Monthly Archives: September 2015

Rainy Day Complications

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As I feared, it was raining when I went to work today as Typhoon 18/Typhoon Etau (aka Tropical Storm Etau) continued its path across Japan.

The news reported delays on part of a key train line so I figured there were going to be some delays. Right after I got to school, I was told that, although it hadn’t been announced officially yet, classes were going to be delayed.

Then, at 8:00 a.m. the intercom speaker crackled and we were informed that, because of the delays, classes would start an hour late and the classes themselves would only be 40 minutes long. This was a bit surprising as it was the longest delay since I’ve been at the school. I knew the situation must be pretty bad.

I quickly notified the other five teachers right about the time one of them walked in the door. A while later, another walked in.

The others contacted us and we set about planning for the day and making assignments. I then got a message from one of the other teachers that the delayed train line had stopped completely.

A few minutes later we saw a serious looking “all hands’ meeting of teachers taking place just outside our office door. A few minutes after that we were told classes had been cancelled.

This prompted another round of messages and one “did I read that correctly” phone call.

The three of that made it to school spent the next couple hours planning tomorrow and next week. I tried to figure out how to squeeze 16 days of lessons in a class that was only going to meet 15 more times. We didn’t yet know about the levee breaches in Ibaraki.

After I finished that work I went home and worked on my home computer and that’s when I learned about Joso and the flood which made paperwork seem dramatically less important.

Our family’s hearts and prayers are with the people of Joso. We hope the rain has stopped and the waters are receding.

White Noise With Texture

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I horrified my colleagues today, although not for the usual reasons.

Typhoon 18 (aka Typhoon Etau) hit the center of Japan today and we in the Tokyo area were cursed with all the rain but none of the train cancellations. This meant I had to go to work. I didn’t get horribly wet when I went to work, as the rain was in “start then stop then pour then stop” mode (I believe this is an actual scientific term).

In fact, I didn’t get wet until I went to the grocery store at lunch time and my umbrella decided to express its inside-out self.

What horrified my colleagues was my decision to walk to the station when it was clear that the sky was about to fall. I predicted it would fall about 10 minutes after I left the office. They pointed out there was a bus and I pointed out that 1) I’d end up like Totoro standing in the rain waiting for the bus or 2) I’d get packed into a hot sweaty bus full of students and end up wet and stinky rather than just wet.

What I didn’t tell them, because this would horrify them, is that I actually don’t mind walking in the rain, as long as I’m going home. (Walking in the rain going to work is a different problem.)

Because I can’t smell it, rain to me is sound and touch. The constant burr of rain on my umbrella and the road and the taps of rain hitting my shoes and my legs and the water splashing as I walk and the cold water on the back of my legs combine as a kind of white noise with texture. A heavy rain also washes out the colors on the street which makes the experience even more about noise and texture.

My walk home. (Not an actual photo.)

A depiction of my walk home. (Note: Rain not to scale, but that’s what it felt like.)

Then I get home and have to peel off my shoes and figure out a way to dry them (unless it’s raining again tomorrow which means I’ll just wear the same shoes since they are already wet) and I leave wet footprints across the floor.

By the time I get dried off and changed and sat down with a cup of coffee I feel as if I’ve had a shower and am much more relaxed than I would have been from just walking home. I sip coffee and hope it’s not going to be raining when I go to work tomorrow.

Dumbfounded by Birds of a Feather Huddling Together at the Back

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After Almost 26 years of teaching in various forms I’m rarely surprised. Today, though, my worst bad class surprised me for the better and the dumbfounded.

Traditionally, at the school where I work, the first two classes of the year for second and third year junior high school (8th and 9th grade) are spent chasing down and checking speeches for the annual speech contest. It is also a tradition for the foreign staff to guess how many students will actually 1) have a speech ready on the first day 2) be able to finish a speech on the first day and 3) actually have the worksheet for the speech.

(Note: I always declare on day one that if they are not finished it is okay. If they claim their dog ate their paper, I say “I hope your dog is okay”. If they don’t have their speech for the second class, I say I hope their dog died.”)

Being the optimist that I am not, I predicted that only two students would have finished speeches. The more optimistic of my colleagues predicted three and two.

The problems started when I arrived in class: the name calling started, although with less energy than usual and two students had decided to give themselves new seats at the back. I let them sit there as they were more interested in talking to each other than disrupting class.

After that start, though, things got better. Five students brought up finished and actually usable speeches. (One, if the author speaks well, has a chance to win it all.) By the end of the class, all but two students (guess which two) had finished their speeches and some had given me the rewritten draft I’d told them to write.

With a couple minutes left I called up the students at the back and told them to show me their speeches. The one that actually came up–who also happens to be one of the name callers–handed me a finished, surprisingly good speech. I was dumbfounded. Since he hadn’t even taken out a pencil or pen all class, he must have finished it at home. If he’d given it to me earlier, he wouldn’t have lost points. In fact, he’d have earned bonus points. (Instead the talking all class earned him a 0.)

I still don’t understand the logic behind not showing  me the speech. Actually, now that I think about it, I do understand: teenager.

As for the other student, he gave me attitude and showed me a blank paper. I told him he had to show me his finished speech next week or he’d have to come in at lunch and finish.

Knowing him, I just made a lunch date for next week. But I’ve already lost one bet this year.

 

SUITO Cleaning Paper for Fountain Pens–Almost Too Simple

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When I was at the ISOT, I found a product that seemed like such a good idea it actually won an award. It was also one of the handful of products designed to be used exclusively with fountain pens. It wasn’t until I got a sample home and started playing with it that I realized it wasn’t that necessary.

SUITO Cleaning Paper is manufactured by notebook and paper products manufacturer Kobeha. SCP is pieces of blotting paper cut into small rectangles with  scallops cut out at one end and perforations down the middle that allow for easy folding. It was popular enough that it won the Grand Prix Award for Functionality at the ISOT.

A pack of SUITO Cleaning Paper.

A pack of SUITO Cleaning Paper.

The idea is that once you’ve inked a pen, you can easily clean the nib with a piece of SCP.

A piece of Suito Cleaning Paper being dragged across a messy nib. (I didn't fold it correctly.)

A piece of Suito Cleaning Paper being dragged across a messy nib. (I didn’t fold it correctly so you can see the scallop.)

You can also wrap the paper around the nib and feed and wipe both at the same time. Although you still might get some ink on your fingers, you don’t have to worry about bits of tissue paper or paper towel getting stuck in your nib. You also don’t have to worry about catching stuff on a microfiber cloth. I found that one piece would thoroughly clean a nib with little mess on my fingers.

A piece if SUITO cleaning paper after cleaning a nib.

A piece if SUITO cleaning paper after cleaning a nib. (Note: not the same one as the picture above.)

The best part about the paper is that is allows you to easily clean small, thin areas such as the threads on my Nexus fountain pens.

The problem is that I can easily make this at home with a strip of blotter paper and a pair of scissors.

A piece of SUITO cleaning paper on a strip of blotter paper.

A piece of SUITO cleaning paper on a strip of blotter paper.

Although the scallop is useful, it isn’t really necessary and I have the same results cutting a piece of blotter paper off of a larger strip and just curling it around the nib.

That said, using blotter paper only works for me because I’m enough of a fountain pen geek that I own a rocking ink blotter (similar to this one) and have a couple packs of blotter paper for it. At $4.07 a pack for 30 pieces SUITO Cleaning Paper is cheap enough that it’s not worth getting a blotter if you don’t already have one.

That’s probably what the people at Kobeha were thinking.

 

 

Retro 1951 Tornado EXT Custom Fountain Pen–First Impressions

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I bought an exclusive edition fountain pen four months ago that has impressed and underwhelmed me. Lately it also doesn’t seem so exclusive.

Earlier this year Massdrop (if you’re not a member you’ll have to register to see more–it doesn’t cost anything to register) partnered with pen maker Retro 1951 to produce an exclusive edition of their Retro 51 Tornado fountain pens. The process involved Massdrop members voting for which of four or five designs they liked best. The design with the most votes was then offered as a drop.

Unfortunately for the companies, the acid-etched herringbone design that was chosen wasn’t my first choice–or even my second–and apparently didn’t appeal to most other voters either. The original requirement for the drop was 300 sales, but the total fell short of that by 50 or 60 sales (at least that’s what I remember. However, Massdrop and Retro 1951 apparently reached an agreement to go ahead with the drop and announced that the drop was a go.

Four months later I received my pen and was both underwhelmed and impressed with it out of the box. The pen came in nice packaging and was much better looking than I was expecting. I was pleased the herringbone pattern was actual texture and not just surface coloring, but I was surprised at how light and cheap it felt. Retro 51 lists the body as being made of “metal” without offering anymore specifics. It reminded me in weight and feel of a fake Montblanc rollerball my dad gave me for Christmas back in the late 80’s. It wrote reasonable well, but broke after about a month of every day use.

In all fairness to the Tornado EXT, I know better than to judge the quality of a pen by its weight. I’m used to heavier pens made of aluminum, acrylic and ebonite and the feel of mystery metal is a bit strange. Also, despite feeling light and cheap (to my hands anyway), the body doesn’t have any creaks or rattles. The threads on the cap and on the body feel smooth and well machined and I don’t get the sense the section will suddenly snap off like the old fake Montblanc’s did.

The Retro 1951 Tornado EXT Acid-Etched Herringbone Exclusive.

The Retro 1951 Tornado EXT Acid-Etched Herringbone Exclusive.

I like that, unlike my old Retro 51, the Tornado EXT can carry two small international cartridges and can use a standard international converter making it easy to clean and change inks. I also like that it has a twist cap and is thicker than my old Retro 51 200 series.

The Retro 51 200 series from 20 years ago next to the new pen.

The Retro 51 200 series from 20 years ago next to the new pen.

The best selling point of the Tornado EXT is the stainless steel Schmidt nib. I chose an M nib and have been pleased with how smoothly it writes. There’s a little resistance on the page as it breaks in but I haven’t had any skips or hard starts. It is light years ahead of the nib on my original Retro 51.

Zooming in on the nibs. I never really liked the two-tone look of the original.

Zooming in on the nibs. I never really liked the two-tone look of the original.

I’ve written as much as possible with it over the last week on different kinds of paper and haven’t had any problems. At 4.92 inches (12.5 centimeters) it’s a good length for my hand and because it weight only 17 grams (0.6 ounces) with converter and ink, it isn’t like lifting weights when you write with it.

My biggest complaint, and the only think I want to see redesigned is grip section. It is made of a form of plastic that seems to be slipperier than Teflon. As I wrote I found my fingers slipping forward toward the nib. To be safe, I have to grip the pen up by the threads which, luckily, are not sharp.

This is nice looking but slippery.

This is nice looking but slippery.

My final complaint is that Massdrop is now offering a second drop of this “exclusive” pen. I don’t know if I should be annoyed by that or not. It’s the same price, but it would have been nice to see them offer a second design, or at least give us first drop members a few more weeks of feeling exclusive.

 

Manners and Fat Men in Diapers Feeling Pain

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I spent the morning ruining my knees (again) whilst watching fat men beat the crap out of each other.

Through a former colleague, I was invited to join a very rare tour of Takanohana Beya, the current sumo stable of former Yokozuna Champion Takanohana. The “stable”, in this case, is a three story building where the rikishi live and train.

My former colleague runs a business helping people acquire sumo tickets and has, of late, been attempting to expand by creating closer links with the Sumo Kyokai, the body that manages sumo (for better and for worse). By a mix of persistence and luck, he was granted permission to bring a group of foreigners to watch a practice.

Although some stables open practices to outsiders (for a small fee) it’s very rare for foreigners to be granted this honor as there are lots of rules 1) no video 2) no flash photography 3) no cellphones 4) no talking 5) no visible tattoos and 6) don’t point the bottoms of your feet at the ring. We were going into their home and possibly interrupting their job so they only wanted people present who would not disrupt things.

Because of all these rules, and because a major tournament starts next week (meaning this was an important practice), my former colleague invited me along because he thought he’d have at least one adult in the room. (He really, really should read this blog before thinking things like that.)

After we arrived we got to see a few stages of practice over about 90 minutes. First there were some practice matches where the winner kept accepting new challengers and then Takanohana Oyakata (elder) arrived and began watching and, on occasion, directing the practice.

Takanohana (blue kimono) sips tea and watches a practice match.

Takanohana (in the center wearing the blue, flowered kimono) sips tea and watches a warm up match.

The warm up matches were followed by continuous attack practice in which one young rikishi (wrestler) pushed another across the ring whilst the other resisted being pushed. At some point, the younger rikishi being pushed was replaced by the highest level rikishi in the stable. At that point it got intense. If a pusher fails to get the other out, the rikishi being pushed forces the pushers head down and forces him to walk in a squat. (Sometimes, if they go in too high, they grab the pusher around the neck and sling him around until he falls.) There’s then a ritual where the rikishi being pushed throws the pusher down and they start over. I don’t know how many rounds this is supposed to go, but several young rikishi were reduced to grunts and wails by the end and could barely stand up. This was intense to see.

When they were finished, they then had to go off to the side and do leg practice.

Eventually, the practice moved to leg work. Some rikishi stretched whilst others hopped around the ring twice, then turned around and hopped around it twice in the other direction.

You are probably not this flexible. The blurs in the back are hopping around.

You are probably not this flexible. The blurs in the back are hopping around in a low pose.

After the practice there was a break and we got to see a demonstration of how the wrestler’s top knots are prepared by an expert hair stylist.

Smoothing the wrestler's hair. This usually takes place up stairs.

Smoothing the wrestler’s hair. This usually takes place up stairs.

Cleaning the wrestler's hair and spreading the wax.

Cleaning the wrestler’s hair and spreading the wax. The wax has a scent that is supposed to attract women.

After the hair styling demonstration we got a chance to eat Chanko Stew prepared by the younger wrestlers. We were eating the same food the wrestlers were eating upstairs and could even get seconds.

The stew was good, but salty, which is what you’d expect from men who’d just spent 90 minutes sweating and crying.

It was all much more interesting than I was expecting and I think all 15 or so guests were well behaved and my former colleague will have a chance to get invited back.

In the end I realized that although they can keep the weight, I wish I was that flexible.

End of Summer Rituals and Wretched Refuse

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Today is the last day before the last weekend before the autumn term starts. This means I have several rituals to perform and lots of crap to clean.

The first ritual is to go to the school where I work and start counting days off until the end of the term. This ritual is important because the most important part of any job is figuring out when you have days off. At the beginning of the school year I go through the annual schedule, totally unofficially of course, and figure out when exams and school trips are and try to work out how many classes I have with each section. After that, at the beginning of each term, I double check, usually with the hope that I missed a day off.

Unfortunately, this term that backfired. I found a cancelled class that makes my life more difficult because it means sections in the same grade meet 23, 22 and 17 times. That right, the others get around a third more class time or about three weeks’ worth of additional classes. Since I’m in charge of this grade, I’m the one responsible for planning for the short class whilst trying to figure out how to entertain the long classes. This leads me to seriously considering keeping a couple bottles of bourbon in the bottom drawer of my desk.

(Note: For about five years, in the old building, one teacher had an unopened bottle of wine sitting above his desk in plain sight of the room and students visiting the office; therefore having bourbon around might not be so odd. I’m not saying it’s a good idea, yet, just that it’s not that odd.)  

The second ritual is writing the days on folded sheets of A3 paper. These “folders” go inside clear files and as I carry the “folders” to each class, they serve as my official notes and log for each class. I record the term and, in case of trouble, the homeroom teachers’ names. Although I also have an electronic schedule, there’s nothing as satisfying as seeing the days on the front page get crossed out, especially once we cross the halfway point. (It’s also a great chance to test pens on regular copy paper.)

There’s also satisfaction in tearing them apart at the end of the term and saving the blank half as scratch paper and shredding the front half.

The third ritual happens both at the office and at home: the cleaning of last term’s refuse. As a teacher, paper tends to accumulate both slowly and all at once. I have my notes and rough drafts and leftover handouts that never got used and mistakes that should never have been printed. Those get sorted and tossed in the recycle box. At home I’ve got more of that and all the stuff not related to school that got acquired over the summer.

For about two weeks the desks both at home and at the office are clean and well organized. Then they start getting messy again and stay that way until the next ritual.

You Got to Obey the Rules to Break the Rules

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I was both mistaken and misled today, I also did some misleading.

First, my supervisor at the school where I work chastised me very slightly for having mucked up a pretty good plan. Without going in too much detail about the plan and the task behind it, let’s just say I was asked to agree to do something I thought was a bad idea because doing the way they wanted it didn’t actually help me out. Unfortunately, my supervisor didn’t hear my teeth sucking and heavy sigh and thought we had an agreement. This was my fault for not speaking up more clearly.

Instead, because I thought the usual “yeah it’s okay for you to do your job” process had already started, I waited for a phone call or a very rare email (the company I work for likes to leave a light paper trail) that never came. Instead I contacted the company I work for who went “Huh, what, really?” and that started a series of phone calls that led to my supervisor at the school where I work getting some extra work. I apologized for the trouble. If I’d know my supervisor at the school where I work hadn’t contacted the company I work for I wouldn’t have contacted them.

That said, the solution to all these layers of I contact A who contacts B who contacts D to tell D to contact me and explain what I’m supposed to do would go away if the school would just hire direct. If they don’t, then I don’t really mind causing a little extra work every now and then by simply following the rules.

Second, I went in today to proctor a make-up exam for a student who’d failed. I had a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn’t be there. As predicted, at exam time, I was the only one in the room. I planned to stay the entire 50 minutes, but the teacher in the room next to me also didn’t have any students so he came over to my room to say hello. When he saw the room was empty he told me I had to stay 30 minutes and then could leave.

I stayed 30 minutes and left, and then 15 minutes later came back when I found out I’d been misled. It turns out the 30 minute rule only applies to end-of-term exams but for make-up exams the students can come in at any time, although they only have the authorized time to do the test. (For example, if they come in with five minutes left in the period, they have five minutes to finish the test.) Mind you, at no point did anyone tell me this and the only person who told me anything misled me.

I didn’t complain, though, because I’d already caused some trouble.

Not So Summery Summer Days

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Things finally reset today, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

It is a tradition in Japan that every summer the Japanese press go to one of the major airports and film the reactions of foreigners as they walk out of air conditioned comfort into a level of cruelty they didn’t anticipate. There are legends of people arriving to Japan to work, suddenly rushing back into the airport to get tickets home after encountering the heat and humidity at even 9:30 in the morning. I’m convinced at least one of my friends was broken by the walk from the terminal to the bus and that ruined his entire tenure in Japan.

The previous 10 days, though, it’s been cloudy and cool and the foreigners have probably been more worried about where they could find a sweater or a good fleece jacket.

This has forced the press to the beaches to interview die hard beach bums and parents who couldn’t convince their young kids it was a bad day to go to the beach.

To give you a sense of the difference, the temperature the last 10 days has averaged, by my personal records, a high of about 23.1 Celsius (73.5 Fahrenheit) and, despite random rain, it has not been very humid. The usual temperature for this time of year is “Scorched Earth” (35 Celsius or 95 Fahrenheit) with a humidity level approaching liquid.

Today, the humidity returned with a vengeance and the sun appeared, after an annoying morning rain, to let us know it was still kind of important to the survival of the Earth and to make us annoyed that we had to carry umbrellas for no reason.

The temperature also returned and it got up to 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) which is great if you can sit on the veranda sipping mint juleps but is bad if you actually have to work or move.

What worries me the most is that, despite the gloom (we didn’t see the sun for 10 days) the cool weather had everyone in a good mood (well, at least I was in a good mood) but the return of hot weather will put me in a bad mood just in time for the start of classes.

Maybe that’s for the best, though. A Scorched Earth mentality isn’t a bad thing to have at the start of the term, especially after summer vacation.

Paper Work for Me and for Thee

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Today I was confused about what I was supposed to do and where I was supposed to be so I just did what I wanted and then did some paperwork. I also sent an email that created work for other people.

I blame them for that, not me.

I’ve mentioned before the odd things the company I work for has done with my days off. This year was more confusing than usual because rather than talk to the department head to get my schedule, the powers what are spoke to the school admin. Unfortunately, the school admin doesn’t know that much. All it knows is “These are the days Dwayne is teaching. These are the days he is not.” Those are then broken down as “School Days” and “‘Work’ Days”. On school days I’m actually working and on “work” days I’m not actually working just doing busy work and have to fill out a couple forms and send stuff in to different email addresses.

The problem is, on some of the “work” days, I’m actually doing stuff at the school to get ready for the school days. The problem with that is that I’m not supposed to be at the school without “permission” because “hiding from government” or something like that. The problem with that is not really my problem, but it could become a pain in the rear.

However, sometime this past year the company I work for actually spoke to the department head who gave them an “earful” if “earful” is defined as “loud unholy hell”. It is possible, therefore, that today and the next three days are school days and not “work” days.

I sent in today’s “work” day forms and the emailed the person in charge of my schedule. I knew what would happen and about how long it would take. She would contact someone above her who would freak out. That person would contact my immediate handler (he’s not a supervisor because supervisor’s actually have authority to make decisions) and my immediate handler would contact me to get more information. After talking to me my immediate handler would contact my actual boss who would contact the school.

I’m predicting the school will not understand the problem and say “we sent you the schedule” and this will start a few more processes rolling. (If you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of layers above the layers above me.)

I have no idea how it will all work out. My immediate handler will call me with some BS explanation that doesn’t actually solve the problem. The only good thing about all this is I’m not the only one doing extra work and paper work.