KONNICHIWHAT!?: Wakai!

What does, "wakai", mean? Hmm, it's used to say something, or someone, looks young. So what does it have to do with me or this blog? Well, I've been hearing that word a lot lately as I've been meeting new people. When people find our how old I am, 31 for all of those unaware, they say, "wakai!", meaning that I look a lot younger than my actual age. It's actually a pretty awesome thing to hear to be honest with you. I'm hearing it from students and other Japanese people I meet. One person in particular told me, "we Japanese think that many foreigners look much older than their age, so I'm surprised!". Yay for me and my baby-face syndrome.

Oh, so I just recently wrapped up what I've deemed, "the longest week", this past Saturday and it was a near-death experience. My last post did say, "next week will kill me", if you recall. Sure, I'm exaggerating a bit, but doesn't a little exaggeration always make things more interesting? It all started on Monday, at my furthest away school (a near 2-hour commute each way), with classes having parent observations for the entire week. So I had P.O.'s on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then Thursday is typically my day off for this school's week but I had to cover at another school for a teacher who was out of the country due to personal issues. To make matters worse (getting screwed out of my day off), I also had P.O.'s at this other teachers school. Let me just say, P.O.'s are already awkward because there's a row of parents lined up against the wall watching you teach their children and you're trying to act like they aren't there. Now picture that in a situation where the students and parents both have no idea who you are and you have a SUPER awkward experience. I somehow made it out of that unscathed and it was back to my regular school and P.O.'s on Friday. Now keep in mind, I get home from this long-commute school around 11pm and it's near impossible for me to fall asleep right away. I need to unwind, eat something, take a shower and then hit the hay. Friday night was rough because I knew I had to get up at 5:45am in order to catch a 7:06am train to my school for 10am classes. I couldn't fall asleep, because my mind races, and didn't do so until around 3am. You do the math. Total exhaustion. Normally I don't have classes that early, but the company is in the middle of it's, "Spring Campaign", which is where we try to get new students to enroll. How do we do that? By giving demo lessons (basically a free lesson) to potential new students to show them what they'd be signing up for. Again, the parents are there watching and it's quite awkward cause these kids have no idea what goes on in the classroom and they're just staring at you clueless. I had two hours of demo lessons, from 10am to 12pm, then I had a 1 hour break, with my regular classes starting back up at 1:15pm. From 1:15pm to 4:45pm I had my three regular lessons with yep, you guess it...P.O.'s. My first class, Green class with little 4 year old kids, was weirder than usual because they all had stage fright, so to speak, having to do things in front of their parents. To make matters worse, the parents were filming the class, which the company says they aren't allowed to do (but you try telling them that). Thankfully, my last class of the day went really well and it was just fun. After they all left, I went back into drained-mode and could only think about sleep. I did just that, falling asleep at 8:30 Saturday night and waking up at 10am Sunday morning, batteries recharged.

However, the excitement of having a day off was hampered by the fact that I'd be traveling two hours north on Monday to cover at Nakatsu for another teacher who is on vacation. No rest for the white man. I opted to spend the extra yen today to get an express train ticket to Nakatsu, thus making my train ride only an hour instead of the cheaper, local train ticket price, which makes for a 2 hour ride. I get to Nakatsu and yeah, it's a sleepy town but the classroom I was covering at was big, clean and pretty darn nice. I only had to teach two classes, which would be super awesome if it weren't for the fact that the last class of the day was one that I'd never taught before called Peptalk. The first class went really well and the kids were well behaved, I'm thinking they were just excited to see a different native teacher, but the Peptalk class was a mixed bag. I had a really talkative boy that was super-nice and happy to chat with me, but that was the problem; he chatted too much. Then there was two really smart girls with the same name, a really shy girl and a girl that just didn't try. The material for this class is pretty lame and this unit I was teaching them about giving compliments to friends and family. You may or may not know that the Japanese have a bit of a reputation for being shy and quiet. This can be quite true, especially if they're put on the spot to give compliments! Regardless, I somehow made it through and there I was, alone on the train platform, the only one hopping on the express train from Nakatsu bound for Oita. I have tomorrow and the next day off. I plan to enjoy a Fringe marathon (currently on season 2) and I'm pondering the purchase of a 3DS. By golly I think I've earned it.