national olympics memorial youth center

i just spent three days and two nights at the national olympics memorial youth center, in yoyogi. it was a established in 1965 using part of the Olympic Village (from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics) i was one of several chaperones for 124 japanese middle school students, 4 american middle school students and their chaperone teacher, and 14 american/canadian college students, who are all a part of the two week english program at school.

it was a really nice complex, with big meeting/classrooms, dorm style housing (for the students; there were small single rooms for the teachers, thank god), japanese style communal bath house, a spacious cafeteria with pretty good food, and lots of open space and GREEN. in shibuya no less!! it didn’t feel like i was in shibuya, until i looked at the night skyline:

or found this photo on their website which gives you a good idea of how it's sandwiched between downtown shibuya (top) and yoyogi park (right):

(my room was in the round pink building in the top right of the olympic center complex, and had a great view off to the right over beautiful yoyogi park)

other facilities included a pool with a semi retractable roof, tennis courts, and a japanese tea house. we didn’t use them, but from our meeting room, there was a good view of the pool. all i could think about was how good a dip in the pool would feel, seeing as the weather for the last three days has been HOT.

tuesday afternoon we gathered all the kids together in the big courtyard area. we had them stand in lines to make the shape of letters, which spelled out the name of the program. one of the teachers went to the 4th floor and took our group photo. i organized it by counting out the number of people each letter needed and where people needed to stand, so i was really excited that it turned out. it’s pretty cool looking.

except for the fact that the program is over, the “good” ends there.

while there were other chaperones on the trip, a few of them didn’t do much but chill in the back of the classroom and occasionally walk around to the classrooms and see what the students were doing. everything else was on me and the other english speaking chaperone. at least it felt that way. check in, meal tickets, directing the kids, going over the schedule...all done in japanese for the japanese students and english for the non-japanese.

monday night we had an “english speakers meeting” to go over the day (how things went for the college kids working with their groups) and go over the schedule for the next day. i tried to stand up for the program and put my foot down on some behavioral issues with the american middle schoolers (one in particular) and was practically scolded by their chaperone. i was really insulted and i felt like she didn't think i was doing my job as well as SHE could do it. (don't even try me lady!) she asked if we could talk about it later and i said yes. then, frustrated and teary-eyed, i tried to finish the meeting. i ended up collapsing against a wall in tears after the meeting and all i could say was “i want to go home.”

i met with her and the other english speaking chaperone (until the night of the 2nd day, there were only two of us who could speak english) and finally got to bed around 12pm the first night. i told the other teacher i wanted to go home so badly and that i wanted to quit my job. he apologized. sometimes i feel bad complaining to him, because i know he is working hard too, and doesn’t breakdown. i'm just at my limit these days.

the second day went smoother, and some other (young and fun) chaperones came in the early evening. during the day i actually did a lot of zoning out and sitting back, trying not to take on so much responsibility. i’m the kind of person who sees something that needs to get done and does it. the other english teacher is like that too. we work together well, with only a few “hey! what are you doing?!!” moments but the other (aforementioned “do nothing”) chaperones just sit back and let things go to chaos. i don’t know if it’s that they don’t realize A or B needs to get done and so they are just oblivious or if they don’t care about A and B or if they are just waiting to see if someone else will do A and B before they have to do anything. regardless, it’s frustrating beyond belief and made my life a living hell for the last three days. while i’m trying to run around and communicate with 14 college kids, it’d would help JUST A BIT if the japanese teachers could talk to the japanese kids. am i in some warped universe where this concept doesn’t make sense?? yeah, i didn’t think so either.

i DID take my hula hoop and got to just play around for about 30 minutes on tuesday and a bunch of the kids, a few of the (young and fun) teachers who came half way through and even some of the college students had fun trying to hoop. maybe a new market!

in the end, the kids seemed to work hard on their projects with their college student team leader and hopefully had fun despite getting into trouble (being late for meeting times, running and being loud in the halls, having video games and cell phones, being up and loud WAY past curfew, etc.).

there are just three more days left in the program, and until summer vacation. tomorrow is the final day of ESL classes and project prep, friday is project presentation day and saturday is the closing ceremony (for the school term) followed by the farewell party for the college student team leaders.

i just keep thinking, “bali...”