Random thoughts, comments, observations and general fluff from a random bint who left London at the end of September 2004 to embark on a new life and new adventures in Tokyo, land of the cute.... and is leaving mid-June 2010 - and counting!

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Stick Figures

I've realised that my stick figures are turning more and more into anime characters now. Not good ones, I hasten to add. But the hairstyles, the eyes, the mouths. And cats. My cats now look like the cats of a Japanese kid.

My hangman figures are getting fancier too as I wait and wait and wait for a student to think of a letter.

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Today, I went to the post office to send money back to the UK for the first time. Luckily the form was bilingual but I had to fill out my address three times on one page and couldn't understand what the assistant was saying to me. Frustrating, but hopefully the money will get to my bank in the UK. And it was only 700 yen (about £3) to send it back this way.

I'm getting more and more frustrated at not being able to communicate simple things properly here. I suppose it would help if I actually studied a bit more...

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I've never talked about a typical day, I don't think. Well, there isn't really such a thing as a typical day but an abbreviated version of yesterday to give you an idea:

1. 20-year old female student, pre-intermediate, 30 minutes: natter about holiday, do work on 'must' and 'have to', discuss her next holiday.
2. 60+ year old female student, intermediate, 45 minutes: natter about her family, natter about families in Japan, natter about the demographic problems in Japan, do some 'you should' book work.
3. 2-year old boy, 20 minutes: songs about colours and animals, colouring, counting, revising ball activity words (kick, throw, etc)
4. 3 x 6-year old boys, 60 minutes: energetic ball games, energetic running around games, circling things on board, colour word bingo, letter bingo, miming last weeks vocab, book work, more energetic games.
5. 2 x 8-year olds - boy and girl, 30 minutes: revising last lessons work with a sticky ball game, learning new vocab, miming game with new vocab, stations (running between different cards and shouting out vocab), energetic ball game.
6. 40ish-year old female student, 60 minutes: won't do book work. nattered about jack the ripper, baseball, boxing, tennis, literature, art, England.
7. 50ish-year old female student, 30 minutes: nattered about her family, looked at an article from last weeks Japan Times about Britains policy of getting rid of foreigners, did a gap fill exercise from the text book.

I had two cancellations also.

At this point my brain stopped functioning. A regular occurance. And one of the reasons why I study so little Japanese.

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