feitclub.com

Demonstration Accomplished

2008-10-09T22:43:00.004+09:00

Looks like I'm going to get a chance to write something after all.

I'm here at work and the demonstration lesson I wrote about yesterday is over. It went pretty much as I expected it would, although there really were way too many people in the room. In fact, at least a dozen spectators stood in the hallway and looked in through the windows. Were the other lessons as crowded as ours, or is the sixth grade where all the action is? Perhaps they can't get enough of me personally? It's not like I was the only foreigner on display for the crowd - each class had an native English speaker (all Americans, actually) to help out.

Once class was over, everyone started to migrate to the gymnasium for some kind of massive meeting/briefing/lecture on English education. I really wasn't looking forward to two and a half hours of non-stop Japanese nonsense, to be honest. That sounds harsh as I don't understand most of what they discuss during these gatherings, but I've attended enough of these to know that nothing that occurs will have any impact on my job. All the teachers from other schools who insist on having me (the assistant language teacher) run the class because they are too embarrassed/unprepared/disinterested, they're not going to come away from this meeting and have an epiphany. They're going to continue to have me do their jobs for them because that's how they've always handled English class before. At this point, I've come to accept that as the norm.

You might be wondering what the point of these meetings is - I know I am. Certainly at this school, the good one where English is well-taught and the kids are enthusiastic about the subject (if occasionally distracted - they are still kids), these teachers no doubt process the feedback from the visiting big shots who evaluate the demonstrations and offer pages and pages of advice. One of the reasons the meetings take so long is the visiting speaker/authority has to read over and elaborate on all the notes he has to offer. But why do all these other people show up? Is it a form of entertainment? Do they go back to their schools wondering how this school gets English right, then continue to silently park themselves in the rear of the classroom when I come to visit?

Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. Perhaps the reaction to these massive presentations is like the reaction I get from my students: very few take it seriously but those who do are genuinely impressed. I know when I face down a classroom with forty sixth-graders at least half are trying to take a nap during class, but I know there's three or four kids out there who really want to participate and get something out of my lesson. I keep that in my mind and I perform as best I can to the entire group in the hopes that those few attentive kids will take what they can get and not quit because their peers think speaking proper English is nerdy (but speaking broken English is cool - go figure). So in a large gathering of English teachers, few of whom actually give a crap about teaching English, those few who do might do their part at their schools to advance English education from "obligatory busy work" to "actual subject worthy of study."

If my theory is correct and a small contingent of students and teachers really do come away from this with a renewed interest in English (and I sure as hell hope so), then all of this is completely worth it. One thing's for sure: we are going out to eat and drink after this is over and that is good news for everybody involved.

Evening update photo: me drinking at the dinner party. Sharp-eyed viewers can spot why my tie is awesome. Sadly, only one co-worker noticed.

I'm packing for my trip now. Feit...out

The Amazing English Lesson Spectacular

2008-10-08T21:53:00.003+09:00

I was right: today was better than yesterday, but it certainly wasn't any less busy.

Tomorrow we're having a big "English presentation lesson" at school, so when I wasn't teaching classes today I was helping the children prepare for tomorrow's fishbowl experience. The first graders are going to talk about animals and what they can do (in the style of From Head to Toe) and the third graders are going to tell a story with pictures of animals that eat a lot (just like The Very Hungry Caterpillar). The sixth graders, being the most advanced, are going to use Powerpoint and a map of the area to point out interesting local sights and landmarks, mostly in Japanese but with some key English sentences like "This shrine is near my house."

Just like the last month's Sports Day, the entire school is bending over backwards to get ready for visitors. Not only has the school undergone some cosmetic changes (such as these steps), all the schools in the district are dismissing their students early tomorrow so that other teachers can come to see the presentations. Today's usual cleaning session was extra-long so the kids could clean the entire first and second floor from top to bottom, making sure none of tomorrow's visitors see something that might be dusty. It reminds me of what we went through when my mom tried to sell our house. We had to clean everyday and ensure that nothing was even left open or exposed. I never understood why because any potential buyer would see our house with the knowledge that we were still living in it. The guests tomorrow are all teachers somewhere, so they know exactly what an elementary school looks like when you look under the desks or behind the cabinets.

It remains to be seen exactly how tomorrow will play out. We've had a number of days like this where we put on a class for a lot of visiting teachers, always followed by a long (and I mean long) meeting where they talk about the future of English education entirely in Japanese and I stay awake by listing professional sports teams (in their respective divisions) in the margins of the pages and pages of handouts. With three simultaneous classes tomorrow afternoon, there must be more than a hundred guests coming so I don't understand where they're all going to go once class is over. Will we all gather in the gym or something? That's not a meeting, that's a lecture.

The only thing I know for sure is that we're going out to eat afterward (I'm predicting Japanese food, imagine that) so I won't be home until well past nine and then I've got packing to do. This is likely my last "proper" posting of the week, although I'll definitely be tweeting throughout my three-day weekend travels. Whatever goes down tomorrow, I'm less than forty-eight hours from my arrival in Earth's Largest City.

I Had a Bad Day (No Singing, Please)

2008-10-07T22:57:00.000+09:00

Had a not-so-great day which became a bad day by never ending.

Things started poorly when I arrived in the English room with an entire class of fourth-graders waiting for me. I wasn't supposed to have a class at that time, the teacher mistook this week's schedule with next week's. Since he and his students were already there, I agreed to just teach them and get past it. It's one less I'll have to do next week at the same time. They were noisy but otherwise things went smoothly.

Second period was my only free period of the day. I spent the time organizing all my papers and flash cards for the rest of the day and then I cracked open Michael Kane's Game Boys. So far it's a compelling story about some folks trying to make it in the world of competitive video gaming...a world that apparently exists! Aside from a segment on MTV years ago on Fatal1ty, I was unaware that pro "teams" existed. I have heard of the game they play (thanks to the generosity of Half-Life bundles, I actually own a copy) but I've never actually booted it up or watched any footage of it in action. Like most online competitive shooters, professional or not, it strikes me as way too hard for me to jump in flail around.

Enough about the nice new book I'm reading, let's get back to work. Third period was a better-than-I-expected class of second graders, most of whom were eager to raise their hands and try to respond to my antics. Kids that young always need a little reminder now and then to look forward, stop kicking the seat in front of them, and so on, but I honestly felt things went well. So far, so good right? Busy but not unbearable?

Fourth period was English time for the other second grade division and it was a total disaster. They were twice as unruly as their counterparts in third period, only there were fewer checks coaxing them to quiet down and look at me. Multiple children insisted on laying down, standing on the benches or otherwise being disruptive. One little girl refused to acknowledge my greeting of "Hello," going so far as to contort her face away from mine, lest our eyes actually meet. Students like that are not as uncommon as you'd might think in Japan and it's extremely disheartening. That's a child deciding that you and your language are impossible to understand.

But I must put all that aside and talk about one little boy in particular, because he is a juggernaut. Not the Juggernaut, of course, but he is a force of disruption and chaos that no one at this school knows how to stop or even contain. When he first entered the room, he tried to pick up and move one of the tables. Thwarted by the staff, his next target was one of the benches. Perhaps trying to appease him (like that ever worked), the staff let him take the bench and move it towards the back of the room. They then sat on either side of him (yes, this seven year old requires two adults to supervise him) and tried to prevent him from embarking on any more redecoration missions, although he did successfully climb on top of the table and bench more than once. With this much going on in the room, it's a miracle I even got the meager sliver of attention from the children that I did.

Lunch was lunch, although it is now chilly enough so that my soup and rice get cold before I have a chance to eat it. This is the only school where a cold lunch is a regular problem because they insist on serving my lunch in the staff room ten to twenty minutes before lunchtime actually starts. I pick up my lunch and then head to a classroom to eat, which means I have to wait for the children to stop fighting with each other, settle down, and distribute their food amongst themselves. By the time we're all ready to eat, my food has been sitting out for more than half an hour.

Fifth period was practically blissful, as the third graders are remarkably well-behaved and receptive to my lessons. My throat appreciated the rest because I didn't need to shout at them at all. They were so good we even had time to play a game and do extra practice because there was so much time left over. Thanks kids!

Finally (yeah right...this day isn't over) I had fifth graders in sixth period. All the energy I saved the period before, I consumed it in the first five minutes. Much like the little girl in fourth period, I had multiple students evade my gaze or ignore my questions simply because (and they love telling me this) "I don't understand English." When I asked the class to identify a picture of Mt. Fuji, only two kids were willing to raise their hands. I had to call them out on that, asking aloud why only two children in a class of thirty-five recognized Japan's most famous thing. That got about half of them to 'fess up and raise their hands, but that still leaves plenty of fibbers. When I then asked the class to identify where Mt. Fuji is (not which prefecture, but what country), the only volunteers I got insisted on answering in Japanese, even though toddlers can say "Japan" in English.

I didn't take many foreign-language classes when I was in elementary school (my tiny-ass town didn't even start mandatory lessons until middle school) but I had a couple impromptu encounters in my day. I wasn't thrilled at the idea of learning Spanish and I didn't stick with it at all, but I never remembered children getting angry or scared or argumentative when confronted by strange-sounding words. I know there's an element of "why are we here" in any mandatory language class, and there are valid reasons to question English education in Japanese elementary schools (compared to say, Korean or Chinese). Yet none of that can explain the downright anti-English antagonism that permeates a significant percentage of these kids. The frequency and depth of these lessons is so minimal in every respect, it simply cannot support this level of frustration. Combine that with a oddball fascination all these kids have with random nonsense English on their clothing and in their surroundings and I'm positively baffled.

It's getting late (this has certainly taken more than an hour) but the epilogue to all this was a trip to the jidōkan (pictured above) for an after-school English lesson. I was completely exhausted and borderline hoarse, but attendance was mercifully light and they seemed as tired as I was. I can do pretty much anything I want for these sessions, so we spent most of the first forty minutes just playing Red Light, Green Light. There was some funny business inside when not one but two children tried to go full-on rag doll in order to avoid speaking in English. They eventually relented when the other teachers (and students) present scraped them off the floor and held them up until their limp legs finally took over.

So it wasn't a good day. Tomorrow will certainly be better. Thursday will be...I'll explain later.

But Friday? And this three-day holiday weekend? Should be pure awesome.

Slow Learner

2008-10-06T23:03:00.000+09:00

So I ran my mouth a little bit (virtually speaking) on Saturday while riding the train into Osaka to attend a party. I was feeling good about myself and about my plans for the evening (I don't get invited to many parties) and I talked some serious smack about writing.

Two days later, I feel like most of the fire I had is gone and I'm not sure what has changed. I'm still super jazzed about BioShock, I've been fooling around with LittleBigPlanet and I even stumbled across a new game I already owned (sort of...it's a long story) called Peggle which put me in a good mood. Of course, nothing brings out the happy in me quite like Mako's cooking. She's prepared a few of my favorites lately, including a ginger-rific version of mapo tofu and lamb curry. And while this week is a busy one, I'm heading straight for a three-day weekend of maximum relaxation in Tokyo.

So what's wrong? There's clearly a direct relationship between my frame of mind and my eagerness to write. I can't tell if this sounds childish or obvious, but I think I've got to have some reason or motivation to push "writing" ahead of the multitudes of other activities I could be doing on any given evening.　I need something more than just me saying "I want to write." I've got to feel like writing is all I've got.

But how can I feel that way if my writing is, at this point, completely self-serving? Deadlines were a sure-fire way to get me to write in college, but they tore me up and made me feel terrible. That's the complete opposite of the "when can I start?" feeling I had all Saturday about writing.

So I had this idea tonight. Maybe if I just convince myself to spend one hour a day (or more, this is not a timed job) writing something, I will train myself to feel like writing belongs in my life. I'm not going to promise that this hour will be tangible in the form of blog posts, because I've got lots of things I started writing when I felt the urge and then put aside when the urge vanished. Whatever that "something" turns out to be, I'll know I was writing even if no one will.

It may not be possible, but I've got to convince myself that writing is the answer. The only question is, will I believe me?

Trainblogging

2008-10-04T19:52:00.002+09:00

Got a few minutes to myself here while I ride the rails.

As ridiculous as this may sound (especially when it's coming from a hastily-typed note I crafted on the train) I'm slowly becoming more excited about writing thanks to the blog. I know most of my posts are extremely self-centered and of little interest to the rest of the Internet, as my traffic and feedback have slowed to a crawl, but the more words I manage to shovel onto this page the better I feel about, well, everything.

I grew up really resenting the pressure to write in school. Book reports, essays, lengthy papers for history class, even straight-forward creative writing drove me nuts. I locked myself into an insane cycle of anger and frustration: I hated writing because it was hard and it was hard because I hated doing it. My troubled relationship with the written word is the number one reason I'll never make it to graduate school, even though I recognize the enormous benefits it would bestow on someone like me, a man with precious-few job skills and a fondness for studying Japanese.

Yet after I played the extraordinary BioShock demo last night, once my heart finally lept back into my chest, my first instinct was to try and write about the experience. Regardless of my dwindling readership or platform of choice (the web being notoriously cluttered with enthusiasts gushing about their favorite niche-entertainment), the notion that someone with my history would feel motivated to write out of sheer excitement...it's an incredible feeling.

I've already arrived at the station so I must put the phone down now, but more than anything I want this feeling to last. Wish me luck.

Friday Night Rapture

2008-10-03T23:59:00.001+09:00

I saw this Japanese guy the other day with "F*CK" written across the ass of his jeans. Pretty funny on its own, but what killed me was the placement of the star. It was almost dead center, lying on the seam as if it was a guide - or a bullseye - to his crack. If I had bigger balls I would have just snapped a picture but cellphone cameras are, by design, extremely non-discreet. I would have had a hell of a time explaining why I was surreptitiously photographing him from behind.

As predicted, I had a busy week. Beyond the usual work issues, the weather was so unpleasant that we had to leave our laundry hanging inside and perform multiple loads mid-week. It felt like I was coming home to a laundromat every day and nothing seemed to be drying as it should. It wasn't much, but juggling soggy shirts and towels felt a little taxing this week when combined with job stuff. Of course, the gloomy weather that forced our laundry inside in the first place wasn't helping my mood either.

Today was different. Very, very different. Sure, I was busy, but on Fridays I don't mind busy. Yes, I had to scold several children who were ignoring me or fighting with each other in class, but on Fridays I don't mind discipline. And when I was teaching class entirely by myself because the teachers either left the room or sat completely silent while I struggled to explain things in Japanese (that's their job, of course), I smiled and reminded myself that on Fridays I don't mind doing everything myself. Little did I suspect what this particular Friday would have in store for me once work was over.

I came home and clicked on the PS3 to check out what new offerings, if any were in store for me. The PSN Store is updated every Thursday, but that's on US time. Here in Japan I'm asleep when those changes are made, so my first chance to explore it is on Friday afternoon. I didn't have anything particular in mind that I wanted, so if nothing of interest popped up I guess I planned on buying Mega Man 9 so I can stop wondering how hard it might be, geek out, and just play it already. But I discovered there was something that is definitely "of interest" to me: a demo version of BioShock.

Let me explain the situation a little bit for those unfamiliar with this game in particular or video games in general. BioShock was released last year on PC and Xbox 360 to tremendous professional acclaim, so much so that its reputation as a must-experience title became a given among gamer-types on the Internet. Much like Portal, its quality was so widely praised that it became an "instant classic" of sorts and I found it repeatedly pushed before my eyes as something I should be playing. After a little research and a lot of tweaking, I did purchase and play through Portal this spring. It didn't look so hot because I had to compromise some settings in order to get it running on my two-year old laptop, but it certainly lived up to the hype. More than a great game, I felt it was one of the greatest science-fiction stories I had ever experienced. If I ever find the funds to get myself back into PC gaming-proper, I will definitely play through it a second time just to experience it again with the proper aesthetics.

BioShock, on the other hand, proved to be beyond my reach. No amount of tinkering would get it to work on my computer and it's not even available for sale in Japan, so the monetary and logistical investment needed to play that game was simply out of the question. Contrasting console platforms and PC system requirements are among the most frustrating elements of being an avid video game enthusiast, for these barriers are unique among major forms of entertainment. International-release schedules aside, there's nothing to stop me from selecting any film in the local DVD store and watching it at home, because I own a DVD player. Video games are only available in specific formats that require specific hardware. If you don't have it, you cannot play that game. I could do nothing but continue to hear of it lauded as a magical superlative of gaming while I sat around and played other, non-BioShock games.

At least, that was the case until this evening, when I discovered a demonstration version of BioShock available for download. It's coming soon to the PS3 and this was going to be my first hands-on experience with the ferociously-celebrated game. When I fired up the demo I was immediately impressed by the art-style, a kind of Miami-art-deco mixed with The Hudsucker Proxy. It was a snap judgment on the most basic of elements, but I took it as a good sign.

More importantly, the publishers made sure to launch the player (um, that's me, I guess) directly into the environment while still maintaining a user-friendly system that explained to me what control options were available. I've played a lot of very poor demos on the PS3; some that felt way too hard (Mega Man 9 for sure), some that didn't clue me in on what the game was about (Mercenaries 2 and Haze just toss you straight into a war zone with virtually no orientation or guidance) and some were just plain boring (Star Wars: Force Unleashed). While I have no confirmation on this yet, I suspect BioShock did the right thing by making the demo the same as the opening of the real game. On-screen prompts and a mysterious voice on a radio gave me a steady stream of necessary info and the Pause menu featured a ton of material on the rules of the game.

Best of all, the whole thing just explodes - literally - from the start and demands your full attention. When the opening animation featured a guy sitting on a plane and thinking out loud, I was preparing myself for a long backstory or a text crawl of exposition. Instead, the plane crashed and my character was alone in the water, gasping for breath and surrounded by flames. Again, I expected some animation to show my guy find his way to shore or be rescued by a passing ship. Not at all: this is the beginning of the game. I was stunned to find myself in control when I tapped the joystick out of curiosity.

It didn't take me too long to find my way onto some sort of island where the story started to unfold one step at a time while continuing to leave me in control at all times. No long cinematic sequences (save for a brief, creepy encounter with a little girl), no prophetic documents explaining who I was or where I was going; I took what facts I could from my surroundings and kept moving forward, gathering what little new information I could. The demo doesn't go very far (as one might expect) but when it ended I felt positively exhilarated. My heart was racing and my mind was flooded with anticipation - I was, rather, I am roaring to experience more of this world. I know I've only played a minuscule portion of the game thus far and the story or gameplay may yet turn out to be more repetitive or laborious than I might enjoy, but considering the mountains of recommendations the game has received combined with the stellar opening chapter (or possibly half-chapter) I saw this evening, I am sold. Bring it, BioShock. I want it.

That would have been a very exciting end to a post mostly about video games, except my evening wasn't over. Hell, it was less than two hours later when I got the e-mail telling me I qualified for a free beta trial of LittleBigPlanet, another upcoming game I have a considerable interest in. Of course, as video games go LBP couldn't be more different than BioShock and my head is spinning from the juxtaposition of the two titles in a single night. However, it is getting quite late right now and LBP is the kind of game that needs a lot more than a summary of why I want to play with it (note my choice of words). So I'm going to go to sleep and I'll let you know what I think of that game in a couple days. It deserves that much.

Still...even at this hour I am positively blown away by what I saw tonight...BioShock...you son of a bitch...what if you are as good as they say?

Delicious, But Is It Karmic?

2008-10-02T13:51:00.001+09:00

Today's lunch was a delightful surprise: whale-meat curry with "olive bread" and fruity yogurt for dessert.

According to the menu, today's meal was supposed to give the children a "taste of India." Hence the bread was crafted to resemble Naan in appearance but it was much fluffier and practically flavorless. I'm no Hindu scholar but I must wonder about their choice of meat. Indian food features plenty of chicken, pork, lamb, and even seafood. But whale? To borrow another faith's terminology, it doesn't seem kosher.

Theology aside, I continue to be impressed by the variety and quality of food offered in the school lunches. And the price can't be beat: these meals cost just 216 Yen a pop. Even if the food was lousy (and it's not!) I'd couldn't complain. To think, I grew up in a much wealthier community and I never had access to anything like this in high school, let alone elementary school. What's their secret?

Better Late Than Never is still LATE

2008-09-29T21:01:00.003+09:00

Seriously, why didn't you yell at me sooner?

It was another day of go-to-work-but-don't-teach-thanks so I brought my laptop and spent the entire morning amusing myself in the English room where grey skies, damp weather and lower temperatures left me positively shivering. I started typing a longer post but - surprise! - it's not done yet. We'll see when I can manage to wrap that up. After lunch with the students I thought I could just do a little reading in the staff room without retreating to the now-frosty English room. This turned out to be a mistake, or possibly a blessing. I haven't decided which best encapsulates what happened.

The vice-principal noticed that I wasn't working and he decided to talk me about it, suggesting to me that I could better spend my time at work improving the English room and making it my own. While my initial reaction was "oh crap, he's upset that I'm not working when I'm not teaching" I took some comfort from his totally calm and straight forward suggestions as to how I could accomplish these things. If he wanted to scold me, he could have made his points and walked away in a huff. Rather, he elaborated and encouraged me to consider how I could increase the appeal of the English classroom, possibly by making it not feel like a classroom at all.

While I'm still not sure if he was reproving me or merely offering me genuine ideas, one thing is for sure: this notion of decorating the English room never occurred to me before and hearing it now is about three months too late. At the other schools which have English classrooms, they handle everything. They created them on their own initiative (it was not my request - this school included) and they designed them as they saw fit. At no time has anyone even implied that I should (or could) set about putting my own touches on the decor. I simply never thought of sprucing up a classroom I only use one day a week, and while I can't complain about tardy suggestions that are absolutely good ones, I am slightly miffed that he saw me sit around all summer doing nothing and only put this out there today. The timing couldn't be more "perfect" as I go into teaching overdrive starting tomorrow. I won't spend a single idle day at this school until December.

Meanwhile, in yet another episode of Don't Trust Anyone, I discovered that some of the flash cards I need to use tomorrow were still unlaminated and sitting in an envelope with some unrelated paperwork. Luckily, somebody somewhere ordered more laminating sheets, so I just sealed them myself and that was that. The lesson of the day (in both cases, really) is that I have to extremely proactive in dealing with this school. I have to assume that all English-related tasks will be ignored and apparently I must try to anticipate future responsibilities that I might assume on my own, because no one's going to ask me to help out until it's too late.

Why this particular school puts me in this position time after time, I can't say. Somehow the hardest school to teach in is also the hardest work environment to navigate - that is, the place where I feel like I need the most help offers me the least. Hey, at least it's only one out of five! It could be much, much worse.

Blogging the Mundane

2008-09-28T20:08:00.005+09:00

With two weeks of potentially busy days ahead, I'd better make sure to post something while I've got the chance.

My weekend was pretty super, thanks. Although the rain and clouds discouraged me from going out on Friday night, I still had a pleasant evening at home partially thanks to some delightful discoveries and no doubt enhanced by the seasonal snacks. Japan is really big on "limited time" goodies and it seems like the stuff they roll out after summer is always worth trying. One more reason I love Autumn!

On Saturday we hit the mall and went to the movies, where I finally crossed Iron Man of my list of "anticipated movies people in America have been talking about forever." Without getting into it too much, I can happily report that Mako and I both had a great time. I was, of course, the only person in the audience laughing at Robert Downey Jr's twisted take on Tony Stark, but Mako insisted she felt the movie was "fun," although when pressed to compare it to The Dark Knight she felt that movie was better (I agree).

If only I had let myself enjoy that film all day, I might have avoided some unpleasantness later that evening. I had rented Ghost Rider earlier this week, figuring I would watch it during my multiple days off. But I never did, so last night I found myself looking at the clock and I said to myself "Well, you might as well put it on now because it's going back tomorrow." In hindsight, I should have just brought it back; the movie was awful. It was not merely mediocre in comparison to Iron Man, it was so uniformly nonsensical and poorly executed I found myself groaning alone in my apartment (Mako, luckily, had already gone to bed).

This was also the final weekend of the September sumo tournament. While my favorite ragin' yokuzuna, Asashoryu, pulled out early with an injury, I still got a kick out of watching the talented Ama finish with twelve wins, his best performance to date. Everyone else I cared about did OK and should be back in November at a higher rank. Hopefully someone will manage to beat Hakuho, because I just find him boring to watch. I recognize his skills, but he seems so passionless. I like my grand champions angry and possibly crazy, not incessantly friendly and grinning.

Mako and I did our best to clean up the place this afternoon, which meant we actually opened and set up the iPod-compatible speaker I bought as a gift last week. Now Mako can just click her iPod into place and listen to music while she cooks, cleans or otherwise spends time in the living room/kitchen/dining room. Hell, the sound carries pretty well, so you can hear the music clearly in any room. I don't know how much usage I'll get out of it, but if we ever have a party I am definitely setting my iPod to all 80's music and slapping it in that sucker.

Tomorrow looks like a quiet day at school, so I hope to write something. Probably nothing insightful, honestly, but we'll see what I come up with. In the meantime, please keep reading the tweets and feel free to peruse my shared items from Google Reader. Both can be subscribed to if you're down with RSS.

One last thought, as I'm out of material: Do updates of little consequence amuse you, gentle readers? Or would you rather I skip the little things and make mega entries critiquing my life, my job, and Japanese society?

Smiletime Factory

2008-09-26T20:20:00.003+09:00

Feelin' fine indeed.

Today was the PS3 release date of the impossibly retro-faithful Mega Man 9. I grabbed the demo version, started it up and couldn't help but grin, grin, GRIN like a imbecile. It's something that has to be seen to be believed, and even with "2008" written on the title screen I still can't believe that this game wasn't made fifteen years ago. I know there's no logical explanation for this, but playing a obsolete-looking sprite-based platform game on a new, widescreen TV was delightfully incongruous. The whole point in investing in HDTV is for higher-resolution entertainment, and yet I sat there and felt nothing but sunshine in my heart while staring at blocky, pixelated graphics.

The only downside is that so far, the demo isn't much fun to play because it's way too hard. While all the press materials have insisted this "neo-nostalgic" (new word I probably just made up) piece of art is supposed to brings gamers back to the golden age of Mega Man 2 (the really good one, for those not in the know), here's the thing: I played Mega Man 2 when it was new and not some magical gold-standard of Nintendo Past. I played it and played it and played it some more, beating it many times over for the fun of it. If MM2 was as hard as MM9's demo, I would not have played it much; no one would have, certainly not the 12 year-old me with other games at my disposal. So MM9 appears to be purposely harder than it needs to be to appeal to the false perception of modern gamers that the old NES games were really difficult, and that simply wasn't always the case. While there were plenty of hard games back then that I kept playing for reasons I can't explain now (Ninja Gaiden 1 & 2, I'm looking at you), MM2 was not one of those games.

But never mind all that - here's the real treat of my evening. My friend Chad, a man I met at Kansai Gaidai a few years ago, just arrived in Japan this summer via the JET Programme. He's started blogging and he decided to make a video tribute to...me. Yes, me. Please, go to his site and take a look. It made me very happy, perhaps it will make you happy too.

Other than that, I've got new TV shows from the States to watch and we're going to the movies tomorrow! Consider me entertained, for now.

The Sport's The Thing

2008-09-25T20:00:00.004+09:00

Our national nightmare is over. This morning I woke up without a drop of sweat on the bed. Indeed, I was downright chilly. Japanese summer has finally ended, just two days after the Autumnal Equinox (which is actually a holiday here). This means I can actually wear clothes at home again! Let's hope Japanese winter doesn't show up and ruin this feeling before December.

Besides the not-at-all-gradual change between the seasons, the big news this weekend was my first undōkai or "Sports Day." I expressed some confusion two weeks ago at the massive amount of time committed to the preparation of this event, particularly at the expense of academics (and even more particularly, my classes). Now that I've finally seen one for myself, I think I understand how the undōkai is such a big deal, although I'm still fuzzy on the why.

As you can see from the pictures, this is way different than the Field Day we had at my elementary school. This is an area-wide event, not just a day of outdoor games for the children's sake or an exhibition for proud parents. Local business owners and board of education officials were in attendance. Tents, flags, props, banners, speakers, sound systems...all of this was set up by the students, teachers, the PTA (yeah, they use that acronym even though none of the words match in Japanese) and eager locals who spent Friday, Saturday and early Sunday morning getting everything ready. One teacher told me he was up at 5 AM which means he probably arrived at school before I even got out of bed.

The event was supposed to take place on Sunday morning but, as noted here, there was a tremendous downpour that forced them to postpone. Considering how often it rains in Japan in September (this is typhoon season, after all), I was surprised to hear that this was the first time that has ever happened. While they always designate an alternate rain date, this meant they spent the rest of Sunday morning revising the schedule of events. With their rain date being on Wednesday, they had to cut about half (!) of the planned activities as those relied on community volunteers who have regular jobs. For a school with less than seventy students, they were clearly counting on the participation of more than ninety adults from the area.

So all this means that the impressive exhibition I got to see on Wednesday was ultimately a mere shell of the intended display. The number of attendees was pretty scarce, no doubt due to the weekday obligations of the parents, but most students I met said at least one parent showed up and many children said they had extended family members in the audience. I can't imagine how many people might have come if Sunday hadn't been rained out. The school's playground is not very large and only a small portion of it was sectioned off for spectators. There also wasn't much in the way of shade - would hundreds of people have crowded together like some kind of rush hour train platform and stood there, watching their children and grand-children run relay races? All signs point to yes.

Gigantic red, white and blue balls - it's not just a metaphor for American hubris anymore!

Let me try to explain the gist of what goes on: the children are divided into three teams: red, white and blue. They march into the "arena" carrying a flag and wearing little colored sashes to identify their team - otherwise, their uniforms are identical. The teams compete, sometimes as a whole but certain events only feature a section (i.e. the first graders) of players while the others sit on the side and cheer. BOY, do they cheer. There's even a cheerleading competition where each squad puts on a skit with a story that requires them to cheer for themselves - kind of meta, I suppose. I was one of the judges for that event, actually. I had to evaluate the teams on "voice," "movement," and "idea."

If you've ever played Ouendan!!, you can imagine what these skits were like. The red team staged a superhero battle where the cheers encouraged the hero to defeat the villains, but they were sorely lacking in props or costumes. The villains were just children in trash bags! The white team cheered for a fictional Olympic softball pitcher in the gold medal game (Japan is super-jazzed about finally beating the US - you have no idea), eventually using one of the giant balls seen above to bowl over the opposing batter. They also collaborated on an impressive (and unexpected) "dragon dance" where all of the children formed a line and moved together, the lead child holding a box for a head. The blue team also went with an Olympic theme, lauding gold medalist Kosuke Kitajima (using their blue pom-poms to simulate the water) but then making a curious segue to the new Miyazaki film, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (I suppose both involve water). I was blown away when the children inflated a giant representation of the title character right on the field!

Go ahead, make your own Buffalo Bill joke about putting things in baskets

Beyond throwing my vote towards the outcome of the undōkai, I was asked to assist in a most flattering way. While the children handle a majority of the announcements, even offering some play-by-play encouragement to their peers during the competitions, they asked me to precede each event with some kind of English description and they wanted me to put some flair on it. This struck me as a little odd as precious few of the attendees understood English in any meaningful way, but I love using microphones and hearing my own voice, so I happily accepted this "narrowcasting" assignment. This was all on short notice, so I had to really improvise in describing these events I had never seen before. In the case of the tamaire (seen above), it's a game where each team tries to put as many tama ("ball") into the basket held above their heads before time runs out. Since the literal translation would be inappropriate ("Insert balls") and "basketball" is another game entirely, I just shouted "Fill the baskets!" They seemed pleased.

Considering how much that must hurt, a good number of them are smiling

Not everything at the undōkai is a competition. This picture comes from the last event of the day, kumitaisō (I dubbed it "team aerobics"). All the fifth and sixth graders went onto the field and started stretching and contorting themselves in a highly rehearsed sequence. Only a teacher banging a drum gave them any direction - no one offered any verbal instructions. As it went on, they formed pairs, and then groups of three, four, and so on until forming a giant pyramid.

Watching it all unfold before me, I couldn't help but be seriously impressed by the undōkai. Everyone chips in and invests a serious amount of their time in planning, rehearsing and eventually executing such a large exhibition for the community. Even in its lessened state, the undōkai was intimidating. Our town had just one elementary school, much larger than this one for sure, and I can't fathom being able to hold such an elaborate event for the public. Meanwhile, this rural district has six elementary schools and they all manage to engage their surrounding neighborhoods every fall. I'm assuming the middle and high schools engage in even larger displays.

My biggest lingering question is why. What is the significance of the undōkai? Is it just really fun for all parties involved? Is it an important lesson in teamwork for the children? Is it intended to reinforce community solidarity? It is designed to reassure parents that their children are doing more than reading and writing all day? I know that these are all possibilities, but I have this nagging feeling that it's really viewed as important for the emptiest reason possible: they do it every year because they've always done it. Considering the recent negative trends in Japanese education, especially in Osaka where test scores routinely rank at or near the bottom of the chart, could this time be better spent in class? I don't say this to disparage the tradition, because as traditions go this one is fun and I'm looking forward to seeing this again next fall, but I'm always curious about traditions I suspect are perpetuated for tradition's sake.

September 19th

2008-09-19T20:42:00.006+09:00

On this day...

...four years ago, I was a student at UAlbany just a few weeks into my first full-time semester of college in a decade. I was nervous about a lot of things but, aside from having no roommate, I felt like I was on my way to making new friends and adjusting to a new environment. Indeed, I went with a classmate to Schenectady that morning in search of a kendo lesson that never materialized. We would eventually get in the door, but after one visit I knew kendo wasn't for me. I certainly could have used the exercise - I'm sure I weighed well over 210 pounds at that point.

...three years ago, I was an exchange student at Kansai Gaidai just a few weeks into my first semester abroad. In fact, I was about to surpass my lifetime record for time spent in a foreign country, period. I was nervous about a lot of things but, thanks to my invisible roommate, I was confident that I could enjoy Japan on my terms despite living in a dormitory full of people I didn't feel I could really get along with. Part of that uneasiness sent me looking for Japanese people to meet over the Internet, and today happened to be the day I first met Mako for a tour of Kobe. It wasn't a date, but we both had a good time, and I looked a lot better than I had a year earlier thanks to an entire summer of eating better and working out daily.

...two years ago, I was living in a small Albany apartment, readjusting to American life and tackling my senior year. Mako and I were beyond dating - we were now dedicated long-distance-lovers chatting online every morning. School wasn't too challenging but every semester I managed to overload myself on one day of the week, in this case it was "Iron Monday." I made an audioblog concerning the details of this particular day but the company has since gone belly-up and it seems the files are lost. Serves me right for taking a shortcut?

...one year ago, I was still very much getting used to the idea that I was now an English teacher working in rural Japan. Although my confidence was shaky, with each new lesson I was rapidly convincing myself that I was able to succeed in this job. I wasn't really blogging at all, but I do remember the day pretty well. After a light day of classes, I rushed home and went to straight to city hall. Thanks to a weekend of filling out forms, I was ready to get married...alone. Once I submitted the proper paperwork at city hall, Mako and I would officially be married even though she was not present at the time. I made sure to call her later that evening to tell her the good news. That, and I had a couple beers to celebrate even though it was a Wednesday night and I don't like to drink on weeknights. But if you can't get a little tipsy on your "wedding night," what's the point? Especially if your new bride is still living with her parents!

...zero years ago, er, today, things are going pretty smoothly. Mako and I have been living together for almost an entire year (she moved in within two weeks of the marriage) and my job is pretty much under control, even if little things go wrong from time to time. Today I had my busiest day of this month so far, but it's all good because I don't have another class to teach until next Friday. There was a typhoon supposedly heading straight for us today but aside from some dark clouds and spirited, non-threatening winds, it never materialized. The only real "bad news" of the day was the phone bill. It turns out that my first full month of moblogging involved sending a hell of a lot of data through my mobile phone, skyrocketing my bill past $100. Mako and I looked over our options and we're confident we can wrangle these charges down in the future, but Step One means no more uploading video from the phone for now. A single 2MB file can potentially cost me fifty bucks worth of data fees!

So...happy anniversary to me. Feelin' fine. Feit...content!

Mako's Most Wanted

2008-09-18T21:40:00.002+09:00

Not much going on in real life, so let's talk about reel life...get it?

Dear sweet DEITY I love going to the movies. LOVE it. The only thing that keeps me from spending every weekend sitting in a theater staring up at the giant screen is the excruciatingly slow trickle of watchable movies that make it to Japanese shores. All native films are out, not just because I'm linguistically incapable of enjoying them but because most of them look like absolute shit. If it's not a melodrama about pretty boys crying it's a big-screen adaptation of a book or manga I've never read - which, coincidentally, will also be about pretty boys crying. There's a movie coming up - and I swear I am not making this up - all about a basketball team made up entirely of JAL flight attendants called Flying Rabbits. And no, it's not a comedy. They're deadly serious.

We just had a three day weekend here in Japan (it was "Respect for the Aged Day") and Mako and I hit the town on Sunday. We enjoyed a Mexican lunch at El Pancho in Shinsaibashi (complete with half-price frozen margaritas), did some shopping at Uniqlo, ogled the new shiny things at the Apple Store and even gorged ourselves on ribs at the Outback Steakhouse in Umeda. In the midst of our consumer orgy we also took advantage of "Toho Cinemas Day," an informal promotion the theater chain is running whereby all tickets are only 1000 Yen on the 14th of each month. They had previously announced the campaign would end in August but it seems that they are extending the discounts into next year. I for one am grateful because as nice as the Japanese theatrical experience is (comfy chairs, designated seating and reasonable concession prices), the standard admission fare of 1800 Yen is extremely steep. Readily-available discount coupons can take that down to 1300, but that's still more than $12 a ticket.

The film of the day was Wanted which was actually Mako's choice, not mine. The trailers and posters made it look like another style-over-substance shoot-em-up where people act like they're in The Matrix except there isn't a Matrix to explain why they can jump from one skyscraper to another. Mako, however, has a "thing" for Angelina Jolie, it seems. I cannot elaborate on that "thing" because I only recently became aware of it. We've never seen any of her other films together (as we have for Mako's other favorites, like Matt Damon) so it was news to me when Mako poked me after seeing the Wanted trailer and told me "I want to see that!"

Of course, I am a reasonable man. I don't need much of an excuse to go to the movies and while this particular movie didn't look very promising, I have enjoyed other shoot-em-up pictures in the past (such as Shoot 'Em Up ^_^) and the critical reaction online seemed unusually positive for what I assumed was mindless violence. With my expectations set blissfully low I escorted my wife into the auditorium with a Coke in one hand and a bucket of caramel popcorn (again, her choice) in the other.

The movie was unsurprisingly mindless and devoid of all logic. It all gets off to a bad start when the film opens with expository text of the utmost superfluousness, followed by Wesley Gibson, the main character, giving us a voice-over tour of his stupendously shitty life. Seriously, his entire situation is so contortedly miserable that it would take multiple conscious decisions to end up in such a pathetic state. I've worked the mother of all dead-end jobs - the postal service - and as depressed as I was at the time it was never this awful. It was unrewarding and dull without actually being stressful, which is how people get sucked into those positions. If my life was anything like Wesley's I would have quit much sooner and probably would have been better off.

Even before people start shooting each other, the movie presents us with an ugly world. Wesley lives in a crummier-than-Rocky's-apartment apartment with a "girlfriend" who verbally abuses him at every opportunity. She is also sleeping with his "best friend" (a fact he is apparently aware of) who in turn mooches off of Wesley. I put both of these terms in quotes because let's face it, other than in the movies when you do encounter people who date/hang out with "friends" like this? As if that wasn't enough, Wesley's boss is a shrill, obese woman who berates him with profanity and physical intimidation over the quality of his work and his value as a human being. With two of the three female characters in this movie being this disgusting, I imagine the filmmakers must have some gender issues.

The film wisely rushes through all this to get to the action that the audience is waiting for, but things only get dumber once the bullets start flying in slow-motion. After Wesley tells us that his father abandoned him, his father is then introduced to us in a slick-looking action sequence that establishes what kind of universe this movie occupies: a man jumps out of a high-rise office window and propels himself to a rooftop across the street, shooting and killing his assailants before he lands. Soon Wesley finds himself being recruited to join the "fraternity" of assassins that mystery man belonged to, as it seems Wesley has an inherited ability to flood his body with adrenaline. This is all the film offers to explain how these characters perform gravity-and-reason-defying stunts in their quest to kill people.

I won't bother trying to explain the rest of the story because even at this point, my powers of disbelief suspension were being taxed to their limits. Even if I accept the notion that adrenaline is essentially a magic potion that turns men into supermen and that said superpowers also include an innate ability to handle firearms with deadly accuracy, that still doesn't explain why all of these killing machines resort to constant gimmickry (if that's not a word already, it is now) to take people out. Why use a telescope and a crazy long-distance sniper rifle to shoot someone in the head from across town when an explosive would get the job done just as quickly? If you know where the "secret" fraternity of assassins does all of its business (seriously, they have an office, a cafeteria, everything), why not just trash the place or shoot them as they head out the front door? Do massive amounts of adrenaline force them to showboat like this? Wanted is a very short movie but I couldn't help but wonder why it took them so long to get anything done.

Another problem with Wanted is the conspicuous similarity to so many other recent films. Besides the stylized gunplay that is a staple of action movies now, Wesley's rise from office worker to master combatant also drew heavy parallels to The Matrix, when we watch Mr. Anderson turn into Neo. Of course, the notion of a cubicle-dweller being frustrated with his life also reminded me of Fight Club, especially with all the voice-over detailing his problems. More recently, Jumper came out earlier this year and also featured a protagonist with a conspicuous missing parent and a serious contempt for the viewer (both films use narration to call the audience "chumps") while simultaneously relying on total wish-fulfillment to keep them in their seats.

The Wanted / Jumper comparison is an interesting one to me, for while I absolutely hated Jumper for its many faults, I didn't hate Wanted despite its equal egregious errors in judgment. I didn't enjoy it, frankly, but I found myself unable to really dislike either. Maybe it was the refreshingly colorful look of the movie (it's not all grays and blacks), maybe it was the music that I find stuck in my head days later, or maybe it was just that one moment when Morgan Freeman gets really angry and curses. Who can say? I can't recommend it but I will say that Mako had fun and I enjoyed being in the theater with her, even if I didn't particularly enjoy what was on the screen.

Why I Crave Feedback

2008-09-18T13:21:00.001+09:00

Today I received this note in a handmade envelope from a third grader:

"To Feit-sensei,
"English is my favorite subject!! I've been waiting for you to come [to class]!!"

New Web Toy

2008-09-15T08:22:00.003+09:00

Why is this so much fun?

Although I've never played Team Fortress 2 due to my computer being two years old (that's 65 in human years) I am aware of the general fondness for the game via blogs and other forums on the Internet. But this image generator can be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of TF2 familiarity. You can use it to create cute little pictures describing Person A vs Person B. For example, here's a famous moment in film history:

You see where this is going? People have re-created entire films with these "alerts." Consider me impressed and amused!

Wii Loan

2008-09-13T15:25:00.002+09:00

I never thought it would come to this.

When I bought a Wii for Mako last summer (which wasn't easy to come by) it was supposed to be something we could enjoy together. It was supposed to be the magical equalizer: a system with something for everyone.
Then came the bad news. Nintendo's aggressive region-locking methods shut us out of nearly all Japanese content. After hearing time after time "Sorry, we can't play that," Mako quickly lost interest in the system. Just like that, the Wii went from uniter to divider as I was forced to choose between playing games and spending time with her. That's not much of a choice, trust me.

Once my gaming habit was forcefully relegated to the fringes of married life, I had a new choice to make. From a quantity and quality standpoint, the Wii was clearly lagging behind its competitors' games and online services. If I'm stuck here gaming alone, I realized, I might as well be playing the newest, hottest games with the option to play online. So I bought a PS3 (which doubles as a nice DVD player) and that was that. Our Wii became a dust-collecting memorial to squandered potential and broken dreams.

Today we lent the Wii to Mako's parents. Someone might as well get some use out of it because I hadn't turned it on in months and there are NO GAMES (as in zero) forthcoming that I'm interested in. How is that possible in this age of booming console sales? How did something designed to appeal to everyone lose my interest? I love games, dammit! If your machine is dedicated to video games, shouldn't you offer MORE than your "media hub" competitors?

Japanese Language Placement TERROR

2008-09-12T17:27:00.002+09:00

Despite (or because of) barely teaching much in the past five days, this week felt very long to me. Thankfully, the next two weeks will be much easier to digest with multiple holidays to break up the Monday-Friday grind and an increase of classes once all of the "sports days" wrap up. I have been invited to see one this year, which I would like to do, but I must first confirm that the buses run normally on Sundays. Remember, I work in the sticks and the buses are infrequent on weekdays, so the Sunday schedule might be extremely limited.

There was an unexpected element of fear that seemed to turn up this week, growing steadily as each day passed. I felt mildly uneasy on Sunday night, but I was watching a movie that whisked me through a great many emotional states. On Monday I kept myself busy with prep work for Tuesday, and the one class I taught on Tuesday went better than I would have expected. Still, I didn't feel good about what I had gotten done. Wednesday was business as usual (with a little bonus) but I was quite tense. Yesterday morning I was a nervous wreck, sweating far too much walking to school than the climate demanded. I had to teach my first two lessons of the semester at that school (which does not feature the most attentive students in my district) but I don't think that was the issue. All morning I tried my best to relax but I was extremely agitated, anxious and afraid in the face of some ever-swelling sense of terror that had (and I was just realizing this at the time) been with me since Sunday night.

It was mid-morning when I finally put my finger on the problem: Today is the deadline to apply for the JLPT, an annual exam that I couldn't prepare in time for last year and I had told myself I was obligated to take this year. The test isn't until December but the surprisingly-complicated application process starts in August and has a strict deadline in September. After that, applicants spend the next three months or so studying, studying, studying for the big day. Having heard that levels 3 and 4 aren't worth much in the eyes of employers, I had vowed to take level 2 this year. The jump from 3 to 2 is steep, requiring a knowledge of more kanji then I ever got to study in four years of college, but the knowledge that some of my classmates at Albany managed to pass level 2 during our senior year told me that it was a reasonable goal to set for myself.

I'm surprised I didn't put the pieces together sooner concerning my unexplained tension and a looming deadline. Deadlines are a problem for me - a really, really big problem for me. Whatever the project or purpose, whenever I find myself up against a deadline I go into a completely irrational state of panic. I have trouble sleeping, I overeat like I'm training for a competition, and I am positively on-edge at all times. College was a constant source of deadline torture, and my only perceived solution was to stay up all night and write the necessary paper or complete the very important application in one extended nightmare session. Occasionally I managed to pull this all-nighter in advance of the deadline, but usually I was working right up until the last possible minute.

No deadlines are almost worse because I get to simply put things off indefinitely. Examples include the long-overdue feitclub.com redesign, various personal essays that are half-written (or not yet started), applying for a spouse visa, that one incomplete I never managed to write in college, et cetera. If you ever find yourself wondering why I haven't written you an e-mail recently, it's because "common courtesy" has found itself on my "to-do list," a black hole of procrastination and laziness that shrouds all my deadline-less goals behind an event horizon of shame. Even entertainment and things I genuinely enjoy can find themselves in this dark place: I'm no closer to finishing Half Life* now than I was four months ago, meaning Half Life 2 is sitting installed on my hard drive just waiting for me.

*FYI: I bought this game eight years ago and I am on pace to complete it by 2009. I bought the sequel as part of The Orange Box this spring, which means I should finish that game by my fortieth birthday (not including the inevitable follow-ups that will almost certainly be released in the interim)

Getting back to the matter at hand, I was sitting in the staff room yesterday morning totally terrified yet suddenly aware of the source of all my woes. It was evident to me that I had to make a choice: bury my fear so I can get back to work or completely collapse in the face of another deadline. The choice was an easy one, but exactly how I could get over myself was a trickier call to make. I had, in theory, enough time after work to get to the local bookstore and buy all the materials I needed, assuming they had them in stock (otherwise I would have to go into Osaka). Running over the potential afternoon I was laying out for myself, I realized that my inner preparatory monologue was making me even more frightened. In a flash, I had discovered that this was more than a deadline issue. This was a failure issue.

Earlier this summer I tried to apply for a special "translation/interpretation" Japanese language course which I thought was the natural extension of the "advanced" correspondence course I completed in the spring. The entrance examination required some proctoring and it turned out to be significantly harder than I expected, so much so that I had to leave large portions of the answer sheet blank. Sitting there unable to answer 80% of the questions in front of two colleagues, I found myself extremely frustrated and morbidly embarrassed. I was so humiliated by the experience that I was actively fighting back tears on some level.

Yesterday's panic attack was not just over a deadline, it was over the test itself and that ties directly into the test I took a few months ago. The putrid taste of that failure is still lingering in the back of my throat. I still have very little confidence in my Japanese ability and I haven't noticed any ostensible improvement since last year when I felt I wasn't ready, so the prospect of applying for the JLPT forced me to think ahead to the actual test three months from now. The deadline was an annoyance; the test was the real nightmare that was scaring me shitless.

So...I gave up. Or maybe I woke up. Either way, I'm not taking the JLPT this year. I can pretend it's a studying issue and that my two-week vacation of awesome in November is going to interrupt my test prep time, but that's a non-issue. I'm scared of that test, period. Clearly there's some plateau of confidence or some invisible standard of Japanese comprehension I need to surpass/exceed/achieve before my fragile ego can handle the stress. In the meantime, I'm stuck with the procrastinator's motto: I'll do it next year.

A Winner Is Me

2008-09-10T13:25:00.001+09:00

Today's lunch was made extra-special thanks to an unexpected decoration courtesy of the fifth graders. I don't know what prompted the personalized flag atop my bowl of rice, but I'll be damned if it didn't taste a little better as a result.

Monster Envy

2008-09-08T18:20:00.004+09:00

Good news, if a little late: today at work I finally had an opportunity to sort out everything that didn't get done last week in preparation for classes. I think I'm going to have to get used to the fact that nothing around here gets done before the semester starts. Even if you have an entire day devoted to preparing for classes during summer break, there's always going to be some crucial element left undone that will have to wait until after the students show up and the teaching staff is extremely busy.

I had some "me" time this weekend because Mako went to Kobe for not one but two B'z concerts, both times returning home around midnight. I turned my lonely-frown upside-down by renting a film that I could watch and enjoy alone that she had absolutely no interest in seeing. It wasn't until I got to the video store that I realized the perfect choice had just hit the shelves this weekend: Cloverfield.

I found the movie to be extremely compelling. As a fan of The Blair Witch Project, I was an easy sell for the "gimmick" of Cloverfield wherein all the action is presented from a single hand-held camera's perspective. They cheat a little bit with professional edits that don't jive with the notion that somebody is just sitting there recording everything, and there were occasions where the gimmick strained my suspension of disbelief (instead of "Don't go in that room" I found myself thinking "Put the camera down and run, asshole!") but otherwise the choice to use hand-held photography made the movie far more enjoyable than if it had just been presented like a typical monster-destroys-New-York movie (US Godzilla, I'm looking at you). The central characters weren't the most interesting bunch of folks but the gimmick forced them into the spotlight and kept them there for the entire story. The more time they spent on the screen, the more I couldn't help but identify with them, in at least some small way or another.

Cloverfield reminded me of the excellent Korean-made monster flick The Host (which I saw last year), in that both films kept the action tightly focused on a small group of people. The Host didn't use the first-person-cameraman idea but otherwise it and Cloverfield follow an extremely similar set-up: the audience meets the protagonists and gets a glimpse of who they are before things get crazy. Once the monster arrives, the audience and the on-screen characters have to deal with the situation together - that is, neither the characters on-screen or the people watching the movie know more than the other about the creature. Cloverfield slightly missteps here because the opening titles actually reveal more to the audience than we need to know about how the "footage" we see will end. I wouldn't call it a spoiler but it's decidedly unnecessary to try and "explain" why we are watching the events unfold from somebody's personal camera. The Blair Witch Project needed a reason as it was tied to the premise and marketing of the film as a documentary about still-missing film students. Cloverfield is obvious fiction from the first scene, so the framing device is completely superfluous.

By contrast, bigger, broader, and dumber disaster films insist on a giant cast of players, spreading themselves way too thin across standard character stereotypes. The loser trying to redeem himself in the face of sudden adversity, the clueless authority figure unwilling to make the hard choices to solve the crisis, the brilliant scientist who tries to warn others but is ignored, the hardcore soldier who puts his duty ahead of his own well-being, etc. etc. etc...none of these dullards show up in Cloverfield and I think the gimmick helped to keep them away. With a single camera recording the entire film, there can be no cutaways to City Hall or NASA or anywhere.

If I had a problem with Cloverfield, it was the far-fetched notion that these people could continually and apparently randomly keep running into the monster again and again. I know Manhattan isn't the biggest island but it's large enough to make me wonder how these tiny humans might possibly encounter the lumbering behemoth so many times, even when they are doing their best to run away from it. Slasher films do this a lot, but at least in those cases the slowpoke killer is actively chasing the protagonists. I'm not sure why the creature in Cloverfield seemed to happen upon the same unarmed civilians so often, because there's no reason to believe it was trying to find them.

However, I got more out of Cloverfield than a good thrill. As a New Yorker who has been dealing with his share of homesickness lately, I found myself getting a little emotional due to all the New York memories the film reminded me of. Right from the first scene near Central Park and Columbus Circle, I thought of a New Year's party my friends & I managed to get into in a penthouse a few years back in that neighborhood. The trip to Coney Island was a nostalgic one made all the more painful by today's news that Astroland may be closed for good. Even throwaway scenes like shopping in a New York deli made me feel like I was missing something in my life here in Japan.

Speaking of Japan, there was another element that spoke to me personally. All of the main characters are gathered at a surprise "farewell party" for one guy who's going off to Japan for a new job. While watching the party scenes, my mind wandered a bit and I started to feel sad that I've never had a farewell party, let alone a surprise farewell party. Then I started thinking about all the parties I have attended in New York and how awkward I always managed to feel, so even if I had such a party I don't think I would be able to enjoy it. This reminded me of the fun we did have this March when I came to town, followed by frustration by the fact that I came to New York to celebrate my wedding and I barely had any time to relax with my friends - arguably the main goal of the trip in the first place.

Wow...as you can see, the movie overwhelmed me for a variety of reasons. Let me just wrap up here with a strong recommendation of Cloverfield and add a forceful declaration that this November, things will be different. And if a monster attacks during our evening of karaoke, I volunteer to hold the camera.

Upgrade?

2008-09-08T09:05:00.001+09:00

So long tedious-to-arrange folding chairs, hello splintery-looking benches! Only time will tell if our new seats are an improvement over the old ones, but for now I've got a class-is-half-full outlook.

It's Over, Billy

2008-09-06T20:22:00.003+09:00

After years of "wait and see" and feeling smug when I was ultimately proven right, I think this year the Yankees are pretty much screwed.

For a long time, I was spoiled. Since 1995, I have had the good fortune of watching my favorite baseball team succeed tremendously in the regular season and having a run at a championship in October every year. Some years (1998) they were incredibly dominant, other years (2000) they just seemed to get lucky. Most of the time, they started slowly, so there were frequent cries of "It's Over!" in May or even July. Yet every year, they showed up at the end of the year with a fighting chance to win the World Series.

It didn't bother me too much when the stopped going all the way like they used to. Yes, 2004 hurt, even more than the lackluster first round exits did, but I got six months of good baseball for my money's worth, so I didn't let it get to me.

Until this year, that is. The Yankees, for whatever reason, didn't have it this year. There were some tough injuries, yes, and last year's monster was considerably quieter this year (despite leading the team in nearly every offensive category AGAIN), but ultimately, the team as a whole just didn't work. To be frank, I didn't have a chance to watch enough games on NHK to really understand why they failed. Once Matsui got hurt, the Japanese networks lost all interest in broadcasting the Yanks. It's official: NHK loves the Red Sox now, and not just when Matsuzaka is on the mound.

So while they are mathematically still eligible to turn it all around and make a run for it, watching today's game (Friday night for you, Saturday morning for me) showed me they were lifeless. They were nearly no-hit in their loss to the worst team in baseball. A month ago, I'd write it off and look forward to tomorrow's game, but with less than a month left and trailing the fucking ~~Devil~~ Rays by double-digits (seriously, why the hell are they good now?)....it's over. It's fucking over and that's sad.

Well, I've still got the Tigers to root for! Of course, they've lost five of their last six and the Giants are gaining on them fast. *sign* I need another beer.

Nobody Here But Us Chickens

2008-09-05T09:40:00.001+09:00

Bad news: the enthusiastic English teacher at one of my schools suddenly requested a month-long leave of absence. No one knows why, although they've recorded it on the board as "sick leave."

Is she OK? Is she coming back? What impact will this have on English classes here? She wasn't very good at speaking English but she really tried her best to get her students excited about our classes. Likewise, she pushed to arrange for an English room here and largely designed it herself. I hope no tragedy has entered her life.

Money for Very-Little, Chicks for Minimal-Effort

2008-09-04T19:57:00.004+09:00

I've got some great news to report if I don't tire myself out by musing at length on my job.

Four days into the new semester, my schedule is starting to take shape, and so far it's looking just like I imagined it would. September is going to be very quiet, as most of the schools insist they need to focus their efforts on preparing for the annual undōkai (運動会). It's a school-wide competition/exhibition of athletic and physical contests, such as relay races and choreographed dances. Back in elementary school, we called it "Field Day" and it was something no one talked much about until two days before it occurred. In Japan, it's a massive event that requires weeks of planning, so my lessons are put on the back burner. In other words, having the children practice playing Tug of War is far more important than teaching them English. If there's a more succinct statement on the fundamentally-low priority placed on English education in Japan, I haven't encountered it yet.

As I'm commuting to work on a regular basis once more, I'm getting back into my usual routine of listening to podcasts while riding out into the countryside. While I admit I am a big fan of the various 1up.com podcasts on video games, it's not all superficial pop culture discussions on my iPod. NPR's This American Life is a wonderful weekly show that manages to run the gamut of humorous anecdotes and heart-wrenching tragedies, often including both extremes in the same broadcast. The latest episode's theme was "something for nothing" and the stories all featured persons who achieved a measure of financial success while circumventing the traditional "get a job, work hard" method that we all accept as normal. The program told these stories specifically to explore the hidden costs of these money-for-apparently-nothing routines.

For example, there was one guy who won a truck in one of those contests where you win by placing a hand on a vehicle and standing there until everyone else drops out. He explained that even though you don't pay a financial price to win the truck, the contest lasts for days at a time and when you go through that extended period of sleeplessness and boredom, you drive yourself crazy. I don't know how much of my sanity I'd part with for a brand-new pick-up truck.

This got me thinking about my current position as an English teacher in Japan. On the surface, this looks like a deal that's too good to be true. I'm hired as a teacher simply because I am a native speaker, something I achieved without dedicated study. Despite having virtually no training as an educator and precious little experience working with children, I get set up with a place to live in a modern, developed nation with a high standard of living and I receive a fairly generous salary for working substantially fewer hours than my colleagues. There's an established network of fellow English teachers who I can meet up with, and Japan is an easy place to meet women. Dream come true, right?

Well there's a serious sacrifice to be made here, and it's something I honestly never considered before I applied. Since the telephone and the Internet make keeping in touch with my friends and family in the United States affordable and easy, I always assumed that any issues of loneliness or homesickness could be solved with a simple conversation. The truth is, that's not enough. There are times when I feel downright foolish for leaving behind New York and all the people I know there. The occasional contact I have with people in America magnifies, rather than shortens, the distance that lies between us. I am becoming more aware at the rift slowly opening between myself and everyone I know and love in the States. In short, much like that guy touching the truck, the longer I live in Japan the more I feel myself slowly...changing.

Is this cause for alarm, an excuse to run back to New York screaming? No, I don't think so. While I have become increasingly mindful of the "price" I pay for participating in the JET Programme, the reward thus far has definitely been worth it. As awkward as I feel at times, I need only remember my friend Scott who lived here for six years and still managed to come back to New York and reintegrate himself into our circle of friends. He changed, I know, but the person who came back from Japan was still a guy we wanted to hang out with.

What's my point? My point is I'm coming to New York in November and I'll be around for Thanksgiving. Regardless of what the future-future holds, the near-future includes me hanging out with everyone again real soon. I'm feeling another KARAOKE THROWDOWN, who's with me??

What, Me Prepare?

2008-09-02T18:04:00.002+09:00

One of the biggest problems I have is dealing with helplessness. Whenever I encounter situations that leave me feeling out of control and unable to manage my surroundings, I get frustrated, angry and extremely irritable. The worst thing about teaching English in Japan via the JET Programme is experiencing these feelings over and over again.

When I first arrived last summer, I found myself defaulting to "helpless" as a state of mind, mostly due to the wait-and-see attitude of the JET Programme. I spent three days in Tokyo at an orientation that offered me virtually no training or guidance regarding my new job, all the while forcing me to pack and repack my suitcases so that my luggage could be shipped off to my new home (which I had never seen) via my new employers (who I had yet to meet). Then I was brought to Osaka with the tacit assumption that my employers would meet me at the station, although no one could (more like no one would) confirm this before I got on the train. They did show up and I was whisked away to my apartment which had no phone or internet connection, where I had little choice but to rely on my supervisor to do everything for me. Even when basic communication protocols were established, I still found myself in a daze for all of August, as no one was willing to sit down and really explain what I would be doing in the classroom. It took weeks for me to really get a handle on things and truly relax.

Having one year under my belt, I had high hopes that this new school year would be different. I knew what to do, I knew most everyone's name, so what could go wrong? Things got off to a great start last week when we had a large gathering of English teachers to prepare the lesson plans and necessary materials. We spent hours brainstorming, printing flash cards and feeding them into the laminator, carefully producing a complete set of props for each school. Up until this point, I had to carry my teaching aids with me to each school. This year, we were looking to prevent that by making sure every school had every resource ready from Day One. Sadly, today I was reminded, painfully, of how planning and preparation doesn't add up to much when the chaos of the school year begins.

I showed up for work today with few expectations. Given my experience of previous semesters, I knew it would be a while before anyone would have time to review the lesson plans or even write down when our English classes would take place. So you can imagine my surprise when I was handed a complete schedule of classes for the entire semester which included one lesson for this morning! At first, I was impressed. I thought "Clearly, they're trying to take English as a subject seriously for a change."

Once the morning meeting ended, I saw the teacher responsible for English lessons run out the door and head for his homeroom. I had to run after him to ask about my first class: obviously, I needed to know where the materials we had prepared we being kept so I could go over everything before the students showed up. He kept running, dismissing my question by saying "You don't have class today." When I told him the schedule said otherwise, his reaction was a stunned "No way!"

Let that sink in for a second. The man who prepared my schedule of classes didn't actually read it before handing me a copy.

I had to follow him all the way to his homeroom where he told me to wait outside. Unfortunately, my class was supposed to start second period, so I really didn't have time to wait. I ran to the English room to check if he perhaps stored the materials there - he hadn't. Also, none of the thirty-five chairs were set up for the students yet. I went back to the staff room and noticed a familiar-looking envelope on his desk. Inside I found all of the materials we had prepared last week, obviously unopened or looked at since that meeting. A quick inspection showed me that half the flash cards were still unlaminated. After running out of laminate, we kept printing with the knowledge that the laminating would have to completed at a later date. Silly me, I was counting on that "later date" to come before I had to actually teach! Likewise, the game worksheets that should have been photocopied had not been, nor was the song I was supposed to use available in any format - no CD and no lyrics for me to teach the children.

After tracking him down again and pointing out how much preparation remained along with the acute lack of time or resources to complete that preparation in the twenty-five minutes I had before class was supposed to begin, he agreed to cancel the English class for today. While that did solve the immediate concern of how to teach a class without any materials, it merely highlighted the overall problem of no one really caring about English class at this particular school. It also means that's one more class I'm going to have to fit into my busy schedule later this semester, as September is otherwise lesson-free. That's something else I had asked to avoid - scheduling an entire month of no classes - but it seems that request was ignored.

So here I sit, angry and frustrated all over again. I don't see what else I can do here. I am an "assistant language teacher" who rotates between five different elementary schools. I only have one day a week for this particular school. When we have meetings about lesson plans or teaching materials, I have no choice but to continue my "rounds" and hope that when I come back, the teacher responsible for English will have addressed, or at least considered, whatever it is that we had discussed. At the very least, he should know better than to schedule my classes before all the materials are ready.

Does this strike anyone else as completely ass-backwards? I'm the bottom rung, the lowest of the low, the last guy anyone thinks about when it comes to the teaching staff. Why am I responsible for pressuring my supervisors/coordinators to do their jobs? And with the time constraints of five schools a week, how can I even pull that off? Do I need to start calling teachers at home?

No Labor Day for me

2008-09-01T21:35:00.000+09:00

Dammit, it's hot again. What happened? Last week was gray and a little gloomy but it was nice and cool, so I didn't turn on the A/C once. Yet here I sit on Monday night, dripping with sweat again! No fair, Japan, no fair at all.

Today was the first day of the fall semester which meant the school was no longer empty and creepy. It didn't mean any classes though, so when the children all left early, I was told by the principal to go home as well. It was a lucky break as I had forgotten to bring a lunch and there's no shops near the schools where I work.

Speaking of food, I went out on Friday to hang out with a bunch of JETs at a Mexican restaurant in Shinsaibashi. It was a damn good meal and a lot of fun meeting more new people. Of course, included in the group were a few not-so-new people who I simply haven't seen since last year. We actually went out to The Blarney Stone for a couple drinks afterward and I hung in there as best I could before heading home to Mako. She's been a real sport in supporting my social wants lately. I hope this doesn't become a problem in the long term, because I do enjoy going out and drinking/dining with English speaking people for a change.

I found myself going out again on Saturday because I got invited to see Tigers-Giants at Koshien, a real thrill! A few teachers from one of my schools got their hands on a pack of tickets and they asked me if I wanted to go. I stunned them all by showing up in full gear: a Tigers cap, a Tigers jersey and a big plastic bat for cheering or banging against things. By the third inning my hand was sore from smacking it with the bat, so I went and bought a second bat so I could hit the two of them together, pain-free. It was a very good decision. In case you missed it, you can scroll down and see a picture (in Twitter) and a video I posted live during the game. Not bad for a guy with three beers in him.

Once the game was over I met Mako at her parents' house (they live in that area) for yet another beer (her Dad insisted!) before spending the night. I'm not sure why we were sleeping over but　I get the feeling they just love guests. Every time I visit they tell me to tell my family to come to Japan and stay in their house. So Mom, Salena, hurry up and get over here so they can have more guests.

Spending all day Sunday at their house was a little draining. I don't have much to do when I'm over there, so as friendly as they are I eventually just really, really want to go back to my apartment. I think part of it is the wall Mako erects around herself, blocking all PDA including hugs. I'm the kind of guy who LOVES hugs and my weekends are the ideal time to snuggle with Mako, so hanging out in the one place we can't do that...well, that's very trying. I understood all the stealth crap when we were merely dating, but we're goddamn husband and wife now. My father-in-law has openly asked me to have children, therefore he is keenly aware that we BONE. So why not hug around Mom and Dad?

We took a trip to the western side of Kobe, some area called Suma. There was this mountain with a cable car that we rode, leading us to a weird roller-coaster-like lift (if roller coasters just went up really slowly) to an even higher point on the mountain. None of it was particularly exciting or anything, but it offered a nice view of the city and the sea. Here's that view on Twitpic.

So things around here are pretty quiet. I'm back to work but there's no sign yet of when I will be actually working while at work. But I've got plenty of books to read, so don't worry about me. This heat, on the other hand, has got to go. I was getting used to eating a meal at home without wiping myself down afterward.

Hey, Fukuda just resigned. I've been here one year and I've seen two Prime Ministers resign in that time. Yeah, they're in trouble over here.