Thursday, April 01, 2010
Persona Non Grata
It seems I am experiencing first-hand the downside to living an online life: my residence in Japan is now in jeopardy.
As I mentioned on Twitter I spent a good chunk of the last two days gathering forms and applying for a new visa. The "education" work visa I received in 2007 is up this summer and having gotten my money's worth I figured now was the time to finally switch over to a spouse visa. Yes, I could have gotten one as soon as Mako and I got married, but it would have definitely been a single year visa which would mean an extra trip to the immigration office (not to mention more fees). So I rode out my work visa to make everything a little easier.
Convenience comes with a price, it seems. Based on the "curt" phone call we received today, the people in the visa office were suspicious as to why I waited nearly three years to apply for a spouse visa. They started making phone calls and I guess I they gave this assignment to the one person in the office who spoke English because that person found my blog and Wired Game|Life.
One phone call to my Board of Education revealed that my freelance writing career is incompatible with my present work visa. While none of this would, strictly speaking, have any bearing on my new spouse visa, the fact that I've been sneaking in non-education work on the side means that everything I submitted to them is now being treated as potentially false.
What does this mean? Right now I don't have any answers. Nothing has been revoked (YET) but clearly the immigration people are upset. My BoE is upset. The JET coordinators in Osaka are upset. That's way too many upset people for this story to end on a happy note.
My options are extremely limited at this point. I haven't technically been punished yet for technically breaking the law and I have to wait and see what they decide before I take any action. This website offers some hope, as there are cases there similar to mine where everything ended up (more or less) restored to normal. Certainly, there's no prison time on the table or anything crazy like that, but there could be a steep fine or even deportation (though that's an extreme example).
Points on my side? I'm not that easy to replace because I work in elementary schools where a fair amount of Japanese knowledge is required to communicate. I am, in fact, married to a Japanese national and we have a baby who is also a Japanese national. Without me in the picture they would have no means of supporting themselves and would likely be forced to leave with me. Japan is stupid sometimes but they rarely deport their own.
OK, it seems waaaaay too many people fell for this so I'm just going to stop you right there: WHAT DAY IS IT TODAY? Where does that link above go to? Sorry if anyone was actually scared.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
As I mentioned on Twitter I spent a good chunk of the last two days gathering forms and applying for a new visa. The "education" work visa I received in 2007 is up this summer and having gotten my money's worth I figured now was the time to finally switch over to a spouse visa. Yes, I could have gotten one as soon as Mako and I got married, but it would have definitely been a single year visa which would mean an extra trip to the immigration office (not to mention more fees). So I rode out my work visa to make everything a little easier.
Convenience comes with a price, it seems. Based on the "curt" phone call we received today, the people in the visa office were suspicious as to why I waited nearly three years to apply for a spouse visa. They started making phone calls and I guess I they gave this assignment to the one person in the office who spoke English because that person found my blog and Wired Game|Life.
One phone call to my Board of Education revealed that my freelance writing career is incompatible with my present work visa. While none of this would, strictly speaking, have any bearing on my new spouse visa, the fact that I've been sneaking in non-education work on the side means that everything I submitted to them is now being treated as potentially false.
What does this mean? Right now I don't have any answers. Nothing has been revoked (YET) but clearly the immigration people are upset. My BoE is upset. The JET coordinators in Osaka are upset. That's way too many upset people for this story to end on a happy note.
My options are extremely limited at this point. I haven't technically been punished yet for technically breaking the law and I have to wait and see what they decide before I take any action. This website offers some hope, as there are cases there similar to mine where everything ended up (more or less) restored to normal. Certainly, there's no prison time on the table or anything crazy like that, but there could be a steep fine or even deportation (though that's an extreme example).
Points on my side? I'm not that easy to replace because I work in elementary schools where a fair amount of Japanese knowledge is required to communicate. I am, in fact, married to a Japanese national and we have a baby who is also a Japanese national. Without me in the picture they would have no means of supporting themselves and would likely be forced to leave with me. Japan is stupid sometimes but they rarely deport their own.
OK, it seems waaaaay too many people fell for this so I'm just going to stop you right there: WHAT DAY IS IT TODAY? Where does that link above go to? Sorry if anyone was actually scared.
Labels: extra extra, Internet issues, Japan, teaching, writing
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Thankful for the Basterds
Hey, it's Thanksgiving! Oh hey, I'm in Japan, so Thanksgiving doesn't mean dick! Indeed, this will be my first Thanksgiving in four years without any familial contact. Last year I was in New York on this holiday and the year before that my parents and sister were in town for my wedding. Frankly, even four years ago I was at Kansai Gaidai surrounded by similarly homesick Americans. I guess I can take some comfort in that I'm in the process of building my own family now, so someday in the future we can have our own Thanksgiving if we feel like it.
I keep thinking about Inglorious Basterds and how terrific it was. The more I revisit it in my mind, the more things I find to love about it. Conversely, I find the elements that bugged me about the movie becoming less significant. This is the opposite of how my thought process usually works. Typically, when I reflect on a film, video game or whatever, I latch onto the flaws and nitpick them while telling myself "I can only do this because the rest of it was so good." With Inglorious Basterds I'm actually downplaying elements that irritated me when I first watched it.
For example, I was not a fan of Eli Roth as Donny, "the Bear Jew." I hold no personal animosity towards the man (I liked Cabin Fever and found Hostel more interesting than people give it credit for) but his portrayal of the supposedly-intimidating bat-wielding Nazi killer did not work for me. There's an incredible set-up for the character where high-ranking Nazis (including Adolf Hitler!) discuss how horrible he is and how he might be a "golem" (boy do I regret not noting how they translated that word into Japanese), plus there's that long shot of the tunnel where you cannot see him but you hear the sound of his bat coming from the dark. But when he emerges, he's just a (somewhat) hairy guy in an undershirt. Not particularly bear-like, in my opinion.
However, as I think about the film again and again, I realize that the entire Basterds unit was a rather unassuming bunch of guys. They're not particularly bad-ass, they just kill Nazis in a purposely brutal fashion so that their enemies will spread rumors about their deeds. They're not The Dirty Dozen, they're just regular soldiers with a colorful modus operandi and Donny is perfect when viewed in that context. He's a loudmouth, a braggart; he carries a big stick but speaks loudly anyway. When he finds himself in a tight spot, such as sitting in a cinema full of Nazi brass, he looks genuinely terrified because he's in over his head.
(SPOILER ALERT)
...
...
In the end, their plan only succeeds due to the unexpected actions of others, namely Landa and Shosanna. Were it not for their "help," so to speak, Donny and the rest of the Basterds would have been killed, easily.
(end spoilers)
Even better than reconsidering what I didn't like about Inglorious Basterds is discovering new things that I did like. It occurred to me today that the movie made a direct appeal to me on a linguistic level. I have always had a strong sense of curiosity when it comes to foreign languages. The whole reason I live in Japan now is because of my interest in Japanese, and even though I'll probably never "master" it (if such a thing is even possible) I'm always on the lookout for tidbits of other languages.
One of the highlights of the JET Mid-Year Seminar is the free language class we get to remind us of what it's like to have a stranger speak to us using words we do not understand. After all, that's exactly what we do for a living. We never get too deep, as it's only one session, but I find it fascinating even if my retention level is pretty poor. Twice now I've gotten a taste of Cantonese from fellow JET Helen and the most I can remember is 1, 2, and 3.
Watching Inglorious Basterds reminded me of how exciting a multi-lingual environment can be. Nearly every character in the film speaks two languages with the glaring exception of the Basterds themselves. This is a group charged with infiltrating Nazi-occupied territory and the only members of the team who speak German were born in Europe. It reminds me of my trips abroad in high school when I met children my own age who spoke English wonderfully in addition to their native tongue while they were studying a third language in school. Meanwhile I was barely navigating basic conversations in French and my German was little more than a collection of nouns that sounded funny (e.g. eierstokke).
I know it's unfair to compare a multi-cultural continent like Europe with an archipelago nation that has serious xenophobia issues, but ever since I saw Inglorious Basterds Japan's view of foreign languages suddenly feels more imprisoning than ever. My day job consists of trying to expose sheltered rural children to the idea that there is an entire world full of people out there who do not speak Japanese. More often than not, I am met with resistance against the very notion that someone could speak more than one language. Everything around here is black and white in that respects.
I am told time and time again how "difficult" English is, as if that explains their national hostility towards it. Twenty years ago I spent months studying Hebrew against my will for my Bar Mitzvah. It wasn't easy and I complained a lot but I still did it. Compared to that, asking these kids to learn a handful of vocabulary words or study the alphabet does not strike me as unreasonable, yet their teachers cannot wait to make excuses for their lack of cooperation.
When you get right down to it, it's hardly the children's fault that they struggle with English. The entirety of Japanese society goes out of its way to shelter itself from foreign language. Advertisements are more likely to include a Japanese "search term" than an actual URL, lest a customer have trouble remembering a few letter of the alphabet. When foreigners appear on television outside of the NHK nightly news, they are typically subtitled and dubbed into Japanese. As if that double translation isn't enough to mask their bizarre manner of speaking, their words will be carefully rewritten to mimic rigid Japanese gender-based speech patterns.
Even while watching Inglorious Basterds in the theater I was feeling the Japanese pressure via the relentless subtitles. Absolutely every line in the film is subtitled, even ones that did not carry English subtitles, even one-word replies and people's names. Even Hugo's knife, which had an engraved message that flashed across screen for half a second while he sharpened it (upside-down, if I'm not mistaken), was subtitled in Japanese. Not a single moment in the film is left up to the audience to bear in an unfamiliar language. Hell, even when the year is written at the bottom of the screen, there's a Japanese subtitle just to make it clear that this is a year as opposed to a random declaration of a four-digit number (which they can totally read, by the way).
I guess I'll never understand why they are so anxious about these things, why nothing can be left untranslated or unexplained. Believe me, I wince when I see how the United States handles foreign language and foreign concepts from time to time (what I wouldn't give to see subtitled films in movie theaters instead of waiting for DVD), but at least we trust our lowest-common-denominators to understand that "si" and "non" mean "yes" and "no." Relax, Japan! A few funny-sounding words won't kill you, capice?
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I keep thinking about Inglorious Basterds and how terrific it was. The more I revisit it in my mind, the more things I find to love about it. Conversely, I find the elements that bugged me about the movie becoming less significant. This is the opposite of how my thought process usually works. Typically, when I reflect on a film, video game or whatever, I latch onto the flaws and nitpick them while telling myself "I can only do this because the rest of it was so good." With Inglorious Basterds I'm actually downplaying elements that irritated me when I first watched it.
For example, I was not a fan of Eli Roth as Donny, "the Bear Jew." I hold no personal animosity towards the man (I liked Cabin Fever and found Hostel more interesting than people give it credit for) but his portrayal of the supposedly-intimidating bat-wielding Nazi killer did not work for me. There's an incredible set-up for the character where high-ranking Nazis (including Adolf Hitler!) discuss how horrible he is and how he might be a "golem" (boy do I regret not noting how they translated that word into Japanese), plus there's that long shot of the tunnel where you cannot see him but you hear the sound of his bat coming from the dark. But when he emerges, he's just a (somewhat) hairy guy in an undershirt. Not particularly bear-like, in my opinion.
However, as I think about the film again and again, I realize that the entire Basterds unit was a rather unassuming bunch of guys. They're not particularly bad-ass, they just kill Nazis in a purposely brutal fashion so that their enemies will spread rumors about their deeds. They're not The Dirty Dozen, they're just regular soldiers with a colorful modus operandi and Donny is perfect when viewed in that context. He's a loudmouth, a braggart; he carries a big stick but speaks loudly anyway. When he finds himself in a tight spot, such as sitting in a cinema full of Nazi brass, he looks genuinely terrified because he's in over his head.
(SPOILER ALERT)
...
...
In the end, their plan only succeeds due to the unexpected actions of others, namely Landa and Shosanna. Were it not for their "help," so to speak, Donny and the rest of the Basterds would have been killed, easily.
(end spoilers)
Even better than reconsidering what I didn't like about Inglorious Basterds is discovering new things that I did like. It occurred to me today that the movie made a direct appeal to me on a linguistic level. I have always had a strong sense of curiosity when it comes to foreign languages. The whole reason I live in Japan now is because of my interest in Japanese, and even though I'll probably never "master" it (if such a thing is even possible) I'm always on the lookout for tidbits of other languages.
One of the highlights of the JET Mid-Year Seminar is the free language class we get to remind us of what it's like to have a stranger speak to us using words we do not understand. After all, that's exactly what we do for a living. We never get too deep, as it's only one session, but I find it fascinating even if my retention level is pretty poor. Twice now I've gotten a taste of Cantonese from fellow JET Helen and the most I can remember is 1, 2, and 3.
Watching Inglorious Basterds reminded me of how exciting a multi-lingual environment can be. Nearly every character in the film speaks two languages with the glaring exception of the Basterds themselves. This is a group charged with infiltrating Nazi-occupied territory and the only members of the team who speak German were born in Europe. It reminds me of my trips abroad in high school when I met children my own age who spoke English wonderfully in addition to their native tongue while they were studying a third language in school. Meanwhile I was barely navigating basic conversations in French and my German was little more than a collection of nouns that sounded funny (e.g. eierstokke).
I know it's unfair to compare a multi-cultural continent like Europe with an archipelago nation that has serious xenophobia issues, but ever since I saw Inglorious Basterds Japan's view of foreign languages suddenly feels more imprisoning than ever. My day job consists of trying to expose sheltered rural children to the idea that there is an entire world full of people out there who do not speak Japanese. More often than not, I am met with resistance against the very notion that someone could speak more than one language. Everything around here is black and white in that respects.
I am told time and time again how "difficult" English is, as if that explains their national hostility towards it. Twenty years ago I spent months studying Hebrew against my will for my Bar Mitzvah. It wasn't easy and I complained a lot but I still did it. Compared to that, asking these kids to learn a handful of vocabulary words or study the alphabet does not strike me as unreasonable, yet their teachers cannot wait to make excuses for their lack of cooperation.
When you get right down to it, it's hardly the children's fault that they struggle with English. The entirety of Japanese society goes out of its way to shelter itself from foreign language. Advertisements are more likely to include a Japanese "search term" than an actual URL, lest a customer have trouble remembering a few letter of the alphabet. When foreigners appear on television outside of the NHK nightly news, they are typically subtitled and dubbed into Japanese. As if that double translation isn't enough to mask their bizarre manner of speaking, their words will be carefully rewritten to mimic rigid Japanese gender-based speech patterns.
Even while watching Inglorious Basterds in the theater I was feeling the Japanese pressure via the relentless subtitles. Absolutely every line in the film is subtitled, even ones that did not carry English subtitles, even one-word replies and people's names. Even Hugo's knife, which had an engraved message that flashed across screen for half a second while he sharpened it (upside-down, if I'm not mistaken), was subtitled in Japanese. Not a single moment in the film is left up to the audience to bear in an unfamiliar language. Hell, even when the year is written at the bottom of the screen, there's a Japanese subtitle just to make it clear that this is a year as opposed to a random declaration of a four-digit number (which they can totally read, by the way).
I guess I'll never understand why they are so anxious about these things, why nothing can be left untranslated or unexplained. Believe me, I wince when I see how the United States handles foreign language and foreign concepts from time to time (what I wouldn't give to see subtitled films in movie theaters instead of waiting for DVD), but at least we trust our lowest-common-denominators to understand that "si" and "non" mean "yes" and "no." Relax, Japan! A few funny-sounding words won't kill you, capice?
Labels: frustration, Inglorious Basterds, Japan, JET, movies, teaching, Thanksgiving
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Sunday, November 15, 2009
The Week That Was: Teaching, Presenting, & Gaming
Quite a week, that. Three days of teaching (two in my biggest, unfriendliest school) plus two days attending the JET mid-year seminar. It was a nice break from my usual routine and I did enjoy having a chance to go into the city instead of heading out into the countryside. And hey, free calligraphy lesson
This year's seminar was a little different/scarier because I had to deliver a presentation of my own: "Juggling Elementary Schools." I guess I should have seen this coming. After years of complaining that the JET Programme didn't do enough to address the unique issues of elementary schools, it seems I have become the best person to actually talk about those issues. I just wish I had a time machine to go back to 2007 and deliver this workshop to myself because I was still nervous as hell back then.
Funny sidenote: when I was first contacted to deliver this presentation, I was standing on the floor of the Tokyo Game Show back in September. Talk about worlds colliding!
And while we're talking games, I should mention that I went to Games Japan Festa 2009 in Osaka on Saturday. The show lasted two days but to be frank, it was a small show. I will be writing a few things about it for Wired Game|Life but anything that I don't cover there I will report on right here.
And as long as we're on the subject, my story on dessert-dispensing crane games went live on that site late last week. Go on and have a read if you didn't already. For the record I did not win anything in the two separate visits I made but I would absolutely consider going again if I had company, hopefully in the form of someone good at crane games. I want pudding, damn it!
つづく...(Click here to read more)
This year's seminar was a little different/scarier because I had to deliver a presentation of my own: "Juggling Elementary Schools." I guess I should have seen this coming. After years of complaining that the JET Programme didn't do enough to address the unique issues of elementary schools, it seems I have become the best person to actually talk about those issues. I just wish I had a time machine to go back to 2007 and deliver this workshop to myself because I was still nervous as hell back then.
Funny sidenote: when I was first contacted to deliver this presentation, I was standing on the floor of the Tokyo Game Show back in September. Talk about worlds colliding!
And while we're talking games, I should mention that I went to Games Japan Festa 2009 in Osaka on Saturday. The show lasted two days but to be frank, it was a small show. I will be writing a few things about it for Wired Game|Life but anything that I don't cover there I will report on right here.
And as long as we're on the subject, my story on dessert-dispensing crane games went live on that site late last week. Go on and have a read if you didn't already. For the record I did not win anything in the two separate visits I made but I would absolutely consider going again if I had company, hopefully in the form of someone good at crane games. I want pudding, damn it!
Labels: JET, Osaka, teaching, video games, Wired
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Mid-September Settlement
It's been a busy couple of days, but it hasn't been a sweaty couple of days which makes me very happy. Summer seems to have let up early this year as it's only mid-September but we've already stopped using the air conditioner. I'm still wearing short sleeves everyday but the sweet spot of autumn should be here soon.
A quick thank you to everyone who expressed concern/encouragement after I made a somber tweet last week. There wasn't anything major going on at the time, I just felt run down and I didn't know why. I wasn't expecting all the responses I got, but I appreciate them. The glum feelings didn't last but the knowledge that so many people are out there listening endures.
I spent Saturday outdoors with a few JETs exploring Uji in southern Kyoto. I had been there in 2006 with Mako on a date so I knew what to expect, and the experience was pretty much as I hoped, save for the rain and the underwhelming turnout. There were only six of us and they were all people I had met before. This is not a bad thing, of course, but I enjoy meeting new people at these "JET-togethers" since I don't spend much time away from my family otherwise. I can't go to next week's pub quiz either, as I'll be in Tokyo.
Oh yeah, Tokyo...I promise I'll write about the big news tomorrow. I had initially said it was three weeks away on Sept. 3rd, but my plans have changed. I'm leaving on Tuesday and I'll be there through the weekend. I know I would be excited in any case as this is my first "vacation" of 2009 but with the things I have in store for me, I can hardly believe it's less than a week away.
Until then, I'm still expected to show up for work this week (I know, the nerve!) and it's been tiring but things are settling down. Monday was my first visit this semester to the tiny mountain school (entire student body pictured above) which is exhausting in a special kind of way. The classes are so small I have to come up with extra stuff to do to fill the entire class period. Also, without any public transportation in the area, I have to sit around and wait for someone to leave in order to get a ride home. This being Japan, I didn't get home until 6:30.
The more interesting developments have taken place at my largest school (entire student body pictured above playing tug-of-war). Rather than follow the lesson plans of the proactive, forward-thinking school that usually coordinates all the English language classes in Hana Town, they have been developing their own lessons this year. The thinking behind this was that if homeroom teachers are actually creating the lesson plans themselves, then they won't sit back and watch me do their job for them.
So far, the results have been mixed. A few teachers have embraced the changes and really stepped up. This means less shouting and less stress on my part. It also means less English, as the homeroom teacher has no choice but to conduct class in Japanese, but better them than me.
Other teachers, sadly, have not shown any signs of changing their ways. Some of them still retreat to the back of the room while others sit down with the kids like they're just another student in the class. That might sound like a clever idea to keep them quiet, but in reality it downgrades the teacher's presence from "authority figure" to "observer."
Meanwhile I'm the only adult standing in front of thirty or so children and I'm trying to convince them that the funny words I'm using are, in fact, a language and not just gibberish. Sometimes I am successful, but other times they simply dismiss me by babbling and giggling as I speak. I try to stay positive about it, reminding myself that not everybody is being disrespectful and some of them are actually paying attention. There's also the cynical way of looking at it, since I get paid whether the kids learn anything or not, but that's not very constructive.
Other than that, life at home hasn't changed much. Mako is feeling fine and Go continues to sleep, cry, eat, and grow. At last check he was nearly thirteen pounds. His most distinguishing feature is still his ruthless ability to look cute. I'll leave you with another taste, reminding you that he'll be appearing later this year in New York City should you want the full experience.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
A quick thank you to everyone who expressed concern/encouragement after I made a somber tweet last week. There wasn't anything major going on at the time, I just felt run down and I didn't know why. I wasn't expecting all the responses I got, but I appreciate them. The glum feelings didn't last but the knowledge that so many people are out there listening endures.
I spent Saturday outdoors with a few JETs exploring Uji in southern Kyoto. I had been there in 2006 with Mako on a date so I knew what to expect, and the experience was pretty much as I hoped, save for the rain and the underwhelming turnout. There were only six of us and they were all people I had met before. This is not a bad thing, of course, but I enjoy meeting new people at these "JET-togethers" since I don't spend much time away from my family otherwise. I can't go to next week's pub quiz either, as I'll be in Tokyo.
Oh yeah, Tokyo...I promise I'll write about the big news tomorrow. I had initially said it was three weeks away on Sept. 3rd, but my plans have changed. I'm leaving on Tuesday and I'll be there through the weekend. I know I would be excited in any case as this is my first "vacation" of 2009 but with the things I have in store for me, I can hardly believe it's less than a week away.
Until then, I'm still expected to show up for work this week (I know, the nerve!) and it's been tiring but things are settling down. Monday was my first visit this semester to the tiny mountain school (entire student body pictured above) which is exhausting in a special kind of way. The classes are so small I have to come up with extra stuff to do to fill the entire class period. Also, without any public transportation in the area, I have to sit around and wait for someone to leave in order to get a ride home. This being Japan, I didn't get home until 6:30.
The more interesting developments have taken place at my largest school (entire student body pictured above playing tug-of-war). Rather than follow the lesson plans of the proactive, forward-thinking school that usually coordinates all the English language classes in Hana Town, they have been developing their own lessons this year. The thinking behind this was that if homeroom teachers are actually creating the lesson plans themselves, then they won't sit back and watch me do their job for them.
So far, the results have been mixed. A few teachers have embraced the changes and really stepped up. This means less shouting and less stress on my part. It also means less English, as the homeroom teacher has no choice but to conduct class in Japanese, but better them than me.
Other teachers, sadly, have not shown any signs of changing their ways. Some of them still retreat to the back of the room while others sit down with the kids like they're just another student in the class. That might sound like a clever idea to keep them quiet, but in reality it downgrades the teacher's presence from "authority figure" to "observer."
Meanwhile I'm the only adult standing in front of thirty or so children and I'm trying to convince them that the funny words I'm using are, in fact, a language and not just gibberish. Sometimes I am successful, but other times they simply dismiss me by babbling and giggling as I speak. I try to stay positive about it, reminding myself that not everybody is being disrespectful and some of them are actually paying attention. There's also the cynical way of looking at it, since I get paid whether the kids learn anything or not, but that's not very constructive.
Other than that, life at home hasn't changed much. Mako is feeling fine and Go continues to sleep, cry, eat, and grow. At last check he was nearly thirteen pounds. His most distinguishing feature is still his ruthless ability to look cute. I'll leave you with another taste, reminding you that he'll be appearing later this year in New York City should you want the full experience.
Labels: Japan, JET, Kyoto, mystery, number one son, teaching
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Monday, August 31, 2009
Bye Bye August
I am so glad this month is over. I don't normally point fingers at or curse arbitrary time designations but this August was a particularly nasty one. I won't be sorry to see it end.
I say this because the arrival of my mystery illness coincided almost perfectly with the start of this month and now that it's over, I am feeling much better. This should have been a light month for me, a period where I could write or play games or do whatever I wanted because I wasn't needed much at work. Instead, I spent a lot of my time feeling like crap, wrote very little and didn't do much of anything.
I certainly didn't have the energy to properly welcome my visiting family or escort the new JET in my area around. Everyone says they don't blame me, but I blame me because my absence no doubt put more pressure on everyone around me who doesn't speak Japanese. So let me say it one more time for all to hear: I'm sorry I wasn't stronger.
But let's move on, shall we? The weather and my condition have improved dramatically over this final week of August. I have to assume those facts are related, because nothing I received from any of the doctors I visited could have "cured" me. Perhaps it was psychosomatic, perhaps it was a passing bug or virus, or perhaps it was just something I ate. It's over now and I'm glad to be rid of it.
Classes have resumed at school and I'm picking up where I left off as best I can. Some students listen, some students don't. The same goes for the teachers I have to work with: some listen, some don't. Most of the schools have done a pretty good job of being prepared to discuss and start classes on the very first day I am available to teach (with this morning being a notable but ultimately predictable exception).
The best news out of all of this is that Go remained happy and healthy throughout the month, so whatever the hell happened to me it didn't have any visible effect on him. I leave you with this photo of him as evidence that my son is, objectively speaking, the most adorable baby of all time.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I say this because the arrival of my mystery illness coincided almost perfectly with the start of this month and now that it's over, I am feeling much better. This should have been a light month for me, a period where I could write or play games or do whatever I wanted because I wasn't needed much at work. Instead, I spent a lot of my time feeling like crap, wrote very little and didn't do much of anything.
I certainly didn't have the energy to properly welcome my visiting family or escort the new JET in my area around. Everyone says they don't blame me, but I blame me because my absence no doubt put more pressure on everyone around me who doesn't speak Japanese. So let me say it one more time for all to hear: I'm sorry I wasn't stronger.
But let's move on, shall we? The weather and my condition have improved dramatically over this final week of August. I have to assume those facts are related, because nothing I received from any of the doctors I visited could have "cured" me. Perhaps it was psychosomatic, perhaps it was a passing bug or virus, or perhaps it was just something I ate. It's over now and I'm glad to be rid of it.
Classes have resumed at school and I'm picking up where I left off as best I can. Some students listen, some students don't. The same goes for the teachers I have to work with: some listen, some don't. Most of the schools have done a pretty good job of being prepared to discuss and start classes on the very first day I am available to teach (with this morning being a notable but ultimately predictable exception).
The best news out of all of this is that Go remained happy and healthy throughout the month, so whatever the hell happened to me it didn't have any visible effect on him. I leave you with this photo of him as evidence that my son is, objectively speaking, the most adorable baby of all time.
Labels: family, frustration, Japan, JET, number one son, poor health, teaching
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The Burden of Being Abroad?
The second semester has begun a week earlier than usual thanks to that flu panic Osaka went through back in May (coincidentally, the flu is back in the news this week as the country faces an increase in the number of cases). The good news is that the weather has magically cooperated, offering us lower humidity and cooler temperatures in the morning and evening. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was September...in New York.
Yesterday was the opening ceremony (yes, Japan has opening and closing ceremonies for every school semester) which meant I saw the students but then quickly waved goodbye and watched them all leave at 11 AM. I can see the logic in not having any classes after a closing ceremony, but why do opening ceremonies get their own education-free days?
I shouldn't complain, really, because we teachers always get together and have a nice box lunch on these opening and closing days. My lunch yesterday was quite substantial, although I could have done without the extra plate of mostly-pickled vegetables. They were obviously homemade and extremely sour. Why would you do that to a pumpkin in the first place?
I enjoy these meals because they offer a nice change of pace from the usual school lunches and because I really like Japanese food. However, the one nuisance factor is that if I attempt to discuss or ask any questions about the food, I then bring upon myself another round of "can you eat Japanese food?" and "oooh, you use chopsticks so well!" inanity. I know two wrongs don't make a right, but some days I wish I could catch these people eating a bowl of fettuccine and ask them "can you eat Italian food?" and "wow, you know how to use utensils!"
It didn't help that throughout lunch, one of the older teachers ("M-sensei") was talking about her trip to China over the summer. All she could talk about was how awful it was to hear so many foreigners talking and how upset she was about having to use English even though she still used Japanese when pointing at maps and asking directions. Her summary of the trip was "In the end I was just happy to be back in Japan" and everyone laughed, not in a "you are a horribly sheltered person" kind of way but in a "I know just what you mean" kind of way.
I know I'm a big weirdo for leaving my home country and moving to another one for an extended, indefinite period of time, but is this seriously how the majority (or even a substantial minority) thinks about traveling abroad? What is it about hearing an unfamiliar language that becomes troubling or upsetting to so many people? I've been to Asia twice now (not counting Japan) and even though English was common enough for me to get by, the dominant language present was still Chinese. It's not a particularly easy language on the ears, in my opinion, but being surrounded by it didn't bother me in the slightest.
Perhaps it's my American or even my New York upbringing that makes a difference. Of course English is my native tongue but I've been hearing other languages spoken around me for decades. Kids at school, people at work, or even just random folks on the street have all exposed me to regular doses of foreign languages over the years. Aside from the occasional foreign pop culture import or an annoying English teacher at school, few Japanese people have had that experience. Maybe if I was as sheltered as they are, listening to a conversation in Russian or Thai for the first time might piss me off as well. But if that were the case, why would I take an overseas trip in the first place? Did someone force this lady onto a plane at gunpoint?
I guess I'm biased, because she happens to be one of my least favorite teachers to deal with in all the schools I visit. She manages to be simultaneously incredibly lax with disruptive students and unnecessarily cruel to students who have too much energy. She gets way too physical with the naughtier kids which isn't that unusual in Japan but that doesn't magically make me accept smacking kids in the head as normal. She also routinely "forgets" about English class even though her classroom is adjacent to mine. Worst of all, she is a first grade teacher so this is the example these poor kids are getting when they first come to English class: a grumpy adult who wants nothing to do with foreign languages.
I don't want to keep harping on this soon-to-be-retired elderly lady but she really crossed the line yesterday when she managed to fall asleep during our meeting about this semester's English plan. I'll admit I've nodded off during meetings before, but those were always massive affairs that didn't particularly apply to me and they were conducted entirely in Japanese. Yesterday's meeting was only for four people (including me) and was entirely in Japanese for her benefit and she still couldn't bother to stay awake. I predict a few "forgotten" lessons in my future this fall.
Too bad she wasn't the only person who couldn't make it through an English meeting with their eyes open yesterday. The sixth-grade teacher, a young man who is very friendly to me and often gives me a lift to school in the morning, said absolutely nothing during our meeting and almost lost consciousness several times. This is a guy who tries his best to participate in class and serves as a good role model for the students and yet he had nothing to contribute to a meeting about English education. If he doesn't care, what hope do I have of ever reaching people like M-sensei?
Of course, I could be overreacting. I wasn't exactly chipper and alert yesterday afternoon either, and even when these meetings serve a purpose there are just so damn many to endure in Japan that it's understandable how people could just tune out right in the middle. What's most important is that, at least at this school, the lesson plans and necessary materials for the entire semester are already finished. That is extremely good news, not just for me but for the students.
Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need a nap. I've been up for hours.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Yesterday was the opening ceremony (yes, Japan has opening and closing ceremonies for every school semester) which meant I saw the students but then quickly waved goodbye and watched them all leave at 11 AM. I can see the logic in not having any classes after a closing ceremony, but why do opening ceremonies get their own education-free days?
I shouldn't complain, really, because we teachers always get together and have a nice box lunch on these opening and closing days. My lunch yesterday was quite substantial, although I could have done without the extra plate of mostly-pickled vegetables. They were obviously homemade and extremely sour. Why would you do that to a pumpkin in the first place?
I enjoy these meals because they offer a nice change of pace from the usual school lunches and because I really like Japanese food. However, the one nuisance factor is that if I attempt to discuss or ask any questions about the food, I then bring upon myself another round of "can you eat Japanese food?" and "oooh, you use chopsticks so well!" inanity. I know two wrongs don't make a right, but some days I wish I could catch these people eating a bowl of fettuccine and ask them "can you eat Italian food?" and "wow, you know how to use utensils!"
It didn't help that throughout lunch, one of the older teachers ("M-sensei") was talking about her trip to China over the summer. All she could talk about was how awful it was to hear so many foreigners talking and how upset she was about having to use English even though she still used Japanese when pointing at maps and asking directions. Her summary of the trip was "In the end I was just happy to be back in Japan" and everyone laughed, not in a "you are a horribly sheltered person" kind of way but in a "I know just what you mean" kind of way.
I know I'm a big weirdo for leaving my home country and moving to another one for an extended, indefinite period of time, but is this seriously how the majority (or even a substantial minority) thinks about traveling abroad? What is it about hearing an unfamiliar language that becomes troubling or upsetting to so many people? I've been to Asia twice now (not counting Japan) and even though English was common enough for me to get by, the dominant language present was still Chinese. It's not a particularly easy language on the ears, in my opinion, but being surrounded by it didn't bother me in the slightest.
Perhaps it's my American or even my New York upbringing that makes a difference. Of course English is my native tongue but I've been hearing other languages spoken around me for decades. Kids at school, people at work, or even just random folks on the street have all exposed me to regular doses of foreign languages over the years. Aside from the occasional foreign pop culture import or an annoying English teacher at school, few Japanese people have had that experience. Maybe if I was as sheltered as they are, listening to a conversation in Russian or Thai for the first time might piss me off as well. But if that were the case, why would I take an overseas trip in the first place? Did someone force this lady onto a plane at gunpoint?
I guess I'm biased, because she happens to be one of my least favorite teachers to deal with in all the schools I visit. She manages to be simultaneously incredibly lax with disruptive students and unnecessarily cruel to students who have too much energy. She gets way too physical with the naughtier kids which isn't that unusual in Japan but that doesn't magically make me accept smacking kids in the head as normal. She also routinely "forgets" about English class even though her classroom is adjacent to mine. Worst of all, she is a first grade teacher so this is the example these poor kids are getting when they first come to English class: a grumpy adult who wants nothing to do with foreign languages.
I don't want to keep harping on this soon-to-be-retired elderly lady but she really crossed the line yesterday when she managed to fall asleep during our meeting about this semester's English plan. I'll admit I've nodded off during meetings before, but those were always massive affairs that didn't particularly apply to me and they were conducted entirely in Japanese. Yesterday's meeting was only for four people (including me) and was entirely in Japanese for her benefit and she still couldn't bother to stay awake. I predict a few "forgotten" lessons in my future this fall.
Too bad she wasn't the only person who couldn't make it through an English meeting with their eyes open yesterday. The sixth-grade teacher, a young man who is very friendly to me and often gives me a lift to school in the morning, said absolutely nothing during our meeting and almost lost consciousness several times. This is a guy who tries his best to participate in class and serves as a good role model for the students and yet he had nothing to contribute to a meeting about English education. If he doesn't care, what hope do I have of ever reaching people like M-sensei?
Of course, I could be overreacting. I wasn't exactly chipper and alert yesterday afternoon either, and even when these meetings serve a purpose there are just so damn many to endure in Japan that it's understandable how people could just tune out right in the middle. What's most important is that, at least at this school, the lesson plans and necessary materials for the entire semester are already finished. That is extremely good news, not just for me but for the students.
Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need a nap. I've been up for hours.
Labels: frustration, I hate people, Japan, teaching
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Daddy's Home
Today turned out to be a very nice day. I went to work and was sent straight home because there's nothing for me to do over the summer. While I admit it was a bit of a nuisance commuting all the way there and back, I'll take the early release over an awkward day of waiting every time.
Mako was delighted to have me around all day. She says Go was also happy to see me, though at this point it's still impossible to tell whether he's happy or just making faces. Either way it was lovely to just be here and help out. Go doesn't sleep much when we put him down but he can fall asleep in our arms, so I served as a valuable distraction throughout the afternoon. Of course, when the two of them took a nap I got in some time on BioShock. This just in: that game is still awesome.
In sports news, I got to watch the Yankees win their way into first place. The team's problems are evident: their starting pitching continues to underperform and several of their stars seem to need a lot of rest these days because of their age, but this team is good. Good enough to get to the World Series? Probably not, but at this point they look like a solid Wild Card contender. Sometimes that's all it takes.
In national (as in this particular nation where I live) sports news, this year's Nagoya sumo tournament isn't going so well. Everyone I like lost today, which left me feeling sad. However, the day ended well when Hakuho, the boring Yokozuna who just beats everybody, lost as well. This means that the tournament is still wide open as we approach the final weekend. Go for it...um...anyone but Hakuho!
There was also the matter of a total eclipse this morning that was visible in Japan. Unfortunately, we weren't really in the target area and it was horribly overcast all morning, so we saw nothing in our skies. NHK did manage to give us a nice HD closeup of the phenomenon, at least once they were done having two dudes stand in a forest where it's always dark. Hey assholes, the point of an eclipse is that the sun disappears, so try hanging out someplace bright next time. I hear "next time" is twenty-six years away by the way, so there's time to find a cave or crevasse.
OK, we all know the big news today is my son. It's been a month since he was born. We didn't do anything special to commemorate the occasion, although I did snap the following picture. Enjoy!
Excuse me for not getting up. I've had a busy life.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Mako was delighted to have me around all day. She says Go was also happy to see me, though at this point it's still impossible to tell whether he's happy or just making faces. Either way it was lovely to just be here and help out. Go doesn't sleep much when we put him down but he can fall asleep in our arms, so I served as a valuable distraction throughout the afternoon. Of course, when the two of them took a nap I got in some time on BioShock. This just in: that game is still awesome.
In sports news, I got to watch the Yankees win their way into first place. The team's problems are evident: their starting pitching continues to underperform and several of their stars seem to need a lot of rest these days because of their age, but this team is good. Good enough to get to the World Series? Probably not, but at this point they look like a solid Wild Card contender. Sometimes that's all it takes.
In national (as in this particular nation where I live) sports news, this year's Nagoya sumo tournament isn't going so well. Everyone I like lost today, which left me feeling sad. However, the day ended well when Hakuho, the boring Yokozuna who just beats everybody, lost as well. This means that the tournament is still wide open as we approach the final weekend. Go for it...um...anyone but Hakuho!
There was also the matter of a total eclipse this morning that was visible in Japan. Unfortunately, we weren't really in the target area and it was horribly overcast all morning, so we saw nothing in our skies. NHK did manage to give us a nice HD closeup of the phenomenon, at least once they were done having two dudes stand in a forest where it's always dark. Hey assholes, the point of an eclipse is that the sun disappears, so try hanging out someplace bright next time. I hear "next time" is twenty-six years away by the way, so there's time to find a cave or crevasse.
OK, we all know the big news today is my son. It's been a month since he was born. We didn't do anything special to commemorate the occasion, although I did snap the following picture. Enjoy!
Excuse me for not getting up. I've had a busy life.
Labels: baseball, family, Japan, number one son, sports, sumo, teaching, Yankees
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Which Way to GO?
What I absolutely didn't want to happen is slowly happening. All of my recent posts have been dominated by my son. Obviously this is a big deal and I should be writing about it, but this blog is more than just a record of what I'm doing. It's my virtual representative on the Internet, my cyber-proxy, my web face, and I'm not going to just hand it over to my baby boy just yet. This site may be called feitclub but Daddy is the clubmaster, not little Go.
The problem is there's not much else to discuss because Go is a real handful. Unless he's asleep, there's never any time for me or Mako to relax or even do regular chores. Go doesn't sit quietly and watch us live our life, he insists on being attended to at all times. I've only recently come to understand that I can reduce his cries with a little bouncing in my arms or other hands-on contact, but this is merely a standoff rather than a victory. The best possible outcome is he falls asleep for a few minutes, but typically he ends up crying until we feed him. I don't know where he's putting all this liquid sustenance we're giving him, but I guess babies have a very high metabolism and consumption/excretion ratio. Most of what we put it in doesn't come back out.
Work is still work, but there was this weird thing that happened this week that got me thinking. As seen in this tweet, I was introduced to a Japanese-Canadian girl who was in town visiting her grandparents. The school decided she should be my "assistant" for fifth period and they told me this more or less ten minutes before fifth period began. While this girl was very pleasant and I might have come up with something we could have done together with even an hour of foreknowledge, their plan put both of us in an extremely awkward position. I didn't know how to integrate her into my one-man show of wild gestures and she didn't know the first thing about teaching English in Japan. Even if she did, no twelve year old wants to stand in front of other twelve year olds and play teacher anyway! I had to do that once in sixth grade and it was mortifying (even though I did do a good job ^_^).
More than being another strange moment in my Japanese life, the incident reminded me just how different Japanese and American* children really are. At this point I've met my share of kids with English-speaking parents, some of whom grew up here in Japan and others who grew up elsewhere. The way they behave is just so fundamentally different I can't believe it. Those kids who grew up overseas are basically little people: you can talk to them about anything and they'll respond well to your questions, asking plenty of their own of you as well. But the ones who grew up in Japan are just really quiet. You can talk to them one on one but they'll barely say a thing. Everything about them (vocabulary, body language, speech patterns) seems restrained.
*American, Canadian, whatever. We're all on the same team and we're more alike than we admit it. This girl was from Toronto so she's practically a (upstate) New Yorker.
I don't need to tell you that I want Go to be more like this visiting child than any of my regular students. Whether their silence is a social pressure (they don't want to be seen speaking too much English in front of their peers) or simply the programming of Japanese institutions, I couldn't say. Either way I looked at this little girl and thought to myself "How can I make sure Go grows up like her?"
The reactionary answer is "Get the hell out of here" but I'm not ready to give up on Japan just yet. After all, Go is my son and I'm going to be actively doing my part to raise him and promote values that I feel are important. I'm not saying he needs to be a loud-mouth braggart but so long as I'm around, surely I can leave my mark on his personality as much as Japan can. The kids that I've met here, I don't really know their parents at all. Maybe they just all came from really quiet households? I don't have enough data to draw any conclusions, so I shouldn't assume that Go will automatically grow up as some kind of tortured soul in Japan.
*sigh* You see what this baby is doing to me? Two weeks of staring at his cute little face and I'm already worried about his future and whether or not I'm doing enough for him. Babies are powerful little creatures, let me tell you.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
The problem is there's not much else to discuss because Go is a real handful. Unless he's asleep, there's never any time for me or Mako to relax or even do regular chores. Go doesn't sit quietly and watch us live our life, he insists on being attended to at all times. I've only recently come to understand that I can reduce his cries with a little bouncing in my arms or other hands-on contact, but this is merely a standoff rather than a victory. The best possible outcome is he falls asleep for a few minutes, but typically he ends up crying until we feed him. I don't know where he's putting all this liquid sustenance we're giving him, but I guess babies have a very high metabolism and consumption/excretion ratio. Most of what we put it in doesn't come back out.
Work is still work, but there was this weird thing that happened this week that got me thinking. As seen in this tweet, I was introduced to a Japanese-Canadian girl who was in town visiting her grandparents. The school decided she should be my "assistant" for fifth period and they told me this more or less ten minutes before fifth period began. While this girl was very pleasant and I might have come up with something we could have done together with even an hour of foreknowledge, their plan put both of us in an extremely awkward position. I didn't know how to integrate her into my one-man show of wild gestures and she didn't know the first thing about teaching English in Japan. Even if she did, no twelve year old wants to stand in front of other twelve year olds and play teacher anyway! I had to do that once in sixth grade and it was mortifying (even though I did do a good job ^_^).
More than being another strange moment in my Japanese life, the incident reminded me just how different Japanese and American* children really are. At this point I've met my share of kids with English-speaking parents, some of whom grew up here in Japan and others who grew up elsewhere. The way they behave is just so fundamentally different I can't believe it. Those kids who grew up overseas are basically little people: you can talk to them about anything and they'll respond well to your questions, asking plenty of their own of you as well. But the ones who grew up in Japan are just really quiet. You can talk to them one on one but they'll barely say a thing. Everything about them (vocabulary, body language, speech patterns) seems restrained.
*American, Canadian, whatever. We're all on the same team and we're more alike than we admit it. This girl was from Toronto so she's practically a (upstate) New Yorker.
I don't need to tell you that I want Go to be more like this visiting child than any of my regular students. Whether their silence is a social pressure (they don't want to be seen speaking too much English in front of their peers) or simply the programming of Japanese institutions, I couldn't say. Either way I looked at this little girl and thought to myself "How can I make sure Go grows up like her?"
The reactionary answer is "Get the hell out of here" but I'm not ready to give up on Japan just yet. After all, Go is my son and I'm going to be actively doing my part to raise him and promote values that I feel are important. I'm not saying he needs to be a loud-mouth braggart but so long as I'm around, surely I can leave my mark on his personality as much as Japan can. The kids that I've met here, I don't really know their parents at all. Maybe they just all came from really quiet households? I don't have enough data to draw any conclusions, so I shouldn't assume that Go will automatically grow up as some kind of tortured soul in Japan.
*sigh* You see what this baby is doing to me? Two weeks of staring at his cute little face and I'm already worried about his future and whether or not I'm doing enough for him. Babies are powerful little creatures, let me tell you.
Labels: Japan, number one son, predicting the future, teaching
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Japan, baby, sleepy...I've written this one before, haven't I?
I've been in and out of work over the last week, missing time to visit Mako and the baby, particularly to be there when they checked out yesterday morning. Can't say it's any easier to get myself in the mood to teach these days, but at this point I credit the unpleasant weather and the fact that this semester is practically over. The fact that I missed a couple days here and there adds to the feeling that we're all just killing time in English class until summer vacation starts. Of course, the fact that half of my classes were canceled today so the kids could go swimming is another reminder that what I do isn't all that important.
I know my attitudes towards this job (and this country) are cyclical. It just so happens that so far, this year's cycles have been warped by dealing with a difficult pregnancy and then the birth itself which was ill-timed to say the least. I'm confident that once the summer has passed, giving me ample time to adjust to the serious life changes that are in store for me, I'll be eager to get back to work when the new semester starts (in August, damn it, thanks to that week off we took for the "new flu" panic).
Speaking of the baby, since that's all everyone wants to know about lately, he is with Mako at her parents' house and doing what babies do: consume, excrete, and occasionally sleep. He's still the most adorable baby I've ever seen, but I guess there's an obvious bias there. For those curious, yes, I have held him and I've given him a bottle a couple of times, but I have yet to try my hand at the infamous diaper duty. Don't worry, I won't leave Mako hanging in that department; I'm no monster, I'm merely squeemish.
Augh, it's past midnight and I'm still up. This kind of behavior can wait for the baby to arrive. He's nowhere near the point where he sleeps through the night, according to Mako, so I should really try harder to get my sleep while I can.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I know my attitudes towards this job (and this country) are cyclical. It just so happens that so far, this year's cycles have been warped by dealing with a difficult pregnancy and then the birth itself which was ill-timed to say the least. I'm confident that once the summer has passed, giving me ample time to adjust to the serious life changes that are in store for me, I'll be eager to get back to work when the new semester starts (in August, damn it, thanks to that week off we took for the "new flu" panic).
Speaking of the baby, since that's all everyone wants to know about lately, he is with Mako at her parents' house and doing what babies do: consume, excrete, and occasionally sleep. He's still the most adorable baby I've ever seen, but I guess there's an obvious bias there. For those curious, yes, I have held him and I've given him a bottle a couple of times, but I have yet to try my hand at the infamous diaper duty. Don't worry, I won't leave Mako hanging in that department; I'm no monster, I'm merely squeemish.
Augh, it's past midnight and I'm still up. This kind of behavior can wait for the baby to arrive. He's nowhere near the point where he sleeps through the night, according to Mako, so I should really try harder to get my sleep while I can.
Labels: family, Japan, number one son, teaching
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
"No Faith" Education
This is a really straightforward flash card. The image is unambiguous and the words are highly visible. Why did someone feel it needed more "explanation" and thus scrawl in Japanese on the right side? How does that improve its educational value?
What's worse is that the Japanese word for "pool" is just "puuru." They're already using a loan word! But instead of students listening to my pronunciation or trying to read the English, now they will simply read and repeat in Japanese.
If you really want to teach these kids words they already know, you don't need me to come to this class at all. Your own staff can practice saying "puuru" without me getting in the way. Maybe then I could spend more than one hour a month with the younger students.
Labels: Japan, JET, moblogging, teaching
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Bit o' the Business
Looks like I picked the wrong week to start writing again.
First of all, Happy Birthday to The Trout. I know you were just here and I did pay for those burgers, but I still feel like I owe you a respectable birthday gift. After all, you didn't "keep" those burgers for more than an hour, tops.
Secondly, I had no time to sit down and write about stuff last week, but it's looking like I've got no time to sit down and write about stuff this week either. I've got a couple non-personal things in progress right now, but even if I upload one of those it won't offer much insight into me...which is kind of the goal of the blog.
Part of the problem has been me being awfully busy at work, as nearly every school has increased their English classes. It feels a bit hollow because they basically let April go with relatively few lessons and many schools continue to slack in the preparation department, meaning that I spend more time in the classroom but don't accomplish anything more than I did before. But that's irrelevant, frankly, because I am working more which means I'm writing less.
Also, things at home are getting...rocky. I'm not going to point any fingers or complain, but instead I'm just going to say this loud and clear: THANK JEBUS I CANNOT GET PREGNANT. It is obvious to me that the physical burden of carrying a baby would break my brain and warp my personality, because that's exactly what it's doing to Mako and she is way stronger than I am, emotionally speaking. She has also come down with a cold (a nasty one too), pouring gas on the already raging "I feel like hell" inferno.
So I come home after a long day at work and then I must contend with a completely unpredictable pregnant wife. Is she mad at me about something, or simply not feeling well enough to get out of bed? I never know and Mako, for whatever reason, will never say which issue is vexing her. Regardless of her mood, Mako needs more help and I simply cannot lounge on the Internet like I used to.
The good news is that Mako is going back to her parents' house for a few weeks...or maybe a couple months, depending on how soon this baby arrives and how the delivery goes. Once she's there, she can relax because her mother will take care of her and I can relax because I know she's got folks watching her all day. When she's here, I know Mako pushes herself way too hard. She is constantly cleaning things, things that in no way demand the attention she lavishes upon them. When she felt better, it didn't matter as much because she had all day to do as she pleased. Now, her energy is severely depleted but that still won't stop her from walking to the farther supermarket or scrubbing the tub on all fours. No way her mom will allow that kind of nonsense under her roof.
Once the "move" is over, I'll have more to do at home but I'll also have more time to do as I please. That means more gaming and more writing (not necessarily in that order). It'll be like a quick return to bachelorhood before that baby changes everything. Until then, I'm indisposed. My apologies.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
First of all, Happy Birthday to The Trout. I know you were just here and I did pay for those burgers, but I still feel like I owe you a respectable birthday gift. After all, you didn't "keep" those burgers for more than an hour, tops.
Secondly, I had no time to sit down and write about stuff last week, but it's looking like I've got no time to sit down and write about stuff this week either. I've got a couple non-personal things in progress right now, but even if I upload one of those it won't offer much insight into me...which is kind of the goal of the blog.
Part of the problem has been me being awfully busy at work, as nearly every school has increased their English classes. It feels a bit hollow because they basically let April go with relatively few lessons and many schools continue to slack in the preparation department, meaning that I spend more time in the classroom but don't accomplish anything more than I did before. But that's irrelevant, frankly, because I am working more which means I'm writing less.
Also, things at home are getting...rocky. I'm not going to point any fingers or complain, but instead I'm just going to say this loud and clear: THANK JEBUS I CANNOT GET PREGNANT. It is obvious to me that the physical burden of carrying a baby would break my brain and warp my personality, because that's exactly what it's doing to Mako and she is way stronger than I am, emotionally speaking. She has also come down with a cold (a nasty one too), pouring gas on the already raging "I feel like hell" inferno.
So I come home after a long day at work and then I must contend with a completely unpredictable pregnant wife. Is she mad at me about something, or simply not feeling well enough to get out of bed? I never know and Mako, for whatever reason, will never say which issue is vexing her. Regardless of her mood, Mako needs more help and I simply cannot lounge on the Internet like I used to.
The good news is that Mako is going back to her parents' house for a few weeks...or maybe a couple months, depending on how soon this baby arrives and how the delivery goes. Once she's there, she can relax because her mother will take care of her and I can relax because I know she's got folks watching her all day. When she's here, I know Mako pushes herself way too hard. She is constantly cleaning things, things that in no way demand the attention she lavishes upon them. When she felt better, it didn't matter as much because she had all day to do as she pleased. Now, her energy is severely depleted but that still won't stop her from walking to the farther supermarket or scrubbing the tub on all fours. No way her mom will allow that kind of nonsense under her roof.
Once the "move" is over, I'll have more to do at home but I'll also have more time to do as I please. That means more gaming and more writing (not necessarily in that order). It'll be like a quick return to bachelorhood before that baby changes everything. Until then, I'm indisposed. My apologies.
Labels: family, pregnancy, teaching, Trout
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Climb Every Mountain
This week went pretty fast. Being thrown under the bus can make time fly, I suppose.
OK, that's an unfair exaggeration, but it was a long week that left me little time for writing because I had to prepare most of my lessons on the fly. When I made it through last week without any lesson plans, I thought things would be different this week. The only difference was that I had already taught a few classes so I had a better idea of how to handle being underprepared...again. Yes, my Monday school must have been really impressed with how I handled myself last week, because this week they left me hanging again, forcing me to come up with another round of lessons on my own. Thursday was the same story in a different building, only in that school I had done absolutely nothing last week. We could have talked about materials or potential lessons, but instead I got a lot of "sorry we're not ready" apologies. Then I show up this week and they want everything right away.
There's a great line in Fight Club that seems eerily appropriate for describing how these elementary schools think about their English language education: "[it] exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends." Despite all the meetings and e-mails, despite the abundance of technology that allows these folks to communicate with one another (and with me!), it's clear to me that until I walk through the front door of their school each week, I do not exist. What other excuse could there be for them to accomplish absolutely nothing in an entire week between my visits?
Things ended up working out, thanks entirely to me. I feel like an ass even saying it like that, but what other way can I put it? If they're not going to help plan the lessons and they don't help teach the lessons, what other choice do I have? Should I just fail spectacularly once in the hopes that it might convince them to stop leaving everything up to me? Maybe my constant delivery of mediocrity is making them too comfortable. They don't need quality lessons because I'm giving them bland, good-enough lessons without all the bother of having a conversation with me beforehand or, you know, actually teaching their own students. Similarly, I don't want to turn into a proactive taskmaster, calling schools on my own time to convince them to do their jobs, because I assume that will make them do even less on their own. I genuinely believe at this point that there is an inverse relationship between the amount of effort I put in and their reciprocal behavior.
On Monday I have to go back to the tiny mountain school for the first time in over a year. As you might expect, the only I reason I knew I was going there was because I was nosy and I started asking a lot of questions about a note written on the blackboard at my regular Monday school. Turns out they've decided to alternate my lessons between the two schools. Why this information wouldn't be brought to my immediate attention, I have no idea. Again, the meeting took place when I wasn't around, so I did not exist at the time.
But hey, at least the week ended very well. Yesterday I went to the good school and we went on a field trip. The entire student body and a dozen teachers took a long walk up into the mountains and back again. We took frequent breaks, but we were definitely on our feet for at least four hours during the six and a half we were out of the building. I had a lot of fun and the whole outing reminded me of how good things can be when schools welcome me and treat me as a person. This is the same school that regularly invites me to after-work meals - there's one coming up this Tuesday, in fact.
It also helps that I have a very good relationship with the students at this school, although there were a few odd moments yesterday. More than one student expressed shock at hearing me speak Japanese. While I do try to speak as much English as possible in class (a luxury I have only when I get to be the assistant rather than the sole teacher), I have been eating lunch and playing outside with these kids for over a year. I don't use much English at all during those times, yet somehow they've managed to forget all about those Pokemon conversations we've had. There was also one kid who started calling me gaijin and I had to explain to him why that was rude. And the weirdest exchange of all came after one of the new first graders learned I was an American:
But kids will be kids, and I ain't mad at 'em. I figure each time we have to get to know each other over again, we get a little bit closer. I took lots of pictures of the excursion, both with my phone and my regular camera. The small images are visible on my twitpic page while an assortment of the larger ones are in this album on Facebook.
After that very physically demanding day, I went out after dinner to a pub quiz in Osaka. I had gone to a number of these in months past, though last night was my first in quite some time. Things got off to a really great start when I came up with a prize-winning team name. The theme was Australia and New Zealand, and the first thing I thought of was "A Dingo Ate My Kiwi." From there, things stayed solid with a round based entirely on guessing the titles of movies from "literal" drawings. For example, a jar of preserves in orbit = Space Jam. We faltered a bit on the later rounds, and half of our team vanished before the game ended (that happens to me a lot) but we still won with 27 of 42 possible points. The prize was a bottle of cider, but it didn't last because in an instant there were strangers eager to share a glass with me. It's not about the prize anyway, it was about having fun and having a couple drinks. Mission Totally Accomplished!
Took it very easy today, thanks in small part to a downpour that lasted well into the afternoon, but that's OK. I'm a bit pink from being in the sun anyway. I'll leave the house again tomorrow. Don't worry about me, by the way. I complain when things get rough around here but as yesterday shows, the highs more than make up for the lows.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
OK, that's an unfair exaggeration, but it was a long week that left me little time for writing because I had to prepare most of my lessons on the fly. When I made it through last week without any lesson plans, I thought things would be different this week. The only difference was that I had already taught a few classes so I had a better idea of how to handle being underprepared...again. Yes, my Monday school must have been really impressed with how I handled myself last week, because this week they left me hanging again, forcing me to come up with another round of lessons on my own. Thursday was the same story in a different building, only in that school I had done absolutely nothing last week. We could have talked about materials or potential lessons, but instead I got a lot of "sorry we're not ready" apologies. Then I show up this week and they want everything right away.
There's a great line in Fight Club that seems eerily appropriate for describing how these elementary schools think about their English language education: "[it] exists only in the hours between when fight club starts and when fight club ends." Despite all the meetings and e-mails, despite the abundance of technology that allows these folks to communicate with one another (and with me!), it's clear to me that until I walk through the front door of their school each week, I do not exist. What other excuse could there be for them to accomplish absolutely nothing in an entire week between my visits?
Things ended up working out, thanks entirely to me. I feel like an ass even saying it like that, but what other way can I put it? If they're not going to help plan the lessons and they don't help teach the lessons, what other choice do I have? Should I just fail spectacularly once in the hopes that it might convince them to stop leaving everything up to me? Maybe my constant delivery of mediocrity is making them too comfortable. They don't need quality lessons because I'm giving them bland, good-enough lessons without all the bother of having a conversation with me beforehand or, you know, actually teaching their own students. Similarly, I don't want to turn into a proactive taskmaster, calling schools on my own time to convince them to do their jobs, because I assume that will make them do even less on their own. I genuinely believe at this point that there is an inverse relationship between the amount of effort I put in and their reciprocal behavior.
On Monday I have to go back to the tiny mountain school for the first time in over a year. As you might expect, the only I reason I knew I was going there was because I was nosy and I started asking a lot of questions about a note written on the blackboard at my regular Monday school. Turns out they've decided to alternate my lessons between the two schools. Why this information wouldn't be brought to my immediate attention, I have no idea. Again, the meeting took place when I wasn't around, so I did not exist at the time.
But hey, at least the week ended very well. Yesterday I went to the good school and we went on a field trip. The entire student body and a dozen teachers took a long walk up into the mountains and back again. We took frequent breaks, but we were definitely on our feet for at least four hours during the six and a half we were out of the building. I had a lot of fun and the whole outing reminded me of how good things can be when schools welcome me and treat me as a person. This is the same school that regularly invites me to after-work meals - there's one coming up this Tuesday, in fact.
It also helps that I have a very good relationship with the students at this school, although there were a few odd moments yesterday. More than one student expressed shock at hearing me speak Japanese. While I do try to speak as much English as possible in class (a luxury I have only when I get to be the assistant rather than the sole teacher), I have been eating lunch and playing outside with these kids for over a year. I don't use much English at all during those times, yet somehow they've managed to forget all about those Pokemon conversations we've had. There was also one kid who started calling me gaijin and I had to explain to him why that was rude. And the weirdest exchange of all came after one of the new first graders learned I was an American:
Boy: "Do you like war?"
Me: "No, no one likes that!"
Boy: "Then why does America fight wars?"
Me: (declining to explain that I do not get to choose when and how America fights in wars) "Nobody likes war, not even those who fight in them."
But kids will be kids, and I ain't mad at 'em. I figure each time we have to get to know each other over again, we get a little bit closer. I took lots of pictures of the excursion, both with my phone and my regular camera. The small images are visible on my twitpic page while an assortment of the larger ones are in this album on Facebook.
After that very physically demanding day, I went out after dinner to a pub quiz in Osaka. I had gone to a number of these in months past, though last night was my first in quite some time. Things got off to a really great start when I came up with a prize-winning team name. The theme was Australia and New Zealand, and the first thing I thought of was "A Dingo Ate My Kiwi." From there, things stayed solid with a round based entirely on guessing the titles of movies from "literal" drawings. For example, a jar of preserves in orbit = Space Jam. We faltered a bit on the later rounds, and half of our team vanished before the game ended (that happens to me a lot) but we still won with 27 of 42 possible points. The prize was a bottle of cider, but it didn't last because in an instant there were strangers eager to share a glass with me. It's not about the prize anyway, it was about having fun and having a couple drinks. Mission Totally Accomplished!
Took it very easy today, thanks in small part to a downpour that lasted well into the afternoon, but that's OK. I'm a bit pink from being in the sun anyway. I'll leave the house again tomorrow. Don't worry about me, by the way. I complain when things get rough around here but as yesterday shows, the highs more than make up for the lows.
Labels: frustration, JET, Osaka, teaching, workout
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Counting My Delicious Eggs (No Chickens Yet)
There's a Japanese song I like called 幸せのものさし (Shiawase no monosashi). It was the opening theme song to a TV show Mako got hooked on last year about three women around 40 years old who were all dealing with personal issues in their rather different lives. I don't understand most of the lyrics but the chorus is in English (kinda!) and I think it's a genuinely positive statement: "Count what you have now / Don't count what you don't have / Find out you have so much."
The fact that this song came up on my iPod this morning during random play (and while it was playing, a complete stranger approached me on the street and shook my hand) reminded me that things are going really well for me around here. Often, I feel overwhelmed when I "count what I don't have," and I'm not just talking about material crap like a new PC or more video games. I get nervous when I think about the baby because I don't have any experience with infants, I feel unimportant when I show up for work and there's nothing for me to do, and all week I've been anxious because I had no confidence in this semester's unusual teaching arrangements.
Throughout last year, we started each semester with a meeting of teachers from all the schools in Hana Town and talked about the English lesson plans. In theory, this was so the other teachers would be familiar enough with the plans to actually teach the classes, allowing me to assume my designated role as "assistant language teacher." Of course, no matter how many meetings we had and speeches were given, I always ended up teaching the classes myself at the other schools.
In this new school year, things have gotten off to a rather different start. No attempt to gather the teachers to discuss English has been made. Instead, the idea is that each school will develop their own plans (possibly using the new English textbooks the Japanese government has come up with) and thus empower the teachers to run the classes as they should be doing. For me, this meant showing up for work this week without any idea of what would be in store for me. I had no teaching materials or outlines, I simply had to show up and discover what each school had in mind for me.
Having been here for almost two years now, I looked at this plan with extreme skepticism. I have had issues with being an "assistant teacher" who is forced to drag homeroom teachers in front of their own students, but over time I got used to the burden of being in charge of the classroom. My anxiety about stepping up and trying to control 20-30 children at a time was offset by the fact that I had a grasp of the material and was familiar with the goals of the lesson. Under the new plan, I would be going in blind, forced to rely on others to provide me with direction.
As I have often lamented on this blog, the teachers I work with are not the most reliable people in the world. English classes in elementary school are far and away the lowest priority activity the children have on their busy schedules, (certainly ranked below keeping the school clean or even jumping rope) so I have become accustomed to canceled classes, surprise schedule overhauls and just all-around disinterest. Asking a coworker to prepare flash cards or give the children a homework assignment is a crap shoot; there's always a chance I'll come in the next week and find my request was forgotten (or ignored).
On Monday, I arrived at a very small school (19 students now, down from 27 last year) to learn that Yes, they wanted me to teach but No, they did not have lesson plans or materials prepared. I wish I could say I was surprised or even disappointed, but I can't. They did, at least, have a vague request that I help the children learn how to do the daily announcements in English. Using their extremely rough draft, I was able to spent most of our class time reviewing the days of the week and months of the year. We also included a generous portion of time to making new name tags, which was of great help in filling 45 minutes.
Tuesday I went to my largest school (over 300 students) and discovered a similarly irritating good news/bad news situation. They had a lesson plan in mind, some of which they showed me the week before, offering me an unheard-of level of preparedness. However, they had not heeded any of my requests for materials or information, so I was left hanging once again. Still, the teacher in charge of English planning for that school was surprisingly free, so between the two of us we were able to discuss ideas and get some of the stuff I wanted in time for class. The rest was left to me and my (ever-growing) talent for taking nothing and turning it into something. Those improv sessions at CTY just keep paying dividends in my adult life.
I knew I had classes to teach on Wednesday (62 students) but again I arrived at work without knowing what the school wanted me to do. As I could have guessed, they didn't know what they wanted yet. However, thanks to a marathon flash card session last summer I had an abundance of teaching materials at my disposal, so I simply adopted the plans of Tuesday's school to Wednesday's school and went to work. It all went pretty smoothly, especially since the classes are smaller and therefore less rowdy.
There was some real magic that took place yesterday when things didn't go so smoothly, something I never could have anticipated. Despite working with two different teachers to set up a laptop with a projector, I couldn't get any images on the big screen once class began. I tried to get it working again but after a few minutes (which felt like an eternity), the homeroom teacher leapt into action and proposed playing a game with the students instead. She came up with the game on her own, explained the rules to the students and set the entire thing into motion. All I had to do was agree and respond when the students talked to me. It was incredible.
Why was a teacher suddenly taking charge of English class for once? Because she had spent the previous year working at the good school, the one where they had been making the English plans for the entire district, more or less. She spent all of last year leading her own English class with the help of a native speaker to assist her, exactly the way this system is supposed to work. She had also never been a teacher prior to last year, which means her entire elementary school career was shaped by that experience. I had mistakenly assumed that once she left that school, she would fall in line with the other teachers and let me take charge. Instead, she all but shoved me aside to keep the class on track. I've never been so happy to be so wrong.
So here I sit at my Thursday school (151 students) with no classes at all, feeling pretty good about this week so far. Each day I came to work with only a vague notion of what might happen and while each school found ways to disappoint me, I still managed to teach all my classes anyway. Rather than add up all that went wrong, I'm happy to "count what I do have" and feel proud of what went right. Maybe their plan to put the burden of lesson creation on the individual schools was the right idea...or maybe it will all come crashing down next week. Either way I'm not going to worry about it anymore because yesterday's success and this morning's musical coincidence have put me in a good mood. That, and it's almost the weekend, and I hate worrying on weekends.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
The fact that this song came up on my iPod this morning during random play (and while it was playing, a complete stranger approached me on the street and shook my hand) reminded me that things are going really well for me around here. Often, I feel overwhelmed when I "count what I don't have," and I'm not just talking about material crap like a new PC or more video games. I get nervous when I think about the baby because I don't have any experience with infants, I feel unimportant when I show up for work and there's nothing for me to do, and all week I've been anxious because I had no confidence in this semester's unusual teaching arrangements.
Throughout last year, we started each semester with a meeting of teachers from all the schools in Hana Town and talked about the English lesson plans. In theory, this was so the other teachers would be familiar enough with the plans to actually teach the classes, allowing me to assume my designated role as "assistant language teacher." Of course, no matter how many meetings we had and speeches were given, I always ended up teaching the classes myself at the other schools.
In this new school year, things have gotten off to a rather different start. No attempt to gather the teachers to discuss English has been made. Instead, the idea is that each school will develop their own plans (possibly using the new English textbooks the Japanese government has come up with) and thus empower the teachers to run the classes as they should be doing. For me, this meant showing up for work this week without any idea of what would be in store for me. I had no teaching materials or outlines, I simply had to show up and discover what each school had in mind for me.
Having been here for almost two years now, I looked at this plan with extreme skepticism. I have had issues with being an "assistant teacher" who is forced to drag homeroom teachers in front of their own students, but over time I got used to the burden of being in charge of the classroom. My anxiety about stepping up and trying to control 20-30 children at a time was offset by the fact that I had a grasp of the material and was familiar with the goals of the lesson. Under the new plan, I would be going in blind, forced to rely on others to provide me with direction.
As I have often lamented on this blog, the teachers I work with are not the most reliable people in the world. English classes in elementary school are far and away the lowest priority activity the children have on their busy schedules, (certainly ranked below keeping the school clean or even jumping rope) so I have become accustomed to canceled classes, surprise schedule overhauls and just all-around disinterest. Asking a coworker to prepare flash cards or give the children a homework assignment is a crap shoot; there's always a chance I'll come in the next week and find my request was forgotten (or ignored).
On Monday, I arrived at a very small school (19 students now, down from 27 last year) to learn that Yes, they wanted me to teach but No, they did not have lesson plans or materials prepared. I wish I could say I was surprised or even disappointed, but I can't. They did, at least, have a vague request that I help the children learn how to do the daily announcements in English. Using their extremely rough draft, I was able to spent most of our class time reviewing the days of the week and months of the year. We also included a generous portion of time to making new name tags, which was of great help in filling 45 minutes.
Tuesday I went to my largest school (over 300 students) and discovered a similarly irritating good news/bad news situation. They had a lesson plan in mind, some of which they showed me the week before, offering me an unheard-of level of preparedness. However, they had not heeded any of my requests for materials or information, so I was left hanging once again. Still, the teacher in charge of English planning for that school was surprisingly free, so between the two of us we were able to discuss ideas and get some of the stuff I wanted in time for class. The rest was left to me and my (ever-growing) talent for taking nothing and turning it into something. Those improv sessions at CTY just keep paying dividends in my adult life.
I knew I had classes to teach on Wednesday (62 students) but again I arrived at work without knowing what the school wanted me to do. As I could have guessed, they didn't know what they wanted yet. However, thanks to a marathon flash card session last summer I had an abundance of teaching materials at my disposal, so I simply adopted the plans of Tuesday's school to Wednesday's school and went to work. It all went pretty smoothly, especially since the classes are smaller and therefore less rowdy.
There was some real magic that took place yesterday when things didn't go so smoothly, something I never could have anticipated. Despite working with two different teachers to set up a laptop with a projector, I couldn't get any images on the big screen once class began. I tried to get it working again but after a few minutes (which felt like an eternity), the homeroom teacher leapt into action and proposed playing a game with the students instead. She came up with the game on her own, explained the rules to the students and set the entire thing into motion. All I had to do was agree and respond when the students talked to me. It was incredible.
Why was a teacher suddenly taking charge of English class for once? Because she had spent the previous year working at the good school, the one where they had been making the English plans for the entire district, more or less. She spent all of last year leading her own English class with the help of a native speaker to assist her, exactly the way this system is supposed to work. She had also never been a teacher prior to last year, which means her entire elementary school career was shaped by that experience. I had mistakenly assumed that once she left that school, she would fall in line with the other teachers and let me take charge. Instead, she all but shoved me aside to keep the class on track. I've never been so happy to be so wrong.
So here I sit at my Thursday school (151 students) with no classes at all, feeling pretty good about this week so far. Each day I came to work with only a vague notion of what might happen and while each school found ways to disappoint me, I still managed to teach all my classes anyway. Rather than add up all that went wrong, I'm happy to "count what I do have" and feel proud of what went right. Maybe their plan to put the burden of lesson creation on the individual schools was the right idea...or maybe it will all come crashing down next week. Either way I'm not going to worry about it anymore because yesterday's success and this morning's musical coincidence have put me in a good mood. That, and it's almost the weekend, and I hate worrying on weekends.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Comings and Goings
There's been a lot of movement in the last few days as far as people in my world, moving from familiar places to unfamiliar ones, returning home after years abroad, or just entering elementary school.
Tuesday night I went out to meet with Alex. He wanted to share some of his (substantial) Xbox collection with me and I graciously accepted his offer. I now have absolutely, positively no reason to buy any Xbox games for months considering the amount of material he has loaned me and the lengths to which these games can last. Fallout 3 alone could easily occupy me for the rest of the year. Of course, we all know I want what I want when I want it, so it's entirely possible I'll end up shopping before I realistically should be. But at least my wallet is safe for the short term.
I wanted to return the favor to Alex by loaning him games, but the fact is I don't have much that he doesn't. He already owns most of my PlayStation games on Xbox and I've shared all of my downloaded PSN games with him. So I lent him Resistance 2 since I recently finished the story mode and grabbed all the trophies I'm probably going to get. If he likes it enough to buy it, I hope we can play the co-op mode together because that was my favorite part of the game anyway. I suppose Alex is thinking the same thing about loaning me notoriously engrossing multiplayer games like Gears of War (both of them) and Left4Dead.
After our game trading and some light drinking was complete (it was a weeknight after all) I said goodbye and then met Greg and Robin for one last time. We had said goodbye on Sunday but when Alex and I agreed to met on Tuesday I contacted them and arranged for one last meal. It was, fittingly enough, sushi. I successfully led them to a nice kaiten restaurant in Namba (one that Scott first took me to) and we had a quick but satisfying dinner. It was actually the first sushi meal I've eaten all year, save for the odd piece or two that turns up in bento boxes at school staff lunches. It was long overdue, I say.
Greg and Robin have since left the country to head back to America, almost as the same time as a good friend of mine left America to head for a new life in Kuala Lumpur. I've extolled Mike's musical talents before but when his longtime girlfriend (at what point does that word become childish?) got a job in the Malaysian capitial, he decided to follow her to Asia and leave New York behind. This is very exciting news for a number of reasons, the least of which being that Kuala Lumpur is a hell of a lot closer to Japan than Brooklyn is. I hope to have more online contact with him as a result and maybe visit him before the year is out. I've never been to the city (save for stopping in their airport en route to Singapore) so the trip will double as an exploration of new things as well as catching up with an old friend. Mike's birthday is also just days away, so I'm going to say Happy Birthday now and wish him the best.
Along with all this human traffic, yesterday was the day for entrance ceremonies for the elementary schools in Hana Town. I attended one last year but I neglected to write about it, so I feel I should explain a bit about what goes on. It's a lighter version of the graduation ceremony I saw in March only it celebrates the arrival of brand-new first graders. It was obviously less emotional because introductions are a lot easier than farewells, but the tone was pretty much the same. Lots of stiff walking, endless empty "congratulations" from an array of guests who barely have any connection to the school (let alone the new students) and a couple of songs from the assembled student body. I felt really bad for the new students who had to sit in their chairs in front of the audience and just wait for over an hour.
While I came to appreciate the formality and somberness of the graduation ceremony because it reminded me that I was losing something important in saying goodbye to my sixth grade students, I found the entrance ceremony completely unrewarding. I can only assume it is designed more with the parents in mind, although I saw considerably fewer family members for this ceremony than the graduation a few weeks earlier. Mind you, these events were at two different schools but I suspect that graduation just means more to everyone and therefore warrants more attention. Only three fathers showed up, so clearly the other dads had better places to be.
As far as I'm concerned, this is simultaneously the best and worst time to be working in Japan. The end of the bitter winters, the start of spring and the beautiful cherry blossoms have made this week a delight. I can't tell you how nice it was to go into the city on Tuesday night without wearing a coat. However, I have had all I can take of the endless ceremonies, introductions and farewells that plague this time of year. I just fail to see the point of all this chatter.
Consider this: before yesterday's entrance ceremony began, the regular students and all of the staff gathered in the gym to commemorate the start of the school year in a separate, slightly-less formal assembly. The principal actually introduced every single school employee to the students. Not just the three new faces, but everyone. The guy who answers the phone in the office, the ladies who make the school lunches, even the "security guard" who dutifully protects the kids by sleeping in his booth all day; all of these people were introduced, one by one. I got my turn after all of the other teaching and administrative staff had been called, but I did rank ahead of the lunch ladies, the old woman who serves tea and the guard. In your face, gramps.
With all that having gone down, guess what happened today? We had two ceremonies to say goodbye to the teachers who left this school to work somewhere else. I've mentioned before that Japanese schools shuffle around the teachers every Spring in a confusing fashion that (in my opinion) destroys any real, cohesive atmosphere of teamwork in these schools. Obviously the Japanese don't feel this way, but I just can't see why these folks were clearly struggling to hold back tears when some of them had only been working here for one or two years. I guess there's no minimum time for creating an emotional attachment to a job or coworkers but one year seems awfully brief to me, especially considering two of the departed are now working at the elementary school that is literally up the street from this one. These kids all own bikes - they can say hi whenever they feel like it.
So yeah, I saw a lot of new faces and bid goodbye to some familiar ones - all while a close friend embarks on a crazy adventure that bring him a little closer to my own ongoing foreign experience. Funny how that transition, which I had no way of seeing or participating in, means a lot more to me than any of the ceremonies I sat through this week.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Tuesday night I went out to meet with Alex. He wanted to share some of his (substantial) Xbox collection with me and I graciously accepted his offer. I now have absolutely, positively no reason to buy any Xbox games for months considering the amount of material he has loaned me and the lengths to which these games can last. Fallout 3 alone could easily occupy me for the rest of the year. Of course, we all know I want what I want when I want it, so it's entirely possible I'll end up shopping before I realistically should be. But at least my wallet is safe for the short term.
I wanted to return the favor to Alex by loaning him games, but the fact is I don't have much that he doesn't. He already owns most of my PlayStation games on Xbox and I've shared all of my downloaded PSN games with him. So I lent him Resistance 2 since I recently finished the story mode and grabbed all the trophies I'm probably going to get. If he likes it enough to buy it, I hope we can play the co-op mode together because that was my favorite part of the game anyway. I suppose Alex is thinking the same thing about loaning me notoriously engrossing multiplayer games like Gears of War (both of them) and Left4Dead.
After our game trading and some light drinking was complete (it was a weeknight after all) I said goodbye and then met Greg and Robin for one last time. We had said goodbye on Sunday but when Alex and I agreed to met on Tuesday I contacted them and arranged for one last meal. It was, fittingly enough, sushi. I successfully led them to a nice kaiten restaurant in Namba (one that Scott first took me to) and we had a quick but satisfying dinner. It was actually the first sushi meal I've eaten all year, save for the odd piece or two that turns up in bento boxes at school staff lunches. It was long overdue, I say.
Greg and Robin have since left the country to head back to America, almost as the same time as a good friend of mine left America to head for a new life in Kuala Lumpur. I've extolled Mike's musical talents before but when his longtime girlfriend (at what point does that word become childish?) got a job in the Malaysian capitial, he decided to follow her to Asia and leave New York behind. This is very exciting news for a number of reasons, the least of which being that Kuala Lumpur is a hell of a lot closer to Japan than Brooklyn is. I hope to have more online contact with him as a result and maybe visit him before the year is out. I've never been to the city (save for stopping in their airport en route to Singapore) so the trip will double as an exploration of new things as well as catching up with an old friend. Mike's birthday is also just days away, so I'm going to say Happy Birthday now and wish him the best.
Along with all this human traffic, yesterday was the day for entrance ceremonies for the elementary schools in Hana Town. I attended one last year but I neglected to write about it, so I feel I should explain a bit about what goes on. It's a lighter version of the graduation ceremony I saw in March only it celebrates the arrival of brand-new first graders. It was obviously less emotional because introductions are a lot easier than farewells, but the tone was pretty much the same. Lots of stiff walking, endless empty "congratulations" from an array of guests who barely have any connection to the school (let alone the new students) and a couple of songs from the assembled student body. I felt really bad for the new students who had to sit in their chairs in front of the audience and just wait for over an hour.
While I came to appreciate the formality and somberness of the graduation ceremony because it reminded me that I was losing something important in saying goodbye to my sixth grade students, I found the entrance ceremony completely unrewarding. I can only assume it is designed more with the parents in mind, although I saw considerably fewer family members for this ceremony than the graduation a few weeks earlier. Mind you, these events were at two different schools but I suspect that graduation just means more to everyone and therefore warrants more attention. Only three fathers showed up, so clearly the other dads had better places to be.
As far as I'm concerned, this is simultaneously the best and worst time to be working in Japan. The end of the bitter winters, the start of spring and the beautiful cherry blossoms have made this week a delight. I can't tell you how nice it was to go into the city on Tuesday night without wearing a coat. However, I have had all I can take of the endless ceremonies, introductions and farewells that plague this time of year. I just fail to see the point of all this chatter.
Consider this: before yesterday's entrance ceremony began, the regular students and all of the staff gathered in the gym to commemorate the start of the school year in a separate, slightly-less formal assembly. The principal actually introduced every single school employee to the students. Not just the three new faces, but everyone. The guy who answers the phone in the office, the ladies who make the school lunches, even the "security guard" who dutifully protects the kids by sleeping in his booth all day; all of these people were introduced, one by one. I got my turn after all of the other teaching and administrative staff had been called, but I did rank ahead of the lunch ladies, the old woman who serves tea and the guard. In your face, gramps.
With all that having gone down, guess what happened today? We had two ceremonies to say goodbye to the teachers who left this school to work somewhere else. I've mentioned before that Japanese schools shuffle around the teachers every Spring in a confusing fashion that (in my opinion) destroys any real, cohesive atmosphere of teamwork in these schools. Obviously the Japanese don't feel this way, but I just can't see why these folks were clearly struggling to hold back tears when some of them had only been working here for one or two years. I guess there's no minimum time for creating an emotional attachment to a job or coworkers but one year seems awfully brief to me, especially considering two of the departed are now working at the elementary school that is literally up the street from this one. These kids all own bikes - they can say hi whenever they feel like it.
So yeah, I saw a lot of new faces and bid goodbye to some familiar ones - all while a close friend embarks on a crazy adventure that bring him a little closer to my own ongoing foreign experience. Funny how that transition, which I had no way of seeing or participating in, means a lot more to me than any of the ceremonies I sat through this week.
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Labels: Alex, friends, Ionic, Japan, PS3, teaching, video games, Write or Die, Xbox
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
終了～!
That's a wrap! See you in two weeks!
Guess I should elaborate: today was the end of the school year. No more teachers, no more....you know the drill. Except in Japan, everything starts again in April. I know that syncs up nicely with springtime, the season for renewal, cherry blossoms, etc, but isn't it a bit anti-climactic? We say goodbye to everyone today, but they're back in only two weeks. Compare that to the States where we say goodbye for two months. Japan has a summer vacation too, but it falls mid-year. That means kids have regular study sessions and *gasp* homework in August. That's just cruel!
There was, of course, a "closing ceremony" with a few words from the principal and the singing of three songs (the school song and something else, twice). After that the kids went back to their classrooms to move all their desks into the hallway. While the smaller schools have a set layout (the same grades occupy the same rooms every year), this large school rearranges the grades each year to suit their needs. Since there are very few new students coming next year, they will only need one classroom instead of two. This gives them a chance to move some students out of the "annex" and back into the main building.
Meanwhile, guess who's moving to the annex? ME! Yes, they have decided to relocate my English classroom to another building entirely. While I feel strange to be so removed from all the regular classrooms, at least this new location will prevent all the jumping/singing/running we do from distracting any other students. In its present location, the noise from my classroom was definitely a problem for the sixth graders underneath us. I will miss the air conditioner I had access too though. The new room is on the third floor and I bet it gets hot there in July!
Other than that, all I did at work was eat lunch with the staff. It was a special meal that we all paid 2000 Yen for, which felt expensive to me but it was certainly filling. There were more speeches during lunchtime and I was stunned to learn that they wanted me to say a few words for some reason. Everyone else who spoke was either brand-new or retiring. I am neither. My guess is they forgot how long I've been here or they just like watching me struggle during impromptu Japanese speeches. Whatever, I got through it without any embarrassing errors.
So tomorrow I go back to work for the first of many days where I truly have nothing to do. No meetings, no students, no responsibilities. And no, the books I ordered aren't here yet. Drat.
OH, one last thing: my story about the earthquake/disaster center was printed in the local JET newsletter today. It's more or less the same as the web version, but I was really happy when Joe (the guy responsible for the bi-monthly publication) told me he liked what I wrote. Sadly, there is no money involved. Just the pride of a job well done...and a free plug for feitclub.com that I added to the end. Web counter, prepare to be OVERWHELMED!
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Guess I should elaborate: today was the end of the school year. No more teachers, no more....you know the drill. Except in Japan, everything starts again in April. I know that syncs up nicely with springtime, the season for renewal, cherry blossoms, etc, but isn't it a bit anti-climactic? We say goodbye to everyone today, but they're back in only two weeks. Compare that to the States where we say goodbye for two months. Japan has a summer vacation too, but it falls mid-year. That means kids have regular study sessions and *gasp* homework in August. That's just cruel!
There was, of course, a "closing ceremony" with a few words from the principal and the singing of three songs (the school song and something else, twice). After that the kids went back to their classrooms to move all their desks into the hallway. While the smaller schools have a set layout (the same grades occupy the same rooms every year), this large school rearranges the grades each year to suit their needs. Since there are very few new students coming next year, they will only need one classroom instead of two. This gives them a chance to move some students out of the "annex" and back into the main building.
Meanwhile, guess who's moving to the annex? ME! Yes, they have decided to relocate my English classroom to another building entirely. While I feel strange to be so removed from all the regular classrooms, at least this new location will prevent all the jumping/singing/running we do from distracting any other students. In its present location, the noise from my classroom was definitely a problem for the sixth graders underneath us. I will miss the air conditioner I had access too though. The new room is on the third floor and I bet it gets hot there in July!
Other than that, all I did at work was eat lunch with the staff. It was a special meal that we all paid 2000 Yen for, which felt expensive to me but it was certainly filling. There were more speeches during lunchtime and I was stunned to learn that they wanted me to say a few words for some reason. Everyone else who spoke was either brand-new or retiring. I am neither. My guess is they forgot how long I've been here or they just like watching me struggle during impromptu Japanese speeches. Whatever, I got through it without any embarrassing errors.
So tomorrow I go back to work for the first of many days where I truly have nothing to do. No meetings, no students, no responsibilities. And no, the books I ordered aren't here yet. Drat.
OH, one last thing: my story about the earthquake/disaster center was printed in the local JET newsletter today. It's more or less the same as the web version, but I was really happy when Joe (the guy responsible for the bi-monthly publication) told me he liked what I wrote. Sadly, there is no money involved. Just the pride of a job well done...and a free plug for feitclub.com that I added to the end. Web counter, prepare to be OVERWHELMED!
Labels: Japan, JET, teaching, writing
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Thursday, March 19, 2009
WHAT DO YOU WANNA DO WITH YOUR LIFE?
My classes are over! If only that meant I didn't have to go to work anymore...
Yes, Tuesday was my final day of teaching for the semester. Before you flip out, remember that the Japanese school system is broken into three, rather than two, semesters, and this one ends next week. Starting in early April the new school year will begin and I'll probably be teaching students again by the time you Americans are paying your taxes. Now that I mention it, I guess I'm supposed to pay taxes too? Don't want to keep the Wall Street executives from collecting their precious fucking bonuses, now would I?
Ugh, let's not go there. With the end of the school year upon us, our theme in English class this semester for the older students was "My Dream." Basically, we taught them a few job names in English (fire fighter, dentist, pilot, etc.) and then asked them the big question we all love to pose to small children: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Now that all of the children have answered that question, I present to you the unscientific, off-the-top-of-my-head results.
Boys were mostly about sports. I can't tell you how many times I heard a boy tell me he wanted to be a baseball player or a soccer player. Other popular choices were ping pong, rugby, auto racing, and there was at least one who wanted to play in the NBA someday. Most of those who expressed an athletic interest mentioned playing in America or Europe, possibly in the Olympics as well. I think they recognize that being a pro baseball player is fine, but being a Major League ballplayer is where it's at. Sadly, there was significantly less interest expressed in domestic sports like judo or sumo.
Another surprise was how few boys said they wanted to be a farmer. Not only was it one of the words we practiced, making it an easy choice, but I work in a rural area where most of these kids grow up around farms. Either they all are "reaching for the stars" and hoping to get out of Hana Town someday or farming just isn't a "cool" job to tell people about. Still, there was a lot of interest in fishing which is basically farming without the soil. I guess an island nation is going to have a lot of respect for fisherman, even though Hana Town is in the mountains with no ocean in sight.
Lots of boys picked fire fighter and policeman as potential careers, most of whom were sons of said professionals. Guess that's the same as it is in the States. I remember all the boys in my class who were into the fire/police departments had parents who were already working in those fields. I'll bet there's a lot of pressure to follow in dad's footsteps in both countries. Will I encourage my son to become a teacher? Will I still be teaching when my boy is old enough to even understand what he wants in life?
There were more than a few boys who talked about science, typically choosing archaeology (for the dinosaurs) or astronomy (for space). A few said they wanted to be astronauts. Others mentioned the Japanese Self-Defense Force and carpentry. Comedy was, unsurprisingly, another popular vocation. Not only was "comedian" one of the words we practiced, but Osaka is seen as the comedy capital (or should I say komedy kapital, nyuk nyuk?) of Japan. Nearly all of the performers on television are from the Kansai area and the dialect is closely associated with laughter. Note to Japanese students everywhere: using Kansai-ben is a sure-fire way to put a smile on a Japanese person's face.
Girls were tragically limited in their employment aspirations. At least 75% said they wanted to be a teacher of some kind. Most of them talked about work in a hoikuen (the Japanese equivalent of day care/nursery school) because they "love children." The remaining girls typically wanted to get into the makeover business: hairdressers, beauticians, fashion designers, make-up artists, nail artists, etc. A few entrepreneurs wanted to run their own bakery, flower shop, or clothing boutique. You see the pattern, right? All of the girls' interests are essentially hobbies and completely compatible with being a housewife. If that's what they really want, I'm not going to condemn them for it, but I hoped a few of them would aim their sights a bit higher. At the very least, I thought the recent high-profile coverage of Japanese female athletes (Ai Miyazato, Ai Fukuhara, and the 2008 Olympic softball team have been television mainstays for some time now) would draw a few girls into sports, but hardly any of them expressed any curiosity in athletics.
So what don't Japanese kids want to be when they grow up? The American standards of "doctor" and "lawyer" were ignored. Only one boy wanted to be an architect (which is what I wanted to be when I was in elementary school). For all their aesthetic talk, not a single girl wanted to be a model and I can only remember one mentioning acting or singing. And not a single student, boy or girl, said they wanted to be prime minister. I guess that shouldn't surprise me, seeing as how Japanese prime ministers have such fleeting cultural relevance (in two years I've seen two resign and the third is heading south in a hurry), but I can't help but think back to my childhood and how presidents and other political figures were so dominant. Yet when I suggested the idea early in the exercise, most students laughed. I think that's a bad sign.
But my favorite story of all this came on Tuesday when I was teaching my last class of the semester, specifically a large fifth grade class. They had actually memorized their presentations and so they were coming up in front of the class one by one and delivering their speeches pretty quickly. One boy got up and said "I want to be a yakuzaishi," which is Japanese for "pharmacist." But all I heard was "I want to be a Yakuza" and I kind of freaked out. Some quick follow-up questions made it clear that I was WAY OFF, and everyone had a laugh when they realized what I thought he said.
To think, I almost had Henry Hill as a student.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Yes, Tuesday was my final day of teaching for the semester. Before you flip out, remember that the Japanese school system is broken into three, rather than two, semesters, and this one ends next week. Starting in early April the new school year will begin and I'll probably be teaching students again by the time you Americans are paying your taxes. Now that I mention it, I guess I'm supposed to pay taxes too? Don't want to keep the Wall Street executives from collecting their precious fucking bonuses, now would I?
Ugh, let's not go there. With the end of the school year upon us, our theme in English class this semester for the older students was "My Dream." Basically, we taught them a few job names in English (fire fighter, dentist, pilot, etc.) and then asked them the big question we all love to pose to small children: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Now that all of the children have answered that question, I present to you the unscientific, off-the-top-of-my-head results.
Boys were mostly about sports. I can't tell you how many times I heard a boy tell me he wanted to be a baseball player or a soccer player. Other popular choices were ping pong, rugby, auto racing, and there was at least one who wanted to play in the NBA someday. Most of those who expressed an athletic interest mentioned playing in America or Europe, possibly in the Olympics as well. I think they recognize that being a pro baseball player is fine, but being a Major League ballplayer is where it's at. Sadly, there was significantly less interest expressed in domestic sports like judo or sumo.
Another surprise was how few boys said they wanted to be a farmer. Not only was it one of the words we practiced, making it an easy choice, but I work in a rural area where most of these kids grow up around farms. Either they all are "reaching for the stars" and hoping to get out of Hana Town someday or farming just isn't a "cool" job to tell people about. Still, there was a lot of interest in fishing which is basically farming without the soil. I guess an island nation is going to have a lot of respect for fisherman, even though Hana Town is in the mountains with no ocean in sight.
Lots of boys picked fire fighter and policeman as potential careers, most of whom were sons of said professionals. Guess that's the same as it is in the States. I remember all the boys in my class who were into the fire/police departments had parents who were already working in those fields. I'll bet there's a lot of pressure to follow in dad's footsteps in both countries. Will I encourage my son to become a teacher? Will I still be teaching when my boy is old enough to even understand what he wants in life?
There were more than a few boys who talked about science, typically choosing archaeology (for the dinosaurs) or astronomy (for space). A few said they wanted to be astronauts. Others mentioned the Japanese Self-Defense Force and carpentry. Comedy was, unsurprisingly, another popular vocation. Not only was "comedian" one of the words we practiced, but Osaka is seen as the comedy capital (or should I say komedy kapital, nyuk nyuk?) of Japan. Nearly all of the performers on television are from the Kansai area and the dialect is closely associated with laughter. Note to Japanese students everywhere: using Kansai-ben is a sure-fire way to put a smile on a Japanese person's face.
Girls were tragically limited in their employment aspirations. At least 75% said they wanted to be a teacher of some kind. Most of them talked about work in a hoikuen (the Japanese equivalent of day care/nursery school) because they "love children." The remaining girls typically wanted to get into the makeover business: hairdressers, beauticians, fashion designers, make-up artists, nail artists, etc. A few entrepreneurs wanted to run their own bakery, flower shop, or clothing boutique. You see the pattern, right? All of the girls' interests are essentially hobbies and completely compatible with being a housewife. If that's what they really want, I'm not going to condemn them for it, but I hoped a few of them would aim their sights a bit higher. At the very least, I thought the recent high-profile coverage of Japanese female athletes (Ai Miyazato, Ai Fukuhara, and the 2008 Olympic softball team have been television mainstays for some time now) would draw a few girls into sports, but hardly any of them expressed any curiosity in athletics.
So what don't Japanese kids want to be when they grow up? The American standards of "doctor" and "lawyer" were ignored. Only one boy wanted to be an architect (which is what I wanted to be when I was in elementary school). For all their aesthetic talk, not a single girl wanted to be a model and I can only remember one mentioning acting or singing. And not a single student, boy or girl, said they wanted to be prime minister. I guess that shouldn't surprise me, seeing as how Japanese prime ministers have such fleeting cultural relevance (in two years I've seen two resign and the third is heading south in a hurry), but I can't help but think back to my childhood and how presidents and other political figures were so dominant. Yet when I suggested the idea early in the exercise, most students laughed. I think that's a bad sign.
But my favorite story of all this came on Tuesday when I was teaching my last class of the semester, specifically a large fifth grade class. They had actually memorized their presentations and so they were coming up in front of the class one by one and delivering their speeches pretty quickly. One boy got up and said "I want to be a yakuzaishi," which is Japanese for "pharmacist." But all I heard was "I want to be a Yakuza" and I kind of freaked out. Some quick follow-up questions made it clear that I was WAY OFF, and everyone had a laugh when they realized what I thought he said.
To think, I almost had Henry Hill as a student.
Labels: Japan, JET, predicting the future, teaching
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Friday, March 13, 2009
Repeat After Me
The more time I spend in Japanese elementary schools, the less I feel I understand them.
Graduation is only a few days away, so preparations are in full effect. This morning I watched the children practice everything they needed to do for the ceremony on Wednesday. Yes, much like cleaning the floors and passing out lunch, the students play an integral role in the graduation ceremony. They are singing a number of songs, playing one with their instruments (in addition to the standard "pomp and circumstance"), and they have a long, coordinated script where they take turns shouting words of gratitude and encouragement to the departing students.
In a lot of ways I respect what these schools do for the kids. Because they have so much responsibility as compared to American elementary school students, I feel like they are getting a leg up on life by learning to work together. I'm also impressed by the fact that even the first graders seem capable of handling two or three musical instruments. I never had any music lessons in my school days aside from singing. What might have been different if I had learned the recorder, or the piano?
On the other hand, the constant drilling around here does grate on me after a while. In between practicing their lines and their music, the children also spent time standing up together, sitting down together, applauding for the graduates together, even opening the door to let the sixth graders leave the gymnasium! As I write this, second period is almost over and they are still in there, practicing something else - or possibly just the same things again. How many hours of rehearsal are necessary for this?
It's not just the one annual ceremony, either. Japanese kids are constantly practicing stuff like this all year round. There are so many events that seem to take a higher priority than education it's a wonder these children learn anything at all.
Take math, for example. I remember learning the multiplication tables as a kid. It was important for basic math and while I can't say I can recall 12 x 9 off the top of my head, for the most part the training has stuck with me. Here in Japan, the children learn their multiplication tables in speech form. They only do 1-9, but the entire list is laid out and re-written (Japanese has a complex method of reading numbers) so that each child can practice reading the entire thing. They then spend time going around the school and "perform" in front of other adults, asking them to listen and make sure they don't make any mistakes. While I have never seen it, I suspect there is some kind of in-class event where they must do the whole thing in front of their classmates.
I'm forced to ask: what's the point? Maybe all that practice aids in memorization, but why add the presentation aspect? How does that help the children retain 5 x 9? I just don't see what purpose all this walking around and chanting serves. Mnemonic devices are great learning aids, but pointless performances are not. And this is only the tip of the iceberg I'm sure. I don't spend much time observing their regular classes, but from what I've heard most subjects include some kind of "memorize this by reading it aloud over and over again" practice.
By making every subject about repetition and memorization, I believe it has a detrimental effect on the children's learning habits. When we do presentations in English class (which we do too often if you ask me), most students struggle to follow along unless they write all of their material out in phonetic Japanese (which makes everything sound off). Even for simple stuff like "My name is," an expression we use constantly in class, few can recite it without notes. It's as if they cannot perform without weeks of practice and written instructions.
Call me cynical, but if these kids spent less time preparing themselves for speeches, essay contests, and memorization drills, maybe they could spend more time learning? Maybe then fewer children would feel obligated to go to after-school cram sessions to make up for the basic education they're not getting in school? And if I may be so bold, what if one tenth of this puppetry was replaced with a valuable subject like, I don't know, ENGLISH? Some elementary schools are better than others, but few pay English any serious mind. The average student gets 10 lessons per year. Not semester - per YEAR. They spend more class hours than that jumping rope.
I can't say I remember everything I went through in elementary school, but the things I can remember are integral in who I am today. The books I read, the songs I sang, and especially the limited acting experiences I had - this is the stuff that has stuck with me over two decades and practically defines me as a person. I'm not saying Japan has it all wrong, but I worry that the balance between education and empty ceremonies is way off. Is this the right learning environment for my son?
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Graduation is only a few days away, so preparations are in full effect. This morning I watched the children practice everything they needed to do for the ceremony on Wednesday. Yes, much like cleaning the floors and passing out lunch, the students play an integral role in the graduation ceremony. They are singing a number of songs, playing one with their instruments (in addition to the standard "pomp and circumstance"), and they have a long, coordinated script where they take turns shouting words of gratitude and encouragement to the departing students.
In a lot of ways I respect what these schools do for the kids. Because they have so much responsibility as compared to American elementary school students, I feel like they are getting a leg up on life by learning to work together. I'm also impressed by the fact that even the first graders seem capable of handling two or three musical instruments. I never had any music lessons in my school days aside from singing. What might have been different if I had learned the recorder, or the piano?
On the other hand, the constant drilling around here does grate on me after a while. In between practicing their lines and their music, the children also spent time standing up together, sitting down together, applauding for the graduates together, even opening the door to let the sixth graders leave the gymnasium! As I write this, second period is almost over and they are still in there, practicing something else - or possibly just the same things again. How many hours of rehearsal are necessary for this?
It's not just the one annual ceremony, either. Japanese kids are constantly practicing stuff like this all year round. There are so many events that seem to take a higher priority than education it's a wonder these children learn anything at all.
Take math, for example. I remember learning the multiplication tables as a kid. It was important for basic math and while I can't say I can recall 12 x 9 off the top of my head, for the most part the training has stuck with me. Here in Japan, the children learn their multiplication tables in speech form. They only do 1-9, but the entire list is laid out and re-written (Japanese has a complex method of reading numbers) so that each child can practice reading the entire thing. They then spend time going around the school and "perform" in front of other adults, asking them to listen and make sure they don't make any mistakes. While I have never seen it, I suspect there is some kind of in-class event where they must do the whole thing in front of their classmates.
I'm forced to ask: what's the point? Maybe all that practice aids in memorization, but why add the presentation aspect? How does that help the children retain 5 x 9? I just don't see what purpose all this walking around and chanting serves. Mnemonic devices are great learning aids, but pointless performances are not. And this is only the tip of the iceberg I'm sure. I don't spend much time observing their regular classes, but from what I've heard most subjects include some kind of "memorize this by reading it aloud over and over again" practice.
By making every subject about repetition and memorization, I believe it has a detrimental effect on the children's learning habits. When we do presentations in English class (which we do too often if you ask me), most students struggle to follow along unless they write all of their material out in phonetic Japanese (which makes everything sound off). Even for simple stuff like "My name is," an expression we use constantly in class, few can recite it without notes. It's as if they cannot perform without weeks of practice and written instructions.
Call me cynical, but if these kids spent less time preparing themselves for speeches, essay contests, and memorization drills, maybe they could spend more time learning? Maybe then fewer children would feel obligated to go to after-school cram sessions to make up for the basic education they're not getting in school? And if I may be so bold, what if one tenth of this puppetry was replaced with a valuable subject like, I don't know, ENGLISH? Some elementary schools are better than others, but few pay English any serious mind. The average student gets 10 lessons per year. Not semester - per YEAR. They spend more class hours than that jumping rope.
I can't say I remember everything I went through in elementary school, but the things I can remember are integral in who I am today. The books I read, the songs I sang, and especially the limited acting experiences I had - this is the stuff that has stuck with me over two decades and practically defines me as a person. I'm not saying Japan has it all wrong, but I worry that the balance between education and empty ceremonies is way off. Is this the right learning environment for my son?
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Labels: Japan, teaching, Write or Die
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Friday, March 06, 2009
ABC: Not as Easy as 123
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." - John Lennon
I listen to the excellent This American Life weekly podcast and every episode gives me a lot to think about. I suspect that if I was diligent, I could write an entire post each week just reflecting on what I had heard. Maybe today will be the first of many such posts.
Ah, do you see what I did there? I started making plans. A recent episode was all about "Plan B," telling stories about people who found themselves mired in their backup plan and wondering how to get back on track. The first story was the one that stuck with me the most. John Hodgman (yes, the one you've seen on "The Daily Show" and the PC vs Mac ads) told a story about Cuervo Man, a guy who made his living as a "party catalyst" hocking tequila at bars and other social events. Cuervo Man happened to be a well-educated guy who always dreamed of being an actor and a series of unlikely events landed him what seemed like a dream job - being paid to drink booze and act like an ass so that others would be inclined to drink more booze. Although the job eventually wore him down (particularly once he stopped drinking out of concern for his health and state-of-mind), he came to respect it as a part of his Plan A - being an actor. He played a role, it just wasn't one with a script or any cameras.
I thought about this a lot this week, especially after something that happened yesterday at one of my larger schools. I make it a point to be BIG in the classroom. Not just in size (that's a given - these are children after all and I live in Japan) but in presence. I move around the room as much as possible, use broad, sweeping movements to punctuate what I say and I constantly point to myself to get the student's attention. So when a little girl yesterday stood in front of the class to do her presentation, she openly channeled/mocked me by waving her arms around with each word, speaking much louder than necessary and generally acting like a crazy person. It was a huge hit with the children and I was amused at how much thought she clearly had put into her act. I was also impressed at her presentation, since few students were able to audibly address their peers in English, but that's besides the point: watching her "zing" me by reflecting my own performance back to me, it forced me to consider what it is I do for a living. Am I on Plan A right now? What is my Plan A, honestly?
I mean, I obviously spent years going back to school so that I could apply for the JET Programme and get a job in Japan as an English teacher. I'm here, mission accomplished. But now what? Even as I studied and worked towards achieving this goal, I was thinking about what I wanted to do next. It was as if my goal was just another step towards a new goal, only I couldn't decide what the new goal was. Did I want to be a translator? Was I going to live in Japan for ten, twenty, forty years? I never actually answered these questions but they kicked around inside my head throughout my senior year.
So now I'm here. I'm teaching English to children in Japan. Is this what I want? I used to consider this job my gateway to a greater and more rewarding life in Japan as some kind of translator or (dare I say it) voice actor, Now, I don't want to say "never," but my lack of progress in studying Japanese has made me realize that becoming a translator in any professional sense is probably impossible. My listening skills are terrible and even if my reading skills were to improve (and that's a big if), it seems like any job worth taking would require a nearly-instantaneous Japanese-to-English response. There would be no time for dictionaries or late nights of exploring odd vocabulary. The translating life I led at school cannot exist in the working world. No one would pay me for doing what I did.
But this is not gloom and doom time. Rather, what that girl did yesterday helped me to recognize that I am, in fact, living out a dream I've had for years. I am more or less an actor right now. Think about it. I have never received any training as a teacher. Everything I do in the classroom is following direction or improvisation. I know the goal (as the Board of Education sees it) is English education, but let's get real here. These kids get so little time with me and that time is so non-academic that this is less of a teacher's role as it is an acting performance. I could do what I do on the streets of Osaka and people would start gathering around me and taking pictures. I'm a human statue that can't sit still, a mime that never shuts up, a busker with a steady gig inside a classroom. Things can always change, but for now this is Plan A.
Once again, this post was made possible with the Write or Die web app. If I keep this up, I wonder if my fantasy of becoming a writer may become the new Plan A?
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I listen to the excellent This American Life weekly podcast and every episode gives me a lot to think about. I suspect that if I was diligent, I could write an entire post each week just reflecting on what I had heard. Maybe today will be the first of many such posts.
Ah, do you see what I did there? I started making plans. A recent episode was all about "Plan B," telling stories about people who found themselves mired in their backup plan and wondering how to get back on track. The first story was the one that stuck with me the most. John Hodgman (yes, the one you've seen on "The Daily Show" and the PC vs Mac ads) told a story about Cuervo Man, a guy who made his living as a "party catalyst" hocking tequila at bars and other social events. Cuervo Man happened to be a well-educated guy who always dreamed of being an actor and a series of unlikely events landed him what seemed like a dream job - being paid to drink booze and act like an ass so that others would be inclined to drink more booze. Although the job eventually wore him down (particularly once he stopped drinking out of concern for his health and state-of-mind), he came to respect it as a part of his Plan A - being an actor. He played a role, it just wasn't one with a script or any cameras.
I thought about this a lot this week, especially after something that happened yesterday at one of my larger schools. I make it a point to be BIG in the classroom. Not just in size (that's a given - these are children after all and I live in Japan) but in presence. I move around the room as much as possible, use broad, sweeping movements to punctuate what I say and I constantly point to myself to get the student's attention. So when a little girl yesterday stood in front of the class to do her presentation, she openly channeled/mocked me by waving her arms around with each word, speaking much louder than necessary and generally acting like a crazy person. It was a huge hit with the children and I was amused at how much thought she clearly had put into her act. I was also impressed at her presentation, since few students were able to audibly address their peers in English, but that's besides the point: watching her "zing" me by reflecting my own performance back to me, it forced me to consider what it is I do for a living. Am I on Plan A right now? What is my Plan A, honestly?
I mean, I obviously spent years going back to school so that I could apply for the JET Programme and get a job in Japan as an English teacher. I'm here, mission accomplished. But now what? Even as I studied and worked towards achieving this goal, I was thinking about what I wanted to do next. It was as if my goal was just another step towards a new goal, only I couldn't decide what the new goal was. Did I want to be a translator? Was I going to live in Japan for ten, twenty, forty years? I never actually answered these questions but they kicked around inside my head throughout my senior year.
So now I'm here. I'm teaching English to children in Japan. Is this what I want? I used to consider this job my gateway to a greater and more rewarding life in Japan as some kind of translator or (dare I say it) voice actor, Now, I don't want to say "never," but my lack of progress in studying Japanese has made me realize that becoming a translator in any professional sense is probably impossible. My listening skills are terrible and even if my reading skills were to improve (and that's a big if), it seems like any job worth taking would require a nearly-instantaneous Japanese-to-English response. There would be no time for dictionaries or late nights of exploring odd vocabulary. The translating life I led at school cannot exist in the working world. No one would pay me for doing what I did.
But this is not gloom and doom time. Rather, what that girl did yesterday helped me to recognize that I am, in fact, living out a dream I've had for years. I am more or less an actor right now. Think about it. I have never received any training as a teacher. Everything I do in the classroom is following direction or improvisation. I know the goal (as the Board of Education sees it) is English education, but let's get real here. These kids get so little time with me and that time is so non-academic that this is less of a teacher's role as it is an acting performance. I could do what I do on the streets of Osaka and people would start gathering around me and taking pictures. I'm a human statue that can't sit still, a mime that never shuts up, a busker with a steady gig inside a classroom. Things can always change, but for now this is Plan A.
Once again, this post was made possible with the Write or Die web app. If I keep this up, I wonder if my fantasy of becoming a writer may become the new Plan A?
Labels: Japan, JET, teaching, This American Life, Write or Die, writing
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Thanks, Japan. I Needed That.
One of the best things about having a holiday in the middle of the week is it changes the dynamic of the other days around it. With Wednesday being off, Tuesday became Friday, and Monday kinda felt like Thursday. Of course, tomorrow is Thursday, but since I spent today resting, doesn't that make it into Monday?
Don't be silly. Thursday is always Thursday.
The worst thing about today was the fact that I'm sick. It started as a simple cough over the weekend, but by Monday evening I was sniffling and my voice was struggling. Yesterday was a challenge, to be sure, especially because I had another after-school class that made it a very long day of teaching. I must have sucked down at least three Vitamin C candies during the last hour of work. I feel better now, thanks to a full day of very little talking (and absolutely no shouting). Maybe the worst of it is behind me now...or maybe another day of shouting will bring it all back tomorrow.
Mako and I spent the morning on the sofa watching Prison Break and we are oh-so-close to the end of Season One. Indeed, we'd be watching the end right now if it weren't for her sudden desire to step on the brakes and slow down. Sure, there are other shows we can watch but after so many hours, how can she stand to wait any longer to find out who makes it and who doesn't? Now I'm going to spend all day tomorrow wondering about it. She told me to pop in Battlestar Galactica instead, but seeing as how I'm almost at the end of their Season One as well, I just want to wrap up one show at a time.
We had a terrific, curry-soaked lunch where I experienced something pretty crazy. As usual, I ordered a bit too much food and I had to help Mako finish hers at the same time, so towards the end of the meal I was really, really full. But the more I ate of my bacon & eggplant curry (with cheese) omurice, the hungrier I felt. If you've ever read The Phantom Tollbooth you might remember "subtraction stew." For the first time I can recall, I actually understood what that might feel like.
With Mako and I both filled to capacity we took it real easy when we got back home. Mako needed a straight-up nap, leaving me a few hours alone with a television and my PS3. I muscled my way through two more stages in Resistance 2 alone and then played a bit of LittleBigPlanet with Richard. I enjoyed the freedom of the afternoon immensely even if both games did their best to drive me a little nuts.
In Resistance 2 I found myself straining my voice just so I could complain aloud about the circumstances I found myself in: two boss battles where the game just wasn't throwing me any bones. The first was me versus a giant something-or-other, a moment that was initially really cool. I was on top of a tower littered with guns but there were no soldiers to be seen. It wasn't until I looked up that I saw...it, and that began the fight. Unfortunately, the designers made a baffling decision to not give me any visual hint that my bullets were, in fact, hurting this massive, crawling monster - the usual red reticule was not present - so it took several failures before I just looked to the Internet for answers. It turns out the answer is just shoot the damn thing until it falls down. I did that.
The second boss was even more bizarre in form and even more irritating due to its ability to kill me instantly if it touched me. It wasn't an "it" so much as it was a "they," a "swarm" of beasties massed together, super-charged with bolts of energy. The first time you see it the game tells you to run away, but doing that means it catches you and kills you. No, you have to walk backwards and shoot at it, somehow slowing it down even though a gun versus a swarm of smaller-than-a-bullet monsters doesn't sound like a winnable fight. Eventually you face off against the swarm in a giant cavern where you must use generators to trap them and kill them with a special weapon. Of course, all the generators look the same and are connected by identical looking corridors, so I kept dying while some voice shouted at me "Get to the first generator!" I asked, alone in my room, "Which one is the 'first' one, you dick?"
LittleBigPlanet is a great game that looks adorable even when it's smashing your little character between heavy objects and driving you nuts. Richard and I actually "finished" the last level today, although the magic of LBP is that the game has an ever-increasing number of user-created levels to play. Indeed, having run through the normal levels, the idea is that I should try and make one myself. I do have an idea or two, but I have the nagging feeling that it will take me as long as it did to complete the other levels just to finish one of my own. I'll let you know if I make any headway in that department though.
My Wednesday/Sunday holiday evening is drawing to a close. I'm keeping my fingers crossed over the next two days to make it through with my vocal cords intact. Candies, you're with me!
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Don't be silly. Thursday is always Thursday.
The worst thing about today was the fact that I'm sick. It started as a simple cough over the weekend, but by Monday evening I was sniffling and my voice was struggling. Yesterday was a challenge, to be sure, especially because I had another after-school class that made it a very long day of teaching. I must have sucked down at least three Vitamin C candies during the last hour of work. I feel better now, thanks to a full day of very little talking (and absolutely no shouting). Maybe the worst of it is behind me now...or maybe another day of shouting will bring it all back tomorrow.
Mako and I spent the morning on the sofa watching Prison Break and we are oh-so-close to the end of Season One. Indeed, we'd be watching the end right now if it weren't for her sudden desire to step on the brakes and slow down. Sure, there are other shows we can watch but after so many hours, how can she stand to wait any longer to find out who makes it and who doesn't? Now I'm going to spend all day tomorrow wondering about it. She told me to pop in Battlestar Galactica instead, but seeing as how I'm almost at the end of their Season One as well, I just want to wrap up one show at a time.
We had a terrific, curry-soaked lunch where I experienced something pretty crazy. As usual, I ordered a bit too much food and I had to help Mako finish hers at the same time, so towards the end of the meal I was really, really full. But the more I ate of my bacon & eggplant curry (with cheese) omurice, the hungrier I felt. If you've ever read The Phantom Tollbooth you might remember "subtraction stew." For the first time I can recall, I actually understood what that might feel like.
With Mako and I both filled to capacity we took it real easy when we got back home. Mako needed a straight-up nap, leaving me a few hours alone with a television and my PS3. I muscled my way through two more stages in Resistance 2 alone and then played a bit of LittleBigPlanet with Richard. I enjoyed the freedom of the afternoon immensely even if both games did their best to drive me a little nuts.
In Resistance 2 I found myself straining my voice just so I could complain aloud about the circumstances I found myself in: two boss battles where the game just wasn't throwing me any bones. The first was me versus a giant something-or-other, a moment that was initially really cool. I was on top of a tower littered with guns but there were no soldiers to be seen. It wasn't until I looked up that I saw...it, and that began the fight. Unfortunately, the designers made a baffling decision to not give me any visual hint that my bullets were, in fact, hurting this massive, crawling monster - the usual red reticule was not present - so it took several failures before I just looked to the Internet for answers. It turns out the answer is just shoot the damn thing until it falls down. I did that.
The second boss was even more bizarre in form and even more irritating due to its ability to kill me instantly if it touched me. It wasn't an "it" so much as it was a "they," a "swarm" of beasties massed together, super-charged with bolts of energy. The first time you see it the game tells you to run away, but doing that means it catches you and kills you. No, you have to walk backwards and shoot at it, somehow slowing it down even though a gun versus a swarm of smaller-than-a-bullet monsters doesn't sound like a winnable fight. Eventually you face off against the swarm in a giant cavern where you must use generators to trap them and kill them with a special weapon. Of course, all the generators look the same and are connected by identical looking corridors, so I kept dying while some voice shouted at me "Get to the first generator!" I asked, alone in my room, "Which one is the 'first' one, you dick?"
LittleBigPlanet is a great game that looks adorable even when it's smashing your little character between heavy objects and driving you nuts. Richard and I actually "finished" the last level today, although the magic of LBP is that the game has an ever-increasing number of user-created levels to play. Indeed, having run through the normal levels, the idea is that I should try and make one myself. I do have an idea or two, but I have the nagging feeling that it will take me as long as it did to complete the other levels just to finish one of my own. I'll let you know if I make any headway in that department though.
My Wednesday/Sunday holiday evening is drawing to a close. I'm keeping my fingers crossed over the next two days to make it through with my vocal cords intact. Candies, you're with me!
Labels: food, frustration, Little Big Planet, Prison Break, PS3, Resistance 2, teaching, television, video games
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Feels Like Progress
As January comes to a close and the deep chill of February creeps ever closer, things are really heating up at work. I had ten classes plus an extended meeting in one 48-hour period, more responsibilities than I had all of last week. With next week looking just as hectic I am very tired but at the same time relieved to be doing my part. Too much idle time in the office (especially a Japanese office) makes me feel like a freeloader.
Speaking of freeloaders, my unborn child is still loafing around the womb and doing a number on Mako's insides. She had a few weeks where DJ was relatively dormant and her spirits were up as a result, but lately he or she has started squirming and kicking which leaves her feeling tired much more often. It's not as bad as it was in the first trimester - she's not sleeping in as much nor is she chained to the couch when I get home - but the suddenly energetic DJ has certainly sapped some of her strength. Sadly, DJ is still too small for me to feel anything with my hand, but that hasn't stopped me from constantly groping Mako's belly in the hope of getting some sensation of movement in there.
Getting back to the subject of getting back to work, I have to admit that conditions at school are showing signs of real improvement. After my optimism last semester was soundly smashed, I couldn't help but head into this semester with a sense of pessimism. It wasn't so bad as to sour me on this job, because if it was I wouldn't have requested a new contract, but it hung over my winter break and left me feeling uneasy about the prospect of going back to work. Instead, this semester's English plans were quickly distributed to all schools and the materials I needed were (almost) entirely printed and prepared in advance of my first day. After we had another demonstration lesson yesterday we had a long meeting and several teachers said how important it is to have the homeroom teacher be more active in English class rather than just let me (the assistant teacher by definition) handle everything. Even though I've heard this kind of talk since day one, the progress in lesson preparation makes me wonder if we might make progress in the classroom as well.
Personally I feel good about the progress I've made, both as a teacher and as a "presence" in these schools. Nearly all the students know me by name at this point and no one has called me any other names in months. I'm still sorely lacking in both the language and confidence department to truly integrate myself with my coworkers, but I'm doing a better job of just talking to other people whenever I'm sitting in the office. You'd be surprised at how many conversations I've had in recent weeks about Obama and the state of the American economy, considering I don't know enough about economics to discuss it in English let alone Japanese. I may never be able to completely fit in, especially since I'm spread across five different schools at this point, but the more people see me as a person rather than just an ALT - a commodity, a mercenary, a "striker" if you will - the better my professional relationships will be.
As far as the students go, I've found that language isn't as important as body language. I've been pushing myself to just do more, both in the classroom and in the hallways. Whether I'm having children repeat after me or just walking from class to class, I try to use as much motion as I possibly can. Waving my arms, clapping my hands, jumping up and down, even striking outrageous poses - I look ridiculous but it guarantees that the children notice me and pay more attention. This has also gone towards improving my relationship with the teachers because they are definitely impressed by my progress as a teacher and offering me a lot more compliments as a result.
So here I am, seventeen months into my tenure on JET and I'm actually starting to get used to it just as my coworkers are getting used to me. At this rate, I may actually be good at this job before my time is up. Imagine that!
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Speaking of freeloaders, my unborn child is still loafing around the womb and doing a number on Mako's insides. She had a few weeks where DJ was relatively dormant and her spirits were up as a result, but lately he or she has started squirming and kicking which leaves her feeling tired much more often. It's not as bad as it was in the first trimester - she's not sleeping in as much nor is she chained to the couch when I get home - but the suddenly energetic DJ has certainly sapped some of her strength. Sadly, DJ is still too small for me to feel anything with my hand, but that hasn't stopped me from constantly groping Mako's belly in the hope of getting some sensation of movement in there.
Getting back to the subject of getting back to work, I have to admit that conditions at school are showing signs of real improvement. After my optimism last semester was soundly smashed, I couldn't help but head into this semester with a sense of pessimism. It wasn't so bad as to sour me on this job, because if it was I wouldn't have requested a new contract, but it hung over my winter break and left me feeling uneasy about the prospect of going back to work. Instead, this semester's English plans were quickly distributed to all schools and the materials I needed were (almost) entirely printed and prepared in advance of my first day. After we had another demonstration lesson yesterday we had a long meeting and several teachers said how important it is to have the homeroom teacher be more active in English class rather than just let me (the assistant teacher by definition) handle everything. Even though I've heard this kind of talk since day one, the progress in lesson preparation makes me wonder if we might make progress in the classroom as well.
Personally I feel good about the progress I've made, both as a teacher and as a "presence" in these schools. Nearly all the students know me by name at this point and no one has called me any other names in months. I'm still sorely lacking in both the language and confidence department to truly integrate myself with my coworkers, but I'm doing a better job of just talking to other people whenever I'm sitting in the office. You'd be surprised at how many conversations I've had in recent weeks about Obama and the state of the American economy, considering I don't know enough about economics to discuss it in English let alone Japanese. I may never be able to completely fit in, especially since I'm spread across five different schools at this point, but the more people see me as a person rather than just an ALT - a commodity, a mercenary, a "striker" if you will - the better my professional relationships will be.
As far as the students go, I've found that language isn't as important as body language. I've been pushing myself to just do more, both in the classroom and in the hallways. Whether I'm having children repeat after me or just walking from class to class, I try to use as much motion as I possibly can. Waving my arms, clapping my hands, jumping up and down, even striking outrageous poses - I look ridiculous but it guarantees that the children notice me and pay more attention. This has also gone towards improving my relationship with the teachers because they are definitely impressed by my progress as a teacher and offering me a lot more compliments as a result.
So here I am, seventeen months into my tenure on JET and I'm actually starting to get used to it just as my coworkers are getting used to me. At this rate, I may actually be good at this job before my time is up. Imagine that!
Labels: Japan, JET, pregnancy, teaching
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
CHANGE: no I can't
I know you college types are just starting to get back to class but at the elementary school level we are up and running at full speed by now. While you knowledge-hungry elitists are just getting back from vacations, maybe shopping for textbooks or reviewing your latest syllabi (syllabuses?), these kids have long since returned to school and their all-too-brief winter break is already a distant memory. Of course, I say that as I sit in an empty classroom in the middle of a day when I have no classes to teach, so some teachers are busier than others. As English is surely the black sheep of subjects here in Japan, I will have a few more days of adjustment before anyone notices that I am, in fact, here to teach children as opposed to sit in the office and type quietly on my laptop.
I'm exaggerating, of course. Some schools had me start working with students on the very first day of classes back on January 9th. Other schools, such as where I am currently sitting, prefer to let the individual teachers sign up for English classes, thereby guaranteeing periods of extreme idleness at the start and end of the semester while everyone tries to squeeze their lessons with me into the middle. So while I had no classes last Tuesday or today, I have five next Tuesday and again the Tuesday after that. It's frustrating, but then I remind myself that they don't do it out of spite, they do it because they simply don't care. I'll take negligence over hate any day.
It is in the midst of this odd period that I filed my request for an extension of my contract. The hiring and placement process for the JET Programme is so incredibly long that my Board of Ed needs to know almost six months beforehand whether or not I intend to renew my contract or not. The renewal forms are distributed three months prior to that in case people are hoping for transfers which take even longer. Hence the first steps in renewing or ending a JET Programme-brokered contract take place in October, only two months after newbies arrive and only one month after classes start.
As stressed and anxious as I was in my first year, I knew this job and life in Japan was what I wanted so I didn't hesitate in re-signing. This year I actually had time to reflect on how my job has changed (nearly entirely for the better) and think about what I want to achieve next year. Factor in a forthcoming baby and the craptastic job market both here and in the States (two big reasons not to start passing out resumes this summer) and I felt pretty comfortable submitting my request yesterday.
If I have one major reservation it is not knowing what might change in April when the new school year starts. Last year it brought about some serious shifts of personnel, including new principals at every single school that I visit. Later that month it was decided that I would stop going to the tiny mountain school in favor of increased classes at other, slightly larger schools. Again, looking back I would say that almost everything that changed was for the better, but I cannot reasonably assume that I will be as fortunate this April.
There's also the unknown element of a new ALT coming to Hana Town. The JET who currently works in the middle schools around here (and that one tiny mountain school) is at the end of his tenure. While they could still potentially offer him some kind of new contract, odds are he will move on and they will request a new ALT. This will obviously have implications for my job, but how drastic they are I couldn't possibly say. Will my current rotation of schools remain the same? Will I be asked to help out at the middle school level, or will he be asked to cover more elementary school lessons? Will he flake out and quit after six weeks, tarnishing my reputation in the process?
Even bigger, will there be a new ALT coming at all? As the number of students in Hana Town continues to dwindle, there might be drastic changes on the horizon. I just learned today that this school, the largest one I teach at, will have half the usual number of incoming first graders in April. Other schools are similarly expecting smaller student bodies: one school is graduating eighteen sixth graders but is getting only eight new students. Another is graduating ten and is unlikely to welcome more than two or three new children, maybe less. Someone might just decide to spread my schedule thin across more schools and forgo the expense of hiring, importing, and then paying the monthly salary of a whole new foreigner.
But that's all speculative and unfounded guesswork. The bottom line is that I came here after years of work and they seem to like me, so I'm staying. Other potential employment issues may come up in 2009, but I hope to remain in Hana Town through at least July of next year with addition renewals possible. At the very least, I can take great comfort in knowing that by the time I wake up tomorrow, this asshole will be out of a job. Here's hoping his replacement doesn't flake out and quit after six weeks either.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I'm exaggerating, of course. Some schools had me start working with students on the very first day of classes back on January 9th. Other schools, such as where I am currently sitting, prefer to let the individual teachers sign up for English classes, thereby guaranteeing periods of extreme idleness at the start and end of the semester while everyone tries to squeeze their lessons with me into the middle. So while I had no classes last Tuesday or today, I have five next Tuesday and again the Tuesday after that. It's frustrating, but then I remind myself that they don't do it out of spite, they do it because they simply don't care. I'll take negligence over hate any day.
It is in the midst of this odd period that I filed my request for an extension of my contract. The hiring and placement process for the JET Programme is so incredibly long that my Board of Ed needs to know almost six months beforehand whether or not I intend to renew my contract or not. The renewal forms are distributed three months prior to that in case people are hoping for transfers which take even longer. Hence the first steps in renewing or ending a JET Programme-brokered contract take place in October, only two months after newbies arrive and only one month after classes start.
As stressed and anxious as I was in my first year, I knew this job and life in Japan was what I wanted so I didn't hesitate in re-signing. This year I actually had time to reflect on how my job has changed (nearly entirely for the better) and think about what I want to achieve next year. Factor in a forthcoming baby and the craptastic job market both here and in the States (two big reasons not to start passing out resumes this summer) and I felt pretty comfortable submitting my request yesterday.
If I have one major reservation it is not knowing what might change in April when the new school year starts. Last year it brought about some serious shifts of personnel, including new principals at every single school that I visit. Later that month it was decided that I would stop going to the tiny mountain school in favor of increased classes at other, slightly larger schools. Again, looking back I would say that almost everything that changed was for the better, but I cannot reasonably assume that I will be as fortunate this April.
There's also the unknown element of a new ALT coming to Hana Town. The JET who currently works in the middle schools around here (and that one tiny mountain school) is at the end of his tenure. While they could still potentially offer him some kind of new contract, odds are he will move on and they will request a new ALT. This will obviously have implications for my job, but how drastic they are I couldn't possibly say. Will my current rotation of schools remain the same? Will I be asked to help out at the middle school level, or will he be asked to cover more elementary school lessons? Will he flake out and quit after six weeks, tarnishing my reputation in the process?
Even bigger, will there be a new ALT coming at all? As the number of students in Hana Town continues to dwindle, there might be drastic changes on the horizon. I just learned today that this school, the largest one I teach at, will have half the usual number of incoming first graders in April. Other schools are similarly expecting smaller student bodies: one school is graduating eighteen sixth graders but is getting only eight new students. Another is graduating ten and is unlikely to welcome more than two or three new children, maybe less. Someone might just decide to spread my schedule thin across more schools and forgo the expense of hiring, importing, and then paying the monthly salary of a whole new foreigner.
But that's all speculative and unfounded guesswork. The bottom line is that I came here after years of work and they seem to like me, so I'm staying. Other potential employment issues may come up in 2009, but I hope to remain in Hana Town through at least July of next year with addition renewals possible. At the very least, I can take great comfort in knowing that by the time I wake up tomorrow, this asshole will be out of a job. Here's hoping his replacement doesn't flake out and quit after six weeks either.
Labels: frustration, Japan, JET, job hunting, politics, predicting the future, teaching
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Security = Satisfaction?
Last week was a very enjoyable if completely uneventful vacation. We didn't do much to commemorate the holiday aside from a few day trips to visit Mako's parents and spend time with family. This week I've returned to "work" but only in the loosest possible sense of the word. I don't dare complain about my lack of responsibilities or feelings of superfluousness though. From the increasingly grim headlines I read everyday, I feel like I should really take a moment and thank the glorious-yet-potentially-imaginary deity that I even have a job.
I live in a world somewhat isolated from the global economic crisis and I've been here for my entire adult life. Years ago, when I realized college wasn't going to work, I earned a living through bottom-feeder part-time jobs. Operating a cash register, providing tech support over the phone, even working in the movie theater (which I loved) - all of these jobs were "secure" in that they were low paying with a high turnover rate, ensuring that nobody stuck around long enough to become an expensive liability to the company. I made friends at each of these places but nobody felt much of an impact when I left and I'm sure I was easily (and quickly) replaced at no significant loss. It's counter-intuitive, but I was so expendable that I never worried about being let go.
Then came my tenure at the post office and that's about as steady as work can get. Stamp prices may go up and volume may go down but no matter what, people are always going to need to send things through the mail and the USPS is always going to have more than enough employees to handle that mail. The job security and unchanging daily grind was so strong that each day became the same as the last. It was like that time the Enterprise got caught in that time loop and kept exploding...or Groundhog Day if you're not as geeky as I am. I still felt expendable but I knew I would never be let go because they never let anybody go, not even those who were incompetent or a danger to others. I didn't take comfort in that feeling at all; rather, I felt like I was worthless.
Now I'm living in Japan and teaching English purely because I happen to have a native grasp on the subject, which puts me in an extremely beneficial situation. There simply aren't enough people like me around to fill all the positions Japanese schools have to offer and that's precisely the reason I was "imported" in the first place. I am replacable, yes, but not in any practical way because bringing in someone new is prohibitively expensive. That level of security, coupled with the general sense of satisfaction that I "matter" because I'm a teacher, makes this job quite possibly the most rewarding one I've ever held.
Taking all of the above into account, I find it ironic that my idle thoughts often wander towards leaving this job and trying to find something that is even more rewarding. As it turns out, the notion that this job ranks so high on the "satisfying" scale when compared to my other jobs isn't enough to convince me that this is something I want to do for years to come. That's because my earlier jobs were totally crappy, frankly. To use a crude metaphor, just because Paris Hilton is more attractive than Rosie O'Donnell doesn't make her a contender for Earth's Most Beautiful Woman. She simply doesn't look like shit.
All of this came to my mind this afternoon when I read about the closure of EGM and the layoffs of most of the writers and online personalities that I came to embrace via the magazine's online portal, 1up.com. Here are a bunch of people doing something that strikes me as extremely enjoyable, even enviable, who are now out of work and looking at a very limited range of future employment options. Journalism in general and criticism (especially video game criticism) in particular is a dwindling field. Newspapers and magazines are drying up as people increasingly turn towards television and the Internet. Meanwhile, here I sit in a concrete bunker of an elementary school earning a very generous salary (paid in robust Yen no less) gaining experience in a field that will never, ever go away and dreaming about finding work as a games journalist.
Obviously, I have a lot to think about over the next few years. Teaching English isn't going anywhere but this particular job that I've got has a time limit, and with a baby on the way I've got to choose my moves very carefully to ensure little Daniel Jr. doesn't grow up lacking anything he needs. Writing in my spare time is one thing but at this stage it is damn near irresponsible to fantasize about making a living with it. However, how long can I really expect to date Paris Hilton without dreaming about...I don't know...Scarlett Johansson?
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I live in a world somewhat isolated from the global economic crisis and I've been here for my entire adult life. Years ago, when I realized college wasn't going to work, I earned a living through bottom-feeder part-time jobs. Operating a cash register, providing tech support over the phone, even working in the movie theater (which I loved) - all of these jobs were "secure" in that they were low paying with a high turnover rate, ensuring that nobody stuck around long enough to become an expensive liability to the company. I made friends at each of these places but nobody felt much of an impact when I left and I'm sure I was easily (and quickly) replaced at no significant loss. It's counter-intuitive, but I was so expendable that I never worried about being let go.
Then came my tenure at the post office and that's about as steady as work can get. Stamp prices may go up and volume may go down but no matter what, people are always going to need to send things through the mail and the USPS is always going to have more than enough employees to handle that mail. The job security and unchanging daily grind was so strong that each day became the same as the last. It was like that time the Enterprise got caught in that time loop and kept exploding...or Groundhog Day if you're not as geeky as I am. I still felt expendable but I knew I would never be let go because they never let anybody go, not even those who were incompetent or a danger to others. I didn't take comfort in that feeling at all; rather, I felt like I was worthless.
Now I'm living in Japan and teaching English purely because I happen to have a native grasp on the subject, which puts me in an extremely beneficial situation. There simply aren't enough people like me around to fill all the positions Japanese schools have to offer and that's precisely the reason I was "imported" in the first place. I am replacable, yes, but not in any practical way because bringing in someone new is prohibitively expensive. That level of security, coupled with the general sense of satisfaction that I "matter" because I'm a teacher, makes this job quite possibly the most rewarding one I've ever held.
Taking all of the above into account, I find it ironic that my idle thoughts often wander towards leaving this job and trying to find something that is even more rewarding. As it turns out, the notion that this job ranks so high on the "satisfying" scale when compared to my other jobs isn't enough to convince me that this is something I want to do for years to come. That's because my earlier jobs were totally crappy, frankly. To use a crude metaphor, just because Paris Hilton is more attractive than Rosie O'Donnell doesn't make her a contender for Earth's Most Beautiful Woman. She simply doesn't look like shit.
All of this came to my mind this afternoon when I read about the closure of EGM and the layoffs of most of the writers and online personalities that I came to embrace via the magazine's online portal, 1up.com. Here are a bunch of people doing something that strikes me as extremely enjoyable, even enviable, who are now out of work and looking at a very limited range of future employment options. Journalism in general and criticism (especially video game criticism) in particular is a dwindling field. Newspapers and magazines are drying up as people increasingly turn towards television and the Internet. Meanwhile, here I sit in a concrete bunker of an elementary school earning a very generous salary (paid in robust Yen no less) gaining experience in a field that will never, ever go away and dreaming about finding work as a games journalist.
Obviously, I have a lot to think about over the next few years. Teaching English isn't going anywhere but this particular job that I've got has a time limit, and with a baby on the way I've got to choose my moves very carefully to ensure little Daniel Jr. doesn't grow up lacking anything he needs. Writing in my spare time is one thing but at this stage it is damn near irresponsible to fantasize about making a living with it. However, how long can I really expect to date Paris Hilton without dreaming about...I don't know...Scarlett Johansson?
Labels: Japan, JET, job hunting, postal service, predicting the future, teaching, Write or Die
つづく...(Click here to read more)
