Monthly Archives: November 2014

Talking Across Cultures and Internet Glitches

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Today, anything that could go wrong didn’t, but something did. Kind of.

At the school where I work I am in charge, sort of, of the foreign teacher part of High School English Club (there’s a Japanese teacher in charge of the entire club). In the past the club has alternated between “good” and “why the hell are you in English club?” (Answer: because I need the points for graduation–said in Japanese of course.)

This year, we’ve got an excellent group and we also have a new school full of fancy equipment, including laptops and computer projectors in each classroom and two Computer Assisted Learning Labs (CALL). Unfortunately, we also have an old school background and teachers are only slowly figuring out ways to use the equipment as more than distraction.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, a volunteer with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA aka the Japanese Peace Corps) in Tanzania got in touch with the  school and set up an international internet chat between our English club and Tanzanian students. Although this seems simple, it immediately became a big deal with everyone at school being invited as well as a representative from JICA in Japan.

This meant our boys had to be on their game; which meant they’d have to step up their game.

To get ready, a couple of my colleagues used their turns in club to help prepare the boys to ask questions and follow-up questions and to answer questions. Unfortunately, the first problem was the boys in the English club didn’t rise to the occasion and come up with clever questions. “Are you a food like?” is not an appropriate question. (Note: this was not an actual question. It is just an example of things to be avoided.)

Extra meetings were required.

Today at 4:00 p.m. japan time (10 a.m. Tanzania time?)  it was show time. Or, it would have been if there hadn’t been some Skype issues involving not being able to make a video connection. Luckily this only lasted 10 minutes or so and the connection was made. Every student got five minutes to chat with a counterpart in another part of the world. Our boys did a great job and one even proved he could break dance (on carpet no less). The Tanzanian students were a mix of boys and girls whose questions ranged from “What subject do you like?” to “How does Japan elect its Prime Minister?”

Everybody seemed to have a good enough time I suspect they will want to do it again. Well, at least everyone who’s not a boy in the club, Although they had a good time, they were really nervous.

The Unbearable Crowdedness of Lights

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‘Tis the season to be wary, at least if you’re shopping in downtown Tokyo, are in a hurry and value all of your toes/both feet.

The reason you have to be afraid is now that Halloween is over and done (and we are waiting for the inevitable sales on Halloween candy) the season of Christmas lights has begun.

Although Japan is a nominally Buddhist and/or Shinto country, no one is particularly religious. They also have a Labor Thanksgiving Day, but it’s not that important of a holiday. However, the Japanese love an excuse to go out and do something that seems as if it’s important and counts as actually doing something. The result is impressive displays of Christmas lights (called “illuminations” here) that attract droves of young couples and photographers and families.

Omotesando's Illuminations and a bunch of cars.

Omotesando’s Illuminations and a bunch of cars, circa 2011. Taken from bicycle parking near a “no standing” sign.

Some of the illuminations occupy entire streets and are made up of a series of arches that require the viewers to look up to enjoy them. The problem is, that when everyone is looking up, no one is actually watching where they are going and this, kids, is when people get bumped, toes get crushed, feet get mangled and tempers get short. (Happy Holidays Indeed!)

The other problem is that, especially in the areas where you have to pay to see the illuminations, the operators close the streets and pack in as many people as they can which means all you can really do is walk through the illumination without stopping. This means you can see the illuminations; you just can’t enjoy them.

Random lights and decorations.

Random lights and decorations on Ometesando, circa 2011.

Our neighborhood is often decked out with lights, too.

The other interesting thing is how superficial it all is. It’s mostly an excuse to sell LEDs and draw people downtown during cold weather.

The day after Christmas, it all goes away and Japan gears up for the New Year’s holiday, which is one of it’s most important times of year (and the season in which Groupon committed business suicide, but more on that in another post).

Bah humbug.

The building is almost more impressive than the trees.

The building is almost more impressive than the trees. Circa 2011

 

 

Old Money and New Money and Confusion

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Yesterday I talked about how living overseas can turn you into a minor currency speculator. Today I’ll talk about how, when I was in Albania, the Albanians clung to their old money but accepted new money.

When we got to Albania, one of the things we were warned about was the difference between Old Lek and New Lek. Basically, in 1965 or so, the then dictator Enver Hoxha (“xh” is pronounced “J” as “jump”) revalued the Lek and introduced new notes and coins. The new value was 1 New Lek for 10 Old Lek. If you had 10,000 Lek in the bank it suddenly had a value of 1,000 Lek.

The problem is the Albanians, being stubborn and prone to keeping their history close and alive, continued to price things in Old Lek and refer to them in Old Lek but would accept the New Lek value. For example, if the street vendor said “30 lek” he would take 3 lek. If the shopkeeper said “100 lek” she would accept 10 lek.

Adding to the confusion, the price tag on something you’d asked about would say 20 Lek, but the vendor would say “That’ll be 200 lek” as he handed it to you.

Note: When I was there $1 US = about 105 Lek.

It got confusing but most vendors, to their credit, were honest with us. With a couple exceptions.

For example, when we first got to Albania, one of my fellow volunteers payed 250 lek for rice (or some other kind of food). Our language trainers’ faces turned very sour and they made him take them to the vendor so they could help him get his money back. The price was actually 25 New Lek, but had been quoted in Old Lek.

In my case, I remember being confused about if the Chinese-made fountain pens I was buying were 150 lek each or 15 lek each and the vendor seemed to be encouraging the confusion. I gave the vendor 30 Lek and he seemed satisfied.

Of course, part of the problem was that we were seeing the prices as cheap, even when quoted in Old Lek. Despite that, we were instructed not to drive up the prices of goods by paying Old Lek for them.

 

International Financial Speculation on a Small Scale

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Note to family and friends: With a weak yen, it’s a great time to visit Japan.

Every country, for the most part, is trying to ruin their currency. Unfortunately Japan has momentarily succeeded.

First you have to understand that when you move to a foreign country you are given a handful of funny looking bits of paper they call “local currency”. The problem is, you have no frame of reference for it and your brain immediately defaults to your home currency. I remember during our orientation in Tokyo that speakers would describe something as 20,000 yen and we newbies would be like “whaaasat?” and they’d say that’s about 180 dollars and then the people from the British Isles and/or Australia would be like “whaaasat?”

Once you learn the money, it becomes second nature and then you give a talk to newbies and they go “whaaasat?” when you mention a computer costs 90,000 yen. However, except for that case, you don’t even think much about the dollar or pound value. You just live and use the local currency.

However, if your goal is to send money back to your home country, you immediately become a minor currency speculator. You analyze whether or not you should send your 200,000 yen home now when it’s worth 1,800 dollars or wait and risk the yen weakening and your 200,000 being worth only 1,700 dollars. But if the yen strengthens, your 200,000 yen is worth 1,900 dollars.

This is important because your salary never changes but its value in your home currency can change a lot, as can your bragging rights. When I first came to Japan I had a 300,000 yen per month or 3,600,000 yen per year salary that didn’t change for three years. This is how the value in dollars changed each year. (I’m including the value when I finished that job in 1999.)

1996: $34,286 per year
1997: $30,000 per year
1998: $27,692 per year
1999: $35,643 per year

Just three years ago that same salary would have been $47,368.

The other thing you become aware of is why countries are trying to ruin their currencies: Stuff. By weakening your currency you increase exports (albeit by driving up inflation and making your country a crappy place to do business but at least someone’s getting rich).

As an expatriate, though, you get really good at price comparisons and adding in tax and shipping to decide if buying local is better or if importing is worth the money, the effort and the wait. For example, three years ago if you wanted to buy a laptop and the price was $1,000 in the USA and 100,000 yen in Japan, it would be worth the time, effort and wait to import to Japan because $1,000=75,000 yen, a savings of 25,000 yen or $328.

Now, however, that same $1,000 laptop would be 115,000 yen to import but only 100,000 yen to buy in Japan.

A couple years ago, I purchased a couple bags from an online retailer here in Japan. Soon after I made the order the yen started to get weak and the retailer cancelled most of my order. I suspect they were importing products from the USA and taking advantage of the margin they got by selling in yen. Then, suddenly the margin disappeared along with my order.

Confused? Welcome to my world.

Edited on 11/8-2014 for clarity.

A Spy in the House of Learning

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There were not one, but two spies at the school where I work.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t work for the school where I work. Instead I’m assigned there by a different company, let’s call it The Evil Empire (not its real name),  that grows rich and fat whilst I grow, um, older and heavier.

For a while we had almost the perfect existence. The Evil Empire left us alone and we repaid the favor by neither asking for attention nor causing a need for attention. We didn’t miss school (I’ve personally only missed two days of actual teaching in the 14 years I’ve worked at the school) and, for the most part, we only went to the main office to sign our contracts for the next year and listen to the glorious range of excuses for why a raise was neither necessary nor forthcoming.

Unfortunately, someone moved the cheese which caused the mice to become cannibals and destroy all other mice in a seven state region, or something like that (although I may have misunderstood that book). In our case, the Evil Empire has slowly begun creeping into our lives.

The most visible example of this is “observations” which happened one per decade in the first 10 years of the 21st century but which are now occurring twice per year, once as an ambush.

Today’s observation was not an ambush, but it was still very odd. The first observer was our new sales rep, who is one part of one tier of actual decision makers in the company. He was there mostly as a meet-and-greet as he’s only been with the company for two months, but he did jump between three classes then left. He was followed by the second observer, our immediate powerless supervisor/handler who stayed all day.

The problem with observations are many, especially if you’re not new at the job. The best that can come out of them is a chance to talk the immediate supervisor, but you’re in a case where your words can be held against you (as well as the research you’re doing, hypothetically, for your football pool during your breaks) and the observers, to justify their existence, have to find fault. I don’t mind feedback and suggestions but I’m not a big fan of “my job is to say bad things” (which, technically, is my job during exam time now that I think about it).

That said, this was a pretty painless observation. I don’t change what I do, although the students do behave a little better when the observer’s around. Especially after I told them the Japanese Sales Rep was a cop observing the lesson.

Glad to be Here When That is on Over There

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One of the advantages of living overseas is that I’ve managed to miss every US election since 1992. (Well, with one mid-term election in 1994 as an exception.)

I’ve voted in most of the Presidential elections since I turned 18, although I don’t have the fetish for voting that a lot of people do. If you don’t like anyone running, what is the point of voting except religious ritual or a twisted electoral version of Saw? (Here are your choices: You can vote to be torn apart by wolves or picked apart by crows. If you don’t vote, you can’t complain about which one tears you apart. Make your choice.)

One of the things I like about being overseas during US elections is the merciful lack of advertising–both official and disguised as “news”. I’ve not seen any attack ads and I don’t get any spin from talk shows. Instead I get raw data from lots of sources and then get to sit back and wonder why anyone ever thought Wendy Davis was viable as anything other than shoe sales and why anyone thinks the fat guy from New Jersey is a Republican.

It has also been interesting to see the “Wow He’s So Cool!” attitude toward the current US President fade in Japan. I’m no longer asked “How much do you like Obama?” and then have to say “A pox on both their houses” and then have to explain what pox and which houses and who they are.

I do, on occasion, especially during Presidential elections, find myself explaining the difference between parliamentary systems and the US system and the difference between first-past-the-post elections versus proportional systems and having set elections versus “Hey, everyone/no one likes me! Let’s have an election RIGHT NOW.”

I also have to explain that money will not be removed from US politics so long as newspapers, radio and television get most of the advertising money that’s spent.

On occasion, though, I have to impose a cone-of-silence in which I refuse to discuss politics, especially at work. Talking/arguing about such thing is not something I normally like to do at work, but I once had a colleague from a Country That’s Not the USA (not a real place) with anti-Sarah Palin derangement syndrome. He had it so bad and came across as so smug that I actually found myself defending her even though, well, see “wolves” versus “crows” choice above.

Now I wait for the next Japanese election. Those involve vans with speakers and women with gloves. It only lasts 90 days or so, but those vans make them seem longer.

International Bring the Pain Month

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This month, because I don’t have enough to do, I’ve decided to write a novel. I only have 30 days.

This month, for the uninitiated is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). The goal is to produce at least 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. This is not to be confused with Movember, where men get paid to grow mustaches for charity or the 3-Day Novel Contest where the goal is for masochists to produce a 100 page novel in 72 hours. (This is the equivalent of “Black Friday” for the caffeinated beverages/energy drinks industry.)

This means I have to write at least 1,667 words a day until November 30th.

Now, if you’re keeping score:
1) I have a day job and winter, er, exams are coming;
2) I’ve committed to write at least 300 words a day on this blog;
3) I occasionally am expected to speak with the members of my family;
4) I’m now writing about 6-7 typed pages of text a day.

The good thing about the challenge (which given the international participation should be called IntNoWriMo) is that it requires the participants to write without thinking–I recognize that look so shut up–and learn to use free time to meet the daily quota. The idea is that the rapid pace required shuts down all internal editors (ha, as if) and the participants just generate words.

In my case I’m what’s known as a NaNoWriMo rebel. I’m finishing a project rather than starting a new one. I still have to produce 50,000 words to “win” and I’m only allowed to submit the words written in November. This was something only recently allowed as the true spirit of the event is to start from scratch and produce 50,000 words. I’ve heard of writers who finished one project and then started another and somehow got to 50,000 words. (To give you a sense of the size of this project, my current novel is at 17,227 words–7,925 written in the last four days–and is 80 pages long.)

After everyone is finished, there used to be a follow up event called National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo) but it appears to be on temporary hiatus.

Wish me luck. I already feel the madness setting in…

Busy is as Culture Does

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Culture Day is one of the holidays in Japan where no one actually gets to rest.

Like all holidays in Japan, it is tied to the birth of an Emperor, in this case the Emperor Meiji who modernized Japan and crushed a rebellion of samurai by mistakenly having Ken Watanabe killed instead of Tom Cruise.

Overtime, Culture Day became, or at least Culture Day weekend, became the time when most schools host an annual Culture Festival/School open house in which 1) Everyone shows off the crappy art they’ve produced over the year; 2) someone gives a speech (someone always has to give a speech) and 3) the crappy boys rock band apparently issued to every school (because every school I’ve worked at has one) plays and everyone feels embarrassed for them and especially for their parents.

Teachers typically have a lot of extra work preparing for Culture Day as it’s one of the few days attended by large groups of parents. Therefore, since, well, crap rolls down hill, this means the students have a lot more work as they practice and prepare for the festival.

Even if you’re not part of the Culture Festival, you may still be busy. Many sports clubs have their annual tournaments on Culture Day, including my karate style. In fact, when we meet for our semi-annual tournament, there are usually three other tournaments, including Kendo and Judo and another karate style taking place in the other arenas as well as a Japanese archery tournament in the archery range. (Someday, i want to see a pervert try to grope someone while that crowd is waiting around for the arenas to open.)

This, of course, means extra practice and sacrificing a day off. One year, I took part in four different events in our style’s tournament (kata, fighting, bo kata and defense against groups) and by the end of the day I was so tired that actually going to work suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

That’s pretty tired.

Standing Exciting Sitting Boring

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Today I watched a brass band play and had flashbacks to high school.

Our oldest’s school hosted a bazaar and band performance that was, in a word, bizarre. First, the PTA, including She Who Must Be Obeyed, set up a used goods flea market inside the school dojo. They chose the dojo because it offered limited access and the best security. They then handed out numbers to interested parties and (via the corruption of easy access) to family members, including our youngest.

When the bazaar opened, we had to stand in numerical order and then change shoes and raid the used goods. At the same time, a group of people with the next 50 numbers was lined up to get in and She Who Must Be Obeyed and other PTA members were selling hot dogs, fried chicken, fried noodles and doughy octopus balls (which sounds funnier than takoyaki).

The bazaar was scheduled to open at 9:30 a.m. However, at 9:00 a.m., the Junior High Brass Band put on a show that included comedy sketches and, well, we’ll get to that.

Because She Who Must Be Obeyed was busy with bazaar, Yours Truly was handed our youngest, a video camera and voluntold to record the show and watch our youngest whilst simultaneously making sure our youngest didn’t lose our number 47 (which by colossal coincidence is my age for about 15 more days).

The band performance opened with a comedy routine that mimicked most Japanese comedy duos and teams (lots of slapstick based on puns). The performance was actually pretty good–which given how much they practice they’d better be–but the trumpet player clearly got nervous during her solo at the beginning of the less than rousing, obligatory performance of Let it Go. As a former trumpet player, I felt her pain (I also felt she could have used some vibrato).

The show featured, though, one of the more puzzling things about being in band: having to stand up at random times to seem cool/add excitement. I remember having to do this in both Hayden, Colorado and at my high school in Kansas. In some cases, during a Glen Miller song, we’d have to stand up and swing our horns left and right which actually made a kind of sense (swing tunes, swing horns).

It was the random standing that got to me. I understand if a soloist needs to stand up because then the audience knows who is playing but I don’t understand an entire section standing up. It’s as if the director thinks the music is boring so she makes a section stand up and suddenly, like magic, the music is exciting.

Try randomly standing up and sitting down during a conversation once and see what kind of excitement that adds to the conversation.

In some cases, one section stands up and then another stands up in front of them in a kind of dueling sections that pisses off the parents trying to get clear video of their oldest daughter playing flute and piccolo.

In the end, the band was asked for an encore (which is obligatory and involves more standing) and then they said goodbye to audience on the way out.

Next year, if our oldest is still playing, I’m going to try to get the audience to stand up at random times. Won’t that be exciting?

Ask and Ye Shall Receive Surprise and Befuddlement

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When I was in Albania I saw an American professor made speechless by an audience question. Everyone in the audience who’d been to a US university was speechless too.

For reasons I don’t get, students in the USA are taught that the most important part of a speech is the questions after. (In Japan, this even caused an acquaintance of mine from the UK to say “here come the Americans” when a speaker asked the audience for questions and several people headed to the mics.)

The theory behind questions seems to be that the person asking the question will somehow be able to either 1) coax an interesting answer out of a boring speaker; 2) give the speaker a chance to expand on a point; 3) trap the speaker with a clever question.

Unfortunately, what usually happens is the the questioner

1) repeats part of the speech creating a “no shit, Sherlock” look on the face of the speaker:
Early in your speech, in the second paragraph in fact, right before you compared bananas to eagles, you said that apples are not oranges because they come from different trees and therefore are essentially different races of fruit…etcetera etcetera. (Eventually the questioner gets to a question heard by the handful of people still awake.)

2) attempts to show off intelligence by becoming incoherent and jargony:
Hobart’s stringent treatment of the relationship between the dialogic materialism of materiality and the linguistic construction of the cisgendered natural jouissance of the Bullcrappian critique of capitalist urmasculinity must be a model for future work in the field. What say ye?

3) attempts to trap a professional politician with a question the questioner thinks is original:
Isn’t it true that you and your actions were responsible for the crimes in Antwerp in 1997 that left 25 people dead and caused the collapse of the Belgian government and caused untold suffering in the Middle East? What say ye? (Politician’s answer: No. It isn’t true.)

(Author’s note: to the best of my knowledge, nothing actually happened in Antwerp in 1997.)

However, the question I heard in Albania was none of these. A Hemingway expert from Some University in the USA (not a real school) came to Albania and gave a lecture. The Albanians, hungry for something not on the official Communist reading list, crowded the small room.

To this day I don’t remember the subject of the lecture, although I do remember the professor was a nice guy and he was a friend of a friend. What I mostly remember is that one of our Peace Corps language teachers, a gentleman name Berti (the “e” has a long “a” sound as in “scare”) was called on to ask a question.

His question: How would your country be different if it had adopted Hemingway’s values?

We were all speechless, which is not normal for a roomful of academics. The question managed to be both different and topical. It was also simple to the point of being anti-academic and gave the professor a chance to shine.

Or it would have if he hadn’t been dumbstruck by the question.

He managed to mumble something about it being more manly or more macho or more people would go fishing and hunting or something and long for women who didn’t love them and then would get drunk and kill themselves with shotguns. (I might be misremembering that somewhat.)

After the lecture, I talked with my friend and the professor. He was in “I should have said” mode but he also knew he’d never get a question like that again. I knew I’d never hear a question that good again.