Kobe

My Kobe confrence went ok. Learned lots about how to be a better English teacher and learning Japanese. I learned about a book, which I promptly ordered when I got home, too. The name of it should amuse you all back home, "How to Makeout in Japanese." Anyway this will be a short blog cause I have to go back out and do random stuff with my neighbors. Much love.

Class

So yesterday I taught my first solo class. It went pretty well I'd say :). On the one hand I felt very akward teaching in English to 3rd and 4th graders with little or no English. On the other hand I had lots of good props to work with and the students seemed interested in what I had to say. So overal a not very painful first experience. More later.

HEEEEEEEEEERE'S JOHNNY!

Hello all my friendly readers. How are you doing? Me? I'm ok. Life continues to move ahead and summer draws ever closer. I am looking forward to Eric's visit as I haven't seen him in over a year. Also I am looking forward to seeing all your smiling faces in the states when I come to visit. Just a reminder I will be in town August 3rd-August 20 (so August 4th-August 19th would be the dates I'm really around unless you want to see me the night I fly in or the morning I fly out). The first week I'm home the day time hours are pretty much booked up with work (gotta teach lifeguarding if I want to keep my certs), but the second week I should have more time off. So give me a holla if you want to see me in the evening or during the day my second week home.
Now down to business. School is ok. I am able to create lesson plans more often that seem to interest the students and make it easier to teach. I recently purchased some teaching materials for my weekend classes that will start this coming Saturday. I am getting very nervous about that. It will be the first completely solo teaching experience with elementary school kids I will have had over here. In the past I have always had another teacher in the room to fall back on. I'm sure it will work out well, but that doesn't keep me from stressing to the max!
Other than that not much new to report. My girlfriend situation remains stagnant and will probably stay that way for a while more unless one of my prospects suddenly becomes less busy. At the moment I would prefer it to be Yoriko or Yuriko but one is busy all the time it seems and the other lives two hours away. One of my neighbors said he'd introduce me to a friend of his who works at Tiger (a local bar), but she seems to be busy as well so I'm just letting things flow and see what happens.
I guess that's all for now. Catch you next time on "In the Life of Steve"

Nothing Really

Nothing interesting has happend recently ... well one thing, but I'll not mention that now. However I've been chided for not making regular appearances on my blog. So here I am! TADA!!! Aren't you just so enlightend now?! Hee hee, anyway work is "meh." Well today actually I had a very fun time with the ichi nensei. I did my self introduction to a class I hadn't visited yet and they had fun with that. Honestly the classes I have the most fun in are the ones I am free to play games or extemporize with the students. I just wish more of my classes were that way.
Other than that I kind of caught the shopping bug so I bought a few crazy shirts (which my parents think will make me laughed at in the states ... but I think they are fun) and I've been cruising the stores off and on, looking for sales on other cool things. I also bought a cool new "murse." What is a murse you say?! Well a murse is a man purse :). I felt that i needed one because when I go out to the clubs or other places I hate dragging my backpack along for many reasons, but the most pressing is it doesn't look cool or good. A lesser reason being it is too bulky and I tend to bring more stuff than I need. With a murse it is more portable, weighs less, is smaller and looks coolers. So hense I bought a murse ... or man bag ... or if you want to be technical a small messenger type bag. So yeah thats the excitement here ... wooohooo!

Okayama pictures

Picture

Still haven't gotten around to downloading the pictures from my bike trip yet, but here is a photo of the name plate outside my room plus addition from my friend Chelsea. During golden week she went to Korea and brought this back with her ... can you remember why? :)

Okayam Biking

So yesterday I went to Okayama with a bunch of people and we went on a 15k bike ride around the place. We visited a couple shrines and temple and enjoyed the fresh air and scenery of Inaka Japan. It was a long day because afterward we went to a city/town near by and did a bit of shopping and then got some yummy curry. Pictures will follow in next post.

New Blog

So due to the high demand for a new post here it is! (You know who you are that was the demanders >.> ) Yesterday was Karen's Birthday, so we went out and saw Spiderman 3 as a group. It was "meh." Afterward we went to our usual Izakaiya and had dinner. At the end of the meal we surprised Karen with a parféi (Don't no body say they don't like no parféi ... parféis are delicious!) and sang Happy Birthday.
Tonight I'm gonna go and see Mai (a girl I met last summer and haven't seen since October) and probably go get some dinner. No real idea what else we'll do. Perhaps go to a bar and get a drink or two before she has to head home.
On Friday I'll be going on a three hour bike ride with a couple of my apartment neighbors in Okayama, so that should be fun (assuming it doesn't rain). Other than that not much else to report. I'll keep you guys posted if anything else interesting crops up.