Journal for 2005-4-28 Thu.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
Today was relaxing. We taught the energetic 7th and 8th graders. I had a great time. Ms. Mishima is just learning how to be a teacher, so she has lots of fresh ideas. It makes for an interesting class. Last night I started reading and doing a Gameboy Advance Programming Tutorial. It seems fun, so I think I'll keep going with it. I still have to think of a good web programming project. I might do a Content Management System. That seems interesting...
Journal for 2005-4-27 Wed.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
Today was a good day. Nothing special happened, but I did start the 6th book in my Japanese self-study course. This is the last book in the course, so I have to find another Japanese study project after this. I might pick up translating that online novel again. I still don't know, but I will definately continue to studt Japanese. I want to get to the level where I can read books and beyond!
Journal for 2005-4-26 Tue.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
I finished writing my article on Izumo Taisha and sent it off. I also put it up on my blog. I want to work on an interesting computer project, but I can't think of anything good at all. I want to do either a web project, or a game project. If I do a web project, I want to work on the problem of accessibility. If I do a game project, I want to make an RPG for the Gameboy Advance. What should I do?
島根県はたくさん名所があります。日本の伝統的な文化が好きな人は島根県がとてもおもしろい場所と考えます。普通な日本人は島根県の立地が分からないかもしれないけれど、皆の日本人は県内のいちばん有名な神社がよく知っています。この神社の名前は出雲大社と言います。出雲大社は日本国内の一番古い神社です。毎年の11月、「神有り月」と言う祭りについて日本の80万神が集めます。出雲大社で「大国主神」は祭ります。大国主神は福運、特に結婚の福運、を図ると言われます。そのために夫婦は福運な結婚について大国主神に祈ります。普通な神社で祈り方は2回で拍手と打つけれど、出雲大社で4回で拍手を打ちます。自分のために2回をすると、恋人のために2回をします。 島根県は出雲大社だけではありません。色んなおもしろい場所があります。たとえば、出雲大社がある町大社町は東洋一の高さを誇る日御崎灯台があります。明治36年、43．65メートル高さの日御崎灯台は建てて終わりました。灯台の一番上の所で日本海をずっとずっとまで見られて、見晴らしがすばらしいです。 それでは、旅行に行きたいとき、美しい自然や立派な文化がある島根県へ行くことを考えてください。 Shimane Prefecture has many famous places. People interested in traditional Japanese culture find Shimane a very interesting place. Most Japanese people don't even know where Shimane is, but everyone in Japan knows the most famous Shinto shrine in our prefecture. It is called Izumo Taisha. Izumo Taisha is the oldest Shinto shrine in Japan. Every year in November all the 8 million gods of Japan gather for the Kamiarizuki festival. The god Okuninushi is enshrined there. Okuninushi is known to grant happiness, especially in marriage, so many couples go to pray there. In a normal shrine you clap your hands twice to pray, but at Izumo Taisha you clap you hands four times. Two times for yourself, and two times for your partner. Shimane has more than just Izumo Taisha, though. There are many interesting places. For example, in the same town as the shrine, Taisha, there is the tallest lighthouse in the Orient, Hinomisaki Lighthouse. This 43.65 meter tall lighthouse was completed in 1903. The view from the top is amazing and it seems as if you could see forever into the Sea of Japan. So, the next time you are planning a vacation, consider the beautiful nature, and magnificent culture of Shimane.
Journal for 2005-4-25 Mon.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
There were three English classes today. The 7th graders were introduced to phonics. I want to slowly teach the 7th graders well-formed English. The 8the graders had a test on the names of the months, but I heard that since none of them actually study at home, they didn't do well at all. It's sad, really. I started writing an article on Izumo Taisha for my Japanese self-study course. I have to write one full page!
Journal for 2005-4-22 Fri.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
I went hiking this weekend. On Saturday, I hiked Mt. Kotobiki in Iinan with some other ALTs. The trail was steep, but it felt really god when we got to the top. On Sunday, my high school buddy, Scott, and his friend Sean came to visit Hiroshima, so Signe and I showed them around Hiroshima and Miyajima. We got to see a traditional Shinto wedding ceremony at the Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima island.
Journal for 2005-4-21 Thu.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
Today was a good day. We taught 4 English classes today. The 8th grade English class was cancelled yestersday because a bullying incident, so we had 2 hours of English classes today. In the first one I had suddenly had a weird feeling. I was listening to the teacher speak Japanese, and watching the students faces when I realized, "AH! I really am living in Japan!" I can't believe I'm still having this types of feelings even though it has been over a year and a half since we came here!
Journal for 2005-4-20 Wed.. Weather: Rainy Plan: Akagi JHS
We had the first 9th grade English class today. I haven't taught the 9th graders in a long time. We have a lot of good kids in there. I updated my résumé on the Internet. What am I going to do after JET... I still want to work in Japan, but eventually I would like to own a house on the west coast of the USA. I'm always thinking too much about my future. I need to live life for today!
Journal for 2005-4-19 Tue.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
The first 8th grade class of the year was today. Even though it was 6th period the 8th graders were way energetic. More so than the 7th graders! Starting today, Ms. Mishima and I are exchanging diaries. I am reading her diary starting from before she was married up until now. She had written down a lot of interesting things. After school I had to baby-sit some kids at Akana Elementary School. Fortunately, nothing crazy happened.
Journal for 2005-4-18 Mon.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
We had our second class with the 7th graders today. I taught lower-case letters with Ms. Mishima. The 7th graders seemed really tired. I think it was because it was 4th period and everyone was hungry. Ms. Mishima said that when she was listening in on Mr. Moriwaki's class, all the 7th graders were having a good laugh. Everyone likes the teachers that crack a lot of jokes, like Mr. Moriwaki and Mr. Matsushima, but that doesn't really come naturally to me. What can I do?
Journal for 2005-4-15 Fri.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
I hiked Mt. Sanbe in Oda with the 8th graders at Akagi JHS today. Mt. Sanbe has four summits: Mother Sanbe, Father Sanbe (the highest), Child Sanbe, and Grandchild Sanbe. We climbed to the tops of Mother and Father Sanbe. At the top od Father Sanbe we had lunch. It was SO cold up there. After lunch we descended the north side of the mountain. The trail was extremely steep so my knees have been killing me all weekend.
Journal for 2005-4-14 Thu.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
Ms. Mishima and I had our first English class with the new 7th graders today. Ms. Mishima was impressed with the English skills of the students, who have been studying English at least once a month for the last year and a half in elementary school. They could do simple self-introductions and after that they wrote their name in English and wrote out the upper-case alphabet. I think that the 7th graders this year will have an easier time remembering English than the 7th graders last year.
Journal for 2005-4-13 Wed.. Weather: Cloudy Plan: Akagi JHS
I didn't have any work today. I checked the accessibility to my web site again today. I got a lot of advice from gurus on the Internet. My first English class with Ms. Mishima is tomorrow so we planned it out today. We are going to teach greetings and self-introductions. We'll do our best together. Only one person came to our English conversation class tonight. We were lonely...
Journal for 2005-4-12 Tue.. Weather: Rainy Plan: Akagi JHS
I didn't do anything special today. First period was the Student Council New School Meeting. At it, the 8th and 9th graders greeted the 7th graders for the first time. In the afternoon Ms. Suyama, Ms. Mishima, and I selected our teaching materials for this year. We chose ones that are a little different from last year. Most of the day I wrote a script that emails my daily schedule to me everyday. I used remind, perl, cron, and sendmail for UNIX.
Journal for 2005-4-11 Mon.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
Today was the new student ceremony for Akagi JHS. That means that it was the new 7th graders first day of school. This year we have 28 7th graders. I know them all well because I taught them for a year and a half in the town elementary schools. There are a lot of good kids. Of course there are some bad kids, but I hope that they will gradually turn into good people. I was doing event work all day, so I am a little tired.
Journal for 2005-4-8 Fri.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
Today was the reopening ceremony and the new teacher introduction ceremony for Akagi JHS. They have a lot of ceremonies in Japan, they have a lot of parties, too. This evening was the party to welcome the new teachers. All the new teachers are really good people. This next year will be fun. Principal Karasuda, who came from Oda Elementary School in town, really likes to make web pages, so from now on Akagi JHS will have a web page that is updated daily.
Journal for 2005-4-7 Thu.. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
This is the last day of spring break. The students will return to school tomorrow. I did a lot of unimportant things today. For example, I worked on updating the Trev Report and my blog. I studied some Japanese too, but for some odd reason I didn't feel like doing it. Like I thought, I like working on the computer too much.
Hello all and welcome once again to your monthly Trev Report, wherein lies many things about Trevor Lalish-Menagh and his goings on in the last month or so. And now on to the report!
Trev's Lovelife --------------- Signe just found out that she is an alternative for the JET Programme. That means if someone doesn't want to go onto the JET Programme she is on the list of people they draw from next. She isn't told where on the list she will be, so we might wait as last as August to know for sure, but I have a feeling that she will get a position pretty soon. Here's hoping. Besides that, we are doing great. We just got back from the 2005 World Expo ( http://www.expo2005.or.jp/en/ ) in Aichi Prefecture ( http://www.pref.aichi.jp/index-e.html ). It was really amazing! Emily ( http://modernemily.blogspot.com/ ) came with us as well and we had a really awesome time. There were lots of crazy robots, wild buildings, and tons of people. Signe's pictures from the expo are at http://flickr.com/photos/jumex/sets/213674/ and my report of the show is at http://www.trevreport.org/blog/2005/04/another-world-expo.html .
Trev's Work ----------- This is the month of downtime for most ALTs in the JET Programme. April is when the new school year starts and we have 2 weeks of spring vacation, but to take the day off, you have to take paid vacation days, so I have just been going to work everyday and playing around on...
Trev's Computers ---------------- In my eternal boredom I have tweaked my homepage ( http://trevreport.org/ ) a lot. I think the design is really kickin' now and I'm pleased with my XHTML/CSS/Perl skillz. It all started with wanting to make my pages more accessible ( http://www.diveintoaccessibility.org/ ), and so while I was at that, I made the site look better. It is really cool in browsers that support CSS 2 (i.e. anything NOT Internet Explorer) since I made it so that the sides and top bar don't move, only the main content thanks to a suggestion from Signe. I also did a few other computer projects mainly revolving around my SDF account ( http://sdf.lonestar.org/ ), like opening my mail directly after I log in, etc. What I didn't do is study a lot of Japanese, which I am slightly ashamed of. Whenever I have a computer in front of me, it seems that I can always find one more thing I want to do on it.
Trev's Japanese --------------- Speaking of Japanese, I AM still working on the CLAIR Self-Study Course, but I am only doing about 1-2 pages a day, and it doesn't seem to get absorbed as well. In good news, I am feeling more confidant in my speaking and listening skills, and writing a daily journal in Japanese for the last two years or so has helped me a lot when it comes feeling unabashed about writing things in Japanese down. I'm not at an employable level in my opinion, but I will just have t keep at it until one day I am. One thing that demoralized me this month was that I was at a Japanese party with the ALT in a neighboring town who didn't know any Japanese before they came over to Japan, and at the party they were speaking, understanding, and even writing way better that I do. I was a little bummed at myself for not being up to par, but I just have to keep the faith that I am improving, albeit at a slower pace than others.
Trev's Art Committee -------------------- The JAGS Committee is coming along well. I feel bad since I didn't make the last meeting because I went to the World Expo. I was mistaken about when the date of the next meeting was. I think I was in a bad mood as well, since there was some hassle about getting the JAGS website ( http://www.shimaneart.com/ ) up and running. The next big event for the committee is going to be a bake sale at the Kisuki Town Wine Event. I will do my best to work hard at that event. I seem to be having a hard time getting excited about the committee, but I'll do my best as long as they will have me.
Trev's Anime, Sci-Fi, and Games ------------------------------- I haven't watched much of anything new lately. I am working through "Golden Sun: The Lost Age" ( http://www.nintendo.com/gamemini?gameid=m-Game-0000-1277 ) for the Game boy Advance ( http://www.gameboyadvance.com/ ). And recently, I was playing a GREAT game called "Another Code" ( http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/anoj/ ) on Emily's Nintendo DS (http://www.nintendo.com/systemsds ). It is all in Japanese, but it is pretty simple Japanese, so I can understand it pretty well. "Another Code" is an adventure game, like the Sierra SCI games or the old LucasArts games. It is like a rebirth of the adventure game genre for the portable platform. I really hope it takes off in America as it has in Japan. As for Sci-Fi, I am still waiting excitedly for season two of Battlestar Galactica ( http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/ ) and to a lesser extent the Stargate shows as well (SG-1 and Atlantis http://www.gateworld.net/ ). As for anime, I am getting in the mood to watch something new, but I don't know what yet. It is tough to get excited about it when there isn't anyone else around that can really be pumped about watching stuff, but we will see. I really want to get a new board game for us to play here. I have heard of a lot of really cool sounding board/card games out there that I want to try, but I just haven't gotten around to buying them.
Trev's One-Point Japanese Lesson -------------------------------- So you want to learn Japanese, huh? Great! How about negative past tense for verbs.
Here are a few verbs for us to work with: tabemasu - to eat nomimasu - to drink ikimasu - to go shimasu - to do
OK. Remember last month? Do you notice something similar in all of them? They all end in -masu. To conjugate a verb in Japanese, all you have to do is change the ending of it! So we will be changing they verbs into the past tense, this is how you do it: Change the -masu at the end of the verb to -masen. That's it!
So, let's look at our example verbs: tabemasu becomes tabemasen deshita nomimasu becomes nomimasen deshita ikimasu becomes ikimasen deshita Can you guess about kaerimasu?
Until next time, keep up your studies! Japanese can be a real fun language to learn and speak!
Well, that is about it for the Trev Report for this go around. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you want to read more drivel about me, you can check out the blog at http://trevreport.org/blog/ . If you have time, drop me a line, I always like hearing from all of you. Take care until next time!
Journal for 2005-4-6 Wed.. Weather: Cloudy Plan: Akagi JHS
I caught up with my journal today. I put up my experiences at the World Expo. I also uploaded our pictures from the Expo as well. Signe really is good at taking pictures. I spoke with the new English teacher, Ms. Mishima, in English today. Her English is amazing! It is because she lived in Canada for 6 months. I was worried, but now I feel a lot better.
＜2005-04-02＞ Today Emily, Signe, and I drove from Shimane Prefecture to Aichi Prefecture. Signe, my wonderful wife, drove the entire way. Tomorrow and the next day we are going to the World Expo in Aichi. We are going back to Shimane on Tuesday. It is about a 6 hour trip. We are really tired now. We are staying at a place called the "Yamazen Ryokan." This hotel has stayed the same for the last 45 years. Pretty cool. ＜2005-04-03＞ We went to the World Expo today. There were lots of really interesting things to see there. We saw futuristic robots, amazing building, and more. Many countries had pavilions as well. Inside the pavilions, people from foreign countries would introduce their country to you. The US Pavilion was all about the history of Ben Franklin. And the Mitsubishi Pavilion's theme was "What if the moon didn't exist?" ＜2005-04-04＞ We were at the World Expo today as well. We saw many great things. I watched a little bit of a live Sumo Grand Tournament. I like sumo, so seeing it live was a real treat. The Toyota Pavilion was amazing. They showcased their robot-like personal mobility devices the i-Unit and i-Foot. We went to more coutries I would like to visit today, too. Like Jordan, Tunisia, and Northern Europe. I really want to go travelling! :) ＜2005-04-05＞ We all went back to Akagi today. Signe is an awesome driver! I was playing a game on Emily's Nintendo DS al day long. The name of the game is "Another Code: 2 Memories." It is freakin' awesome! It reminds me of the old adventure games I used to play as a kid. I love adventure games. Another Code is all in Japanese, but it is simple Japanese, so it's easy to understand.
Journal for 2005-4-1 Fri. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
Today was the last day for the departing teachers. Actually, most of the teachers have already said their goodbyes. All I did today was clean my desk and the such. This weekend, Emily, Signe, and I are going to the World Expo in Aichi. The JAGS web site is finally uploaded. From now on I have full control of the site. I think it is better this way. Although, we still need an English to Japanese translator for the site.
Journal for 2005-3-31 Thu. Weather: Sunny Plan: Akagi JHS
I like spring break, but it is a little boring with no one around, Of course I do stuff, though. I study Japanese, work on my web site, etc. I just applied for an ISSN number for the Trev Report. After that I played on the Internet. I got a lot more Japanese studying done last year since I didn't have a computer at the Jr. High School. My willpower has been weak lately.
