I must be getting better at this english teaching thing...

But first!
here's the link to Andrew's photobucket album. You guys should favorite it if you want to be privy to his photos...since I'll probably never get around to adding the link.

http://s135.photobucket.com/albums/q145/WertleJapan

Now...about this english lesson. I have to say...I always get stressed out about them. I never know if I'm doing a good job or if I have enough planned and plus I feel like a joke anyway since Mrs. Fujisawa knows so much english already. But I do it, hoping that if she really hated me she'd just fire me.

So last night I had the following planned:
First we'd go through stuff about the book we've been reading. It's "Kitchen" by Banana Yoshimoto. A short novel with two different stories in it and I like it quite a lot. I planned to talk about themes and characters and imagry and all that stuff plus if Keiko had any questions.

Next I was going to have Keiko tell me about two of her favorite artists (out of a list of four she had given me). I had found images for both of them and was gonna ask her why she liked them, about their techniques and work and stuff like that.

After that was to be discussion on two...events? that I had read about in some online Japan news websites. One was Abe's Health minister calling women "baby making machines" and the other was an article about how angry Japan was with this Australian guys book about Princess Masako.

And if we still had time my last plan was to ask her those sorts of questions that you find in "question books", like...If you oculd only take one memory with you after death, what would it be...or if you were stranded on an island, what three things would you have with you?

The goal of these plans is mostly to get Keiko confident and talking and sharing her opinion and thinking in English. And I was worried that it wasnt enough or whatever.

SO I go and she asks me a bit about Sapporo and tells me a bit about what she's been doing (which was interesting because it was the first time she volunteered the information on her own...I beleive she's learning darnit!). Apparently the two staff persons at her gallery are both leaving so she and her husband went through 70 interviews to find replacements. Apparently they have to go to a special person to tell them what specific "direction" the persons they hire should have. Very cool. They also hire based on personality because the job has no real skill requirements.

After that we began the book lesson. It turned out Keiko had taken my advice and underlined everything she didn't understand so I could explain it. We spent 30 minutes on this! Much longer than I had anticipated. Mostly what needed to be explained were english phrases that are...err...is colloquial the word? Phrases like "chin up, kid" "slipping through the cracks" and the like. Also some words she had trouble with, like "diminish" and "dense". There were some writing style questions she had and some metaphorical problems that didn't quite translate, I guess. The funniest thing, by far, was when I had to explain the phrase "cut the crap." It was hilarious. First I had to try and explain what crap literally was and it was funny because she didn't know the words "poo" or "feces" or "excretement" and I couldn't think of any other ways to say it partly because I was so embarrased. I also have learned the japanese word for "shit" but couldn't think of it either so I asked to see her english japanese dictionary and looked it up. When she saw what I was talking about she laughed too and was probably a little embarassed as well. after that I kind of explained how it was slang, to some people derogatory but usually not as bad as other words and also explained the different ways it can be used...but briefly. Definatly the best lesson ever.

After that we spent another 30 minutes on book discussion about general themes, character and plot. Then we took our usual tea break, talked a bit about valentine's traditions (thanks thenikku!) and then talked about the articles. After that we had time to talk about one of her artists. So I overplanned! for the first time! yay!

I was very happy.

Much Love!