Long Time

So I guess I'm not that great at updating blogs frequently. Scratch that, I'm not great at updating THIS blog. Sorry. Anywho, I'm up in Iwate-ken, Miyako-shi (岩手県宮古市) and have been for the past 2.5 weeks. I started teaching on the 16th, so I'm almost done with my second "full" week of school (Japan has SO many national holidays, and this week was no different so that I had Monday off). Its been real good so far, though of course minor mistakes have been made, but who didn't see that coming?
I'm working at 3 different highschools: Miyako Koukou (koukou means highschool), Miyako Kita Koukou, and Miyako Kawai Koukou. I teach at Miyako Monday-Wednesday, Kita on Thursday, and Kawai on Friday, and these schools couldn't be any more different: Miyako is, for the area, a very academically-minded kind of school, with most if not all of the kids trying to get into decent universities. As a result, their English ability is, while obviously not great, pretty damn good for their age. The past 2 weeks have been the semester-end testing period, so this week I was grading tests. That proved to be an interesting task, considering I'm pretty sure that a few, though not many, questions were grammatically incorrect, and also considering that a number of questions had multiple, grammatically distinct, possible answers but only one was right. In the end, I was a bit confused about the whole process only because I felt like I had been shorthanding some of the students due to the strict nature of Japanese grading syllabi.
Then there's Kita. I'm not sure if they take tests. Kita's basically the punk's school, and I don't mean that in the Ramones/Sex Pistols sense, but rather they don't give a shit about what they learn, and I wonder if even one of them has post-high school plans in the realm of education. Its also a bit smaller than Miyako (which is, as far as I can guess, probably around 800-1000 students), at around 500-800 students. Pardon the french, but its a fuck ton of fun - while actually adhering to a proper lesson plan there is next to impossible, if you can ride the wave its actually possible to get information across to these kids where a more rigid teacher would be stuck. What does that mean? I can talk about the Steelers and Pens a lot more than I normally wold be able to, as well as music; basically pop culture is the key to success there. Plus they like my beard.
Finally comes Kawai, which is closing at the end of this year. As such, despite its already being a small school, the only students left there are seniors. This means I have a grand total of 40 students to interact with at that school. The kids are interested in learning, though, unlike Kita, and so while the classes are small they are also much more focused. I don't have much of an impression yet, however, because the only time I've been there was last Friday which happened to be a testing day, so I literally went there, having already prepared my introductory lesson plan, and sat around all day doing nothing. It wasn't much fun. And kind of hot. Plus its 800 yen and 45 minutes away, so I more or less felt like I wasted my time.
But what about my life outside of school? Its not bad, though weekdays are mostly devoted to prepping for the next day. Its a nice, small town, full of restaurants with that-day-fresh seafood (I'm about a 20 minute walk from the ocean), and surrounded with ski resorts, beaches, onsen (those Japanese hot springs that I'm sure yr all familiar with), and apparently a real cool cave about 2 hours north of here... so basically its the exact opposite of Tokyo. Its different, yeah, but that' not to say I don't enjoy it - hell, I love Hikone, where I studied abroad, and while that's closer to a big city (Kyoto/Osaka) by a long shot, its way more rural than here. Or at least as rural. If there's one reason I'm bummed about being all the way up here (I'm about 5 hours north of Tokyo), aside from the fact that most of my friends live in Tokyo, its that while I was down in the big city I was doing a pretty decent job of getting myself connected with promoters and bands. Hell, I had an opportunity to try out for my absolute favorite band, Church of Misery, but then I got placed and couldn't go to the audition. Lame. Ultra lame. Ultra fucking lame. But you know what? I'm young, 23 to be exact. I took this job as a way of getting myself over here, and I figure that I can spend some of that time out here in the sticks. I'll be back in Tokyo at some point kind of soon (sorry to all you folks who thought I'd be over here for only a little/thought I'd be coming back to visit the states regularly), and I'm gonna enjoy the ride before, during, and after that time. Here's to me finally getting what I wanted, living in Japan. Cheers.