Author Archives: DELively

The Five Tiers of Worstness

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All worst high school students are the same, but the worst junior high school students are worst in their own unique ways.

The worst high school students are either loud or sleepy. That’s pretty much it because in high school in Japan students can fail and, in theory, it’s okay for you to remove them from the class.

Junior high school students in Japan, however, cannot fail and private schools won’t expel them so their worstness comes in tiers.

Fifth Tier: The Sleepers
If they are not asleep when you walk in class–and they will not wake up easily if this is true–they will put their heads down as soon as they reach their seats. They do not have books, paper or any kind of writing utensil and will not understand why you think such things are necessary. They will take personal offense at being woken up.

The worst of the sleepers (and this applies to high school) are asleep in the wrong class, wake up half way through, and then groggily collect their stuff and go to their proper classes.

Note: I always confirm the students are actually breathing before letting them sleep.

Note the Second: If a student wasn’t breathing, I’d probably ignore that until the end of class in order to make it another teacher’s problem and avoid any paperwork.

Fourth Tier: The Finnishers
These worst give up easily. They will ask you to speak Japanese (even after you speak Japanese to them) and they will refuse to open a dictionary even when you plop one on their desk. They will look at an assignment and sheepishly stare around hoping someone close by finishes the assignment. If necessary, they will roam the room in search of people with the answers.

If they have a textbook, it is probably one stolen from another student’s locker which means there’s a student in another class losing points for not having a textbook.

When Finnishers decide they’ve done enough classwork–even if they’ve done nothing at all–they say “I’m Finnish” and your best efforts to correct them will always fail.

Third Tier: The Obnoxious Brats
These are Finnishers with attitude. They will not do an assignment even if you explain it to them in Japanese. When you try to explain they will smile and nod at you in ways that indicate they have ears but will not hear.

They have pristine textbooks because they have never written in them. Or they have a textbook from another student. If the answers are already written in the purloined book, the book will be passed around the class for others to copy.

Second Tier: The Seriously Obnoxious Brats
These SOBs have, in many cases, never heard the word “No.” They are not used to doing things they don’t want to do and don’t understand why techniques they use on their parents not only don’t work on you but often result in homework.

They have pristine books stolen from other students in their class and when you try to explain an assignment they will laugh and make faces back at you.

They will sit at the back and talk the entire class. They will lie down on the floor. When you speak in class they will parrot every word you say without actually understanding anything you’re saying.

First Tier: The Right Little Shits
The Right Little Shits are hostile, in-your-face bad. They will do every trick they know to make you angry and if you ever do get angry they will push those buttons again and again and again and try to get other students to push them. If you get angry again, they will laugh.

They walk in late, even if they know it will get them in trouble–actually, they walk in late because they know it will get them trouble–and will make a joke out of it. Their goal is to perform for the rest of the class.

They use bad words (in English and Japanese) and will mock your attempts to discipline them.

In most cases, they are fairly smart, but never as smart as they think they are. Most end up in lower level classes and are refused admittance to high, or they are admitted and fail their first year in high school.

In all my years at the school where I work I’ve taught a lot of SOBs but only a handful of right little shits. One I gave a negative class mark to just to attract attention to how bad he was and how he shouldn’t be allowed in high school.

Some matured when they got to high school, because suddenly they could fail and there were enough new students they suddenly weren’t cool, but a few did not. The one I gave a negative score to failed out of high school after one year.

First Day in Front

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Wednesday’s going to be a long day, and it appears it’s going to finish badly.

Today was the first day of classes and after stumbling through, and modifying on the fly, a new class diary system that lets me use a bunch of old notebooks (more on that in a future post) I actually had to stand in front of students.

This involved me lying to some students (part of the lesson) and then letting them lie about each other. In the last class, though, I just let them talk about themselves.

The first two classes are junior high school third year (US 9th grade) and they’ve already figured out the scam (Hey! We CAN’T fail.) The lowest level class has a few bad students from past classes but, except for seeing the fault lines, I’m not that worried about a major quake.

The sixth period class is a junior high second year class and they think they are cool for having survived their first year. Three of my Second Tier worst students (long story) are there including two who used to be in the higher level class and one of my First Tier worst students, who also used to be in a higher level class.

It will be a challenging class, but I’ve started to follow the Japanese tradition of having students stand up at the beginning and end of the class. That will be followed by them being silent while I talk or they won’t get to leave. I’ve done this before and I like it because it gives the class a clear starting point (most students treat the bell as a suggestion) which means they can’t just meander in as they feel like it.

Because the class is last period I also have a lot of ways to apply negative motivation, especially because I’m willing to stay late after school with them if need be. If the class ends up being tolerable, it will be because of that.

 

Monokaki Pocket Notebook–End of Book Review

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: There’s this really cool notebook that claims that it’s the notebook of Nobel Prize winning writers.

Although the way a  famous notebook brand uses this story is somewhat dodgy (and is most accurately described as “famous people used a notebook that looked kind of like this”) in the case of Masuya’s Motokaki notebook, there appears to be some truth to the story. The notebook was, as near as I can find, made in 1939 for Fumio Niwa, author of The Buddha Tree. Since then it’s been used by other Japanese writers.

Note: Please keep in mind that none of this impresses me. In fact, when I learned about the story behind the more famous notebook, I felt kind of sad, as if I’d been duped, even though I hadn’t read the story beforehand.

Two Monokaki Pocket Notebooks. The one being reviewed is the one on the right.

The Monokaki Pocket Notebook I used was terrific. It is one of the most fountain pen friendly notebooks I’ve ever used.

The notebook contains 128 pages of Masuya’s cream colored, acid free Kotobukiya paper. I used the version with a light grid, but it also comes in blank and ruled versions. The off-white cover is made of thick Japanese washi paper with a woodblock print inspired pattern designed by Ryo Takagi. The end pages are black (charcoal gray?) paper and help add some support to the notebook when you’re holding it in your hand as you write.

Detail of the fountain pen and ink bottle on the cover. Also, detail of the wear on the spine.

At 140 mm (5.5 inches) tall and 85 mm (3.35 inches) wide the notebook is roughly the same length as a Field Notes Notebook, but slightly narrower. Because it’s made of eight sewn signatures, it lays flat when it’s open, which is not true of many smaller perfect bound notebooks.

Detail of the end pages and the notebook’s construction. If you zoom you can see the individual signatures.

Although the paper is thin, it handles fountain pens extremely well. There is a lot of show through, which might bother some people, but very little bleed. In fact, the only ink that bled consistently was Wancher Matcha, which is always a heartbreaker. It breaks hearts.

Wancher Matcha bleeding through the page. It is a heartbreaker. It breaks hearts. Also, nice detail of the grid pattern.

The only real complaint I have with the notebook is more a matter of taste than a problem. As a rule, I don’t like solid grids on notebook pages as they break up the lines. Yeah, you have to look fairly close, sometimes, to notice, but it bothers me. Ruled pages I don’t mind as much because I don’t have to cross the lines, but I prefer blank pages in small notebooks. (Actually, in all notebooks, but more on that in a future post.)

The Monokaki Pocket Notebook has entered my top five pocket notebooks. I have a blank version yet to use, and I may bump it forward in my notebook queue.

 

 

Giving Away the Old But Still New

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At first they laughed. Then they took the notebooks. It solved problems for all of us.

Over a decade ago an online stationery shop I used on occasion went out of business when the owner graduated from school, got a “real” job, and no longer had time to dedicate to the business.

(Note: I cannot, for the life of me, remember the name of the shop, nor can I find any old links to it.)

Before the site shut down, though, the owner dumped the last of her inventory at surprisingly good prices. Because of this huge discount, I managed to acquire four large Moleskine notebooks (three lined, one blank) for around the price of one and a half Moleskine notebooks in Japan.

However, because I already had one notebook in use, and another in my notebook queue (oh, like you don’t have one) the four notebooks got stuffed into a drawer. Where they remained, still sealed in plastic, for over a decade.

In fact, if I’m remember the timing correctly, I may have got those four notebooks before we got our youngest daughter.

During yesterday’s office cleaning I pulled the four notebooks out of the drawer and looked them over. They looked to be in good shape with no obvious signs of mold or age. Because they are older Moleskine notebooks, they still have reasonably decent paper compared to more contemporary versions. I thought about keeping them, but then quickly decided to give them away as I no longer use large notebooks. (Instead I use a large number of small notebooks.)

As I have with Field Notes notebooks, I took them to school. With the Field Notes notebooks, I gave limited editions to my fellow foreign staff and left the craft cover versions in the main teachers’ office where they quickly disappeared. With the Moleskines, though, I walked around the English department repeating “free notebooks, really cheap, free notebooks, really cheap, take all you want.”

At first everyone who saw them laughed and then went “really?” I explained how they hadn’t cost me that much and how I’d never use them and wanted to get them into the hands of people who would use them.

I quickly passed out all four to Japanese teachers of various ages and watched as, for the first time in over a decade, the plastic wrap was removed and the notebooks were put to use.

It was oddly satisfying, especially as I now have room for more notebooks which, I realize, kind of defeats the point of giving some away.

More Old and Dusty But Not Quite as Much so

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For the record, I survived eating all that old survival kit food. Now I’m going to eat more.

In my defense, it’s not as old as the other stuff was.

Today I cleaned out a drawer and my survival kit box. There were a couple revelations.

First, the cheapish ferro rods I had in the three “damn, the lighter’s dead and I forgot the matches” tins corroded and left a disturbing gray dust all over everything. I cleaned them off and even though they all still worked, I researched how much it would cost to replace them. I also warned She Who Must Be Obeyed that the only way to preserve them was to start a fire every month.

The key thing was the expired survival food. Since I survived the old jerky and Spam, I’m now set to eat food that expired a couple years ago and, in a couple cases, this month. Some of it is rice, but one item is expired Spam-like substance. That will be lunch tomorrow.

This all inspired SWMBO to clean below the stove. (Note: that is a cabinet, not an oven.) Whilst cleaning she found some perhaps decade old brandy.

So far, so good.

 

Revisiting Old Television

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Because I have lots of free time right now, even with house arrest, to be doing lots of things, I’ve primarily been watching old tv shows.

One show I didn’t like then liked was Babylon 5, which is the show I’m now watching again.

However, what I do on a rewatch is stick with an episode until I remember the basics of it and then either keep watching or skip ahead past the annoying bits. Sometimes I do both by skipping the comic relief section to get to the main story line mostly to see how the writers handle the story over time.

I also tend to have an episode summary available to help me decide if an episode’s worth watching. For example, with Babylon 5 I’ve skipped two episodes entirely and skipped the entire PSI Cop story line in episode six.

The trouble with Babylon 5 is you’ve got a lot of story line and lots of good performances. Andreas Katsulas is terrific as G’Kar and it’s amazing to see how well he can act despite the prosthetics he’s forced to wear. The make up itself still looks quite good.

I also tend to jump off and read and watch things related to the show. For example, I somehow missed several of the actors dying and also missed that J. Michael Straczynski had revealed in 2013 why Michael O’Hare, who played Captain Sinclair, left the show after only one season. (Note: all the videos, especially the second Arizona ComiCon video are worth your time if you like the show.)

I’m tempted to watch the fifth season, which I’ve only skimmed because, technically, the story line had already ended at that point, but I’ll probably save that until exam time.

 

 

Keeping the Place

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Not feeling it today, er, this morning so this will be short.

Only a few days until I start working at the school where I work and I’m already in Most Horrible Anticipation Mode. This is the mode where I imagine the worse possible scenario and mentally live it until it comes true or not or, most likely, comes partially true.

The worst possible scenario involves the worst possible students with the worst possible number of days and the worse possible encounters with the company I work for.

I realize this is the worst possible way to view things, but it’s that time of year and I’m in that kind of mood.

 

 

Better Easier More and Less Improving

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It’s easy enough making them do what they want to do. It’s trying to get them to do what you want them to do…that gives you a headache. –Azolan (Peter Capaldi) Dangerous Liaisons

The above epigraph was said about women but today I think it applies more to computer software.

As part of my house arrest “work” I spent part of the day redoing the spreadsheet I use to record marks and do all the cipherin’.

This involves lots of clearing and cutting and pasting and swearing when the formulas don’t paste correctly. Things that should have been easy cut-and-paste jobs required lots of extra attention as I was forced to manually edited formulas. Some cells that should have been class names had been replaced with random formulas. (More on that in a second.) Then there were the sections that could only be handled a certain way and couldn’t do what I needed them to do. Then there were the missing columns that required an internet search and a live animal sacrifice to recover. (Well, I tried anyway, but it really didn’t help that much, but there are still lots of feral cats around here to experiment with.)

Remember: we use software to make our lives EASIER.

Eventually I got the spreadsheet into shape and all the parts and formulas seem to be working. Now, though, I have to move on to the second phase of swearing, er, preparation: making sure it all works on my tablet.

For some reason I have the only major brand tablet on the planet that can’t use a version of MS Office and, until recently, Open Office wasn’t available. I tried using a different office program, but it wouldn’t let me save to the tablet and was so buggy I went back to pen and paper until they ran a couple bug fixes.

Now, that program is destined for the scrap heap of software history. However, its legacy will be a lot of swearing as I get used to the new software.

Remember: we use software to make our lives EASIER.

Images of the Fall

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I had intended to review a notebook today, but then something happened and I can’t decide if it means I’m psychic or clumsy.

For the past couple months I’ve noticed a lot of people trip as they walked down the sidewalk. This gave me images of me tripping and falling, which is something that used to happen at least once every year–it’s also a tradition that I scuff new shoes on some structural oddity on the road–but I realized, as I watched the suffering of others, that for the past few years I hadn’t fallen down or even had an embarrassing trip. However, the image of it happening has been stuck in my head.

Today it became more than an image. Of course, six bottles of collectible ink were involved.

After doing my “work” for the day, I headed down to Tokyo to go to Takashimaya department store in Nihonbashi to acquire some ink for some customers. I proceeded, with no trouble at all, to the fifth floor and actually found a clerk quite easily. (Note: I should have realized this was an omen so one strike against psychic.) I can tell that the staff are now used to dealing with ink hoarders as the clerk didn’t blink when I requested a couple bottles of flavors and she instantly told me which ones were sold out. (Note: I take credit for all this. Long story.)

I stuffed the ink into my book bag, much to the chagrin of the checkout clerk who wanted to give me a carry bag. She seemed especially concerned when I was forced to shove the package down with some force to get it past some of the crap I carry.

After completing the transaction, I headed back downstairs and out Takashimaya’s impressive front entrance. However, as I turned in the direction of the crosswalk, I discovered that Takashimaya’s entrance is not level with the sidewalk when I rolled my ankle on the raised step.

What happened next was an odd hop, a loss of balance, a flop to my hands one elbow and knees, a loud slap, and a surprising amount of pain. After I recovered I shifted to a seated position on the sidewalk to reset my nerves. I told the concerned on-lookers I was okay. (Note: as everyone who’s rolled an ankle knows, you don’t feel the real pain until later.)

After that, I went to one of the best liquor stores in the world where for a couple hundred yen I was able to sample a couple expensive bottles of bourbon. (Note: I count this a trip to a medical clinic.)

Luckily, the ink was intact. My instincts caused me to fall in a way that protected the bag, hence the inexplicably injured elbow. This instinct came from my father who used to say as he was carrying his cameras across slippery sidewalks:  “If I fall, grab the camera, not me”.

Of course, if I’d listened to the checkout clerk and placed the ink in a Takashimaya carry bag, I’d now have a broken glass collection and six highly decorated small boxes, so that’s one strike against clumsy. (Although I suspect my instincts would have changed my landing style in that case.)

My ankle is okay, albeit a little sore. I do have those odd scuffs on my elbow and knee where the fall drew blood without damaging my clothes. (What evil is this?)

Now, though, I’m afraid to carry the ink to the post office.

 

Stuck in the Rules and the Formatting

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Maybe I should have left them how they were, but I don’t remember if I’ve submitted the forms before or not.

Today’s “work” day project as part of my house arrest was to update and reformat the rules form I pass out to my high school second year students. This involved resizing and centering and tweaking a couple fonts. If I’d left it at that, things would have been fine.

However, tweaking things like that trigger what I call “the doodle reflex”.  This is the phenomenon where you’re scribbling a couple silly pictures on a piece of paper during a meeting and then you start adding a line here and thickening a line there and experimenting with shading all over the place and pretty soon the doodle is the center of your attention and you’ve got to make it perfect and before you know it you’ve got a sloppy masterpiece that needs just a little more work and then you realize everyone is looking at you as if you’re a moron because your boss has been trying to get your attention for at least ten minutes. (Oh, like that hasn’t happened to you.)

With the rules changes, one change led to another and then I decided to make a worksheet to help reinforce the rules in the students’ minds and I suddenly I was working on two doodles and although both were sloppy, neither was perfect.

All this took a lot longer than I thought it would and in the end I have something I’ll probably change again.

Eventually, I’m supposed to submit it, but since it’s class rules, I’ll probably say it’s not right for me to do so. I’ll make that a new rule. With nice formatting.