The Great Nagoya Fortnight -or- How I Became a Peppy teacher

In the beginning, there was training.

Having just returned from a wonderful weekend with Christian (our agent in Hyogo… see the link on the right side of this page) I was ready to get down to work. The things I had seen up to this point were already thrilling me, and yet I had only seen a small fraction of what this beautiful, green, mountainous country has to offer. Before I had left for the weekend, two days were spent in Nagoya with Phil, my roommate and the very few other trainees that had arrived. By the time I returned from my trip, the training centre was full of people. My exhilaration caused by recent adventures was immediately mixed with a small dose of regret, for I had missed the first weekend together with the rest of my training group.

This was the night of June 19^th. Returning from downtown Nagoya and the Shinkansen station, I approached the steps to the Kenshu Centre, where we were all staying for the next few days. Outside were standing a couple of people I had never met before, but little did I know they both would become close friends by the end of our two weeks together. Chris and Tara are their names. The former is a Brit, who had been living some time in Australia. He is world-travelled, he is a formidable bass-player, (I have recordings of two bands he has been in as proof,) and generally just an amazing fellow. The latter is a saucy Aussie, straight from Sydney, and one of the funniest people in our training group. It was great relating stories of my weekend in Himeji, Osaka and Kobe; they were more than happy to hear about other places in Japan that they would undoubtedly visit at some point in the next year. In turn, I got to hear about the goings-on in Nagoya during my absence, including an all-night karaoke session, (only the first of several before our time together was up.)

So those first few days became mostly an experience in discovering identity and personalities as we started our training sessions. The first day, however, brought one of our harshest blows. Since there were two dozen trainees in this group, we were being split up into to groups: the Nagoya group and the Osaka group. As it turned out, we in the Nagoya group scored large when it came to the people we had with us. I’m sure the Osaka group would say the same thing. The first day of training was spent in one room, all of us dressed in office attire, listening to speeches from various members of the Peppy Kids administration, including Yano Jicho, the president of our branch of KTC Group. We received a plethora of information as well, pertaining to all manner of things, mostly company policy, but also our apartment assignments in our various cities. It was long, arduous, and jam-packed with information, but it was also no sweat. For me, at least.

The next two weeks spent in training involved traveling around to various classrooms in the Nagoya district, and receiving instruction about the Peppy Kids curriculum. For each of us in the training group, we would also have three days where we went to classrooms and taught our very first classes while being observed by the regular native English teacher there. It would be rather pointless to give you a daily run-down, so I thought I would provide a brief overview of how the actual teaching side of Peppy works.

Peppy Kids Club provides English lessons to Japanese youth aged 2-14. They receive these lesson from both "Native Teachers" as we foreigners are called, and from Japanese teachers, who are Japanese women who can speak Ensligh. In Japan it is very rare that men are teachers by profession, especially when it comes to instructing children. Because of the large range in ages we have several different curricula in use. Our youngest students, aged 2-5, are placed in what we call “packet classes.” There are four levels of packet classes, but they all contain the same basic elements. We sing action songs, which get the kids up on their feet and generally laughing and having fun. One song is to learn the alphabet, one is to learn verbs, and one is to learn gestures and vocabulary. We also teach them what we call “fundamental basics.” This covers colors, shapes, and numbers. Then they get some vocabulary lessons. Peppy Kids Club in its entirety is focused around a flash card system. The company patented a machine called the “Egg-go” that reads aloud the information imprinted on a magnetic strip built into the card itself. The vocabulary lessons we give involve using these cards in groups like fruit, vegetables, animals, professions, and family. We then have a game that employs the vocabulary in one way or another, and the class always ends with an activity that involves the general theme of the term.

The middle curriculum is called Peppy Headway, and the children range in age from 5-12. There are 7 different levels in this group alone. At this level there are no longer any songs, but there is still vocabulary and mostly more involved games to do with vocabulary and verbs. There is also an element in each lesson of phonics instruction. At the end of each lesson there is a time set aside for what we call “cultural awareness.” In short, this means exposing the children to how their culture differs from others around the world. You would be surprised how uninformed these children are about other cultures, and often even their own. For example, in one term we teach them that in North America after someone sneezes it is polite to say “bless you.” It is not a custom in Japan to do the same. This term’s cultural awareness lesson had to do with peeling apples. The kids were astounded to learn that in North America it is very common that people do NOT peel their apples before eating one. In Japan they peel everything, including grapes.

The oldest group is called Peppy Pathway, or Junior classes, with the oldest group called Destiny’s Gate. The children at this level are usually somewhere between 11 and 14 years of age. Central to the entire junior curriculum is the textbook that is used. The entire class I basically guide the children through several pages in their text, along with some audio readings and assignments on the CD assigned to each level. At this level, our goal is to get the children speaking full sentences and entire, albeit short, conversations entirely in English. The oldest students, the Destiny’s Gate students, have quite an interesting experience. Their classes are based around one continuous story that spans the entire year in the format of a film and associated comics. Again, the goal here is fluid conversation in English, along with increased vocabulary and also a focus on idioms.

The way the schedule works, my earliest class on any given day might be 1:15 pm, but it also might be 5:00 pm. I have anywhere from 2 to 5 classes a day, and I work 5 days a week with Sundays and Mondays off. I get paid the same for a day where I work two hours as I do on I day when I work six. It’s nice that way. One thing I have mixed feelings about is the rotation of classes. I teach at four different schools in my area, and I essentially spend one week at each school. Since the children only come to class once a week, this means I see a different group of kids every day in the month, and I only see them again the following month. By the end of my contract I will have seen each child only 12 times. Although this is ideal when it comes to difficult classes, it makes me a little sad that I can’t develop a closer relationship with most of the children. The reason for this is the schedule. As a “native” English teacher, or NT, I act as a substitute teacher for one week. The other three weeks of the month, these children get to see their regular Japanese teacher, who also teaches them English. The week when I am at their schools is the week the Japanese teachers have off altogether. I enjoy going to different places, and spreading the knowledge around but some of these kids are so darned CUTE! I wish I could spend more time with them on a regular basis so that a true pedagogical relationship could form.

So now it’s our last night in Nagoya together as a group before we head off to our respective cities and towns to be successful Peppy teachers. We met up at the subway station closest to each of our respective training apartments to decide our fate for the evening. The dilemma was that if we did go all the way downtown (a good 21 stops on the subway line) then we would most likely get stranded down there until morning because the trains stop running right around midnight, and that would be FAR too early for us to even consider returning home on our last night together. It’s so interesting how quickly friendships form and how strong they seem to be under such circumstances. When a bunch of people are thrown together in the same new experience, I find it usually inevitable that seemingly intense and passionate friendships are inevitable. In fact, I’m still as close as I can be with at least 5 of the people I met in training.

After some deliberation it was decided that we would brave the downtown core, and hopefully be able to hole ourselves up in a karaoke room until daylight. Yes, all of these places are open all night, and many often don’t open until 9 or even 11 o’clock. Stepping out of the subway, we rose into the central courtyard of the Sakae district. In the centre is a giant fountain; a very plain, unimpressive, concrete monstrosity, typical of concrete-jungle Nagoya. As we roamed around, our roamings brought us to the far end of the courtyard where a street band was playing. It was a funk band called The Blunk Top. Don’t ask me what it means. As we approached they actually seemed to be packing up their equipment. One of our group, Hannah, thought it would be fun to jump on the drums, and as it turned out the band had no problem with this idea. She got behind the drum kit they had set up and started hammering a little bit, but immediately complained that there wasn’t much she could do without accompaniment. Fortunately, we had a skilled bass-man with us in the form of the formidable Chris Raine. After a little goading by myself he did get up there and ask the band if he could use the bass guitar, of which they approved. So Hannah and Chris were doing their thing, but there wasn’t much sound going on without any other instruments involved. I was very hesitant to pick up the electric guitar considering how I had just days before had the splint removed from my middle finger, the one that had the torn ligament. But I did anyway. Although it hurt like hell, and all I could play was bar chords, it was awesome. It wasn’t long before Allison jumped onto the keyboard and there we were: a full band! We played for a short while, and then let the band have their equipment back so that they could pack up. There were a few bystanders listening and checking us out, but it was totally for our own satisfaction that we were playing. What a great start to the night.

After trying for some time to find a decent karaoke bar, and failing, I ended up hanging out in the courtyard with Phil and Chris, Allison and Hannah. The rest of the group had holed themselves up in a karaoke bar around the corner, but at the time we really had no interest in that gaudy, black-lit palace of off-tune tunes. That part of the group felt that we had deserted them and were upset when they caught up with us in the courtyard later, but we just couldn’t deal with being in that place. As the night wore on, we’re talking 3 a.m. by this point, I started to get not only tired, but severely bored. I suggested perhaps the five or six of us that remained should split a cab home. When we tried to figure the logistics of how much it would cost us to get back, it was basically out of the question. We were staying in the furthest east end of the city, and cabs in Japan are ridiculously expensive. So after some persuasion I convinced my fellows to at least start walking. We made it perhaps 8 blocks before we found… a Denny’s! I couldn’t believe it. Of all place, there it was right in front of me, the home of the Grand Slam. We thought we had found salvation because we could sit in there until the sun came up and the subways started running again. What we didn’t know was that Denny’s is most likely the most expensive restaurant in Japan! I won’t go into much detail, but let’s just say that the smallest club sandwich I have ever seen was more than $10!!! We sat talking until I began to notice the sky lightening and the sun glinting off the office buildings, so after milking our stay for so long, we paid our bill and set out for the nearest subway station. I’ll end the recounting adventure by saying that it was around 7:30 a.m. by the time I got to bed.

So there you have it. I lied though; just a little one. That was actually the second-last night in Nagoya. The last night Phil and I invited a bunch of people over to our apartment for a movie-fest, which actually turned out to be more like just good friends, food and conversation. At around 2:30 a.m. when everybody finally left I packed up the rest of my things and hit the sack, excited for my trip to my new hometown the next morning. When I woke up, Phil was already gone, having to take an earlier train to get to Okayama. Tara came by about 30 minutes later to walk me to the subway station and see me off. After a quick breakfast and a nice goodbye hug I was sent off on my way to the Shinkansen station downtown and then to Fukuroi… my current hometown.

And that’s where I’m going to leave it for now. There’s a few more adventures and just general things about Japan that I am eager to share with all of you, but I think I’ve written enough for one blogging. There will be much more in the near future, (perhaps even tomorrow and Friday,) because I want to get things up to date before Christian arrives Friday evening. We have a big weekend ahead of us, for on Sunday we will be climbing the biggest mountain in Japan: Mt. Fuji!

Keep yours eyes peeled, and your mouse buttons ready for more.

Much love to all of you from over here in the land of the rising sun.