The role of an ALT is an ambiguous one. The government 20 years ago pretty much told every school in Japan they must have one. The first few years were a great success, but I'm pretty sure after that, the 'novelty' eventually started to wear off.
Every year the school gets a new ALT. He's either going to be okay, or be a smelly culturally unaware gaijin. He's only staying for 1 year or maybe 2 so it's not really worth investing time to befriend him that much - maybe just enough to feel welcome. The schools aren't given any guidelines on how to actually utilize the ALT so they will make a decision and the working situation varies all over the country.
So as an ALT, some days (with some teachers) I am literally a living tape recorder just reading out new dialogue. Other days I am just allocated a 10 minute 'game time' at the start and do nothing the rest of the lesson, other days I prepare an entire lesson and run the full 50 minutes entirely in English and other days I work in tandem with the Japanese English teacher, bouncing dialogue off eachother, running games together, and engaging students the entire lesson.
So being an ALT, it CAN sometimes be boring, it CAN feel like you'll never fit in, it can seem as though you are a resource rather than a staff member. On bad days of course.
Fish medallions with a chicken stirfry and miso
Egg & ham omlette with oden casserole and soup
Sweet & sour chicken with oden soup and oden vegetables
Green tea and crispy rice batter encrusted fish with vegetables and chicken and egg miso soup
Tuna salad with a pork medallion and oden soup.
