Jean Of mArc

Hello everyone! Merry Christmas! This is my first time being away from home for Christmas, and it is quite different, but interesting. First of all, as in Canada, right now is the winter holidays at the schools. However, it is not to celebrate Christmas, but the New Year, which is a much bigger deal here. To demonstrate this point, even during these “holidays”, teachers are required to continue coming to school this week and to teach classes… but attendance by the students is optional. You would think that would mean a bunch of empty classes, but students here in Japan are quite a bit more diligent I guess, because they are still around the school. This, sadly though, means that I too have to work this week, even on Christmas Day. That part is kind of depressing, I must admit. I’m going to ask tomorrow (Christmas Eve) if I’m at least allowed in the kitchen or something so I can bake some snacks on Christmas Day, rather than just sit at my desk and weep or something.

That being said, there are a number of things that make it feel like Christmas here: there are some lights out around town. Not on anyone’s houses, but just along some trees and in shops, for example. Stores here are trying to push the idea of Christmas to make people buy more, of course. Sheesh. Also, it is snowing here…. it has been snowing pretty much every day for the past week. That has definitely made it feel more festive. Also, within the various church gatherings, there are special events made for Christmas, such as a Christmas Eve service tomorrow night, and carols for singing. Speaking of carols, I am going out carolling on Dotemachi, which is the more popular of streets for walking in this city, with some friends: Travis and Angie, a missionary couple who are teaching English at a Christian High School, Takarou, a Japanese friend who is very excitable, a good business and quite good at English, and others. It should be a good time, and I don’t know if anyone has ever sang carols outside at Christmas in Hirosaki before!!

On Christmas evening, I’ll be logging onto Skype to log in to Christmas Morning in Halifax with my family, so I can be at least a part of whatever is going on there. I just organized a Christmas Afternoon with Travis and Angie, and hopefully a few more of us who celebrate Christmas. It’ll be on Boxing Day, but this year, Christmas is 2 days long!! And next week, I’ll be going to help out with a Christian English Camp. I’m really looking forward to being able to spend some time getting to know some Japanese people during that time.

Anyway, as a message to my family and friends back home, as well as anyone else that I don’t even know who is reading this blog, I leave you with this heart-felt message:

I guess that’s the Japanese version. Close enough?

Dear Everyone,

I’m sorry that I haven’t been keeping up on the posts. To be honest, I just plain forget about the blog a lot the time, or don’t think about it when there’s a good opportunity to do so. Anyway, there’s my apology, on with the post!

As the title of this post states, I have a test coming up this weekend all the way up north in Sapporo city. It is the JLPT test that I mentioned way back in fall on this very same website! Don’t believe me? Well check it out for yourself!

So, many people have been asking me if I feel ready for this test, and the honest answer is: I think so, but I’m not sure. I’ve been spending countless hours studying from various books for the past 4 months in preparation. I’ve learned over 2,000 words, numerous grammatical structures, about 1,000 kanji characters (or combinations thereof), and read countless examples.

However, there is a problem: in the practice tests that I’ve been going through, there are always a number of words that are NOT listed on the vocabulary list, or some new way of wording things that I’ve never seen before. So my thoughts are: if the material on the test only uses what I’m SUPPOSED to know (according to the standards), I should be fine. Not perfect, but fine. But if there are too many things on the test that they never even told me I needed to know, then things probably won’t turn out so well. There’s no way I can memorize the whole dictionary just in case I run into some words I’m not familiar with. And if you don’t know what a word is, sometimes it is possible to figure it out based on context, but sometimes you are just at a lost. So hopefully what I know will do. Also, my listening comprehension is kind of low, because the input is so much faster with a voice than it is on paper. Not only that, but you can’t go back and re-read something that was spoken. So, we’ll see how it goes.

The reason I chose the title for this post was because when I finished my last exam at Acadia, I was so excited, telling everyone that I just finished my “last test ever!!!” Guess that was a bit premature. At least this one has no barring on graduating from a school or anything.

It’s hard to believe how long I’ve been here: when I came it was hot and humid, and the students’ summer vacation was just starting! Now it is December and we are beginning to see winter. I’m already done 1/3 of my first year here! It went pretty fast!

In December, I am used to seeing Christmas decorations all around, stores get more packed, and Christmas music is always playing anywhere in public. I was not expecting this in Japan, since Christmas is not really important to most Japanese people; New Year’s is the big deal here. However, just as in Canada, there are Christmas decorations everywhere here, and Christmas music is always playing… but the stores aren’t any more packed than usual. I was told that in Japan, Christmas Day is a day where young couples celebrate their love by going to Kentucky Fried Chicken. No, I didn’t make that up.

On the topic, yesterday was my first full-day school visit to another school besides the one I teach at. This is a school for disabled children. Because of that nature, each child has their own care-taker, and classes are only between 2 to 8 students. It was tons of fun: we played games with them, and sang songs with them. This DOES have to do with Christmas, because we sang “Silent Night”, and they got me to dress up like Santa Clause, complete with beard and red clothes, and come in to give gifts to the students. The pants were way too wide for me, so I had to fight to keep them on. After I left and came back as my regular self again, the kids were telling me that I had just missed seeing Santa!

Anyhow, that’s all I feel like writing right now, so that’s all I’m going to write! But some day soon, I will put up a more amusing post… as soon as this darn test is over with!