middle and high schools.

My TEFL Certification has immensely benefited me. Having a foundation in second-language acquisition theory, experience with adult learners, lesson planning, and team-teaching have been indispensable. My experience with adult learners has transferred well to my community English conversation circle, or eikaiwa, and my community English class for beginners. It makes me think that since I was most experienced with adults and junior high level students, and that I ended up teaching primarily these, that placements on the JET Program are much less random than they may seem (and Hokkaido was my second choice!). 

I have encountered many first year JETs who are at a loss as to what to teach in their eikaiwas.  With little guidance or experience, it might be difficult to decide what exactly to teach. But let me begin by saying that  the Internet is a virtual hot spring (onsen!) of teaching ideas. You can find curriculum, lesson ideas, or activity ideas, handouts or conversation questions. This post does not focus on specific lesson ideas, rather, creating a strong foundational backbone for your eikaiwa. The rest will fall into place.

I have a bit of a background in biology, and I find that the process of teaching a new class loosely follows the scientific method. The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting or integrating previous knowledge. By researching, observing, making hypothesis, testing, retesting, and modifying your hypotheses, you can run a good eikaiwa! Okay, maybe that overly complicates it...but anyway...

The first step in running an eikaiwa is researching your group and observing during the first lesson. How many members are there? What did your predecessor do? What levels are they - beginners, intermediate, or advanced? Discover demographics perhaps using a survey: ages, occupations, and experience with English. What is their motivation for learning English: travel, business, making friends, or watching English TV shows? What are their expectations: do they want activities, games, open conversation, grammar, new phrases, and on about which topics?

Now, once you have acquired all that information, what do you teach? By assessing the needs and abilities of your learners, you can begin to develop a curriculum and goals. While it is okay to use some of the work done by your predecessor as there is no reason to reinvent the wheel, you also want to introduce some new ideas and make the class your own. Usual topics include: shopping, culture, asking for directions, travel, ordering at a restaurant, talking on the phone, etc. Hypothesize what your class wants to learn, and revise as you go. For my adult beginner class who is quite well traveled, I extrapolated that they would want experience with travel conversations (airport, asking for directions, restaurants, etc.) in English. And at the next class, a member requested all three. Luckily, I had already planned that night's topic as "at the airport" and I had began planning next week's lesson: ordering at a restaurant!

Chances are you will be teaching to a multi-level classroom, with a variety of interests and ages. One lesson I learned in my TEFL classes was the saying, "Every classroom is multi-level." You will (most probably) never have a class of clones, so your students will always have varied backgrounds and abilities. As a teacher, this is a wonderful opportunity for you to utilize your creativity and intuition. To accommodate varying levels, it is important to use individual, pair, and group work, a variety of difficulty level tasks, teach functional language including how to ask clarifying questions when they do not understand. "Could you please repeat that?" "Please speak slowly." "What does ___________ mean?" Sometimes splitting the class into two groups to work on two separate activities will be appreciated, to challenge all adults at their level.

And perhaps the most important part of your lesson comes after all the hard work is done: reflect. How did the lesson go? What did the learners get out of it? What would you do differently next time? If you reflect and adapt, you will undoubtedly improve as a teacher, make class more enjoyable, manageable, and useful for your students.

Most of all, members of your eikaiwa probably just want to use English, learn a few things, and have fun. So if you can manage to pull those off on any given night, you will be successful! 

a trip to the hospital: health care in Japan and America

Have you wondered how the Japanese health system compares to that of America? I can't say that I know much about either, save that of some quick Wikipedia research and firsthand experience, both which I will share here. 

The US spends more on health care per capita and as a percentage of GDP than any other nation, and life expectancy at birth in the USA is 78.49 years, ranking 50th in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) ranked America as the highest in cost, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health. In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was signed into law, requiring individuals to become insured in hopes of reducing overall government spending on health care, and fining those who are uninsured. 

Since 1961, Japan has offered universal health coverage which allows all access to preventative, curative, and rehabilitative services at an affordable cost. Insurance is also mandated, but local governments offer national health insurance plans. Patients enrolled in national health insurance pay 30% of the cost while the government pays 70%. Hospitals, by law, must be run as non-profits and corporations are not allowed to own or operate hospitals. Medical fees are regulated by the government to keep them affordable. Households are also eligible for monthly thresholds. With these structures in place, Japan ranks about 20th in the world. People in Japan have the longest life expectancy at birth in the world.

As a JET, you are enrolled under the national health insurance. If you are married, your spouse is covered as well. The JET Program itself provides additional insurance in the case of a freak accident. Not long after arriving in Japan, both my husband and I received our national health insurance cards.

I don't know anyone who thinks that the situation in America is ideal. It sometimes takes weeks to make an appointment, and many people I know won't go unless they are seriously ill. As a child, when wining about my health, my dad used to tell me, "Are you bleeding? No? Then you're fine." As a soccer coach, his motto was, "Walk it off." He taught me to be tough. Unfortunately, another personal lesson that came with that is a resistance to visit the doctor. If there's a chance of my body healing itself, I like to take that chance. I'll probably be fine. And with the expense and inconvenience of American health care, for many Americans, including myself, visiting the doctor is a last resort. I have had to wait in the doctor's room for over a half an hour for them to return. Usually it seems that they want to run test after test, "just to be sure." To me, it seems that hospitals in America are money-making-machines.

In Japan, I have heard two sides to the story:  First, that the medical field is generally distrusted, and that Japanese people do not want to be medicated, but I think this is kind of an outdated story. Secondly, I have heard that people visit the hospital at the slightest inkling of a cold!

After some pressure from  my husband and family members, I took the risk of visiting my local hospital, because it seemed that antibiotics would be necessary. Here is an account of my first time visiting the hospital in Japan with the help of my supervisor.

Your first visit to the hospital will be without an appointment. You will show your insurance card to the receptionist and they will create a hospital card for you. For future visits, appointments are first come first served and automated, on computer consoles that operate like the machines used when buying a ticket at the movie theater or maybe self-checkout at the grocery store. People line up an hour or more before doctors arrive to get a good spot in line. Old people don't have anything better to do I guess, and they have probably been awake for a few hours already. They also line up outside the grocery store on Sunday morning to get the best deals. But I diverge..

After a bit of paperwork and within 10 minutes of arrival, I was issued my card and in with a doctor. In my small town of 20,000, I was surprised because the doctor not only spoke English, he had a terrific bedside manner and a kind disposition. His English medical vocabulary was quite surprising. After prescribing antibiotics and explaining my condition to me, I received my bill and prescription.

I paid at one desk, they faxed my prescription to a nearby pharmacy, and I picked it up immediately. The entire visit: getting my health card, being tested and seen by the doctor, paying, and picking up my prescription took less than 1 hour, and less than ¥3000. I visited for my follow-up today, the antibiotics worked their magic, I was given a clean bill of health, and a cheap one too, no more than ¥500.

I had such a positive experience that I won't hesitate to visit the doctor again. Say what you will about universal health care, ("In Canada the wait times are outrageous!  The quality is terrible!") but in Japan, it's efficient, comfortable, and affordable. Not only have a been cured of my illness, I think I have also been cured of my fear, distrust, and hesitancy to visit hospitals. 

Halloween in Japan

I probably haven't been so disappointed about Halloween being over since I was six. I have discovered that Japanese people think Americans are a lot more gung-ho about Halloween than we actually are. Don't get me wrong, I love candy and seeing little kids dressed up in costumes, but my trick-or-treating, partying, and even pumpkin carving days are long gone. Well, that was true, until I came to Japan. As a cultural ambassador, I am able to relive and spread the joy of holidays to children and adults around the world. It sounds cheesy, but it's pretty magical.

The last two days have been a Halloween whirlwind. I feel fortunate that my schools and English Circle have taken such a great interest in my culture. However, I have had to do a lot of research about the history and origins of my own country's holiday. Did you know that kumo means spider in Japanese and kyuuketsuki means vampire? When's the last time you bobbed for apples on Halloween? Did you know the origins of Halloween encompasses multiple religions and traditions from many countries? Where do Jack-O-Lanterns come from? The more you know, man. 

First, I team-taught three classes at one school. One class carved jack-o-lanterns, one watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" and had a mummy contest, wrapping each other in toilet paper. I gave a general explanation of Halloween to the last class, and they had a jack-o-lantern design contest and did a Halloween word search. I especially enjoyed showing the pumpkin carving group how to dig their hands into the slimy, seedy goop inside the pumpkin and remove it with disgusting ease. Unfortunately, I can't post photos of my students here, but if you visit my town blog you can see them after 11/7/12.

I visited another school on  Halloween, and they were absolute fanatics, mostly because the principal (my only female principal) is also the first grade English teacher, extremely well-traveled and skilled at English, and knowledgeable and interested in foreign cultures.  In addition, I am the first American ALT they have had at their school, so they are very excited to learn about a holiday that some other English-speaking countries do not share. When I arrived, I noticed about 10 gigantic pumpkins ready to be carved.

My other team teacher had ordered some expired Halloween-themed pretzels to give to students during class in a trick-or-treat role play. For the first grade class, the principal ordered 3 pumpkin pies, not only using pumpkin as an ingredient but also as a decorative theme. I don't know where she got the tableware!

Even after watching Halloween movies, pumpkin carving, eating pumpkin pie, trick-or-treating, and dressing students up as mummies, there was more excitement to be had! The town English Circle held a combination Welcome Party / Halloween Party in a small building, by day a restaurant where special needs people work, and by night a Halloween jamboree. The English Circle planner is a retired English teacher whose husband is a Buddhist monk. She has studied English on her own for more than 20 years, and she is eager to praise the language: "English is the key to understanding people in the world," she says. 

Walking into the room was like walking into another world. The room was fully decorated with Halloween posters and jack-o-lanterns. The 16 or so people who attended were dressed in various thrown-together costumes, the women in witch hats, two of the older men with witch hats and some yarn hair sewed on, even our handicapped member in a wheel chair sported a bloody knife going through his head. One member was in a Dalmatian jump suit, one wore a panda hat, and one middle aged man borrowed his daughter's costume from last year and admitted that he didn't know what it was: it looked like a carrot hat with a bib worn backwards. The tables were covered in food: gourmet platters, Yakumo cheese (they recommended we dip it in soy sauce and it was divine), and snacks galore. 

In addition to some lovely English conversation, I explained some Halloween traditions and fielded questions about what candy corn has to do with actual corn since it doesn't really look like corn and isn't made of corn, and what's up with graveyards since Japanese people are mostly cremated. I also took the liberty of connecting the dots between burials, graveyards, and the zombie phenomenon, since, in Japan, there aren't a lot of dead bodies around to come back to life. I guess when the zombie apocalypse hits, I know where I'm going! Except there are basically no guns here so fending off any of the (rare but existing) Christian burials would be quite difficult.

There was a Halloween quiz, tea and a flute performance, and a grand thank you at the end in which my husband and I were given flowers, a present, and two bottles of alcohol. We received so many gifts - a cake from a member and some sweets from another, even kabocha squash and sweet potatoes.

Holidays are a reason to celebrate and to share joy with others, I realized. Even thousands of miles from home, the "Halloween spirit" is alive and well! Happy Halloween!

How to Make Friends in Japan

We found some Japanese friends! I didn't think it would be possible, with my pathetic lack of Japanese language ability. Here's how the magic happened:

I asked my supervisor if there was a group with which my husband could play basketball. Not only did she introduce him to a group of young males to play with weekly, she asked  him to assist with coaching the team at the junior high school! Here's a photo of him in action:

The style of these pick-up games is often a frantic race from one hoop to the next, with the taller guys getting rebounds and chucking full-court passes to the sprinting guards. Like every possession. It puts "run-and-gun" in a whole new light. There is little to no physical contact, selfishness, aggression, fouls, or anger. Everyone is out there having a good time, and being competitive but being friendly first and foremost. Quite a bit different from pick-up games in the US - well - about exactly the opposite. 

It seems that there are three steps to making friends in Japan (or maybe anywhere):  1. Do something you like. 2. Find other people who like it too. 3. Talk to them. I think it might just be that simple.

After his first basketball outing, we were invited to meet two guys and their lady friends (relationship statuses unknown) at a local restaurant owned by someone's mother. It was closed the Sunday we went, a stormy night perfect for some handmade takoyaki (octopus balls) and friends. We spent 3 hours together, cooking, chatting, laughing, and looking up words on our Smartphones (they make for excellent electronic dictionaries). 

We were even graced with a magic show by the mom who owns the restaurant!

They showed us so much kindness, and often I am at a loss as to how to show people how much I appreciate everything they do to make us feel welcome. Next, we will 'drink alcohol together' - the plan proposed by the young men. Tom hopes to have them over to watch NBA International League Pass sometime too.

A Meeting in Obihiro

Last weekend I took a trip to Obihiro for the HAJET fall meeting. Obihiro is a city of about 150,000 people, located in the Tokachi area of Hokkaido. It is a large farming area, the main crops are wheat, potatoes, beets and beans. It is home to the "pristine" Satsunai river, which, like the Mississippi River, is largely polluted by fertilizer runoff from local agriculture.

I was nervous about the train ride, since my experience taking trains includes only a couple days in Chicago, chaperoned by a friend with a Smartphone, and going by myself from Yakumo to Sapporo with no transfer. That's it. There is like one train in Minnesota and I've never taken it. To Obihiro, I took a limited express train, transferred at Minami Chitose, and somehow figured out from which platform my train departed and which car was for unreserved seats. Being in Japan is in indispensable learning experience in so many ways. 

Upon arrival, I visited the Kita no Yatai foodstand, an alleyway of unique, compact restaurants. The area is famous for a dish of glazed pork on rice called butadon. We stayed at the New Hotel Obihiro, a fairly priced place that smelled like decades of cigarette smoke had seasoned the walls.

The training was rather minimal, but I enjoyed HAJET's ongoing game of assassins (I made the first kill by getting someone to say 'galaxy' only about 2 minutes after the game began), the Halloween costume contest (I dressed as Dr. Horrible, an obscure reference that helped me find kinship with some nerds), and the pub quiz, despite the way HAJET seems like a selective group of insiders who operate by the same popularity rules as high school, and the tendency for the 3rd+ year JETS to take every opportunity to interject with their undying expertise. That was a long sentence. 

I was glad to have some time to walk around during the day, and I found Obihiro's Park: Midori ga oka koen. Only a 15 minute walk from the train station, there is a park golf course, open green spaces, gardens, an art museum, a pond with mallards and some trails. It was a lovely fall day for a stroll.

I had some good times, met some friends, and took the train back to Yakumo feeling less than 100% after a night of ample festivities, if you catch my euphemism. 

Work Updates

I have been swamped, stressed, and sleepy. Between teaching 9-5 at 5 junior high schools, I facilitate an evening English circle, teach an English class just for beginners, and today I am leading a classroom/conversation one-shot English workshop for a mix of elementary and middle school teachers. Not to mention the everyday lesson planning, and I have to do and the multiple full-period Halloween lessons tomorrow and next week. And to top it off, my BOE is adding elementary schools to my mix, so Monday I will team teach at my first elementary school. It doesn't help my stress level that I have had about 5 CouchSurfing requests that I have had to organize in the last couple of weeks, and that lat weekend I was out of town for the HAJET Fall Meeting in Obihiro and wasn't able to get work done or relax. *head explodes*

On a lighter note, I drove to my 2 schools that are 45-minutes away through a mountain pass last week, and the fall colors and sunshine over the sea of Japan was so picturesque:

Last week all of my junior highs also came together to display tidbits of their school festival performances, which overall was lovely.

However, I think there is a teacher who is trying to sabotage me. She's an English teacher who sits next to me every day and rarely talks to me, besides apologizing for putting her stuff all over my desk all the time. On a day that I wasn't informed that it was a half day for students and there was no lunch planned, I remained at school for an hour while she ate next to me, before someone else mentioned the schedule change. She is constantly misinforming me about my weekly schedule, but what really got me pissed was what happened at the performances.

I walked into the gym, standing along the wall with a few other teachers while the gym filled with students sitting in chairs or rugs on the gym floor. A kind teacher came over to me and showed me where I could sit on the floor with students if I wanted to. But the saboteur intervened, and told me where I should sit in a line of tables with about 7 seats. She led me there and I didn't have much choice but to sit down.

Then, the superintendent and the head of the town council were seated at the other end of these tables. I felt out of place, sitting alone at the other end of the table that seemed reserved for people more important. I realized right before the performance started that the principals of each of the 5 junior high schools were standing next to each other, on the other side of the tables, as if they were waiting to sit down, and I thought for sure I was in their spot, but before I could act, people brought a bunch of folding chairs for them to sit where they didn't have quite as good of a view. So I sat, with 4 chairs between myself and the superintendent and head of the town council, for the entire performance. I felt like such a moron, but that teacher told me to sit there! She walked by later, and didn't acknowledge me at all.

I can only try to explain how uncomfortable I was...and have my little conspiracy theory that this teacher is out to make me look bad. Maybe she didn't know those tables were reserved, but why would she have been so insistent for me to sit there when she has never gone out of her way for me before?

At my two-month meeting with my supervisor, I was asked if there were any situations in my life in Japan where I felt confused or uncomfortable (the paper she gave me said, "tell me about your condition"). I told her that I feel confused and uncomfortable a lot, but I would do my best. Being unable to speak Japanese well, unable to understand the subtle rules of Japanese culture, and unable to grasp the individual school subcultures, renders me awkward and if unguided or misguided, I will likely commit many a faux pas, creating an endless string of baka gaijin's misadventures.  *sigh*

Shikotsu-Toya National Park, Ryokan, and Tourist Traps

This last weekend I took a trip to Noboribetsu's Hell Valley (地獄谷 Jigokudani) and Shikotsu-Toya National Park (支笏洞爺国立公園 Shikotsu Tōya Kokuritsu Kōen). Having a car in Hokkaido makes amazing weekend trips possible. 

The trip began in Noboribetsu, found on the Japanese Ministry of Environment`s list of the top 100 areas of fragrance and scenery! I stayed at Dai-Ichi Takimotokan, the largest spa in Asia. This was by far the most luxurious stay I have ever had at a hotel. 

I greatly enjoyed staying in a Japanese style room for the first time. The tatami mat floor is delicate and it smells very earthy, both refreshing and sort of like a pet store at the same time. While I had been hesitant to book a room without Western style beds, futons turned out to be a lovely experience! It felt like a sleep over, and the staff set them out for us in the evening. I honestly enjoyed them so much, I slept so soundly and comfortably, that I would consider sleeping on a futon back in America.

Hell Valley (地獄谷 Jigokudani) is a 450-meter-diameter mouth of a volcano, which produces 3,000 liters of hot water per minute. The fragrance I mentioned above? That would be the sulfur rotting egg fart smell that seemed initially vile, but ended up growing on me by the end of the trip. If you can't get over that smell, you won't enjoy the hot springs very much, as they contain sulfur too. The hot springs feed the baths at local ryokan, and as the springs boast 11 different types of water, each with different chemical properties that supposedly have different health benefits .

Every year around late August, the Hell Festival takes place here, so demons are a local motif. There are even red and blue beers, which looked cool but tasted like soapy carbonated water.

I enjoyed wearing my first yukata, using the instructions provided by the hotel website:

The main drag in Noboribetsu is full of souvenir shops, and some all-you-can-drink bars at night. One amazing thing about this town is that at any time, you can see the hotel guests walking about in their yukata and sandals!

Dinner was a huge, all-you-can-eat buffet with seriously high quality food, a large selection of fresh seafood, and a huge table of desserts including four kinds of hard-serve ice cream. Breakfast the next morning was also impressive, but I didn't have much room in my stomach after dinner the night before! It's probably best to choose either the dinner OR breakfast buffet.

The next day, I took a cable car/gondola up a rope way to reach the summit of Mt. Usu (有珠山 Usu-zan). This volcano had a massive eruption in 1977, wiping out all the surrounding buildings. People who reside near volcanoes (which accounts for many residents in Japan) have a unique appreciation for the destructive power of nature, and a unique resilience for overcoming that destruction. There was a volcano simulation room and museum, and plenty more tourist traps. My visit coincided with a group of tour buses from the Princess Cruise lines, and I hadn't seen so many white people in awhile!

Here's the crater at the top:

Below is a view of Showa-shinzan (昭和新山), a lava dome that mysteriously emerged from the ground between 1944-1945. A local postman kept notes about the rapid growth of this mountain, which remain the best record of its growth. The Japanese government tried to keep it's emergence secret at first, as it seemed an unlucky omen during wartime. It is listed as one of Japan's "Special Natural Monuments" - there seem to be about a million different lists like this in Japan, presenting every location as superlative.

My next ryokan stay was in Toyako resort town (Tōyako Onsen 洞爺湖温泉), which lies on the shore of Lake Toya (洞爺湖 Tōya-ko). Lake Toya is a caldera lake, formed when land around the volcano collapsed during an eruption. I took a cruise on a castle-themed ferry, and again, encountered many tourists. I saw one lady with skull pants that I had seen earlier that morning at the breakfast buffet. Also, a good bit of advice is that where tourist areas are concerned, sometimes it's better to speak English than Japanese to other tourists. I walked up behind an Asian couple that spoke only English to buy tickets for the ferry (while us white folk purchased tickets using only Japanese), and another Asian man asked us to take his picture and we spoke a bit of Japanese to him before we realized the text on his camera was in Korean. It can be confusing. Anyway, here are some photos from the cruise:

The ferry stopped at Nakano-shima, an island in the middle of the lake, that houses the Tōya Lake Forest Museum, a shrine, some tame deer, and a little ice cream stand. I think it is possible to explore the forested area that is fenced off, but the sign stated that during the deer mating season (Sep-Oct) they can be quite aggressive, so it seemed in our best interest to steer clear.

 I stayed at Kawanami Hotel, a small but affordable place, with excellent meals, and hot baths that aren't as crowded as other places. I enjoyed a relaxing 10pm bath without another soul in sight, and had all three baths to myself! I really recommend visiting the bath right before bed...I have never slept better in my life. And remarkably, every summer, Toyako shoots off fireworks every night about 8:40pm over the lake. If you're as lucky as I am, you can see them right from your window! 

The last leg of the trip was a stop at a sandwich and cheesecake place in Niseko that came recommended by one of my Japanese coworkers called Graubunden. The sandwiches, on soft and delicious French bread, are made with some hard to find ingredients from around the world! I had the ALT (avocado, lettuce, tomato, not assistant language teacher), with chicken, and it came with cheddar cheese and dill pickles, YUM! However, I recommend against the pumpkin pie, which tastes nothing like its American counterpart, and pales in comparison to their other choices: cheesecake, or gigantic slices of layer cake, the likes of which international bakeries have never seen.

If I could do this trip again, I would spent less time visiting tourist traps and more time hiking and exploring off-the-beaten-path locales. I truly enjoyed the ryokan experience and the natural sights!