Brian's Japan Adventure

February 19th, 2008

It’s Cold; Must be Tuesday Again

I played around early this morning with synching my iPod with iTunes and all mu podcasts.  Until this morning I had been listening to all these podcasts not with my iPod, but with my Palm Pilot. It’s been nice being able to take notes right there on the same device I have been listening to, but I am not listening to as many business-related shows as I once was, so the notes aren’t as common s they used to be. The iPod a lot smaller in my pocket and holds four times as many shows, so I figured it was worth a try. Yeah, it works just fine; I should expect that of course since the iPod is when Podcasting got its name. That’s an unfortunate name since it’s completely unnecessary to have an iPod to listen to podcasts. Oh well.

Eventually it was time to go to Fukuyama. The train trip was just about like always. I have recently been buying lunch at the convenience store inside the big station (Okayama) and eating it on the train. Today I had a package with four pieces of ham sandwich and four pieces of egg salad sandwich. Add to this a little bag of something like Slim Jims, and I was all set.

Food!

The walk from the station to the school was cold and windy. I’ve mentioned it before, but it seems like it is always cold and windy between that station and that school. Blah! But I survived the walk and the assistant principal copied my lesson materials for me. Then I met up with “my” teacher for the first two classes. We did a couple of activities involving food names. I have found that they are much more comfortable with lists of vocabulary words of any length than they are with actually speaking. That lesson went quite well both times.

Then it was time for the High School class.  As expected, the teacher was not there. It really had no effect on me since he didn’t have much to do in my classes anyway.  I, on the other hand, was much more comfortable without him there. I have no problem with the kids at any age, but when there is a teacher in the room, I always feel like I’m either being evaluated or “performing” for them. I mentioned to them that this would be my last visit with them, since next week they would be studying for a test. I asked them if they had any questions at all about English that might be on the test. I figured they could ask me for help on the English portion of their test, but nobody asked anything. That didn’t really surprise me. We then went on to do the “food lesson” for a third time. No problems there either.

Kazakhstan? That’s In… Europe, Right?

Then it was time for the “chat room.”  This time, instead of children, I had one adult!  He was a geography teacher, and he will be accompanying the class of students who will be going to America next month. He had lots of questions. The one that really seemed to worry him was a language issue. He had heard that there were so many Hispanics in Washington DC and New York that his English might not help him. He doesn’t know any Spanish, and that was worrying him.  I explained that it was a small but growing problem, but anywhere he was likely to go with his pre-arranged tour group would all be speaking English. He liked that answer. We talked about places he had gone n the past; The U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Korea, America, Canada, and Kazakhstan. That last one surprised me, but it was for some kind of teacher exchange program. He was nervous, but he was completely understandable, so I think he’ll do fine in America.

Harry Gets Blown To Bits

Then it was time to come home. I got to leave a little but early since the Geography teacher didn’t use all the chat room time. I may have left Fukuyama early, but I then had to wait outside for thirty minutes for the train from Okayama to Hokaiin. Arriving at the Hokaiin station, I picked up my usual from the carryout and headed home to eat.  Marc had bought to new movies really cheap at the video store, Harry Potter and Robocop. I suppose I’ll watch those sometime this weekend.  Too bad they are two separate movies. I’d really like to see Robocop just shoot the crap out of those little witch-kids.

February 18th, 2008

Not Much Again

Another “nothing” day.  I went up to the office this morning and checked my email, since the library was closed. Nothing major happening in the online world. I got an email from my brother wanting to know about my three “projects”— but my lips are sealed!  I printed off the lessons for Wednesday, and then came back down the hill.

… And quickly got bored. I ended up going to Megalo, and upgrading my blog software. Wordpress 3.2.3 is now out, and they claimed it was “critical” to upgrade it.  Yeah, right.  Nevertheless, I did it anyway.  Three hours zoomed by, and the next thing I know I’m back at home, and bored again.

…So this time I leave the house to get something to eat. I went to Big Boy and had the usual stuff plus the salad bar. It was pretty good compared to the other stuff I’ve had this past weekend. I then rode the bike downtown to go to Bic Camera (the big computer store) to look at their selection of computer microphones. I figured they’d be more expensive than buying one in the States, but it turned out they didn’t have anything I wanted. They had umpteen cheap little “made in China” microphones, but nothing of real quality. So I ended up riding home empty-handed. At least dinner was good.

And the rest of the night was spent listening to various podcasts. I heard one where they guy did an interview with a podcaster who does a show on English as a Second Language (ESL).  It was from 2005, and the guy was having serious growing pains. I should probably check him out and see if his show is still around!

But that’s pretty much it for today. Nothing new, nothing exciting. I’m even too bored to bother counting days today, although I seem to remember the three-weeks-to-go mark coming up soon.

Guess Who’s Skipping Class Tomorrow?

One thing that was noteworthy today was an email I got right off the bat in the office.  It was from the teacher of my Tuesday High School class. He said that in Marc’s class, the students keep asking him to translate into Japanese, so this week he is not coming to the classroom for either Marc or myself. He specifically mentioned Marc’s two classes by number, so it’s not my problem, but it got me wondering. A couple of weeks ago, my Junior High teacher never came to class. Hmmm. Remember how I said I didn’t think their English was good enough for them to be teaching English?  I think they are beginning to realize this themselves and are afraid to come to class.  The students ask them to translate, and they don’t understand well enough to do it confidently. They don’t want to look bad in front of the students, so they are finding a way to skip classes. That’s a new one; the teacher skipping classes!  At least that’s one possible explanation; I could be wrong. Either way, tomorrow is the final class for the High School, since they have to study for exams next week.

February 17^th, 2008 

Publicity Day 

Saturday is library day. When I get home next month, it is going to seem incredibly strange to be able to just walk into the next room to get on the Internet. Here in Japan, I have to ride the bike two miles, ride the bus two miles, and walk a half a mile just to get to the library/Internet. And then I have to go home, and it always seems to want to rain or snow on the way home!  I was planning on doing business work today, since I have lessons essentially ready-to-go for this week’s classes. 

Zero to Twenty-Five In Under An Hour 

Anyway, no notice from Apple still, so I resubmitted site #2. I suspect they’re still just overloaded. I checked my statistics to see if anyone had visited site #2 and listened to the podcast there.  The log showed two listeners. That sounds good, except one of them was me with my Firefox browser, and the other was me with my Safari browser.  Nope, you just don’t get any more obscure than that. Clearly, the project is going to go nowhere without Apple and iTunes getting their act together.  

On the other hand, most of the podcasters I have been listening to say they get 60% of their traffic from iTunes. That means 40% of their traffic is coming from elsewhere. I decided that maybe I should get working on that other 40%. I registered my feed with Podcast Alley, Feedburner, Yahoo Audio Directory, and two or three smaller ones. Within an hour, I had 25 subscribers.  Not individual listeners, but potentially long-term subscribers. In an hour!  There was no sign of it slowing down when I left the library either. I figured that it would take about a hundred subscriber for me to consider the project worthwhile, and I’m guessing I hit that number pretty quickly.

Toward the end of the library session, I figured that I might as well consider the site to be “open” now, since real people were signing up and I am not committed to more episodes. The next thing to do was really advertise the thing. So I zipped on over to Google and set myself up with some Adwords. Believe it or not, I’ve never used Adwords before, but it was easy enough. I sent in a list of dozens of keywords that I want my site to come up under, as well as a budget for the month. They hadn’t authorized my credit card yet by the time I left the library, so I don’t know how well that worked out yet.  Now I have real money invested in this, so it’s no longer a “project” anymore. 

TEFL Whining Part II 

Dr. M from the home university finally answered my inquiry about the TEFL Certificate. She’s currently in Bangkok Thailand. I bet they have even worse Internet than I do here.  She said she’d get on the university about that certificate, but she never suggested that it was “in the mail” or “on the way.”  I’m guessing she forgot it again.  That really is annoying; if I were actively trying to find a job here this alone could keep me from getting one.

In the same email, Dr. M mentioned that they are only sending over one student next time to replace both Marc and me.  She’ll be handling the busiest days from Marc’s schedule as well as the busiest days from mine. Apparently the second student dropped out of the program and now it’s too late to get someone else (remember my visa delays?). That’s going to be tough, especially with no partner to compare notes with.  It might not be so tough if she speaks Japanese already, but I don’t know if that is the case or not; I’d bet she probably doesn’t know Japanese any better than Marc or I did when we got here. I know back in the summer, it looked like Marc might not have been going, and I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to do it alone or not. I might have done it then, not knowing any better, but knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have done it alone. 

Tick-Tick-Tick… 25 Days Left 

The new student is a girl, so her partner would have to be a girl too. Nevertheless, Dr. M. suggested that I should talk to Y-san about staying over the summer.  This building has numerous small apartments that are all currently empty; I am sure the same-sex restriction could be worked around if they really wanted to do it.  There is simply no way one student can cover the same course load the two of us are doing. Granted, Marc and I have never really been swamped in work, but we both have to do something every day, and some traveling is usually involved. No, something will definitely be lost with only one teacher here.

Am I still interested in staying over the summer? I would have no objections to coming back here at some point, but no, I don’t think I could be persuaded to stay on without a break.  I have to go home, at least for a little while, since I need things I can only get in the States: a haircut, new shoes, a burrito, eggs for breakfast, and a whole list of other things.

February 16th, 2008

A Day About Nothing

I got up even earlier than yesterday, probably because I got to sleep insanely early. I read for a bit and then headed out to the library. Naturally, on the way to the library Ronald McDonald ambushed me; I couldn’t help it, he made me stop in. Eventually he fed me and let me go, so I walked down the road to the library.

I found a good spot at the library and got everything wired up. I checked my email; nothing from Apple, nothing on any of my projects. Oh well, no rush. I updated the various podcasts that I am subscribed to. I downloaded the latest version of LOST. Then I did some research on Creative Commons licensing, “Podsafe” music, and a few other interesting subjects.  I grabbed another short grammar lesson for Wednesday, and then all the “business” of the day was done.  It was a lot of information, but not much to post about here.

The next thing I knew, I had been messing around for three hours. I got up and rode the bus home. Marc paid me for this Episode of LOST, and we watched it together in the living room. The only complaint I have about iTunes is that at the end of the show there are no previews for next week.  We have no idea what’s coming up. Argh!

After LOST, I worked on the grammar lesson for next week. I decided early on that I was not going to let that get ahead of me. By my count, I have five pages of handouts, so that should be plenty. Plus, one of the students said he would bring in something to share with the class from one of his other English classes. I think Wednesday will go fine. I think I’ll us the “food handouts” that I printed up as spares yesterday for Tuesday’s classes.

Overall, not much to say today. It was a fairly uneventful and quiet day.

February 15th, 2008

The One-Hour Workday

I woke up entirely too early this morning, and having several hours before classes, spent some time actually reading a book. With all the audio books and podcasts, I haven’t spent much time actually reading in more than a month. With my back still not in good shape, maybe I should spend more time in bead reading this weekend.

I still find it annoying that I have to spend five hours, from noon to five pm in order to teach a single 50-minute class. Marc has to do the same thing today as well, only an hour earlier. I realize they are paying our wages whether they use us or not, but even just paying for train fare for both of us seems like a waste. Surely just one of us could teach two classes today and let the other take the day off?  We would never suggest that to the company, but you’d think they would have taken that into consideration. I assume they figure we both need more experience teaching that age level. It doesn’t really matter much at this stage since we only have two more of these Friday classes anyway.

Roger, I Copy That

Eventually, it was time to leave for school. I rode my bike to the stationery store and had the old lady inside make copies for today’s worksheet, a bingo game that used various English phrases like “talk on a cellphone” or “play soccer.”  She recognized me from the other time I think, as getting copies from her was easier this time. I also had her make a bunch of copies of another worksheet with food items.  I was a little concerned that the student’s limited vocabulary might limit them in part of the bingo activity, so I wanted something else to fall back on in case that didn’t take as long as planned.  I then went across the street to the bicycle parking lot and rode the train to Fukuyama.

I passed Marc on the way out; he had done something on “how do you feel” with lots of pictures. I’m going to see if I can grab a copy of his handout for another time. I went into the classroom as the bell rang, and found myself alone again. It worked out pretty darned good last time, so I just started without her. The regular teacher did come in about five minutes later; I don’t really know where she was during that time.

So I proceeded with the lesson exactly as I did in the Tuesday classes. With the exception of a more limited or advanced vocabulary, I have been using more or less the same lessons with all my Fukuyama classes.  If one class understands something fairly well, then it stands to reason that another will also. Today was no different than last time. They actually surprised me by filling up the entire chalkboard with various entertainment activity verbs. Then we played bingo, and I finished out the time with the letter guessing game.  Basically, it went exactly like the Tuesday classes, and my fears about having too much time left over were unfounded.

The Chain Gang

On the walk back to the train station, I passed about two hundred elementary school children ad two or three teachers along the side of the road picking up garbage.  Aha!  Now I see why there is no litter anywhere to be found, they have free “slave labor” to clean it all up!  Even if this were actually some kind of environmental activity for a legitimate class, some of the kids were climbing over drainage ditches and scrambling over very rocky mountainsides. It seemed pretty likely that eventually, someone would get hurt. This kind of thing would never fly in the States. It didn’t really seem like a classroom activity anyway; it seemed to me that they were simply told to clean up all the roadside garbage, much like you often see prison workers or volunteers dong in America.  I guess I can see the point; if more American children were forced to clean up litter, they might think twice about throwing that McWrapper out the car window.  You don’t even see cigarette butts on the ground here. Still, it didn’t look like a particularly safe thing for children to be doing, especially on that busy highway, but maybe children are more careful and responsible here than in America. At first thought, I don’t like it, but with a proper explanation, I could probably be swayed into acceptance.

I got off the train at the little station around 5pm, picked up an obento from the carryout, and went home. I ate it in front of the news. There was no mention of dumplings tonight, so maybe that has finally blown over. After eating, I picked up the book, lay down on the bed, read about three pages, and woke up at 7am the next morning; an abrupt end to a very short day.