Monthly Archives: March 2017

Word Searches and Silence

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It was a copy of several copies, it wasn’t something we’d studied and I didn’t have the answers. It kept the students mesmerized, though, so it did its job.

This week and part of next week we have pass back classes for our first and second year junior high school classes. Because the actual pass back part takes only a few minutes, we are left with at least a half-hour’s worth of time to fill.

This year some of us decided to pass out word searches that involved matching capitols and countries and then finding the capitols in the word search. It had nothing to do with anything we’d studied, but it was something to do.

I made it optional, as the students already have homework for the next grade even though they haven’t, technically, finished the current one, but almost every student grabbed a copy and each class became eerily silent as the students tried to finish the word search.

My job was to translate the over-copied words into letters the students could understand.

This means, of course, that complicated word searches will always be a part of pass back classes.

Getting Ready for the Normal

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I’ll be normal again soon, but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

I finished marking exams today and even managed to figure out all the final marks. This means I have a chance to fall back into normal rhythms for a while, at least until I have more free time and that’s when things fall apart. Granted, part of that “free time” will be served under a de facto house arrest where the company I work for forces me to work at home because there’s no work for me to do.

The trouble is, that for a few days after I finish marking, I enter an anxious period where I feel as if I should be doing something and that keeps me from relaxing. Oddly, during those periods, I can manage to waste time in a way that’s not even fun. I’d actually feel better about it if I just wasted the time playing games. Instead, the time is just wasted.

Eventually, I settle down and start taking advantage of all the extra time. The trick this time around is to keep the extra time from being filled with planning how to fill the extra time.

That’s not always the case, though.

The State of Zooming Out

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The end is near, but like the vertigo effect, the closer I get, the farther away things seem to be.

Because I don’t always think things through/have aspirations that outshine my abilities and focus, I decided to mark the exams that are due last first and the exams that are due first last. This will, of course, give me a weekend off.

The problem is, that it is also slowly driving me insane–or maybe that’s the Bond movies (more on that in a different post)–by blocking off my chance to do any outside activities.

That said, if all goes according to plan, and we all know what happens to the best laid schemes of mice and men, I’ll finish relatively early tomorrow.

Actually, because of my odd plan, I have to finish tomorrow. If I don’t, Friday will be interesting in the “may you live in interesting times” curse kind of way.

 

The Last There Were There

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Some were still there, but they were cut off by bags and emergency food.

After work today I made a quick run to the last day of the 8th Annual World Fountain Pen Exhibition in the slim hope of tracking down some more bottles of the ink I managed to track down when I went there before. Alas, although there was some ink, the rare stuff was long gone.

The biggest treat was stumbling across the Sailor ink blender Mr. Usamu Ishimaru as he worked with a client. I wasn’t free on the day reservations became available and therefore didn’t have a chance to get a reservation so all I could do was gawk. He’d clearly been there a while and was looking bored. He also gave me a temporary look of recognition as I am a permanent troll at these events.

Usamu Ishimaru, Sailor’s ink blender, works with a client. Next to him is a bag display where Nakaya used to be.

I was mostly surprised to see that the Nakaya table was gone. Granted, the pens on their display have no nibs as part of the Nakaya mystique is that, if you buy from their table, they will let you choose a nib style and then their pen master/mistress will tune it to fit your writing style to help make  the pen yours, but I still expected to see a few for sale. (Then I remembered that they sell a few downstairs in the mausoleum.)

Ohashido and Eboya were still there, but Euro-Box was gone and in their place was a necktie display (yes, this is a bookstore, therefore, neckties). In Nakaya’s place was an emergency food display that included cans of curry.

That, in a nutshell, summarizes what’s wrong with the two department store pen shows. The pens are an afterthought, the sales are what’s important and pens are not more special than neckties. When I went there before, the staff at the LAMY table couldn’t give me any information until the LAMY rep was free.

My next goal is to track down the local pen fanatics and make it to one of the Wagner pen club meetings. (More on them in a future post.) Or, since I have more free time now, if I can overcome the usual resistance, find someone who could help me start my own pen show.

That will bring it’s own problems, I suspect, but that’s fodder for a future post, too.

One More Begin Again and End

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Today was a mix of finishes and starts.

I saw a few dozen for the last time today as I won’t be teaching third year high schools next year. At the same time I picked up two more sets of exams from students I’ll have to see again very soon.

This situation makes this an especially odd time of year as I don’t get to enjoy the satisfaction that pass back classes usually bring as they are just harbingers of more work yet to come.

Granted, the good news was that apparently no one has failed which means I won’t have to write and mark a make up exam, but I do have only a few days to mark the exams I just got–or maybe I have all weekend to mark some of them. It’s all confusing, although the confusion is offset by the shocked looks on many of my high school students when they saw their low scores and realized they should have 1) paid attention in class 2) followed instructions and 3) memorized their speech contest speeches which would have helped them a lot on the exam.

I did get some marking done, but I’m actually doing it all backward: I’m starting with the class I might have the most time for. This will force me to finish all the exams by Friday, and that will give me the weekend off.

That’s the plan, anyway. Who knows what will actually happen.

 

Gradually, Then Suddenly

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Sometimes you don’t get the extra work you want when you want it. You get a little with lots of time to do it and the you get all of the rest with less time to do it.

I had 10 days to finish marking my first five batches of exams. Starting tomorrow I’ll have four days to finish six batches. (Note: for complicated reasons, that’s about the same number of exams.) Because of that I found myself wishing that the junior high first and second year exams had been a couple days earlier. I would have even been happy to come in on Saturday.

Instead the exams are late in the exam period and the first set of pass backs is on the earliest possible day for pass backs.

This wouldn’t be so terrible except that we’ve also got pass back classes eating up time that could be spent marking.

At the same time, there’s been a sudden interest in ink and because I’m in the “yeah, sure, I can totally do that” phase of the business, I’m spending a lot of time fielding emails and texts and taking pictures of ink samples whilst working my phone charger overtime. (Note: I’ve discovered that I’m a surprisingly good up-seller/enabler thanks to the Detective Colombo “Oh, just one more thing” style of sales.) I’ll be dealing with all that on Monday and Tuesday. That leaves me only a couple free days to buckle down and do the marking that is my actual job.

As work tend to expand and contract to fill the time, I’ll get it all done, and hopefully won’t have to pull an old-school all-nighter. Then again, knowing me, I’ll probably do that anyway, I just won’t get much work done. Then I’ll have to do it all suddenly.

Cake Around Midnight

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If it hadn’t been for the cake, I’d probably be asleep by now.

Yesterday was Hina Matsuri, the doll festival which celebrates/honors the girls in the family, and although we at the traditional sushi, which looks a lot like fried rice with a raw fish topping, we never managed to finish the cake. Everybody was so busy that even I got involved in baking the cake. (Granted, my part involved only waiting, removing and flipping the cake, and several burns.)

Today, though, we got to eat the cake, but as fate would have it, the cake wasn’t ready until after 10:00. (Long story.)

I ate a piece and that, on top of the coffee I’ve been consuming as I mark final exams, has me wide awake around 2:00 a.m. Unfortunately, because I’ve been marking exams, I don’t have much to report.

I’ll make this one a short one then. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have a few adventures to report.

Or maybe not.

 

Fun Up Stairs and Surprises Down

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I didn’t get way up stairs today, so I don’t know if there was a third pen show, but the two I visited were pretty good, mostly thanks to a surprise.

Today I visited the 8th Annual World Fountain Pen Exhibition at Maruzen Books down in Tokyo. Because it was a Friday, I wasn’t expecting much. As always, the things I most wanted to see were all huddled into a tiny space next to the exit at one end of the ground floor.

I was especially pleased to see Euro-Box on hand as it was fun to look over the large selection of vintage pens. A Nakaya staffer was there tuning and fixing pens as were staff from Ohashido and Eboya.

Eizo Fujii from Euro-Box (left) watches over four displays full of vintage pens. The pen maker from Ohashido consults with a client at the back, near the exit.

The pen master from Ohashido works on a client’s pen.

The pen mistress from Nakaya (I forgot her name and she usually keeps it secret anyway by hiding her name tag) checks the smoothness of a nib at the Nakaya tables. (Note: She doesn’t like pictures, so I’m only running this because you can’t see her face clearly.)

I drooled over a couple pens but managed to walk away with my finances intact. Mostly.

Some of the Ohasahido pens. That orange and black pen second from the left is calling me. My wallet is sending a different message. (I also like the three to the right.)

Although it wasn’t that busy, there was still a lot of energy on the ground floor. However, because there wasn’t much to see other than temptation and temporary joy followed by fits of remorse, I headed downstairs into the mausoleum where it was dark and silent.

However, as soon as I arrived in the mausoleum, I saw a large collection of store exclusive inks. I quickly bought one of each. This was a big surprise as 1) I expected any ink they had to have sold out the first day and 2) they were older versions in the old style bottles. I quickly bought one of each, gambling I’d be able to sell them.

Because of that find, I was in a much better mood in the mausoleum. I looked around at a few of the displays and talked to the LAMY rep about the cap on my LAMY 2000. (He says it’s fine; I says it’s barely fine.) I saw the anniversary edition LAMY 2000 black amber, which is neither black nor amber, but is cooler looking than I expected it be.

I also found my scribblings from last  year in a sample notebook in the darkest corner of the mausoleum. Something about that struck me as funny and I left in a good mood.

I was in such a good mood that I completely forgot to check out what events were happening on the third floor.

I still think it would be cool if they squeezed a nibmeister in next to the Nakaya or Ohashido tables. It would also be nice if they allowed pictures in the mausoleum.

But I left in a good mood, so none of that bothered me much this year.

 

 

One Brief Moment

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Every now and then I see that a student has learned something, even though he doesn’t realize it.

As a rule, I don’t use any Japanese in class, even with low level students. Any use of Japanese by me creates a temporary ruckus that distracts from whatever point I was attempting to make. This happens as students laugh, mock, act shocked that I used Japanese. My students do all that despite the fact that they constantly say “Japanese please”. Even if they don’t do all the laughing, mocking and acting shocked, if I use Japanese they will learn to ignore any English coming out of my mouth until I stop spouting nonsense and start speaking Japanese.

Today, in a class that was competing to be my worst class, a student tried to get me translate a phrase. I’ve mentioned many times that I’m not a dictionary but that they are welcome to bring one to class.

A student was trying to get the phrase “get to school” but wasn’t sure about the “get to” part. He was ignoring the student next to him who just kept repeating “get, get, get, get” which only annoyed the student and made him say “get, get, get, get” louder.

The student with the question asked me in Japanese, but then stood up and demonstrated, in English and with gestures, what he was trying to say. I said “get to school.” and he finished his writing.

He didn’t realize that this is exactly what I’m trying to get them to do: talk around words they don’t know and, whenever possible, use gestures.

I felt smugly satisfied, which is not something I usually do with that class.

Watching Them Give Up

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The assignment was to write a conversation in which Speaker A is appealing to Speaker B to change something and explaining why the change needs to be made.

What I got was more random than that.

At the end of the year students tend to give up. They figure that, no matter what they do, they’ve already passed, or they figure that, no matter what they do, they’ve already failed.

Either way, they focus their energy into other courses and the course I teach is of much less importance. As a result, end of year exams can be quite the debacle.

First you have students who ignored the rule to save all their worksheets (the end of year final is comprehensive) and therefore can’t study; and Second, you have the students who figure that if even if they fail my class they can still move on.

This comes to me as exam essays that don’t match the assignment. I’ve got conversations about new inventions, conversations about new gadgets, conversations about school and conversations about nothing.

These students get a low score, but they do make me more sympathetic to the students who actually follow the assignment.