Mid-Year Wrap-Up

The second day, I walked with Rose and Joe. The aforementioned obnoxious Québécoise sat next to me in the conference room. I learned from her conversation with Zoë that she had woken up very early this morning to have a drink with a local friend in a park somewhere. Thus, she was at least half-drunk for the first part of the morning.

The keynote address was given by a professional-looking lady in a red pantsuit. She was ex-FBI (or it might have been CIA), and has extensive experience teaching English in a foreign classroom setting. She gave a very long and, bless her heart, boring speech about strategies for maximizing the efficiency of students' learning English. Several times during the speech, she would pull out and lift up a random item and, without commenting on it whatsoever, would put it back behind the lectern.

Once she had finished, she opened the floor for questions. As roughly half the room tried to wake up, one guy's hand went up. I braced myself for an awkward expression of the boredom that was palpable in the room. However, he completely sidestepped that: "I enjoyed the speech, but I was wondering why you held up the cookies and stuff." She smiled a little, and asked what the first item was. When several people in the room replied, she politely but sternly directed the question at the first guy. When he answered, she revealed the item again, walked to the front of the stage, and gave it to him. When she asked what the next item was--a bottle of wine--everyone's hand shot up. She did the same thing for the candy canes, the last item she'd held up.

A second question came from Thomas, an ALT who arrived with me last year. He began in the Goto island group, southwest of Nagasaki, but transferred to the main island for his second year. I believe he's a professional teacher from back home, as demonstrated by his questions at these things. He referred to a major theme of her speech, which emphasized the value of steady, day-to-day building up of English skills with students. He asked her what advice she would give to those ALTs who only see a class once or twice a month.

The question dumbfounded her. She paused for a couple of long beats before asking, "...Some of you only see your classes once a month?" To which a sizable part of the audience murmured in the affirmative. She was genuinely flummoxed, and basically admitted that's much more difficult. I heard a few people around me give a derisive snort, along with not-quite-nice things about her intelligence. I thought it over for a minute or two before realizing the blame likely belonged to the planners of the conference. They probably neglected to give her a full breakdown of our teaching routines, and simply invited a reputable TOEFL veteran to talk to us.

(Thomas actually wasn't the person who asked this question, but I don't know the guy who did, and I don't know Thomas well enough to have any other reason to mention him.)

The next question came from a supervisor (remember, each JET's supervisor, a Japanese teacher of English, came too), one I'd heard lots about from Rachel. Rachel's a sweet Maine girl I went to Indonesia with--her mom hooked us up with the Bali Hyatt--and I'm a firm believer that she wouldn't even harm a fly. She also cannot stand her new supervisor, who was the one asking this question. I don't remember the details, but it rambled on, full of awkwardness, and would have required a very long time to answer. The speaker did something awesome, though: she very gracefully and professionally ignored the question all together.

Anyway, the seminar I attended was called R.U.K.Y. The title referred to the Japanese slang phrase kuuki yomenai, which literally means "can't read the air (or atmosphere)." Basically, it means being unable to take a hint or see the obvious. The guys giving the presentation taught us some other Japanese slang, then segued nicely into a talk about faux pas we might be making without even knowing it. They went on to talk about strategies for studying Japanese.

For lunch, I walked with Leigh, Kim, and Rose. We didn't have any place in particular in mind, so we settled for a nice-looking restaurant called Pierre something-or-other. The food wasn't that great, and a group of salarymen came in, sat next to us, and smoked what must have been a pack of cigarettes each. Before their lunch arrived.

The afternoon seminar was about cross-cultural understanding. We were all broken into groups, which had been formulated such that each group would have the same number of ALTs and JTEs. We were given situations to roleplay, with the parts of Supervisor, ALT, Principal, Other Teacher, etc. The catch: nobody could play their own roles, meaning we ALTs had to be a Supervisor, Teacher, or Principal, while the JTEs couldn't play the Supervisor part. The exercise was designed to make us take the side of the argument that we would otherwise be opposed to.

Afterwards, everyone reconvened in the main hall for closing remarks from Ben, the ALT prefectural advisor. Nagasaki-ken is divided into blocks of ALTs, and each block has a representative. Aaron passed the torch on to me, so I'm nominally responsible for organizing and helping out with stuff the Tsushima ALTs need. Anyway, Ben called up all 15-20 block reps to introduce ourselves. Joey, Mike, and Gavin provided me with a cheering section.

Once the conference officially ended, everyone said their goodbyes. The JETs who live on the main island, and can take the train to their towns, had to get back that afternoon for work the next day. Most of the island JETs, including 7/8 of Tsushima's ALTs, didn't have to work until Thursday. I was the only ALT on Tsushima who had to be back at work Wednesday.

Determined to visit as much as possible before I flew back that afternoon, I met up with Mutia, Sarah, Jacob, Stephanie, Carol, Sue, and Rachel at the Baskin Robbins at Nagasaki Station. I learned that a friend of mine, also named Stephanie (who is a quite fabulous Quebecoise, not obnoxious in the slightest), uses "stayfunny" as her email address. Get it? That's how her name sounds in a French Canadian accent.

I said my goodbyes, bought some more omiyage, and caught my flight back to Tsushima. Kamito, my supervisor, gave me a ride back from the airport. In the car, we talked some about the conference. I found out that when education majors graduate from university and get their certification for Nagasaki prefecture, they're asked for their preferences with respect to islands. (Remember that every teacher in Nagasaki has to go on a six-year "tour of duty" in one of the small islands in the prefecture.) Unlike most teachers, who spend their first year or two at a school on the main island, Kamito and a few other teachers from our high school were shipped to Tsushima fresh out of university.