Happy Halloween!

Ahahhaahahah sorry about no posts in a while but ya here's Halloween!

I did Halloween activities with my students for a whole week before Oct 31st.  Please remember that halloween is not common in Japan. Most activities are foreign to them but the flood of candy is mind-blowing.

I dressed as Toad [Kinopio in japanese] again from the mario bros. games because I like it and I can work it into my classes well, but this time I included a costume making activity where my students can make masks so I was more like 'Robber Toad'.

Later on the weekend I helped out at the nearby clinics Halloween Party.  They organized a great trick or treating route which we guided in groups. It was a little nerve-racking that I had group #1 because my Japanese is not very good and I wasn't sure where we were going.

Luckily, they provided every group with a map and a unique course to follow. Check it out in this pic:

13 locations participated, which made it an awesome experience for the kids. 

This guy had a great Jack Skelington costume. I wish I took a better pic.

These people had a whole buffet style of treats for kids. Even melon hahaahh its a Japanese thing.

Afterwards, we returned to the party where they demolished a unique string pulling piñata and then examined their loot.

It was a fun but exhausting week!

A Day In Tokyo

Here's some pics of a day I spent in Tokyo with some other teachers. First is a video of a bunch of different bits of video I recorded.

Welcome to Tokyo!

Here is a big statue of what looks like 2 giant stool snakes consuming each other.

Luckily everyone is a work today.

First place we decide to go: The Tokyo Sewerage Museum! 

This is a TV that showed us what it was like to be in a sewer pipe when people flushed their toilets while we stood directly in the stream's path. The pic isn't very good but the brown bits were poopies and the white was toilet paper. Sometime a ruby ring would come down!

This is what I would look like if I worked for the Tokyo Sewerage Department.

Next Stop. This was a very large mall on a dock.

Always keep an eye open for a good English quote. No They didn't want us to sit on it. 

Something for everyone!

The only thing I wanted was not for sale.

Joypolis is an indoor amusement park. It was games and rides and was quite a fun place. We spent most of our day here.

I should have took more pics inside Joypolis but it was dark inside. This was the best ride. "Veil of Dark" combined a roller-coaster ride with a shooting game. As the coaster climbs up it would stop and we would have to shoot monsters using a control device on our safety harness. After we beat the final boss we go down a short but fun ride. Some really cool visuals and the unique idea made this worth going on multiple times.

That's about all I feel like mentioning for now. More to come soon! 

Sights For Your Seers

This first pic is a panorama of my classroom in Nagaura. Its a really cool room mostly because a previous teacher who was really good at drawing coloured and laminated popular cartoon characters and put them on the walls. They have been very useful. You may also notice a plethora of other English thingies on the walls.

Behind me is my precious whiteboard.

I am currently fighting an unhealthy addiction to this drink. It has caffeine which is my kryptonite but its soooooo good.

My students will come to fear the phonetic terror of Dr. Suess.

This is what it looks like when a new 7eleven is born. That red dog is "Chiba-kun" the prefecture's mascot. I don't understand his relevance to the opening but Japanese people love big cute costumes.

SO CLEAN! and the shelves are so well stocked!

This is a big stadium.

Here is a soccer game inside a mall.

This is a really cool park that I walk through during breaks.

Shashin!

I'm thinking about buying this car. It's about 2500 Canadian Dollars. Toyota Vitz.




The manager for my school in Nagaura likes to bring flowers from her garden every week. It's nice!




This is a daycare or Kindergarten that I found while walking around Chiba.




"Wannabe's" a hipster clothing store ahhahahaha




Sitting on a train.




There's a school for everything here.




Small train station on a rainy day.









My whiteboards are sometimes really interesting by the end of a class so I try to remember to photograph them every now and then. In this one we were talking about time and sleep. This is a discussion I've had many times with company classes. I'm the first one. I have yet to find a Japanese person who gets 8 hours of sleep. Madness.

A second look at my apartment

Cherry Blossom Season

So cherry blossom season has passed again.  Its a special couple of weeks that the Japanese celebrate by having picnics,walking around, and taking pictures. 

This is the view from my classroom at one of my schools

Walking around a nearby park.

It's kind of like snowing but flower petals instead of frozen hatred.

Some more awesome English.

Okay Japan. We get it. English is yummy neat special life.