Teacher's Column
Hello, This is Dan!
Hi everyone! My name is Dan and I am sure many of you have already met me, as I have been working at Bridge now for about two months now. I will give you some background information and also tell you about some of my interests.
First of all, I am from America. My hometown is called Vista and is located in Southwestern California. It is about a forty minute drive to San Diego and a one hour drive to Los Angeles from my house. The beach is also close, only twenty minutes by car. I lived in Japan for about five years now and I have lived in four different cities.
The first place I lived in Japan was in Tokyo. I spent ten months there on a study abroad program. It was great! I was able to learn a lot about Japanese culture as well as the language. There were many other foreign students there too, from all over the world. So I was able to meet people from Sweden, England, China, Twain and Germany just to name a few. One experience I remember well during this time was when I met a Korean student at my school. He could not speak English, and I could not speak Korean so we had to communicate in Japanese! We could understand each other pretty well and that gave me more incentive to study harder.
After I finished studying in Tokyo, I went back to America to finish university. Then after I graduated, I came back to Japan as an ALT (assistant language teacher) at a high school. This time I got to live in Shizuoka in Fuji City. Teaching here was pretty fun, but it was a lot of work sometimes because the classes were big. Most classes had about thirty students in them. Some of the teachers at the school could speak English, but most of them could not speak well so I had to try to use my Japanese when we talked. My memorable moment from my stay in Fuji, was Mt. Fuji. When I first arrived in Fuji, it was the end of summer. There was a mountain that was kind of big in the distance. I thought, Hmmmm...maybe that is Mt. Fuji.....nah, it is too small. I was watching the news one day and they said today Mt. Fuji got its first snow of winter. I went outside and looked at the mountain and there was snow on it! I got to see Mt. Fuji everyday while living in Shizuoka.
I returned home after two years of working in Shizuoka and spent some time with family and friends. Then I decided I wanted to come back to Japan again. I got a job at an English school in Yokohama and worked there for about two years. I liked Yokohama because it was big, but not too big and if you wanted to go to Tokyo it only took forty minutes. I liked China Town because you could eat lots of great Chinese food. My favorite is sweet and sour pork. I also really like gyoza too, but nowadays you have to be careful of Chinese gyoza! There were also several good Mexican restaurants. I enjoyed my stay in Yokohama.
About ten months ago I moved here to Nagoya. When I came here, summer was just starting. Nagoya has the hottest and most humid summers I have ever experienced! In Southern California, the weather is pretty warm year round and is very dry. Japanese summers are very uncomfortable for me. My best experience while living here so far is when I went to Takayama. It is very beautiful there. I went in fall, so I was able to see many different colored leaves on the trees. I also got to see a few waterfalls. One was amazing. There was nobody else there and there was nothing to stop people from going as close as they wanted! I tried to get close, but I was getting too wet! I hope to go back to Takayama again soon.
So those are my experiences in Japan. Now I will tell you a bit more about my hobbies and what I like. When I was in junior high school and high school, I loved skateboarding. My friends and I would skate everyday for several hours. In my local area, skateboarding was very popular and there were many semi professional and professional skaters there. I finally gave it up when I thought it was getting too dangerous. I was too chicken to jump on handrails and slide down them; I did not want to get hurt! I got hurt a lot skating, but most of my injuries were not too bad. I did fracture my wrist once, and had to get a cast.
After I gave up skateboarding, I started to play basketball. I was not very good at the start, but it was fun and safer than skateboarding. I made some new friends and we played almost every day, sometimes in the rain! We would play for three or four hours straight some days. I was in really good shape then. I learned how to shoot the basketball pretty well, but I still could not dribble very well. I even played in a few recreational leagues. It was fun, but it was weird having a referee. When my friends and I played, we would just call our own fouls. Lots of the referees needed glasses!
Nowadays, I like to watch movies and surf the internet in my free time. I like most kinds of movies but I guess my favorites are action and comedies. I really enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings. The only thing I did not like about those movies was that I had to wait one year to see the next movie! Recently I have not been to the movie theater. Summer will be here soon and that is when most of the good movies are released. Movies are expensive to see in Japan. In the States, it only costs about seven or eight hundred yen to see a movie and if you go in the day time, it is cheaper.
I use the internet everyday to check the news and keep up with sports. I really enjoyed watching basketball and football (not soccer!) back home. In Japan, it is hard to see games or get any news about them if you do not have satellite television. I also like to play games on the internet too. You can meet many different people and do a lot of different things. Plus it is cheap and safe entertainment. I could not imagine living with out a computer these days.
Well, that is a bit about me. If you have any questions, be sure to ask me! Oh, I forgot an important thing! I do not like seafood! Yuck! Hope to see you around.
Dan