Brian's Japan Adventure

October 21^st, 2007

Drinking Problems and Problem Drinkers
 

I woke up last night at 3:30 to the sound of two drunks stumbling through the apartment. They eventually passed out around 4:30. Good thing I went to bed early; it’s almost as if I saw that coming and planned for it. Heh. I eventually did get a little more sleep, but still was up and out the door by 9:00. I wanted to get rolling before I got sucked into anything I didn’t want to do. Turns out they both slept until 3:30, so I had nothing to worry about.

Just to liven up the morning, McDonalds screwed up my order. My large hot coffee came as a small iced coffee. I probably should have complained, but if they couldn’t understand me when I ordered, why expect them to understand the complaint? Ah well, they still have a better average than McD’s in the States; at least it was actually coffee. I’ve learned not to gag on cold coffee, but it’s still not a choice I make willingly. I even regularly buy a carton (like a milk carton) of iced coffee from Happy Town; but this stuff is so sweet, I suspect it’s more chocolate milk than coffee. 

I have had some ice coffee from vending machines here, and it’s VERY strong.  I have noticed that some of the vending machines here that usually sell iced coffee are now switching over to selling hot and cold coffee. I haven’t tried it yet, but I assume it’s just the same cans only warmed. How do they sell cans of hot coffee without the cans exploding?  Which reminds me, I never have taken or posted any photos of Japanese vending machines. They are literally on every corner, so I know I can get a good selection of shots quickly. 

Look It Up—If You Can!

I then went on to the library, where I got the rest of the materials that I forgot about yesterday. The old ladies (and probably the afternoon group too) will be working with restaurant vocabulary this week. I have lots of good stuff for that theme now.  Just to kill time at the library, I looked into electronic dictionaries some more. These things are incredibly hard to find documentation for in English, and none of the salespeople speak English either, so I am having a really hard time buying one. They run between $200 and $450, so I don’t want to make a mistake and get the wrong thing.  All my students have them, and they look sooooo useful that I want one too.  But they already know Japanese and are learning English; I want it to work the other way around, and they’re not really optimized for that. 

They all have pretty similar features as far as the basic dictionary goes, but I need some way of looking up Kanji without my needing to know to say the kanji ahead of tine.  If I see a squiggly little symbol with lines that go here and here, I want to be able to select that kanji from a list or something. Most of them require you to know that that kanji means “Toshokan,” spelled TO-KO-SHA-N.  If I knew that much, I could look it up in a paper dictionary!  Some of the more expensive models let you write the symbol on a little pad and it recognizes it for you. But all the buttons and sales materials are in Japanese; for all I know the instructions are too. 

So I packed up my stuff and left the library to go to Maruzen, the big bookstore. They have dictionaries, and I want to play with them. I fiddle around with the fifteen or so models that they have. I even think I know which model I think I want; it’s the same model as the old man on Wednesday night and one of the girls on Tuesday have, a “Seiko SII Siluco”.  But I don’t have anywhere near that kind of money in my pocket, so I decided to go home and get it. So I head all the way home, grab some money and go back. By this time, I’m having second thoughts. “What if there’s a better choice?” “This will DO, but could this other one be better?”  “This one costs more, there’s probably a reason for that.” And so on. 

I’m thinking about whom can I ask for advice about this?  Mrs. Y will just say I don’t need one, and of course she’s right. But I’m a gadget nut, and I want one, and as my parents would say, “You ain’t gonna have any rest in your butt until you get one!”  And they would be right in saying it. I’ve wanted one of these since I saw the exchange students using them way back in August. So who can I ask?  Y-Sensei has one, but I bet she says I don’t need it either. Her I should probably listen to.  Shingo has one, but it’s one of the expensive models that does a dozen languages. I don’t really want to pay for a bunch of languages I’ll never use.  Plus, I never know when I’m going to see Shingo.  I guess I’ll bring it up tomorrow with Y-Sensei, and maybe in classes again. The students like to talk about their toys, so why not let them? 

So I walked out of the store empty-handed. Grumble. Maybe I can go to Deo-Deo and get a salesman there that can talk to me. I wouldn’t bet on it, but I should probably pay them a visit to comparison shop. Maybe tomorrow after Japanese class.  On the way back, I stop in at Co Co Ichban, the curry place, and order “the usual.”  I really should try something new; they have lots of stuff to choose from. But I like the chicken-spinach curry rice plate, so I’m sticking with it for now.

So then I go home to find that Beavis & Butthead are gone, for the rest of the evening, I assume. Marc has classes tomorrow morning at 10am, while his guest isn’t leaving until sometime in the afternoon. I wonder how that’ll work out?  It’s getting to be a soap opera. Also, tomorrow is Japanese class again. I am going to accept Y-Sensei’s offer of splitting the class. I’ll only get half the lessons, but it will be at my speed, not the speed of the missing link. Oops, I meant weakest link.

But before the Japanese class, I have to survive N-Sensei’s class. I have to continue last week’s lecture on dating. I have a couple more pages to do in the book dealing with that. It’s no great problem to prepare, but I’m a little nervous after last week. All the stuff in the book is highly interactive, and the class…isn’t interactive at all.  It would be easy to do my part of the class as a straight lecture, but I am supposed to use the activities in the book, and they are all heavily interactive with lots of back-and-forth. It’s a good book, but I’m not so sure it’s going to work well with this class.

October 20th, 2007

Standard Saturday

Got up and went to McDonalds for breakfast.  For some reason the breakfasts here just aren’t as good as the ones at home. There does seem to be just a slight difference in spices use; the sausage they use here is a little blander than at home. And they don’t offer salt or pepper, so “fixin’ it up” isn’t really an option. But it’s still not bad, and it beats the heck out of fixing my own breakfast, so I can live with McDeficiencies once or twice a week.

After McDonald’s on Saturday is, of course, the library. Nothing new there. I arrived  right after opening time, so it wasn’t hard to find a desk space.  They don’t have wireless access, so you have to find a desk and plug in a cable. I’ve never been “shut out” of finding a desk, but if you aren’t there pretty early you have to share. Not a big deal, but it’s like sitting next to a stranger on the bus; it’s not unexpected or inappropriate, but no one wants to do it either.

As I get set up I remember that I have forgotten my paper notebook. This is the notebook I carry to all my classes and make notes for things to do next time. Oh yay, and picking up stuff for next week is the main “official reason” for coming here. I remembered a few things and forgot a few things. I guess I’ll be going back tomorrow. That’s no problem, since Marc’s friend is arriving tonight. I’ll probably be eager to spend the day at the library tomorrow; too bad I can’t spend the night there too.

The subject of Momotaro and legends came up in several of my classes this week, so I saved a few “American Legends” this time. I especially picked up some Native American (Indian) legends to discuss. They probably haven’t been exposed to those stories before. I re-found and saved a brief article on Alzheimer’s disease that I forgot (heh heh) to print out last week. I also found one news article for discussion, but should probably find a couple more tomorrow.

Nova Explodes Catastrophically

P’tuny caught up with me somewhere along the way and informed me that Nova, the biggest English school in Japan was in big financial trouble. A little research showed that they haven’t paid their teachers in three weeks, and that today was the date most of the teachers had set for not showing up for work. Wow. The job market in Japan just got more interesting.

I haven’t decided one way or the other what I want to do when my internship ends, but it looks like this shake-up will muddy things a bit. All those English teachers are going to be looking for jobs. But right now is the middle of the school year, so where are they going to go?  Many of them are already penniless after not being paid for so long, so many will be forced to go home; others may not be able to go home.  I figure whether I really want to stay here long-term or not, I will apply a few places and see what turns up, but this just removes the biggest name from the list of options.  Their loss will create opportunities for smaller schools to pick up the slack, so who knows how this will work out?  Or maybe Nova can salvage things, but it doesn’t sound that way.

I didn’t spend an exceptionally long time at the library, since I knew I’d be going back tomorrow. I returned the two books from last week, but didn’t look for anything new today. That’s something else I can do tomorrow.

Marsh-Melons?

Then it was time to eat, so I rode over to Happy Town and picked up a few things. I have never seen them so crowded; Saturday night at 5:30 is a bad time for the grocery store, imagine that.  I did remember one very important necessity. In one class last Tuesday, we were doing a worksheet on food and the shopping list contained something none of the students had heard of before; a strangely shaped thing called a “marshmallow.”  I tried to describe it, but that’s not as easy as it sounds. Tonight, I found a bag of marshmallows at Happy Town. Sign me up for teach of the year award.

How Many? The Joke Builds.

The light in the bedroom is still flickering. We have replacement bulbs in the closet, but I found out just how high the ceilings are here; I can’t reach it even standing on a chair. At home, I can change the bulb without even standing on anything. What are all these little tiny Japanese people supposed to do? I’ll bet there’s a trick or a tool that I don’t know about.  Marc doesn’t know either. We’ll ask Mrs. Y on Monday. In the meantime, my desk lamp works just fine. You can start those light bulb jokes now, because two wasn’t enough and now we’re getting a third involved.

October 19th, 2007

Elementary, My Dear Watson.

OK, so Sherlock Holmes didn’t suddenly show up in Japan this morning, but I did go to the Elementary school for the first time.  I mentioned previously that my impression after the first meeting with them was that they didn’t want us there, and really nothing has changed. I can’t say I blame them though; it’s hard to see a purpose for this. With all the other classes I do, “the management” want Japanese students of English to interact with a native speaker in some manner. That’s what I am here for, and what makes me different from ten thousand Japanese people who speak broken English; I speak English natively. The thing with the Elementary school is that they already have that. They have three full-time teachers there that speak English natively. One guy is Australian but I guess we can count him too, heh-heh.

Everyone was nice, and I sat in on classes for all three teachers. The first teacher has the only complete immersion classroom. They speak only English there.   Seriously. When the kids were talking behind the teacher’s back, they did it in English. The second class was about half and half English and Japanese, but it wasn’t complete immersion. The third class was a bunch of fourth-graders, and they were just animals, much like fourth-graders in the States. Overall, I was most impressed with the first group. These first-graders honestly spoke better English than 95% of the adults here, and my understanding is that they knew nothing of English back in April.

So what did I do?  Mostly just sat in the back and watched. As I said earlier, there really isn’t much for me to add. They have English-speaking teachers; those teachers know the kids and what they can do already. What can I add to that?  Not much. I suspect observation is all I am going to get to do with this school, but I think that’s fine. I don’t want to be an elementary school teacher anyway. Watching is fine, and I’m sure Marc will agree. I even gave the “in charge” teacher a business card to read the blog. I hope he doesn’t find anything I’ve written here to be offensive, it’s just what I see. He has nothing to fear from me, as we’re not officially reporting anything to anybody; even if we were reporting to someone, I’m impressed with what I saw.

During the lunch break, the main teacher, who is also from my home university, showed me a little restaurant there that had curried rice. It wasn’t as good as CoCoIchiban, but what possibly could be?  We talked about which teachers were still around (he was there about 14 years ago), and how the program has changed (not much) in that amount of time. He seems like a nice guy, but I’m still getting undercurrents of suspicion from all three of them. Maybe Marc will have better success in demonstrating that we’re not out for their jobs.

So that was Elementary school.  Everyone was nice, and it went well enough, but I am glad it’s only going to be once a month. October is done; that leaves November, December, January and February. I doubt I’ll need to go in March. One down; four to go.

And The Rest of The Story

On the way home, I stopped at the carryout and had chicken bits with rice (my usual) and ate it at home. The light in my bedroom is flickering; I may soon learn how to change a Japanese light bulb (yes, they ARE different).  Maybe I can get Marc to help, just so we can make jokes (“How many Americans does it take…”) about it.

I need to get myself organized for next week’s classes later tonight, and then gather whatever I need at the library tomorrow. I need to decide whether or not I want to return “Zen and Japanese Culture” only one-third finished. It’s just not pulling me in. Much of what he says is obvious, and the writer’s style is incredibly arrogant, making sweeping generalizations with nothing to back them up. Granted the book was written 50 years ago in post-war Japan, so there are going to be issues, but I’m thinking I don’t care enough about that subject to finish the book. I have been working through “Zen Keys” pretty quickly, so I’m still getting my Zen fix.

Marc is having some friend who lives in Tokyo stay over this weekend on the couch. I don’t know the full story, but he’s supposed to be here Saturday night and leave Monday morning. I expect I’ll spend Sunday at the library getting my peace and quiet. Whatever the situation, I am NOT cleaning up, and I’ll be locking everything up when I leave. Marc’s planned this for a month, so I can’t say it’s a surprise or anything.

October 18th, 2007

My Phone Gets a Workout

This morning went well enough. I slept in a bit since my first class was up on the hill adjust a little before eleven. At least I thought I’d sleep in, but Mom called me at 9:00 (actually my alarm went off during the call, so she didn’t wake me up by much).  She had a few questions about my next package. She had a bunch of kindergarten supplies that I told her not to send. I can get crayons and construction paper here, there’s no point in paying postage on that stuff. Even so, there are nearly 80 kindergarteners, so they couldn’t send enough stuff anyway. Teacher books with ideas and things are fine, but I’m going to make do with the supplies I can get over here. But we discussed more important items like winter coats and gloves and such, and that stuff I need, probably sooner rather than later.  I am 7000 miles form home, and I still managed to get my little brother into trouble; Mom didn’t know about my niece’s report card until she read it in my blog.

I figured I could catch up on the Internet after class. Just before walking out the door, I got a call from Mrs. Y telling me what was going to be happening from now on with my Fridays. The elementary school finally got their act together and decided that Marc and I could come on every other alternate Fridays. What that means is that I go on the third Friday of the month and Marc goes on the first Friday of the month. Yes, that’s right, I work one Friday a month. Yeesh, why bother at all?  Oh that’s right, they were told they have to do it. Still, I’m not going to complain too much about having mostly three-day weekends for the rest of my stay. I’ll just cry and moan all day over that decision.

But since I was thinking about the phone call, I got halfway up the mountain before I remembered that I had forgotten to bring my USB stick with me. Oops; no Internet today after all. That’s OK, I was current as of yesterday anyway.

So I went on to K-Sensei’s class and explained all about an article on DNA. I thought the article was pretty short, but managed to talk about British understatement, the structure of  a long paragraph: “they once thought…however…they now realize.”  I even got to throw in another old saying. The article describes the shape of DNA. I managed to squeeze in “A picture is worth a thousand words” at which, K-Sensei’s eyes lit up. When finished, he asked me a few questions about the article, which I had no problems with, and he sent me one my way, telling the class that “another good presentation, again from Brian-sensei”; OK, now I know he’s happy!

I then zip down the mountain (since walking slowly down a mountain isn’t as easy as it sounds) and do my laundry. While it’s drying, I read over my Japanese vocabulary, which I haven’t had much time to study since Monday. Before I know it, it’s once again time for Japanese class. After Monday’s Bandit-free class, today couldn’t possibly be any more dramatic, could it?

“Mr. Bandit, meet Mr. Smoky”

Class starts at 3:30, and I’m there. Y-Sensei is there. That’s it. There’s a piece missing out of this puzzle. Will anyone notice? Oh, yes. Y-Sensei is fully able to count to two in either language. No Marc; no bandit; no study partner; no big orange hat. She doesn’t wait; she has me call him immediately. I dial him and the phone rings; then I am suddenly disconnected. At this point, it’s obvious that he’s not just late. She asks me what do I know about it, and I answer honestly, “not a thing.”  He was fine this morning and went to his own class (as far as I know) and didn’t say a thing about skipping class. I’m not surprised that he did it again, but I wasn’t expecting it either.

She says at least six times in the next ten minutes that nothing like this has ever happened before. OK, at least Marc is going to be memorable and a unique case. We talk for around five minutes about Kanji letters, and she gets up out of her chair and asks me if I can wait for five minutes.  Japanese people don’t turn red and stomp about like Americans do, but you can tell when it happens. This was one of those times. She was gone a while, and when she came back, the language school principal was with her.

Mr. Principal wasn’t looking too happy either.  They both asked me about Marc’s health, “I said fine.” Was he homesick? “Not that I have really noticed.”  There were some other questions that I didn’t really understand and said so. They spoke Japanese back and forth really fast, and they knew I couldn’t follow. When the principal put his hand to his mouth and moved his head back in a “gulp-gulp” motion THAT I caught. Meanwhile, I can see that this is going to be a big deal, and I’m really trying to minimize my involvement in the whole thing, giving as noncommittal answers as I can. There are some things I can’t play ignorant on without looking like I’m lying for him. I am NOT going to lie for him, but then again, I have to live with the guy for five more months.  I don’t like doing this.

Eventually, someone calls Mrs. Y. Mrs. Y likes a well-organized group that does what it’s supposed to. Y-Sensei asked me if I had suggestions to help Marc. The thing is, he doesn’t need help; he needs an ass-kicking by someone important.  Y-Sensei knows this; the principal knows this too, but I guess it’s just a cultural thing where they have to assume there is a problem other than Marc just doesn’t care about Japanese class. This is just something they have never dealt with before. That really does surprise me a little; it’s never been a problem before? Wow.  This is a full-scale professional school to teach foreigners Japanese. They have LOTS of students. It’s hard to believe that Marc is the first Slackass in Japan.

Nothing came of this today, but something will. After the principal left to call Mrs. Y, we got on with out lesson.  Toward the end, she asked me if I wanted to split the class. We can continue to have two classes a week with Marc, or split the class so we each have one individual lesson once a week. I don’t know that I like either option. Sticking with Marc means things are going to slow way down until he gets caught up, if that’s even possible. Splitting the class means I get to go once a week, which will result in fewer sessions and less to learn. I told her it was up to her, but I’m not thrilled with either option right at the moment.

When class was done, I rode over to Happy Town for groceries and when I got back, no one was home. I have no idea where he is or what’s up.  I wonder if anyone’s called him about any of this or if he thinks everything is fine and dandy right now?

[update] Marc claimed to have just fallen asleep again. I don’t see why this should make any difference in anything.  He’s going to have to learn that this is NOT the USA. They take schooling very seriously here. Mrs. Y did call him tonight, and he apologized profusely. Is this  over? I don’t know. He thinks it is, but after seeing how upset they were at the school, I’m not so sure. I guess we’ll see.

Also, after a little more consideration, I think I will take her up on the offer to split the class if she suggests it again. Better to have half the number of classes but work at the level I want rather than be dragged down time and time again by an uninterested partner.

October 17th, 2007

Funny Pumpkins and Lost Legends

Woke up early this morning and once again almost decided to call in sick. Not for the usual reason though, but because my cough is just getting nasty. I laid in bed wheezing all night, and this morning wasn’t any better. But I figured this is my busiest day of the week, so it’s better not to miss it unless I really have to. Later on the train I considered what they would have to say about me infecting 80+ kindergarteners with whatever I have, but it was too late to turn back by that point. They’d probably just prefer I show up anyway, plague-ridden or not.  So I went anyway, pretty sick. I stood there sweating all through my kindergarten classes. I did the same thing when it was 90, and no one paid much attention. Today is was pretty darn cool outside; they must think I’m just some kind of sweating freak.  Of course it was due to being sick, but they don’t know that.

So in classes, I briefly reviewed body and face parts, and moved on to some new flashcards they gave me to use. There were several sets; eye/mouth/nose/ears which they already know inside and out. The next stack had sunny/night/rain/snow/rainbow, which they knew too. Next came some food cards, which had all the usual vegetables that we’ve covered before, but added some new ones. For some reason, all of them, even the teachers giggled and laughed when I pulled out the “pumpkin” card. Granted it was green and looked more like what we would call a gourd, but I don’t think that was what they were laughing at. It seemed to be some kind of inside joke. Dunno. Lastly was a stack of animal cards that also included all the usual stuff, but had an insane number of bird-cards in it. Why these kids would need to know an Eagle from a parrot and a partridge and a sparrow and a pigeon and a duck and a turkey, etc. etc., I cannot imagine. I removed all but the duck and the turkey and that worked fine. I don’t know where these cards suddenly came from, but I suspect it was that website I helped them with a while back.

On the way downstairs after the third class I told the principle that I should probably come up with something different for next time, since I though I was overdoing the flashcards (even though they are different cards every time). I asked for suggestions and he indicated the same cards, saying “Next week too!” OK, he said it, not me. Next week too on the flash cards. Sigh. I may be the one getting tired of the cards, not the kids or the teachers.

On to the community center! I got all set up, and we talked about our weeks. A couple of them had visited relatives in the hospital, and we talked about the health care system.  We talked about the legend of Momotaro. This came up yesterday too. Apparently, they’ve all been told that there was a lonely old man who found a peach floating in the river. When the old man opened the peach, there was a baby inside. This is NOT the original story. Read the version at Wikipedia for the real version. None of them yesterday had ever heard the story that included sex. I though today’s adult students would know it, but no, they had never heard it told like that either. With my interest fired up, I had to read it to the old folks this evening too, and even then, not one of them had heard the original legendary story. That’s just cool; a perfect example of changing a legend to suit cultural changes.

So to finish out the first class, we played a game I put together a couple of weeks ago and kept running out of time before I got a chance to use it.  I had four short lists of travel-related vocabulary; hotels, airplanes, trains, and vacations. Each subject had about ten words. Using a stack of blank cards I wrote one word on each card. Each student got a stack of cards. We went around the room, and the student had to describe the thing on the card while the others had to guess what it was. The person who guessed the answer got to keep that card, and the winner was the one with the most cards at the end. Wow. I didn’t hurry to use it before because I figured it would bore them since the words were too easy, but they absolutely LOVED it! It really is hard to judge what is too easy and too hard sometimes. The strangest stuff is too hard and some really advanced thing just bore them cause they already know it.

Then for the old folks class, we finished the “Shopping” vocabulary that we ran out of time on last week. Then we did the Momotaro thing.  I told them that next week, I’d bring in some kind of American Legend to talk about. Then I remembered I actually had one with me! I thought I could simply read them the story of “The Headless Horseman,”
There’s a website with lots of ESL American Folklore stories that I really like. I have printed out about a half dozen or so.  They’re very short, and can be used for a variety of things. I used quite a few of these short-short stories way back with my Korean student in the States. But they decided they had to analyze it for vocabulary and understand every word. Yeesh. This story was way too advanced for them; I had it for yesterday’s class, not theirs. I only decided on a whim to read it to them for fun. They really dug into it, but when finished, they said “too hard!”  Yeah, I knew that. Ooops!

And that’s about it. There isn’t much time for anything else on Wednesdays. I leave the house around 7:35 am and return home about 10:00 pm. It’s after eleven now, and I am heading for bed. Tomorrow I have K-Sensei’s class, where I need to analyze a very short article about DNA for the class. After that is yet another installment of the soap opera known as “Japanese Class.”   Shingo may or may not make an appearance tomorrow; he mentioned doing some things “next time,” but your guess is as good as mine when that really is.

Sayonara!