Genbikei and Geibikei

Genbikei and Geibikei are two famous gorges in Iwate Prefecture in the Tohoku Region of Japan, with Geibikei being the more famous of the two. I went there this past weekend to see the fall leaves and take photos. Actually, Genbikei might be most famous for it’s “Flying Dango” than for the actually scenery. Dango is a sticky riceball that comes in various favors such as seaseme (goma), red bean paste (an), or my personal favorite (the one with light brown sauce on the right), soy sauce (mitarashi). Genbikei has “Flying Dango” because a restaurant on one side of the gorge sends it to the other side of the gorge via rope and basket.

Geibikei’s main appeal is that you take a boat ride down a shallow river that runs between cliffs as tall as 100 meters (about 328 feet). Round trip the boat ride takes about 90 minutes and at the half way point you can get off the boat and walk around some before coming back. The boat ride and scenery is very beautiful and relaxing, though as you might imagine, the 100 meter cliffs can make for some difficult lighting situations if you are trying to take photographs.

Naruko

Naruko is perhaps the most famous place in Miyagi Prefecture to see fall leaves. I recently went there and I think I went just a little too early and maybe it will be very nice next week, but since the weather was very nice yesterday and I wasn't sure what it would be like next weekend, I went anyway. There really isn't too much to write about so I will let the photos do the talking. If you want to see more photos check them out.

More updates coming...

I realize I have had less and less updates as of late, but if you have been checking my other blog, http://babibubebo.com you would notice that I have been fairly busy there. Below is a graphic that displays the last few posts on my site.


Since I started it back in July (OK, so last day of June), it has grown considerably. There are many ways to track how a website's popularity is growing (google rank, page hits, unique visitors etc.) but the one I like the best is that I can check ow many people have added my site to their favorites. To me this shows they like my site enough to want to come back again (duh) so it means I am doing something right. Anyway, here are the % of people that have added my site to their favorites:

• July was 2% (I barely had anything on the site at this point)
• August was 10%
• September was 18%
• October (so far) is 44%

So like I said before, I guess I am doing something right! Now I am just trying to find ways to make it grow even more and one of those ways is that I am looking for more contributors so if you or if you know somebody that might be interested in helping out or submitting photos or writing about places in Japan send them my way!

Speech Contest

This past Friday I was able to take the day off from work to go to a speech contest that 6 of my students were taking part in (4 from boys school and 2 from girls school). Since August I have been occasionally meeting with these 6 students to help them prepare and since September I have been meeting with at least one of them almost everyday. I enjoyed helping them bc was nice to have some interaction outside the classroom with students who really wanted to learn/practice English; however, I am somewhat glad it is over bc it was preventing me do any other things like basketball club or photography club.

There were 2 different sections: recitation and speech. If the students did the recitation then basically they picked on of 5 pre-written speeches and the speech was suppose to be a self written speech (the students were allowed to write in Japanese and have somebody else translate it, so They wrote it in Japanese, one of my Japanese teachers translated it into English, and then I made more natural English). Anyway, to make a long post short, I thought all of my students did a great job and one of my boys got 3rd place in the speech section and one of my girls got 3rd place in the recitation section! Yeah I know it is not 1st but considering that the girl student was not allowed to get first bc of the type of school she goes to and the boy student use to be a bad English student I am very, very, excited for them!

The boy student (in the middle in the above photograph--sorry for poor quality photo, I only had my cell phone that day) even thanked me and said it was his best memory of high school! Let me tell you a little about this student. Hearing this made me really happy mainly bc I finally feel like I have def had an impact on some students. Maybe I have reached some students already but with only meeting students at most once a week, it is sometimes hard to really help the students out and influence them. I mean not to toot my own horn, but from where this kid started, there is no way he could have placed without the help of a native speaker or at least a Japanese English teacher...it just happened that I was here at the right time for me to be the one that helped him. Not to take anything away from him bc he is a really hard worker and def worked the hardest out of the 6 students, but when we first started his Japanese accent was very very strong so he did need some outside help, and he recognized this and thanked me many times. Now he has a plaque and certificate that says he got third place in this contest and nobody can take that away from him, this coming for a kid who told me in middle school his average English test scores were below 30. Needless to say, I am very proud of him and the rest of my students who all memorized about 3 minutes worth of English and participated in this contest, but I couldn't be happier for my students who got 3rd place!