Author Archives: DELively

Marking Plans Go Away

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Plan A never got started, but Plan B has been nearly successful.

Plan A was to stay at school and mark exams for a few hours and then come home and slowly dredge through the remaining exams. (Note: the dredge through exams at home is my normal marking system.) The importance of Plan A is that the more I mark at school, the more I “put way” so to speak.

However, I abandoned Plan A as soon as I got my exams. Instead I went to lunch and came home where I dredged around before I even started marking. There was also an odd set of emails involving Saturday, the school where I work, the company I work for, and the latter’s shocking unwillingness to give clear instructions even though we are expected to go to them for instruction. (Long story that’s still being resolved so more on that later.)

Eventually, I started marking, and have made good progress. The goal for Plan A was to finish all the junior high school first year exams today and have a few hours to relax before getting two sets of exams tomorrow.

However, because of the immediate switch to Plan B and the odd emails from the company I work for, I’m behind where I wanted to be.

The goal is still to finish this batch of exams tomorrow morning before I head off to the school where I work. However, that depends on if I get any emails from the company I work for or not.

Knives and Stuff

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It wasn’t that impressive, but it usually gets better.

There are four big knife shows in Tokyo. The first two and the fourth are usually awesome. The third, which took place today, is usually ho-hum. In fact, I’ve skipped it a couple times because the weather is so hot and humid I cant be bothered to go outside.

Today was no exception.

Although I got some good video (that I’ve been too lazy to edit) I didn’t see anything new or exciting and left after a short time. What’s odd is that I wasn’t temped to buy anything, which is not the way these things usually happen. (Actually, in all fairness, it’s more accurate to say I didn’t see anything NEW that I wanted to buy; lots of old stuff, though.)

Also, my usual partner in knife crime (so to speak) couldn’t attend. That probably made him the smart/lucky one.

The next knife show is in October and it’s usually the best of the year.

I’ll start planning for that one right after exams finish.

Not Much Going on To Do

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This weekend is one of the very nice in-between weekends that fall after the end of classes and before the start of exams. This means I’m taking it easy before all the busy work starts.

That meant today was a combination of binge watching Broadchurch (Tennant’s very good; Colman is briliant; the show is uneven but better and less stuck up than the first season of True Detective.) and working on small projects.

The summer is more or less planned, with a few concessions to the company I work for and with the underlying assumption that every thing can change quickly. I hope to sneak in a couple minor excursions and put to rest, in one way or another, a couple long running/denial filled projects.

Complicating matters is the upcoming ISOT and an unusually long exam marking period. This means it will be easy to put off until the day after tomorrow what could have been done a few days ago. (Something like that.)

 

Decline and Fade

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My colleague and I turned in our exam papers at the same time. The only mystery was if there were any kanji mistakes. Oddly, there were only number mistakes. Then we went back to the office with nothing productive to do. I sat down and said “I’m bored.”

It was almost kind of funny. It wasn’t, though.

Every one of the foreign staff at the school where I work was spent. Those of us who weren’t spent were done.

The last day of the summer term is the longest day of the year. Although the Autumn term is longer and we have more classes, the weather is getting cooler and drier.

Today, though, it was humid and we’d pretty much stopped caring. We did have to finalize our exams and check listening CDs. and that provided some much needed life purpose, but other than that we were done.

The students were also done and most of them chose not to study. I didn’t care, though. That’s part of the last day mentality. No one cares. Everyone is done, even if they’re not finished.

Not Unpunished Good Deeds

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All in all, it wasn’t a bad day, until things got annoying.

I’ve mentioned before how I’m in an odd place where I work for one company but have been assigned at the same school for a long time. I therefore have to distinguish between the company I work for and the school where I work.

Today the two worlds clashed. Sort of.

I’d just finished a decent day of classes (even my low level class was pretty good) and I’d brought some audio editing work home so that I could use an English language version of the software. After completing the listening files for the final exam, I was just about to start a nice, relaxing break when I got an email from the company I work for.

They “asked” me to “teach” three days during the summer at a kindergarten in my town. It is, as near as I can tell, the definition of shit work: summer vacation plus kindergartners plus difficult to reach location plus Japan summer heat and humidity plus every other Monday plus the fact in all the years I’ve been teaching, I’ve never taught at a kindergarten. I am therefore the least qualified person in the company to “teach” the assignment (which will be nothing more than glorified babysitting).

Oh, and I’m babysitting our youngest on those days as those are days She Who Must Be Obeyed works.

I pointed out that I’d prefer not to teach on those days as I’d be using a paid holiday on one of them and had to babysit on the other two.

I then got a response telling me to take paid holidays for the other two.

At this point I got salty. I said I wasn’t going to take paid holidays for the other two days as I’d been with the company 18 years and hoped to get a little respect and consideration from it. If they couldn’t give me that they should just give man an official order to report to the shit work and send me the materials I need to do it. They should also stop wasting my time pretending I actually had a choice.

I haven’t heard back yet, but I expect a phone call tomorrow. I hope it’s not the new guy. We haven’t met yet and I’m afraid I’ll leave a really bad pre-impression.

The Endless Week of Thursdays

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Today felt like Thursday. So did yesterday. Tomorrow, when it is actually Thursday I suspect it will feel like Friday.

Part of the problem with this time of year is that we are mostly finished with all the planning we need to do. We have exams to finish and listening tests to record and edit, but none of that takes much time. That leaves us with lots of down time to fill during the day.

In class we are merely watching the students work on (or not work on) review assignments. We field a few questions, but mostly we react to every movement and every stretched arm. The conversation is usually:

–Student raises arm to stretch.–
Me–Do you need me?
Him–No, no, a thousand times no.
Me–Carry on then.

Because we have a lot of down time, the week begins to drag and I think that’s what makes it feel longer. The weather is also changing, which drains a lot of energy.

Then there’s the dread of how busy we will be next week when the exam papers arrive.

Long Day, With Videos and Ink

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Just a short one today.

The day started with me filming videos and using my iPod Touch for the first time as a camera thanks to me leaving my phone at home. The videos are mostly to scare the students into taking it seriously and to torture them after with the sounds of their voices and the way they actually look on camera.

It will also show some of them how boring they were.

The two classes after the videos were second year junior high school classes. The higher level class was terrible and the lower level class was pretty good. All I did was explain the exam (or in the case of the higher level class, stop explaining the exam because no one was listening). I also handed out a review sheet. The problem with the lower level class is there were a few students who just talked and others who just smiled because they didn’t know what they were supposed to do.

After I got home, I packed three boxes of ink into a bag and walked them to the post office. This isn’t that far of a walk (2.2 km/1.4 miles round trip) but even though it was fairly cool it was muggy and I’d spent a lot of energy at work.

I did some minor work after that. Emphasis on minor.

Something Completely Different

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I’ve now reached the point with my worst student where I might actually keep him in my class just to see what happens next. In the past he’s freaked out, flipped me off, hit me with a desk and torn up his textbook.

Today, though, was something completely different.

Because today is one week before the final exam, I dedicated the class to discussing the content of the exam and passing out a review sheet that included the actual long writing question.

As I explained things, though, I heard a rattling sound. He was alternating between throwing the metal cone of his mechanical pencil as if it was a die or attempting to spin it as if it was a top. This attracted the attention of other students. I explained that if students weren’t listening I’d stop talking and just turn them loose with the review sheet.

Although most students in his class worked hard and were better than my other classes, he set his review sheet sideways on his desk and surrounded it with pens to create a kind of top-spinning pitch. He then set up obstacles and spent the rest of the class spinning his pencil top.

Other students asked him what the hell he was doing (in so many words) and he just repeated his usual “I don’t understand therefore I don’t have to try” shtick (in so many words).

I was fascinated by the entire event and just let him not try. He’ll end up in the lower level class where I’m guessing he thinks things will be easier and the where he thinks the teacher will use more Japanese. Or, maybe he thinks he’ll get to sit at his own desk and play with his own stuff.

Whatever happens, I’ll be really surprised if he writes more than his name on the final exam. If he doesn’t even do that I won’t be surprised either. It makes it easier for me to mark, but guarantees he’ll drop to the lower level class.

(Note: Because of the latter, I’m torn about whether or not I want him to actually write something.)

I don’t want to make him someone else’s problem, but that seems to be his goal. I may not keep him around, but I suspect I’ll get interesting reports from his new teacher.

Last Week Adventures

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Because tomorrow is the first day of the last week of classes, and because I was out all day yesterday, today I was surprisingly useless. A large portion of the day was spent watching TED talks about how to beat procrastination.

I did not intend to do that or be this way, but my brain was apparently warning me that the next couple weeks are going to be hectic right as the weather is getting hot and rainy.

Granted, there isn’t much actual work this week. Most of what I will do amounts to providing information about final exams, passing out review sheets, and answering questions/staying awake. What makes this tiring is how boring it all is and the fact the air conditioners at the school where I work are set for “sub-tropical”.

Sometime this week we will record the listening portions of the various exams and I’ll spend an evening editing mine into something that hopefully works and spares me the usual listening related stress. I then have to turn it all in on Friday.

I’ll then have another couple days to be useless before I get busy.

 

Day of the Doomed

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It started badly but ended well and at least one person was ecstatic. Another has given up.

A fellow pen addict has returned to Japan and I got the chance to hang out with him. The plan was for me to meet him at a pen fair at Ito-Ya in Ginza where I planned to buy a new nib for my Nakaya or have the old one repaired.

However, just past the point when it would have been practical to turn around and go back, I realized I’d left the pen on the variety room desk.

That shortened the visit to the pen show as there was no real reason to be there. I met my friend and we then went to Euro-Box to look at vintage pens but has been the case in every previous trip, it was closed.

This means my friend has given up on ever seeing the place. Such is the nature of doom.

We then went on a wild goose chase–led by me–through the red light district of Shinjuku looking for a building that doesn’t exist. (Long story involving maps, identical names, and doom induced stupidity.)

Later, at Kingdom Note, whilst we were waiting for a spot at the counter to open up, we were approached by a Chinese woman who expressed that being at Kingdom Note and buying ink and pens was her dream come true. We were happy for her, but our problems were just beginning.

We went to the store in Shibuya that we thought we’d find in Shinjuku to buy a few trinkets. However, there was an odd delay involving a trinket with no price tag attached. That led us into Shibuya on a Saturday night trying to find a quiet place to have a drink.

Every place we found was closed or crowded. This led us to an izakaya called, in English, “the Stupid Son”. We chose it because it had empty chairs, It filled up quickly though.

It turned out that the food was pretty good and the beer reasonably priced. We suddenly felt less doomed.