Author Archives: DELively

Don’t Use It or Lose It

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There’s a point you reach with consumable items, especially those that can’t be replaced, when you suddenly realize you’ve used more than half and are approaching the end of the item’s days. At that point you face a dilemma: Do you use it up and then tell “things were so much better in those days” stories or do you hoard the last few bits, essentially rendering them useless but retaining the option to someday use them?

I’ve reached that point with one of my favorite fountain pen inks: Tomiya-Bungu’s Bakke (Fukinotou), which translates to something like “Butterbur Sprout”. Bakke (pronunced Bah-Kay) is a Sailor-made custom ink that was sold in the older-style “curvy” bottle, rather than the current “who sat on my bottle?” squat version.

The box, the bottle and a writing sample.

It’s a brown ink with some green mixed in. It’s more green as it goes on the paper, but dries to a nice brown. It was the first brown ink I tried and still one of the best looking.

Unfortunately, although Tomiya-Bungu still lists it on its site, it hasn’t been available for a couple years. Since the store no longer carries Sailor products, it’s unlikely it will ever be released again. This also makes me wish I’d purchased a bottle of each of the four flavors when they were available.

Today, as I inked up a pen with Bakke, I realized it was approaching the halfway point and thought about this dilemma. I was always the kid who thought stretching Halloween candy past more than a few days constituted a form of waste. (Quick Side Note: It’s best to eat the candy fast because if you spread it out over a few days you’ll develop a candy-eating habit rather than a quick upset stomach that makes you not want to eat candy again for year. Therefore eating the candy all at once counts as a weight loss program.)

This is starting to look dangerously low…

I have enough ink flavors on hand to stretch my last bit of Bakke out for quite a long time. I’ve also found a suitable replacement (more on that in a future post) so there isn’t as much need to use it.

If I don’t use it, though, I run the risk of watching it go bad. I also realize that not using it and using it up both end with the ink not being used. In the end I think I’d rather waste it by using it up than waste it by letting it sit.

 

The Best Laid Plans Are Sent Awry

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As it is my signature Japanese dish, sort of, I had planned to make gumbo today. There were, however, some complications.

Recently, I discovered that an online store had a version of andouille sausage and that got me thinking about gumbo. I ordered the sausage and mentioned to She Who Must Be Obeyed that I was not only in the mood for gumbo but in the mood to cook it. Then, today, when I planned to cook it, She Who Must Be Obeyed sat down at her computer and started looking up recipes. I kept assuring her that I already had a recipe but she kept researching researching and telling me things I already knew.

Because of this, the gumbo never got made.

As I pondered and pouted, it occurred to me that I didn’t actually know SWMBO when I first made gumbo with my adult class. She didn’t join until after that and I don’t remember her being at the festival where I made it for the town. As a result, she may have never actually had gumbo.

Now it’s a moral imperative that I make it If she likes it, she’ll start making it herself. If the doesn’t like, well, at least I’ll get to eat it.

Happy ‘Cause Skies Are Gray

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I woke up early, as if I had to go to work early, but then got to relax when it was clear the marathon hadn’t been cancelled. Granted, this is kind of complicated.

Despite Thursday being the only snowy day since last November, nothing stuck and nothing froze so my students got to enjoy a nice run in sunshine, whilst I got to enjoy hunting in Tokyo.

Unfortunately, on the school website, this is indicated by an announcement that nothing has changed. It doesn’t announce the marathon is a go, it just says that whatever the schedule is, nothing has changed. As a result, we, the foreign staff, exchange a lot of direct messages to confirm what is and is not going on.

I went down to Kingdom Note to pick up a bottle of ink for a customer and, oddly, not buy anything for myself. I did, however, look around a bit before running away as swiftly as possible.

That short adventure was followed by shoe hunting. (Note: I could have ordered the ink, and paid shipping, but since I needed shoes, I decided to make it Daddy’s Day (few hours) Out.

Because shoes my size are both rare and expensive here in Japan–my weight loss allows me to buy clothes, not shoes—there are only a few ways to for me to buy shoes: import, at a price, or trek down to Tokyo and hunt at a shoe store in Gotanda that specializes in non-Japanese sized shoes. At a price.

Of course, they didn’t have exactly what I was looking for, but I did find something and it cost less than a small car.

 

Which Weather Would be Nice?

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A couple weeks ago I was kind of hoping for snow. Now I’m hoping for a beautiful, sunlit day.

Every year around this time the school where I work conducts the annual marathon event. This involves high school students running a 10K course and junior high school students running a 5K course.

For the event, regular classes are cancelled, but if the weather turns bad, the marathon is cancelled and we have regular classes. This leads to an odd situation where students desperately want to have regular classes and teachers (specifically ME) are hoping for good weather.

This year, though, because two of my third year junior high school classes meet only three times this term whilst the other meets six times, I was kind of hoping that we’d have regular classes.

However, recent events have led to two teachers being absent for a short time. This means that if we have class tomorrow, I’ll have a five hour schedule and lose most of my planning time as I help substitute for the absent teachers.

I don’t mind this, even though the teachers work for a different company, but taking over another teacher’s classes creates complications that I don’t need when I’m supposed to be finalizing a final exam.

Therefore, I’ve changed my position on the weather. Here’s hoping for sunshine, or at least a marked lack of precipitation.

That Bad Disco With All That Noise

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My first two classes today reminded me a lot of being stuck in a night club that plays crappy music at a volume capable of drowning out jet engines. You can’t leave because your drunk friend thinks he has a chance with the cute blonde and all you can do is watch and go deaf whilst he gyrates in spasms that he thinks counts as dancing.

At the end of the evening you’re speaking loudly and can barely hear him as he complains about how much the cute blonde is missing out on.

My first class was especially loud as I hadn’t seen them, because of entrance exams, since the middle of last month. They’d forgotten a lot of rules. Three students hadn’t even bothered to bring their textbooks.

This means they had to be reminded of how petty and mean I can be, especially as we approach the end of the school year.

One of my worst students was trying to get me angry by parroting anything I said. He spoke in  a mumbly voice that got laughs from the class. I countered him by always asking him to repeat what he’d just said. He likes the attention and laughter of the class but doesn’t like my attention because it often comes with homework.

Tomorrow, if the same three don’t have their textbooks, I’ll put them at the back in what I call the playroom. They get zeros for the day, as does anyone who talks to them. Talk to them twice and you get homework.

The Only Funny Thing

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Events at the school where I work have brought back bad memories as colleagues have to rush home to care for loved ones in their final hours and after. This has me depressed so the only recourse right now is to make fun of my students.

Well, sort of.

What was my best first year class is now competing to see if it can be my worst. Despite that, I let them pick their own seats a few weeks ago to see if that changed the dynamic. It didn’t, but it puts the problems into one main area which makes it easier to isolate.

However, one student has decided he doesn’t like the place he chose and he’s now lobbying for a new chair. I asked him why and his answers were vague, but I suspect that because he chose a seat at the back near an odd corner, he’s limited in who he can talk/cause trouble with.

I told him I’d be happy to oblige the move, but that everyone would sit in seats I assigned. To help make the point, I had a seating chart drawn up and explained to everyone where they’d be sitting. By coincidence, the worst boys would be sitting up front near me in what one colleague calls a “wall of noise”.

After much students grumbling about the sample chart I put it to a vote and the one student was outvoted. Now the only grumbling is his.

They all may still end up moving, but there won’t be any votes when that happens.

Speeches and Translater Errors

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The last student to give a speech contest speech today was the one I figured I’d have a lunch date with tomorrow. He’d already refused to do his speech once before as he only had two sentences finished and I wasn’t expecting great things today.

I didn’t get them, but I did get a speech. Of sorts.

The student gave a speech that was long enough and almost resembled English. The words were English, but not much else was.

What he had done–and in his defense he wasn’t the only one–was enter Japanese into an online translator app and then copy what the machine told him. This is almost always a bad idea as the translator interprets words literally and, even when it’s reasonably accurate, it often uses words the students don’t understand.

For example, here are two translations of the opening passage of Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country.

Original version:
国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった。夜の底が白くなった。信号所に汽車が止まった。
向側の座席から娘が立って来て、島村の前のガラス窓を落とした。雪の冷気が流れこんだ。 娘は窓いっぱいに乗り出して、遠くへ叫ぶように、「駅長さあん、駅長さあん。」
明かりをさげてゆっくり雪を踏んで来た男は、襟巻で鼻の上まで包み、耳に帽子の毛皮を垂れていた。

Human translated version (taken from this site):
The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky. The train pulled up at a signal stop.

A girl who had been sitting on the other side of the car came over and opened the window in front of Shimamura. The snowy cold poured in. Leaning far out the window, the girl called to the station master as though he were a great distance away.
The station master walked slowly over the snow, a lantern in his hand. His face was buried to the nose in a muffler, and the flaps of his cap were turned down over his face.

Google Translate:
It was a snowy country when I passed through a long tunnel in the border. The bottom of the night turned white. The train stopped at the traffic light.

A daughter stood up from the seated side, dropped the glass window in front of Shimamura. The cold air of snow flowed. My daughter embarked on a window full and shouted to afar, “Station length, Ann, station length anan.”
The man who stepped on the snow slowly while slowing down the light wrapped up over the nose with a collar and was hanging a fur of a hat in his ear.

What I especially like is how the translation app turned this passage: 駅長さあん、駅長さあん (Station Master-san, Station Master-san) into  “Station length, Ann, station length anan.” 

Granted, the human translator summarizes the woman’s shouting rather than quoting it as it was in the original (big can of worms there), but at least it makes sense, is actual English, and has some style.

The biggest problem is many of my students are just pushing for the barest minimum passing grade, which isn’t that hard to get. Doing a good job on the speech contest speech runs the risk of getting you sent to the speech contest.

The other problem is they can’t use translator apps on the final exam. Things change a lot them.

Knives and Notebooks and Information

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I went to Tokyo to look at knives, but ended up with notebooks. In other words, it was a typical trip to Tokyo for me.

The morning started with the Ginza Blade Show which is relatively small, but was crowded and hot. Fortunately for my pocketbook, there wasn’t anything there I couldn’t live without and after taking some video and a few pictures, I ran away.

The next stop was ItoYa which, to my mind, isn’t as cool as it used to be, but is always worth at least a short trip.

That was followed by the search for a pen shop I hadn’t been to before. I found it surprisingly quickly. Unfortunately, it decided to close today so all I could do was stare longingly at the locked door.

After that, I made an excursion to Maruzen to hunt for ink and pens. The pen was sold out, as were the flavors of ink I was looking for.

From there I went down to the Mitsukoshi main store to verify the dates for their annual fountain pen festival. (March 15-20th, if anyone happens to be in town.) The clerks were friendly and quickly gave me the information. The Mitsukoshi stationery section is small but in a nice location near Mitsukoshi’s famous atrium. It also has three different sets of modern pens available to try. I played the Platinum nibs and the Pilot nibs and convinced myself NOT to buy a Falcon nib for one of my pens. Before I changed my mind, I wandered over to the notebook section.

Unfortunately, although it is small, the stationery section had some notebooks I’ve been looking for. I now own them, which partly breaks one of my Pen and Stationery resolutions as I forgot to do push-ups in the store before I bought them.

After that, I came home. All in all, for trip to Tokyo, it wasn’t that hard on my wallet. I’ll be back down there in two weeks, though, for the Tokyo Folding Knife Show.

Making Plans Without Details

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I’ve been trying to plan March, but some places are only interested in February. All I’ve learned is that knives plan better than pens.

February marks the start of knife show season and, quite frankly, the two shows in February are the best shows, with a special shout out to the show in October. I already know when the April show is and, if I dig around enough, I’m pretty sure the July show is already listed.

However, for the March pen fairs I have two problems. First, I have to navigate the horrible Maruzen website which only gets worse and worse as Maruzen gets new partners. Second, the website only lists special events in Febuary and includes events in Maruzen stores all over Japan.

The Mitsukoshi website also lists nothing for March.

The only thing I’ve been able to confirm, sort of, is that the Maruzen pen fair will be from March 1-7, with the Nakaya people holding court from the second through the fourth. The Sailor ink mixer will also be there a couple days as will the Pilot pen repair people. I learned all that by visiting the Nakaya and Sailor websites.

I ran into this problem last year. The department stores don’t treat the pen shows as anything particularly special and it’s hard to get any news about them until a couple weeks before they start. This year I’m going pretend I’m a member of the press and try to take pictures.

But it’s hard to plan all that when I don’t know when anything is supposed to start.

 

 

North-Northwest, With Beans, Sans Mask

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One of the greatest tricks the Japanese invented is an annual tradition that forces kids to eat in silence, at least for a little while.

Today was setsubun which, under various traditional calendars, marks the last day before the first day of spring. (This makes more sense when you remember that September, October, November and December mean 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th month, but are actually the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th months.)

The evening starts with everyone eating a large sushi roll. The sushi has to be eaten whilst facing a specific direction (North-Northwest, today) and must be eaten in complete silence. The silence must be maintained until everyone at the table is finished or there is bad luck. (This, by the way, works like a charm with kids.)

After that it’s a regular meal.

After that, we also did the traditional mamemaki, or been scattering., I got beans thrown at me, but threw a few back, too. Rather than the traditional “Demons out! Luck in!” chant, my chants where “iPhone out! Homework in!” and “Backtalk out! Piano practice in!”

For over a decade, the bean throwing was done while I wore a mask, but our youngest seems to have outgrown that tradition. This makes me kind of sad, but at least they no longer try to hit my face with beans.