Last August Office Day

Today we had our last office day for the month of August. This one was a bit different from the others in that all the Takasaki ALTs attended (that’s 83 in total!) so we got to officially meet everyone and get some advice from the older ALTs.

Woke up at 7:00am and finished my congee for breakfast. Set off at 8:15am since I was getting a ride from a nearby ALT. We went to pick up another ALT who lived nearby and arrived at the city hall at 9:00am. The room was really packed since there were all 83 ALTs here! Despite it being a lovely cool day today, it was hot and stuffy in the room. We were seated in groups of about 7 people, with 3 new ALTs paired with 4 experienced ALTs in each. The first program was an announcement from an English village that’s going to be run from next year April. They need ALTs to help out with the weekend camps, and it sounds like it’ll be a lot of fun (plus you get paid!) so there were a lot of people interested. I’m definitely signing up for this one too. The next program, we discussed school lessons and school life in our respective groups. To be really honest, I don’t find these office days very helpful, but I guess that might be because I’ve lived in Japan before, my school is very nice with no problems (my JTE is super awesome and detailed!) so the information they give during office days is often quite irrelevant. Nevertheless it was nice to meet all the ALTs. I do have to say a lot of the ALTs in my group were just complaining about the things Japan doesn’t do well in their English education/in general, which is why I guess I didn't think today’s office day was super helpful.

The office day finished at 12:00, and we also got our pension books and health insurance cards today! Japan’s healthcare is really good and cheap, so they go to the hospital and to the doctors a lot, even for just little colds. We bought lunch at the city hall convenience store and then they dropped me off back home. I dropped off my stuff and got my laptop, and then cycled to school. Didn't do too much today except for final checks and prep for tomorrow’s very first lesson! The HDMI cable adaptor had arrived yesterday, so I brought it in today to make sure I could connect to all the classroom TVs and everything – it was all fine! Finished at 16:15 today and made sure my attendance sheet would get sent to the BOE.

After school I went to Daiso to pick up some things to make nametags for the English classes – some classes have 35 students in them!