As you will read further the title is very misleading. The reality is that Andy and David and I spent a weekend in Tokyo participating in a teacher training seminar event that was put on by Pearson Longman and The British Council. We were hob-knobbing with the likes of Jeremy Harmer, Sherry Preiss and Goro Tajiri. Pretty exciting, no? Or is it just pretty sad that anyone would actually find that exciting?

The schedule was very busy and provided us with some really interesting presentations and discussions. Harmer opened at 2:00 PM with a few jokes and then it was right down to business. For three and a half hours we watched examples on film of professional English teachers, we listened to Harmer discuss how to teach English, we did group work dealing with elements that made one a “good teacher” or a “not good teacher” and how to help the latter improve, and we generally went non stop until it was time to finish for the day. It was full participation and David and Andy did FIA proud

 OK, you might think that three and a half hours isn’t such a grueling day. But we left for Tokyo in the morning and we were also required to attend a dinner that went from 7:30 PM until 10:00 PM so we could continue discussing teacher training and all the exciting research that was going on in the field of English language teaching. And people did just that!

Sunday started with breakfast at 7:30 AM where there was more shop talk and then back to the venue to participate again in seminars and workshops with Sherry Preiss. Her focus was on performance-based testing and the relationship between ongoing assessment and classroom learning. Preiss was a very engaging speaker and presenter and gave us all a lot to talk about and think about. Andy did a hell of a job reporting back for his discussion group, and David wowed everyone with a graph for measuring language proficiency that he introduced to his group. All the professors and text writers and rubric designers ooed and ahhed over the “spider graph” we use for the final IEP reports. FIA was certainly well represented with Andy and David working their magic.

In the afternoon we listened to Goro Tajiri until 5:00 PM. He presented materials on how to motivate students to speak. He used techniques that he had developed during the time that he was teaching in Junior High School and showed video of exactly how the techniques worked and demonstrated it in the seminar. Goro (as he likes to be called) was dynamic, interesting and was able to show us some very practical methods of getting people to talk.

All in all it was a very complete weekend. It was busy, interesting and somewhat exhausting, but well worth doing. Already David and Andy and I have discussed the ideas and how we can present and share some of the practical things we learned at a future FIA English trainer meeting. Thanks to these two Teacher Trainers for volunteering their entire weekend to help with FIA training. I know you’re all waiting with baited breath, so we’ll make sure to give you something to write home about. Or at least something you can use in the classroom.

by Tony

"My Grandpa likes to drink.”

That’s what I used to tell my friends.  We’d tell stories about our parents and relatives we saw fall down, or vomit, or fall sleep (I later learned the term ‘pass out’) at family gatherings, usually around a holiday. We thought it was cool for Mommies and Daddies to drink too much so that we had to stay at the neighbour’s till our parents came back from driving home drunken partygoers, sometimes up to three hours.

• you rush onto an escalor, and just stand there.
• you don't hesitate to put a $10 note into a vending machine.
• you see a gaijin get on the train and think "Wow, it's a gaijin!"
• you have trouble figuring out how many syllables there really are in words like "building"
• you go for a drink with friends back home and start pouring everybody's beer.
• you find yourself bowing while you talk on the phone.
• you think US $17 isn't such a bad price for a new paperback.
• you go to a coffee shop in your home country and order "American coffee."
• you're talking to your mother on the phone, and she asks you what "genki" means.
• you don't think it unusual for a truck to play "It's a Small World" when backing up.
• you think the natural location for a beer garden is on a roof.
• you think that you can impress foreigners by drinking Budweiser.
• you find a beautiful way to eat natto.
• you start thinking can coffee tastes good.
• you wait for the first day of summer to wear short sleeve dress shirts.
• you buy a potato-and-strawberry sandwich for lunch without cringing.
• you stop enjoying telling newcomers to Japan "all about Japan".
• you have mastered the art of simultaneous bowing and and-shaking.
• you think NHK is "the Japanese BBC".
• you think curry rice is good fod.
• on a cold autumn night, the only thing you want for dinner is nabe and nihonshu.
• you return the bow from the cash machine.
• you can't find the "open" and "close" buttons in the elevator because they're in English.
• you think that coffee goes perfectly well with squid pizza.
• the Christmas music in the stores does not make you feel at all sentimental like it used to.
• you think sleeping, driving, and shopping are perfectly acceptable "hobbies".
• you draw a sharp distinction between "English" and "English conversation".

and you know you've been in Japan TOO long when...

it all seems normal!

by Pav