Konban wa, Norah Jones!

My girlfriend and I have been busy recently with work and all. But last night, we had a chance to go to a Norah Jones concert here in Osaka. It was my girlfriend's first concert, and it was my first in a few years.

The venue was a good one. The capacity was 3,000 seats. We were far away in the balcony, but even up there we felt an intimacy with the performer. The place was packed with people. I was surprised that so many Japanese like Norah Jones, but hey... I can't blame them.

The concert was great. Norah Jones is a great live performer, a great singer, and a great pianist. Her Handsome Band was pretty cool, too. What most impressed me was her sense of humor. On the CDs, she sounds very serious and low key when she's performing, so it was shocking to see her joking around with the audience between songs. Once, she noticed the two screens on either side of the stage and said, "These screens aren't good for me." Then she playfully and jokingly pretended to move her expensive-looking dress around on her body as if she were making it look better on her. Also, while talking between songs, she said, "This spotlight... you can't escape from it!" Then she ran around the stage like a little girl trying to escape the spotlight, but to no avail. I was in stitches. A great concert.

Todai-ji Temple

One of the gems of Nara Park - Todai-ji Temple. Inside is one of the biggest Buddhas in Japan.

Dances With Deer

This past weekend, on Sunday, I had a good time. I went with my girlfriend's family to a place not too far from Osaka called Nara Koen. If you don't know about Nara Koen, it is a beautiful place. It's a very large public park between the city of Nara and the small mountains east of there. For me, living in a large city with hardly any greenery, it's a sight for sore eyes. Lots of grass, lots of trees... places where you can actually sit and have a picnic. It's great. Plus, at Nara Koen there are a few temples, shrines, and historical spots.

But those things are nothing compared to the real attraction at Nara Koen: deer. Lots of them. Just walking out in the open. That's the amazing thing to me. You can go there and just pet deer. Imagine trying to do that in the U.S.

Anyway, I went there with many members of my girlfriend's family: her, her mother, her sister, her mother's two cousins, one of their husbands and their children. One of her mother's cousins brought a big cart with several grocery bags of food for the deer: lettuce, bananas, bread, cucumbers, carrots, among other things. It was amazing. See, usually people buy the special deer cookies available at the park and feed that to the deer. Not many people actually buy fresh vegetables to give to the deer, and if they do, it's usually just one head of lettuce, a few carrots... something like that. Not a whole cart of the stuff. When we were walking in the park, many people did a double take at our group and our big cart of vegetables. It was a little embarrassing. At the same time, it was very cool. I'm lucky to have a girlfriend with that kind of family, one that has their own way of doing things and aren't embarrassed about it. That's unusual in Japan.

Another picture from the ski trip. Lovely view of Lake Biwa. 

Here's a picture of me on the slopes, ready for action.

Ski Trip

This past weekend I went on my first ski trip. I have to admit: it wasn't that bad. It was actually a lot of fun. But you couldn't tell me that on the first day. Man oh man, where do I begin...

The place: Omi-Imazu in Shiga prefecture. My girlfriend and I went there by train from Osaka, about a 2 hour trip. As we rolled into north Shiga, I started to get excited as I saw all the snow around. This is gonna be great, I thought. I remained excited all the way up until I put on my skis and tried to make my way from the rental ski shack to the lifts. If you don't know, walking with skis on is not the easiest thing in the world to do, especially if you don't know what you're doing.

After I used all my energy to get to the lift, I was dead tired, and probably not fit for skiing. But we went up anyway. We went to the beginner's course. But once I was on top and I saw how high it was, I was thinking, No way is this a beginner's course! But I gathered enough courage to start going down. I didn't go that far, about 5 meters, before I fell. OK, I thought. I fell. That's a part of the process. Now get up. Easier said than done. I couldn't get myself up. It was the hardest thing I had to do all day. It's tough to explain to those who haven't experienced it. Imagine you're at the skating rink, and you fell down in the middle of the rink, where there's no wall to help you up, then try to get up by yourself. It's like that.

Anyway, to continue, it took about 5 minutes before I got myself up. Once I got up, I was up only a few seconds before I fell down again. Then the whole process began again. My girlfriend went down the slope like 8 times before I made it all the way down the first time. That's what my first day was like.

The second day was much better. I was able to go down the course without falling, and I was even learning to turn and zig-zag a little. I was proud of myself. Yep, I thought, a black man can indeed ski. Now, I'm waiting for the next trip. I'm not looking forward to a sore behind again, however.

What's in my digital music player now

In case you want to know (and I'm sure you really do), here's some of the albums I have in my mp3 player:

-N.E.R.D., Fly or Die
-Ciara, Goodies
-Alicia Keys, Diary of Alicia Keys
-Jay-Z/Linkin Park, Collision Course
-Utada, Exodus
-Craig David, Slicker Than Your Average
-Linkin Park, Hybrid Theory (after listening to Collision Course, had to pull it out again)
-stuff from my Japanese textbook CDs

OK, so elementary school wasn't that bad...

Yesterday I finished my short assignment at that elementary school near Kobe that I told all of you about. Despite all my problems while I was there, it ended on a pretty good note, I must say.

All of the students (even the bad ones) were a little sad that I wouldn't be back. To my astonishment, they had come to enjoy the English games that I used in the lesson. Many students took time after the last lesson to tell me thank you very much. That meant a lot to me. One class even gave me a binder with thank-you letters in English from every student in the class. Here are some excerpts, and forgive me - I didn't correct their English:

-"I was very grateful to you for teaching English, although a short time."

-"I couldn't speak English, but I could understand it little by little, studying with you. I want to study English very hard in junior high school."

-"I have been learning English but I could not study home work at all. But I can do it, thanks to Mr. Herman."

-"I like sports, especially basketball. You are very tall, I want to play basketball with you if I have a chance." (Herman's comments: I think to any 12-year-old, I'm pretty tall, don't you think? Still, very cool letter.)

Amazing, huh? I guess my time there was kind of effective, even though I didn't think so most of the time. In hindsight, things weren't so bad, I suppose. I'd probably do it again.... maybe.

Happy New Year everyone!

Welcome to my first post of the year 2005. So far it's been a good one. Of course, it's only January 11, so there's a lot of year to go.

Christmas and New Year's was good. In Japan Christmas is more of a romantic holiday, so my girlfriend and I went out to dinner and exchanged gifts. It was good. New Year's was great, also. I was able to do what Japanese usually do at the beginning of the year. I went with my girlfriend's family to a local shrine, and we said our first prayers of the year. It seemed very spiritual at that time. But that quickly went away when I saw all of the food stands and goods tents that were set up on the shrine grounds. However, the food was very very good!

The big news over the holidays around the world was, of course, the tragic earthquake and tsunamis in South Asia. (By the way, if you didn't know, tsunami is a Japanese word. It means "harbor wave". My Japanese buddies were surprised that we use that word in English.) There were no tsunamis here in Japan. But we felt the impact here at my company. Some teachers were vacationing in the area and my bosses were not able to contact them immediately. But it turns out that they were okay. They weren't in the affected areas, so that was good news.

Well, I look forward to a good 2005, and you all should, too. Take care.

OWWW! In Japanese, ITA!

Well, well, well... several weeks ago, I was talking about how well things were going over at the elementary school near Kobe. Well, the honeymoon is over... for some classes, anyway.

* A few weeks ago, I did a sports lesson. I had a bunch of sports toys from my company that I used to help teach the target English. Well, at the end of a few of the classes, some of the boys decided to grab the materials and take off, and I had to go chasing them because I needed the materials for the next classes.

* Today, I was doing a class on food. We played a game where the kids had to use a toy fishing rod to pick up these picture cards and put them in a paper bowl. One boy had trouble with the fishing rod, and, in his frustration, he threw the thing against the blackboard, breaking part of it.

*Here's the worst part: recently my hair has been kind of long, and the kids love to touch my hair during and after class. I don't mind that; after all, these kids don't get many chances to touch a black person's hair. However, after the last class, a couple of boys went too far. They grabbed a few strands of my hair and PULLED THEM OUT! That really got me steamed. After that, they went to their friends saying, "Mite! Mite!" (That means "Look!" in Japanese). It's like they got a souvenir or something. I was really upset.

Notice that in all the problems above, they involved the boys. The girls are no problem; they're sweet and nice, but a little shy.

Elementary School

Yep, that's right... in addition to teaching at a high school 3 days a week, I'm also teaching at an elementary school near Kobe every 2 weeks or so. The first time was yesterday. It was a blast! The kids were excited to be learning English, so they were eager to see me and participate in the activities. It was more fun than high school! I was dead tired after work, though. 5 straight lessons with 10 and 11 year olds will do that to you. But it was enjoyable, a break from all those bad high school students.

Here's me in front of the world famous Sydney Opera House in Australia, October 2004.

The Land Down Under

I just had the most wonderful vacation. My girlfriend and I have just come back from Australia. That's right, the Land Down Under. It was only the 4th country I've been to, besides the USA, Canada and Japan. We went there for 5 days. It was great!

First, we went to the Gold Coast in Queensland. The Gold Coast is famous for its beaches, and they were some great beaches. We also did some other things there like shopping, restaurants, and riding buses that turn into boats. We went to a place called Sea World (a little different from the ones back home) and we went to a walking nighttime safari and saw kangaroos, crocodiles and koalas.

After a few days at the Gold Coast, we went down to Sydney for the second half of the trip. There we took in the sights, such as the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour. We ate at some good restaurants and enjoyed the city. We drove to a Koala Park and saw, yep, koalas, in addition to some other animals. We fed kangaroos and petted wombats. We even saw a sheep get sheared! That was hilarious. After that, we went to the Blue Mountains and saw some gorgeous scenery, including the Blue Mountains.

The trip was great for me. It was good to be back in a place where everybody spoke English, even if it was Australian English. It was good to be back in a multiracial environment, too, especially Sydney. But I guess I'm too used to the great service we have here in Japan, because I missed that in Australia.

What a trip. Unfortunately, it was too short. Maybe we can go back sometime. But for now, it's back to the world of teaching in Osaka.

Below the Rim

Whenever I have some free time after a hard day's work teaching English at my high school, I decide to play hoops with the basketball team. Now, the basketball team is not even a team right now. They have only four players: 3 boys and a girl. The hoops teacher is all too happy to have another body there to make things more interesting.

Yesterday was just my second time to join the hoops team for some b-ball, and today we decided to have a little ball game. I and two of the boys were on one team, and the hoops coach, the third boy and the girl were on the other team. I'm proud to say that the game was very competitive, with the coach's team winning a close game, 10 to 9. The highlight of the game for me was when I posted up against the coach, spun around and made a layup. Apparently, the team doesn't learn much about posting up, so you should have seen the looks on the students' faces at that work of art. All of a sudden, rumors are going around the school that I'm a basketball star. One of the students called me Jordan. Hey... I'll take that. That's better than Kevyn Little.

Back to School

This week I started teaching at the high school again, after a good summer break. By the way, summer break was nice. I didn't do much, but you know, those are sometimes the best kind of vacation. I needed to just relax.

The high school hadn't changed that much. The bad students still behaved in class, and the good students were still too shy to say anything in English in my class. One thing that I did notice was that a lot of the girls have started to call me Kevin Lyttle. I had no idea who Kevin Lyttle was until they started calling me that. (If you don't know, he's that soca singer with that song, "Turn Me On", which, surprisingly, is popular here in Japan.) Both my girlfriend and I think that I look absolutely nothing like Kevin Lyttle. But most of these students have never seen a black person in the flesh before, so any black guy looks like Kevin Lyttle to them.

Even so, it gets on my nerves, because (a) I don't look like him at all, (b) it's not just one girl that's doing it, it's a huge number of them calling me that, and (c) they do it every single day. You'd think they'd get tired of it.

Oh, and while the girls call me Kevin Lyttle every day, the boys are worse. I've been at that high school since May, telling everybody that I'm American. But even here, in August, the boys insist that I must be from Jamaica! I know why they do that: (a) I'm black, (b) their idea of an American is someone with blond hair and blue eyes, and (c) reggae music is popular with the boys at that high school. Still, it bothers me.

Enough ranting. By the way, I do like working at the high school, if you can't tell.

I know, I know....

Sorry everyone... It's been a while since I updated my blog. I know, I know... I'm lazy. Actually, I've been kind of busy lately with some projects at work, so I've been too tired to go here and update it like I should. I'll do a better job of it, I promise.

Anyway, now it's my summer vacation here in Osaka. Today I visited Nihongo Club for the first time in 3 months! It was good to see everybody again. For those who don't know, Nihongo Club is a volunteer Japanese teaching group where you can go and talk and learn Japanese. I went there for several months before I got my new job with ECC Outsourcing in May. I had a good time there, talking to some of the people I haven't seen for a while. But my former teacher, Mrs. Ishida, wasn't there. How sad. Maybe I'll see her in the winter vacation, if I'm not travelling.

Is this a Japanese high school?

Well, several weeks into my high school job, I can say that I've been very very surprised. In the U.S.A., we always hear about how Japanese high school students study all the time, how good they are at math, science, etc. The people that tell us that have never been to the high school I'm working at. In their classes, some students sleep, email friends using their cell phones, curl their hair with curling irons, read comic books, listen to their Walkmans, put on makeup, play with their little sticker books - anything except pay attention to the teacher. And this goes on every day, in just about every class I have.

Part of the problem is that teachers don't discipline students for those kind of actions. You can be sure that if I listened to my Walkman in class, I would have been in detention or something. But the students at my school get away with it. I don't know why the teachers don't do anything about it, or can't. But obviously they're embarrassed about it. The teachers that I team-teach with always say, "Herman, we're very sorry. Don't think this is a typical Japanese high school. Don't believe these are average Japanese students." In other words, this school is a special case.

To be fair, my high school is about an hour and a half by train from Osaka, in the countryside. These students don't expect to be much when they are adults. Many of them have hard lives: poverty, family problems, peer pressure. They don't have the motivation to study hard. So that's probably why they behave that way.

Still, I'm surprised every day I go to school. It doesn't bother me that much. It just makes my experience more interesting.

May 2004 - This is me during our visit to Iraq. Hahaha... just kidding, y'all. This is the Arabic section of Tokyo Disney Sea.

May 2004 - On the monorail at Tokyo Disney Resort. Check out the shape of the window. 

12 June 2004

Let me update you on what has been happening in the past month. Well, I left my old job, and I got a new job. I'm working as an English teacher at a high school! It's definitely more interesting than my old job. I'm the only foreign teacher in the high school, and the students love me just for that fact. It's cool to be in a Japanese working environment. But let me tell you... it's not easy teaching high school.

In other news, I got a new working visa, so I'm set here in Japan for the next few years. Things are looking pretty good right now.