Tomorrow I'm leaving Japan and traveling back to my homeland to reconnect with my roots. No, I don't mean Canada.. I mean Vietnam! I'll be flying to Saigon on Thursday to spend Christmas and New Years exploring southern Vietnam. I have a lot of extended family in Saigon that I'll be meeting for the first time but, unfortunately, they don't speak English and I don't speak Vietnamese. Luckily, I will have some help because half of my family already moved to Vietnam three weeks ago! My brother, sister, niece, and brother-in-law all sold their belongings in Calgary to pick up and move to Vietnam. My niece is only 4 years old but she wasn't sad about about the move, especially after her mom kept telling her they were moving to "Beachland"! They're getting away from modern life in Canada to experience a new, exciting life in Vietnam and are hoping to start up a clothing business there. My mom also went and flew with them on the same day. She's the only one in our family who can speak Vietnamese so she'll be our translator to the rest of our relatives.

I'll be there from December 18th to January 4th and will get back into Japan on the 5th. I'll be traveling with Callie so we're going to spend a little bit of time with my family before we head off to backpack around Southern Vietnam and Cambodia! We only have a short 17 days to explore as much as we can so we booked a few tours, all-day and overnight buses, and a domestic flight already. Traveling around Vietnam is ridiculously cheap so we're only bringing a few hundred dollars with us for the two and a half weeks we're there. The domestic flight only costs $55 USD a seat! It's a pretty popular place to go over the winter break because I know of at least 15 ALT's from Hokkaido who are headed there too. It'll be my first Christmas without snow so I'm pretty excited about chilling on the beach and relaxing in the sun. I won't be blogging while I'm there but I'll have a lot of pictures and stories to put up when I get back! Until then, I hope you all have a

On Monday I went into work and there was a hand-written note on my desk saying "X-mas Party, Wednesday 6:00pm. Can you make it?". I thought it was a bit strange so I asked my co-worker who speaks English what the note was about. She said the town's Rotary Club was holding a Christmas party and that I was invited. I didn't even know our town had a Rotary Club.. and to be honest, I'm not even sure what the Rotary Club does! I know we have them in Canada but I had only heard of the name. I checked my schedule and, since I wasn't busy, told her I would go.

I got to the restaurant tonight about ten minutes before 6 o'clock figuring I was on time. As I was walking across the street towards the restaurant, a man was there who was apparently looking out for me because the moment he saw me, he came over to greet and usher me into the restaurant. When I entered the private dining room on the 2nd floor of the restaurant there were around already 20 other older people sitting around tables full of food, waiting for me. They had invited another ALT I knew, Tania, who lived in the next town over to the party too and she told me afterwards that they had picked her up at 5:30pm! Whoops.. I guess being 10 minutes early still meant I was late!

They started out with the night with the ring of a ceremonial bell and the kaicho (president of the chapter) and others giving formal speeches of welcome. Once the speeches were done, they rang the ceremonial bell again and then brought out a large Christmas cake (with strawberry toppings) and asked me and Tania as the guests to make the first cut. They lit the candles on the cake, turned out all the lights and to much acclaim, we made the first cut. I'm guessing it has some special meaning but I have no idea what it was. After that, everyone took off their suit jackets and buckled down to eat. We were treated to huge plates of sushi, tempura and even actual turkey! After about 30 minutes of eating and chatting with the kaicho who sat next to me, we were all given out Bingo cards to play for prizes. Playing Bingo is really common at enkai's and there are usually enough prizes for everyone, even if they get the last Bingo. After five minutes of calling out numbers, I managed to be the first winner of the evening. They were joking about the first place winner getting hyaku man yen ($10,000) but all I got was to choose from the selection of prizes first. The money would've been nice! I chose a bag that looked like it might have had something good and ended up with a jumbo-sized New Year's mochi.. thing. I guess they're really popular during New Years.

After that we played an awesome horse race game that must exist only in Japan. We each had to pay 400 yen ($4) to get four vouchers (another lady there bought me and Tania our vouchers as 'presents') where we had to choose a number between 1 and 8 and write our names on each of them. Then they have a large board with inward facing cards on rows that are numbered from 1 to 8. There are 80 spots on the "racing board" but 81 cards. They start by putting the number, for example '4', into the left side of the '4' row and by doing so, pushes out a card from the right side. If this card had the number '2' on it, it would get placed into the '2' row and so on. This continues until one of the rows has all of its numbers facing outwards and whoever chose that number on their voucher was a winner. The prize money gets split up evenly among all of the vouchers with that number (ie. a person who chose that number more than once gets more of the prize money) - AND - to add to the excitement, there's a red 落 card which means the horse fell down and is out of the race! Oh noes! So even if that number finishes first, no one can win off of it. Unfortunately I didn't pick the winning "horse" and get any prize money, but it was a fun way to gamble!

After that was an auction on different things like ramen, flowers, and various seafood. The kaicho next to me bid on a box of ramen (a high quality brand, apparently) and gave me a package as a gift. Near the end of the auction they were auctioning off whole frozen salmon but, since there were no takers, the auctioner just decided to give the fish away to the guests, me and Tania. I got a free whole salmon!

Shortly after that we finished eating and then had the closing speech. The kaicho talked for a bit and then, surprisingly, asked me and Tania to make speeches as well! They wanted us to speak in Japanese so not quite knowing what to say, I said "Hello everyone. Thank you for inviting me. The food was delicious. Tonight was fun. Thank you." in my broken Japanese. After that we all stood up, joined hands, and then sang what I'm guessing was the Rotary Club anthem song. We all swung our arms in unison during the song and after it was over, we all did the formal, single clap that marks the end of an enkai.

It was a really nice surprise at being invited to the Christmas dinner (notice in the top picture, the banner says Ⅹ'マス (X-mas) in Katakana?). Apparently they like to have English speakers at their gatherings in order to promote the whole internationalization aspect of the Rotary Club. I think they were inviting us as guests in order to welcome us to Japan and the town. Not that I mind though. If it involves free meals, invite away!

One of the reasons I came to Japan was so I could continue to learn Japanese and study it in an immersion setting. I came here with three years of language courses under my belt and decided I wouldn't be leaving here until I can actually say "I speak Japanese" and mean it. I'm planning to stay here for a minimum of two years so the least I could do is come out with a second language.

Studying a second language in an immersion setting is a lot different than learning in the classroom. Instead of reading textbooks and doing homework, my textbooks are street signs, menus, and food labels. My homework is finding a way to communicate with my kids in a foreign language without getting lost in translation. I simply have to step outside my door and I am in my Japanese classroom. The main difference between the classroom and immersion, however, is motivation. In school, the motivation was ultimately to learn a second language, but also the relentless push to finish homework before deadlines or to study and do well on tests. Its easy to check on your progress this way but outside a structured classroom, everything is not so streamlined.

I realized this really quickly when I first arrived here in Japan. Sure, I had three years of Japanese language background, but it wasn't at the point where I could hold an extended conversation with a Japanese person. I knew a lot of grammar and vocabulary but I knew if I didn't work to expand on it, I would forget everything and my ability would fizzle out and die. I've heard of JETs who have left Japan after a year or two with worse Japanese than when they came and I wanted to avoid that. What I decided to do to give myself motivation was to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT).

The JLPT is a standardized test held once a year in December which tests for Japanese reading and listening skills. I took the easiest level, 4kyu, last year. I did well on it since you need around a year of study (or 4 months if you study really hard..) to pass it and I had been studying for over two and a half years by then. This year I decided to go up another level and write 3kyu which requires around 2-3 years of study. The application deadline was way back in mid-September but I knew I would be writing it so I sent in my application soon after I got here. I received my little test voucher in the mail about a few weeks ago and the test itself was held today.

There were quite a few JETs writing the JLPT ranging from 4kyu to 2kyu (there is also an 1kyu level but it's pretty damn tough.. even for native Japanese) so we all gathered in Sapporo this weekend to write it. I stayed at Callie's place with two other JETs and we got up early this morning to get to make sure we got to the test site with plenty of time to spare. Before we went in, we had a short camera interview with some students from Callie's High School who are making a documentary about her Japanese-learning experience. When I got into the room which held about 30 people, I chatted with a few other JETs who were also taking 3kyu before settling down for the start of the test. I had studied steadily for the past two months or so and pretty heavily in the weeks leading up to the test so I wasn't feeling nervous at all. I was as prepared as I was ever gonna be.

Now if you noticed from the picture about the test times, we were given around an hour for each section. For example, we were allotted 50 minutes for the writing/vocabulary section but, curiously enough, we were only given 35 minutes on the actual test! This is because they have a very long and formal procedure before and after the test period. There were three officials in the room with us (who barely talked at all) and the instructions (in Japanese) were given by a pre-recorded voice over a loudspeaker at the front of the room. First, they explained the penalty system which is similar to soccer games where a yellow card means your given a warning and a red card means you're disqualified from the test (they actually had yellow and red cards). Then they handed out our answer sheets and test booklets in order of registration number and then checked our faces against the images on our vouchers. Then there was a random 5-10 minute wait before the voice over the loudspeaker would say "Hajimemasu" which was the signal to begin. At the end of the test the voice would say "Jikan desu" and tell us to put our pencils down. Then the officials would come and collect all of our answer sheets and booklets before we were allowed to leave the room. They repeated this procedure for each of the three sections so it was pretty slow and monotonous. At one point, I laid my head down on my desk to nap while waiting for the test to start and the lady official had to wake me up to check my face against the voucher.

Eventually, it was all done and over with. I felt pretty confident about most of my answers so I'm sure I did fine. During the breaks I talked with the others about the questions which helped to confirm how well I did on the test. It was a long and exhausting day but it was well worth it. Looking back in retrospect, studying for this test has definitely improved my Japanese since when I first arrived. I also believe that regardless of how well I did on the test, I still put in the effort to study and constantly improve myself and I can already see the results in my everyday life. To keep my motivation going, my next goal is to write 2kyu next December. Passing 2kyu is one of the defining marks of being fluent in Japanese and lots of companies recognize a person with JLPT 2kyu to be proficient enough to work in Japan. That's my holy grail for next year.

I'm looking forward to the day I can smash down the language barrier and not have to rely on someone else or a dictionary to navigate my way around this country. Until then, I'll continue to study at my own pace and return back to my normal, steady life in Japan - back to my classroom.