Category Archives: Japan

More Than Three Frogs

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A short one tonight as I need to get some rest and try to chase out the frogs.

This morning, during “my goodness, why are we still doing this to ourselves” prep-time conversations at the school where I work, one of my colleagues noted my hoarse voice and suggested I had a frog in my throat. I suggested it was at least three, if not more frogs.

This evening, when we finally celebrated our oldest’s birthday with cheesecake, there were definitely more than three frogs.

The start of the term is the worst time to lose your voice at the school where I work. Students have arrived from a short vacation and each grade is beginning to see itself as the next grade. First year junior high, especially, are developing an attitude as they suddenly imagine themselves as middle-classmen rather than lower-classmen.

I try to get them writing and then speaking, but that usually involves speaking. Tomorrow I start off with my worst class, followed by a class that’s suddenly competing for the second place title. That means that tonight I’m hoping a bunch of frogs die.

If they don’t, tomorrow could be really interesting.

Do or Do Not; There is no Next Week

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First I suggested he leave class. Then when he told me he actually was leaving early, I suggested he do his speech before he leave. He didn’t like this.

Started class today with students I meet on Sundays, but haven’t seen in a while, by trying to remember their names. I couldn’t remember the last guy’s name and he thought he’d be cute and not tell me his name. I told him to tell me his name or get out because if he didn’t have a name he didn’t need to be there. (Note: I am on cold medication.) He told me his name and got to stay.

Then, after I announced to the class that they’d be doing their speeches after lunch, he said he couldn’t because he had to go to an exam after lunch. I said he could do the speech before lunch and he went into panic mode as he clearly hadn’t finished his speech. He recommended that he go next week and I said that wasn’t possible. Even the people absent today wouldn’t get to the do the speech next week.

Eventually, he worked up a speech. It was too short and he stumbled through it even though his eyes stayed fixed mostly on his note cards, but he finished it and got an actual score.

After that, he ran away. Maybe I’ll see him next week.

 

Revolving Sushi and Birthday Girls

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We went to a sushi restaurant tonight, but not because the birthday girl wanted to. In fact, she technically wasn’t invited.

Last week our oldest managed to get herself grounded. Grounding however, is not as easy to do as it sounds as going to school requires her to go out and her club often keeps her late which makes a fixed early curfew difficult to enforce; the public transportation system makes it easy for her to get around without a vehicle; and because of the Japanese New Year’s money tradition, combined with being one of only two grand kids/nieces, she has a shockingly large slush fund at her disposal.

Now, in a different world, we’d force her to stay home from club, but that would cause both her and us problems with the school. The slush fund has cost her an allowance until she turns over a chunk of the money to be saved. We tried to get the family to play along with a plan to save most of the money but “oldest of only two grandchildren” ensued.

All this has led to frequent arguments between our oldest and She Who Must Be Obeyed. (Argument, in this case meaning: SWMBO rants whilst our oldest listens to music via headphones.)

Adding further complications, our oldest declared she wanted neither presents nor cake nor a special dinner for her birthday. She only wanted cash. SWMBO obliged her by doing nothing for her birthday. Instead, she let our youngest choose the restaurant.

I invited our oldest along and paid for everything. We all managed to have a good time, even if it, technically, wasn’t a proper birthday dinner.

Our oldest is doing dishes for a month and I’ve set a hard curfew. I’ve been putting off the nuclear option: seizing her smartphone and holding it hostage in a bank bag and/or just cancelling the plan. (The latter is problematic, as it is nice to be able to spam her phone with texts and calls when she’s out.)

Now we have six months to prepare for our youngest’s birthday. She’s perfecting her backtalk techniques. Actually, she’s perfected them, so our oldest may get to choose the restaurant next time.

Sweet Sixteen, indeed.

 

One Out of Three is Bad

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Today was unusual because I met students I’m only going to see three times. I also got mad at students I wish I was only seeing three times.

One of the quirks of scheduling at the school where I work is that during the winter term, different grades finish at different times. We are marking and passing back exams whilst still teaching other classes. There are also long periods of “self-study” when the school is locked down for entrance exams.

This term, my Friday third year junior high school classes get entrance exams and the marathon. (Note: this latter can be cancelled because of weather so four classes is possible.) I’ll see them this week and next week and then a month later for their final class before the exam.

Both of my third year classes were good. The problem was the one I’ll see the most. They are a first year junior high school class that has started to become rowdy. Granted, they can’t help it. They’ve just received a dose of chemicals that has scrambled their brains and will render them unteachable for at lest the next seventeen years (aka puberty).

That said, it is unusual for them to be bad the first day back. One student seemed to think he could sleep and was annoyed when I woke him up. He then served as the ring leader for the problem students.

All this means they will have new seats next class. And homework. Lots of homework.

 

 

 

The Long Day Back

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Today was the first day of actual work after the winter holiday and it was a nasty one.

It all started first period, with one of my worst classes. Luckily, they didn’t turn out to be so bad. Then I had a good class and then a bad class. Somewhere in there a student questioned his grade from last term. I showed him how he earned the score and how he could do better.

Then I had to stay for high school club which involved an interesting discussion, in English, of whether or not English should be the official language of the club. (Long, long story involving the club meeting on different days with different teachers.)

Then it was the mad rush to my evening class where I found myself slowly grinding to a halt. As it turned out, I ground down less slowly than some of my students, which was good, because I ended the class by giving them some pretty rough homework, and that required some extra time be spent explaining/justifying it.

Then, to top it all off, the train home was delayed.

 

A Pleasant Day, with Pain

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By all accounts, it was a perfect day, then it wasn’t, but it wasn’t that bad.

First I got a proper eight hours of sleep and woke up do gorgeous weather. (The Tokyo area, in general, has the Season of Static this time of year, but it’s still pretty awesome.)

Then, I met up with a friend I haven’t seen in two years and we immediately fell into old habits as if he hadn’t been away. Then I went down to Tokyo for my evening class and had a coffee before heading to the school.

On the way to the school I bought supper. Something didn’t feel right but I figured it was because I hadn’t had my traditional Train Nap (more on that in another post). Then, right as I say down to eat I got my migraine spot.

I popped a couple extra-strength something-or-other (the medicine’s scientific name) and drank more coffee. After pondering a short nap, I started class and as the medicine set in things went well. I was pleased to see my two shyest students rock their speeches, but that may have been a migraine medicine induced hallucination.

Luckily I caught the faster train home. Now it’s time for bed.

2017 Pen and Stationery Resolutions

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Along with my recent confessions, I thought it might be fun to include some pen and stationery resolutions for the coming year.

Pens:
One–Refine the collection. Focus more on quality rather than rapid and random acquisition. Get rid of what doesn’t set your soul on fire.

Two–To help accomplish One, stay the hell away from the nightly Kingdom Note pen sales. (For example.)

Three–Actually use your so-called “work horse” pens at work.

Four–Sell the pens that have been in storage for a long time.

Ink:
One–Sell the large stockpile of Kingdom Note inks once the weather warms, and/or find pen addicts who live in the tropics.

Two–Limit the ink rotation. Use up the inks you like, sell off the rest. Match pens with ink and make a system out of them.

Three–No more new inks (after you’ve acquired a couple you have your eye on.)

Four–Formalize the ink business or run away.

Paper:
One–Stop collecting scraps to bundle into notebooks.  Remember that you can’t spell “scrap” without “crap”. (“It’s crap” said quickly and repeatedly eventually sounds like “Scrap”. I think “scrap” actually derives from the Elizabethan English pronunciation “S’crap.” Look it up, forsooth.)

Two–Do one push up on the floor in the store for each 100 yen of price before buying a new notebook you suddenly can’t live without. (Don’t forget to wash hands after doing this.) Also, consider doing this for pen and ink purchases: Cheapest Montblanc Hemingway = 1,763 push ups (followed by spending the pen money on hospital bills and physical therapy.)

Three–Scan, scan, and scan old notebooks and then retire the moldering hard copies.

Four–Retire the last of the handmade writing tablets. Keep only the ones currently in use at work.

Five–Use up as many notebooks as you can before you get better at push-ups.

Other:
One–Take pictures of stuff.

Two–Review stuff.

Three–Just say “NO” to Massdrop and Kickstarter.

Four–Listen to the Pen Addict podcast, but do not check out the show notes. If you do check out the show notes, do NOT click on any interesting links.

 

 

 

Papa’s Got a Brand New Mixed Bag

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Every now and then I couldn’t come up with a single coherent topic and I would instead resort to random aphorisms, observations and questions. — Your Humble Blatherer in Editorials and Litigious Leisure

Random bits today as lots of random stuff happened.

–Spent the morning watching a student write a make-up exam. The exam was three writing questions that, if done perfectly, would force him to write over 600 words. In the end, he only wrote 300 words, but by colossal coincidence, that equals the lengths of the two speeches he didn’t write or do last term. This, of course, means the test worked perfectly.

–While my student was working, I was doing my daily 10 Ideas, which has now been relegated to a smaller notebook, and then wrote extra ideas, and then switched notebooks where I wrote out notes for some upcoming posts on this site. They included my Sinclair Seven (now modified and including a plus one); my stationery  confessions; my Top Five pens (of various sorts) and my 2017 pen and stationery related resolutions. (More on all these, of course, in upcoming posts.)

–The afternoon was spent marking paragraphs from different students and deciding appropriate punishments for our oldest. (Long story involving grandparents, concerts, skipping school, bullet trains and Osaka.) The big fight was saved until after supper.

–Some where in there I took some pictures for future blog posts and sorted through a bunch of crap as part of some belated soot brushing. I have camera gear to trade and ink to sell. I also have a bunch of notebooks to dispose of somehow, someway. My long unused karate gear is still mocking me, even though I’ve somehow taught myself not to see it as little more than a ghost in the corners of my eyes.

–I also have work to worry about and more marking to do. I also have a grounded teenager to deal with, especially as I think she’s about to make the mistake of calling my bluff. (More on that in a future book…)

Hobonichi Techo Cousin Planner–End of Book Review

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The size of the Hobonichi Techo Cousin didn’t put me off as I only intended to use it as a desktop item but the color did. Unfortunately, for reasons involving expensive covers that are sold separately, the Hobonichi Cousin comes only in Caucasian flesh tone beige.

The Cousin is an A5 sized planner with 544 pages of Tomoe River paper. The pages include daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly planners with several black pages at the end for notes. Each day has a quote (in Japanese, though) that is supposed to serve as a source of wisdom, inspiration, contemplation.

The Cousin filled the role of my daily log and it was nice to replace the average paper of the MUJI notebook I’d used before, with the terrific and fountain pen friendly Tomoe River paper in the Cousin. I ended up using the monthly planner to keep track of days I actually wrote and the daily pages to write my log entries. I also used the blank pages as a scrapbook for random stickers and labels.

The paper was terrific, with only a few pens and inks bleeding through. My Noodler’s Ahab flex nib scored the paper and caused lots of bleedthrough and Noodler’s Apache Sunset ink is oily enough that it tends to soak through. Wancher Matcha, as good as it looks, laughs at pages made of any paper and makes them cry.

Noodler’s Apache Sunset bleed through.

Noodler’s Apache Sunset from the above bleed through staining a third page.

Wancher Matcha laughs at Tomoe River, even from a smooth M nib.

My biggest problems with the Cousin was that it simply was trying to do too much. Out of the 544 pages, I left about 100 pages unused. This isn’t so much the fault of the planner as much as it is a testament to the way I used it. However, I don’t see why it needs monthly, weekly and daily planners under one cover.

As for the cover, despite being on my desk, it showed a surprising amount of wear and tear. It is glossy card stock, but a year of being pulled in and out of a slot next to my PC wore both sides of the cover, including the side that wasn’t against the metal. A fellow Cousin user has dubbed this as “Hobonichi Cousin patina”.

The “patina” (aka scuff marks) on the Caucasian flesh tone beige cover.

I also noticed that the end tape started to peel and that the cover that was against the warm computer began to separate from its backing paper.

Another example of the “patina” spots and of the peeling end tape.

It is a good planner though, and most of my problems with it are a matter of personal preference. It has a lot of space for recording events and even writing follow up, which is nice. I find the daily quotes to be useless, though. After a while, I didn’t even notice them, except when I wished they weren’t taking up so much writing space.

I would recommend the Cousin, especially if you’re willing to splurge for a cover, or just make one yourself from some construction paper. (Alas, gone are the days of making book covers from paper grocery bags.) Even if you’re ballpoint pen user, you’ll like the paper.

However, as I’ve written before, sort of, this year I’ve decided to pare down some of what I’m using by combining my planner with my log. I’m also not going to keep the log in the same way. (But that’s fodder for a future post.)

 

 

Getting Home Eventually in Time

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We got home, but our bullet train was a lot slower than I was expecting. Somehow, though, we didn’t have a lot of time.

Because it was part of the bi-annual U-turn rush here in Japan, we ended up with some odd trains and little time to catch them, which meant we didn’t have time to buy snacks and drinks–which meant my girls stopped to buy snacks and drinks–but we made our one connection.

Unfortunately our bullet train was a “slow” one that stopped at every stop, including several at places that don’t seem to actually exist, and then lingered several minutes at each stop so the actual bullet trains could pass.

Then we exited the station at the wrong exit which meant we couldn’t find the treats we were looking for. (Note: one side of Omiya Station is awesome. The other side sucks.)

Then we got home and enjoyed the biannual tradition of She Who Must Be Obeyed being horrified by the state of the apartment. (Note: she does this even when we travel together.) (Note the Second: The bear wasn’t my fault.)

Now, we’re settling back into our normal patterns, for better and for worse, but at least we’re home.