Author Archives: DELively

The Difference Between Bad and Worst

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Today I taught a class that’s the same level as my worst class. Unlike my worst class, though, they are bad in a better way.

First some history: A few years ago, the school where I work changed the way it divides junior high school English Conversation classes. It added an extra section to the grade to make class sizes smaller, then divided the classes with the “S” class having 20 students and the lower level “R” class having 14. The idea was that 14 students would be easier to control than a larger class. (Note: the classes used to be divided more evenly with about 17-21 in the lower level class and, yes, 14 are a lot easier to control than even 17.)

Because the “R” classes are lower level, and because no one can fail, they are often rowdier than the “S” classes and usually more trouble. The worse they are, the more likely they are to get a nickname: Class 2A (Second grade, A class) becomes “2 Awful”; 2B becomes “2 Bad”, etc. (Note: the others are “2 Crappy,” “2 Damned/Dammit,” “2 Evil” and “2 F@#ked”.)

Today’s class was loud and the students have a typical “I don’t understand, therefore I now have free time” attitude but they actually listened and actually did work (most of them). It was only in the last 10 minutes or so that things began to collapse. Some gave up; some finished and started playing; everyone was talking; no one was working. This is typical of an “R” class. I’ve always maintained that if “R” classes were 40 minutes long they’d be great; unfortunately they are 50 minutes long.

Also unfortunately, my worst class tends to skip the first 40 minutes and starts well after the collapse and goes downhill from there. Those classes tend to get lots of worksheets and they often make me recite the mantra (it’s only 50 minutes, it’s only 50 minutes) and start counting how many more times I will have to see them.

The better bad classes, though, tend to be more fun to work with and they often surprise you. Today a student who got in trouble stayed into lunch to help another student finish his writing assignment.

This class doesn’t have a nickname yet, but it’s still early in the year.

 

Sometimes Ignoring is Bliss

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Today I had to teach my worst group of students. They started the class off by insulting me.

After I entered the classroom, the bad student with the “whatta ya gonna do aboudit?” attitude muttered that he’d been informed by his homeroom teacher that if he didn’t turn in his homework at the beginning of class he’d have to meet me at lunch and do his work. I also tried to remind him but he tried to ignore me.

After got his attention he said “nice joke” and that that prompted the rest of the class to start saying “joke” and to start calling me “Jason,” after Atsugiri Jason, an American in the IT industry who’s become a popular comedian by poking fun at the absurdity of the Japanese alphabets. (For example, the kanji for one, two and three are 一､二､三 and the number of strokes match the numbers in a nice pattern. But four 四 has five strokes. After he points this out he shouts his catch phrase “Why, Japanese people!”)

They called me Jason, I guess, because I’m a white foreigner and we apparently all look alike.

The name Jason stuck most of the rest of the class. They even tried calling me over for help by calling me Jason. I entered a blissful zen state (a very, very rare occurrence) and I ignored them until the used my name. (I also don’t respond to “teacher” or “sensei” so I had a lot of practice at this. I also ignored the three “fuck you’s” that were muttered. I caught one student and told him if he said it again, the entire class would get homework and I’d keep them all after school until they finished. (Note, because this was a junior high class, I can’t send students out of the room for things like that.) (Second note: the “fuck you’s” and most of the “Jasons” stopped after that.)

Somewhere in there, most of the students actually got work done. A few others adopted the usual “I don’t understand therefore it’s free time” attitude and did very little.

I collected all the worksheets and then reminded my bad student about our lunch appointment. I then reminded his homeroom teacher about it. (Long story short: the student showed up, eventually and eventually finished his homework.)

Now I have to back off a bit. I don’t want to keep dragging the homeroom teacher into the battle (and will probably buy him lunch to thank him) and I can’t pull the homework card all the time.

The precedent, however, has been established and that’s often all I need.

 

Babies Make People Insane

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There was a brief fit of madness at the school where I work today. Mostly from the women, but a couple of the men got involved, too.

Luckily, I knew what was about to happen and got to watch the madness unfold, albeit after briefly suffering because of it.

This only happened because I found a discarded or dropped memory stick in one of my classrooms and delivered it to the student office to be added to the surprisingly large pile of lost goods. (The pile is large enough that it reminds me of the large warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is secretly being stored.)

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get immediate service as one of the teachers had just brought his child to school. This teacher is currently taking paternity leave after swapping with his wife. (He wisely waited until after 2:00 a.m. feedings and the toxic Velcro poop phase were finished.) However, clearly being bored, he brought the young one to school. The staff at the student office both looked at me once, determined I was not carrying a child and quickly shifted their attention to the young one and adored him with squeaks and koos that reinforced my notion that babies make people insane.

(Note: the insanity is much different for the casual viewer than the actual parent. More on that later.)

After pretending to play along by making faces at the child, I was treated as a member of the tribe and finally able to deliver the lost goods. I went back to the office an mentioned to a couple people that the room was about to explode. (More specifically, I mentioned that the teacher was visiting and “with child” so to speak.)

Soon the child arrived and there was squeaking and kooing and the crowd gathered and even women who already have children were saying how awesome it would be to have one.

This, is the first form of insanity: mother’s, upon seeing someone else’s baby, immediately remember the cuteness and how adorable the clothes were but forget the 2:00 a.m. feedings, the toxic Velcro poop and, more importantly, the Terrible Twos.

Even She Who Must Obeyed goes through this. When she enters this phase, I play a recording of our youngest letting out a blood-curdling scream that sounds like it belongs in a scene from a horror movie where the baby suddenly stands up in her crib, lets out a blood-curdling scream and then eats her entire family who are so stunned by what’s happening they either freeze or run down into the basement.

If you think I’m joking, here’s the actual recording:

 

The men also found the baby cute and a few played with it.  This is the second form of insanity: playing with a child and thus exposing it’s undeveloped immune system to the germs of dozens of strangers.

In the end order was restored.

 

NOTE: Edited for clarity on June 2, 2015.

This Zone is Dead for Now

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If I liked baseball, I might actually have something to watch other than English detectives.

The end of football season (the violent chess US version) and the end of the college basketball season marks the start of a dead zone for me. Until the start of football season (and by that I mean the real season, not the useless pre-season) there is no sport worth tracking down and nothing worth keeping track of.  Instead of sports I’ve started watching A Touch of Frost, which is annoying in its own way (but that’s another post).

I’m not a big fan of professional basketball as I don’t like the way they limit the defenses and encourage endless scoring. This makes it just a series of wind sprints ending with baskets or a rebound. Also, pro-basketball doesn’t have that March Madness energy. Not fun at all.

Also, as I’ve mentioned before, to me baseball is little more than a bunch of people standing in a field watching a couple guys play catch. This is especially true in Japan where it is the only sport on television right now. The major networks in Japan all share broadcast rights meaning baseball is on TV every night and often preempts the few things I might still watch on TV.

There are exceptions to this: Any time there’s a major figure skating competition it will be shown on Japanese TV as will any major marathon in Japan or marathon relay. There are also a few interesting things shown on TV: major golf tournaments like the Masters’  and the US Open (these are mostly fun to watch to see the leaders choke on the last day). We also get to see international volleyball competitions, international soccer matches and any tennis event where Kei Nishikori is doing well.

Unfortunately, those aren’t as common as I’d like. Eventually, though, football and college basketball seasons start again.

Until then, I’ll keep watching A Touch of Frost and try to forget the lead character is named Jack Frost and is played by Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses.

Shaken and a Bit Stirred

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We got a two earthquakes this evening in rapid succession. The first was kind of humorous. The second started scaring us.

I’ve written before about how we used to get enough earthquakes that we got complacent, at least until the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, which made us get a lot more serious about our emergency plans and preps.

However, after several months, the aftershocks stopped and my sense is that we’ve had fewer earthquakes. We occasionally get a good shaker, but they don’t impress anymore. In fact, there was one last week when I walking to the station. I didn’t notice it and wondered why all the trains were running several minutes late. I didn’t learn about the quake until I got home.

Tonight, though, we had a small one that my oldest and I noticed. We felt a little shaking and noticed the pull strings on the ceiling lights swaying. She Who Must Be Obeyed and our youngest quickly turned on the news. This is a normal reaction. If I even notice the earthquake, I act as if it’s perfectly normal that everything is wiggling and SWMBO gets very serious.

A few minutes later, we got a bigger one. This one caused the ceiling lights themselves to rock. It went on long enough that SWMBO and our youngest got in the doorway and even I got serious and started eyeballing our emergency kits. After a minute or so it stopped but we are suddenly much more cautious.

Lately, even Kansas and Oklahoma have been going through a cycle of quakes. Although it’s fashionable to blame Fracking, the truth is much more ominous: earthquakes are more common in the Midwest than people like to admit (note, the data in the link ends around 1972).

The bright side is, at least you don’t have to deal with volcanoes. Well, at least not right now.

 

The Day After and the Last Day

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All my students were pretty much brain dead today, but it wasn’t actually my fault. That said, my brain wasn’t much better.

The school where I work is strange in May. There are lots of school trips and lots of disrupted schedules and lots of partial days. During mid-term exams we focus on our final exams and making lesson plans for the final push whilst everyone else is administering and marking exams and they don’t care about anything else. To give an example of what happens, on the day before exams I told one of my homeroom  teachers I had a junior high student who was sitting back, doing nothing and daring me to make him work with a “whatta ya gonna do aboudit?” smirk. The homeroom teacher’s reaction to this news was one part “why is this my problem?”, one part “why are you telling me this now?”, and one part “yeah, how about that.”

(For the record: now that mid-terms are over and I can keep students after school, my student’s about to discover what I’m gonna do aboudit.)

The final push, as I’ve mentioned before, is June. We’ve been at school since early April but still have about half our classes to go because of the strange schedule.

Today, though, was especially strange as it fell after two days of mid-term exams. To a student, in three different grades, the students’ attitude was “Whoa? You’re still here?” and “Why the hell are you making us do stuff?”

I had students sleeping; students pretending to use their phones as dictionaries whilst “secretly” texting; a student who walked in with a smile but no text, no pencil and no paper; students who didn’t bother to bring the handout; students who ignored me when I called on them because they weren’t ready; students who did the wrong assignment when it was their turn to speak and had to do it again.

Granted, they are coming down after an intense couple days, but my class doesn’t have mid-terms exams which means, quite frankly, I don’t care about their previous problems.

June is coming and things are about to change. If they think this ends happily, they haven’t been paying attention.

 

The Best Laid Plans Abandoned Again

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I had a plan. Actually, I have a plan, and it’s a good plan except I’ve never been able to put it into action.

The plan is to write these posts earlier in the evening when I’m still feeling the effects of afternoon coffee and have the energy to dedicate to writing and editing, and to taking and editing photos if necessary. It’s all very simple and would allow me more time to read in the evening and get me away from screens before bed.

Unfortunately, that’s not always how things work out; or, more specifically, that not always how I work things.

First there’s the problem of working after work which is a difficult thing to do. My normal habit is to plop down at the computer and do absolutely nothing useful for an hour or so.

(Note: according to my definition “or so” can last anywhere from two hours up to several hours.)

If I’m really looking to waste time and or get frustrated at nothing, I might play a few matches or so in an online game. If the matches go well the “or so” might only be a half hour. If they don’t well, “or so” happens and I either play longer or rage quit. After rage quitting I might actually get some writing done, but none toward these posts.

Eventually we have supper and that’s followed by the nightly ritual of “Arguing With the Genius Teenager Who Knows Everything but Hears Nothing.” The arguments typically involve proper use of an Asus Tablet during study time. (Note: for me there is no proper use.) This typically ends in a victory for me but it’s annoying enough that I need to read something and end up putting off these posts.

Eventually I sit down to write these posts. That process involves 20 minutes or so of staring at the screen going “okay, so now what?” Eventually something gets written.

Next week the goal is to implement a new habit to write these posts earlier and then post them early.

It’s a good plan. The trouble is, it’s lot like all the ones that have come before. Also, I might have  a new, for me at least, Asus Tablet to play with and that could complicate things.

Every Day is Vaguely the Same

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If you ever want to verify that you need to shake things up in your life, keep a diary. If you want to make the sameness even more horrifying, try keeping a log in different colored inks.

I’ve mentioned before how I’m not a big fan of keeping a diary (with apologies to all my history professors who consider such items to be an important part of history which is why I hope historians will some day find my diary and wonder if I could actually fly) but have decided to experiment with keeping a daily log, where I record events and my thoughts on them soon after they happen. To do so, I use different colored inks for different events. Weather is usually done in Noodler’s Midway Blue and Apache Sunset and my morning routing and morning pages are done in either purple or green.

This not only gives the log some visual flair but also lets me test different inks and pens on the Muji paper.

Now, at four months of making regular entries, I’ve begun to notice flaws in the plan.

Part of the trouble is I only have a few inks. After several days, each page looks similar to the ones before and after and I even seem to dedicate the same amount of space to the same events, including meals and complaining about work. This means despite my efforts to make it interesting have instead made it kind of boring.

Also, because my work days don’t change much from week to week, it’s easy to fall into a foolish consistency in the way I describe them and complain about them. Classes are either crappy, ordinary bad, decent or better than normal. I’m wasting time, fretting over wasting time, writing about wasting time or, on occasion, actually doing something. It’s the same “Okay day” metronome click click click that made me stop keeping diaries in the first place.

Now, there are a few solutions to this:

A–Buy more ink.
B–Try different ways of keeping a log.
C–Both A and B.
D–A and B plus buy a new pen.
E–Abandon this and keep a calendar like a normal person.

As much as I should probably choose E and would like an excuse to choose D, I’m leaning toward C. I do like having a personal history on hand to occasionally peruse, but since the log is supposed to be an experiment, I’m feeling the need to shake it up a bit. No more descriptions of food, I’d rather draw what I ate. No more sloppy sketches of the weather, I’d rather make the sun into a character with regular expressions and a consistent look.

Hopefully, in four months, I won’t have chosen E, but there are days.

A Wedding with Bureaucracy but no Counselling

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Because of a wedding ceremony, my late grandmother left her church.

I’ve mentioned before how fifteen years ago She Who Must Be Obeyed and I had bureaucratic issues on the day we chose for our official wedding day. That was then followed by two more wedding ceremonies. The first ceremony, the one in the USA, had its own bureaucratic problems.

The original plan for the US wedding was reasonably simple. We’d play dress up and rather than a ceremony there’d be a reception, cake, presents, and sparkling wine of some sort. However, one relative or another insisted we be married in a church even though we were already married.

This seemed like a simple idea, and even I thought it was a good idea, but the Lutheran church involved wasn’t as impressed. They insisted we go through wedding counseling with representatives from the church. This counseling could be done in Japan with a local representative but SWMBO and I would be required to go through individual counseling not couple’s counseling. After my mom explained this my reaction was, and I believe this was a direct quote, “No fucking way.”

After washing my mouth out with soap at my mother’s insistence (as a requirement for continuing the conversation/remaining her son) I explained that all they were trying to do was convert SWMBO. I’ve been subjected to a religious “intervention” before (it’s part of the reason I’m more a supporter of religion than churches–more on that in another post.) and I wasn’t going to let that happen to SWMBO especially as we were already married.

After much negotiation on the US side of the issue, my grandmother threw her hands up and said “fuck this” (knowing her, she probably actually said that) and stopped going to that church.

Instead we went to a Methodist church where the pastor did everything she could (not a typo) to make sure we and She Who Must Be Obeyed’s family were taken care of.

No counseling was required, although there are days I think it might have been a good idea…

NOTE: Correction 5/27/2015. Originally stated we went to a Lutheran church when, in fact, it was a Methodist church.

Signs of a Struggle are Not Always What They Seem

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A friend of mine kept house so badly that people used to say that if he ever disappeared police would look at his room and declare there was evidence of struggle. That pretty much describes our apartment right now.

As the weather changes from Static to Pleasant, with periodic fits of Humid and Awesome in the same day, we are in the annual “Changing of the Clothes”. This is a process that involves opening the top cabinets of our closets and taking down several soft cases full of summer clothes. Those clothes end up in the living room whilst they are sorted into various piles: fits, doesn’t fit, could fit, give away to someone it might fit, and yes the baby clothes really need to go so give them away to someone with an actual baby because NO WE ARE NOT. (Something like that.)

Then the winter clothes are sorted into fits, full of holes, you only wore this once last winter, you didn’t wear this at all, and really, you think that still fits? Those clothes are then put in the soft cases and returned to the cabinet above the closets.

The problem is this process requires both our girls to be on hand and that’s not always possible once school starts. Also, because She Who Must Be Obeyed is now working she’s not always at home to sort the clothes. (Note: She won’t let me near them.)

There is also the problem of putting the heavy blankets away in the variety room closet which requires moving the “secondary storage” pile in front of the door and then moving a few boxes and putting the blankets away on top of the kerosene heaters and the electric carpet. Because this is currently a complicated process, we try to do it as few times as possible and won’t do it until everything is ready.

The problem right now is that with the clothes stacked up, we haven’t had time to clean and put away the electric carpet. Also, because we haven’t been able to finish the carpet, we’re also backed up on revamping the emergency supplies which means more stuff is scattered about the variety room than usual.

Yes, there are signs of a struggle, just not what you’d expect.