:Japan )

Merry Christmas All!

I almost got to spend Christmas with no heat myself. My kerosene tank outside the house decided to go empty the night before Christmas Eve. It took a while for me to figure out why my heater suddenly stopped working. Even more odd because a friend had just called hours earlier saying he was getting the same error number on the heater. Fortunately for him his was easily fixed. Realizing I was not going to have hot water for a shower on Christmas Eve morn, I stayed at his place for the night. Christmas Eve I had to go to work so I was able to ask them to help me get my tank refilled and they delivered. Thinking I was safe and sound I went out for some more shopping hell…er ..pleasure that is this time of year. Coming home around 9 pm or so I find my heater now has a new error code!
(more…)

New time is 1′ 25′’ almost had 1′ 20′’ on another trial but fell down just before finishing.

So far it’s pretty easy to shave off many seconds as I get better at the form and my muscles get used to the work load but I’m expecting a plateau soon. My goal is to make the 50″ mark without having to buy one of those skin tight suits these people wear. To me it kinda stops being a hobby when you start buying all the professional gear.

My new record time for 500m speed skate track is 1′ 32′’ 6 seconds better than last week but still a far cry from the 50′’ goal.

–Edit
The world record for the 500m is in the range of 34-35″ There is a 12 year old on the team I’m practicing with that is skating it in about 42″ In fact the first time I attempted to go 500m the coach challenged be me to do it faster than the previously mentioned kid’s 1000m time of 1′ 35″… couldn’t do it. The 50″ goal above is for a “Level C badge” I don’t know what the 1000m time requirement for that is.

Last Friday I was asked to give an Introduction and English lesson to 128 5th graders at one of the elementary schools I only teach a club at for yesterday. I was a little nervous that my lesson plan wouldn’t last a whole hour and it is a little hard to find activities through existing JET printed material that works for massive amounts of kids. Things went really well though. The master plan was to teach the kids the Hokey Pokey so I first started out teaching right and left and had the kids jump at my commands like “right, right, left.” Then the same thing with forward and backward just to kill a little time and watch them laugh some more as some of them bumped into each other when they mixed the commands up. Most of them knew when they were wrong so I didn’t have to worry about correcting.

After that I taught them the vocab for head, shoulders, elbows, hands, knees, and feet. Then we made a massive circle around the gym and played the Hokey Pokey. I was standing in the middle of all of it so some of the teachers that were helping out would grab some students from the edges and bring them to the middle to do the Hokey Pokey with me. The kids ate it up, probably a little too much. Just as things were about to get out of hand we had them all line up again and did a couple of rounds of Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. I know they hate this by now but I needed to kill a little bit of time again. Finally some Questions and Answers. The question that never is never failed to be asked is “What is your favorite word in Japanese?” Jesus, I don’t even know my favorite word in English. This time I was prepared with のんびり pronounced nonbiri or carefree in English. Surprisingly they didn’t ask the other favorite: “Do you have a girlfriend?”

All in all a good end to a day I was a little nervous about.

Well I guess it’s about time to update this thing eh? I am still alive (how many times have I said that on this blog now?) and sadly I won’t be going back to the States this Christmas. It was a hard decision but it’s just to difficult to make it back this time. I will probably be going back closer to summer time though.

As for what’s been going on… well it’s mostly been pretty standard fare teaching life and/or office life. Nothing very exciting on that front. I guess the latest news is that the outdoor speed skating track in the nearby city of Hachinohe has opened and I’ve bought a rather expensive pair of speed skates to continue practicing with the elementary school kids. It’s quite a different feeling compared to the in-line skating we did for summer practice. The schedule for this speed skating club has ramped up quite significantly: every day in the week from 4:40 pm until about 8:00 pm. I can only attend on about 3 of those nights. Then add Saturday morning from around 7 am to 10 am. They are dedicated, no doubt about that.

I also bought a Nintendo DS recently for some electronic entertainment when possibly stuck in car on a long trip or something. Only have the Mario game so far (45 stars at the moment) if anything
(more…)