Category Archives: Japan

Days Back After Days Out

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All things considered, he wasn’t too bad. But he did try to play games.

Today was our first day back after the three days of Golden Week holidays. Students, although most of them have been attending club practice, had easily gotten used to the idea of coming to school without going to school. This meant that classes were a bit rowdier than usual and a few students, at least in my class, tired to get away with things they hadn’t tried to get away with before.

In my first class, during the warm up (which involves students standing to answer questions, getting to sit when they answer, and the last man standing starting the new row) one particularly rowdy student decided he could blurt out the answer without raising his hand or phrasing his answer in the form of a sentence.

When I ignored his answer and chose someone else he got pouty and refused to answer the next several questions. Eventually he seemed to realize I’d keep him standing all class until he answered and he quickly raised his hand and answered in a sentence.

The rest of the class went well and that student tended to finish his work quickly. After that he took advantage of his “free” time to put his head down and take a nap. (Since he was finished I let him rest, especially as he would disrupt the class if awake.)

The rest of my classes went well, although every class had someone try to cause trouble. A JHS 1 decided he didn’t need to do any work at all and another JHS 3 decided he could sleep before finishing, This act earned him the first of his classes “yellow cards” (more on that in another post).

Now it’s time to settle into the weekend and very briefly ponder what the students have in store next week. Then I’ll quickly forget what I pondered and enjoy the weekend.

In the Belly of the Buddha

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I got swallowed by a Buddha today, although I did enter by the side entrance.

Because today was the last day of my Golden Week holiday, I met up with an old friend (and former photography teacher) in Kamakura to take some pictures of the big Buddha stature at Kotoku-in.

The Buddha statue at Kotoku-in.

The Buddha statue at Kotoku-in.

The Big Buddha is made of bronze and stands 13.35 meters (43.8 feet) and weigh 121 tonnes (267,000 pounds). It is one of those places I’d always intended to visit but had always decided “there’s always next week”.

The big concern today was crowds, especially on the small coastal train line. We were lucky that neither train we took was that crowded (i.e. there was actually room for people AND air, rather than just people).

The entry fee of 200 yen ($2ish) makes it one of the best deals in Japan (not counting, of course, the money and time spent getting to it.

Despite the crowds around the statue, I managed to score a photo with no people in front of it and was able to get inside without too much of a wait. (Although it did cost another 20 yen). The inside would be more interesting to architects and engineers than it was to me, especially as it was too dark to take good pictures.

Looking up through the neck of the Buddha. It literally has "No Mind". There's a lesson there, I suppose.

Looking up through the neck of the Buddha. It literally has “No Mind”. There’s a meditation lesson there, I suppose.

I like the Buddha and could be persuaded to go back. I like that it seems to have a slightly different expression from different angles.

Contemplating the power of having "No Mind".

Contemplating the power of having “No Mind”.

After seeing the Big Buddha, we went to Enoshima, a picturesque rock/island just off the coast in Tokyo Bay.

Unfortunately it was even more crowded and we opted to avoid the main stairs and wander off toward the Marina which turned out to be rather boring.

People on the main path up the hill at Enoshima.

People on the main path up the hill at Enoshima.

It was a good day, even though we chose the wrong path on Enoshima.

Now it’s back to work, for a day, then there’s the weekend.

 

Another News Cycle of the Same Cycle

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I was pretty sure I’d seen what was happening on TV before. She Who Must Be Obeyed said I had but not with that family. This proved that the only things certain in Japanese are death, taxes and maps verses navi’s.

As we are in the middle of Golden Week here in Japan, there are certain TV traditions that must be upheld: there will be endless reports of the endless traffic jams at the beginning and end of the holiday, reports on the number of people taking a couple days of to enjoy a full 10 days of holiday and a dad with a map will compete against a dad using a navigation system in a race to the same location.

This race usually involves a car full of mom, dad and at least one kid with patience of, well, a kid. Dad A puts his faith in himself and his driving instincts and Dad B buts his faith in technology.

Dad A chooses byways and sideways that often seem to lead in the wrong direction which Mom A is more than happy to point out. Dad B does similar things but uses the navigation systems on-the-fly traffic reports to help choose the correct path.

Along the way each tends to take a pit stop to allow family member to buy souvenirs and “evacuate”. I don’t remember if this is a requirement or not. I also don’t remember if there’s a prize other than pride.

I watched this race a few years ago and I vaguely remember Dad A winning, but not by a significant amount (maybe 15 minute or so) as most famous places can only be approached by a few routes. Today, when I saw the same events happening in similar types of cars I was convinced it was a rerun.

She Who Must Be Obeyed told me it wasn’t, although it was exactly like things we’d seen before so it kind of was. It was a rerun with different players.

That actually made sense. I don’t know who won. Because I’d seen it before, more or less, I didn’t bother watching the ending.

One Student Enters, Another Student Leaves

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There was an accident in what’s emerging as my worst class today and that gave one of my worst students a chance to be bad.

The funny part is, the sleeper in that class stayed awake. (More on that in a minute.)

Early on in the class (which happens to be first period) I noticed a puddle on the floor. That puddle led to a bag which happened to belong to a bad student who used the opportunity to check his bag and clean up the mess as a chance to disrupt. He laid a chair down and used the back as a seat so that he didn’t have to sit on the floor. He made a couple trips to the restroom to rinse out the towel he was using to sop up the mess. He talked with the guy in his usual desk. (Note: I always move them to different chairs.)

I proceeded with the class without him and only lost a couple students to his distraction. He eventually got bored, finished and went back to his seat where he acted bored and annoyed at any requests that he actually speak/do work.

As for the sleeper, he surprised me by being a relatively decent student today. He not only didn’t try to sleep, but he actually did work and didn’t try to disrupt the class. Usually when sleepers are forced to stay awake they respond by being belligerent and doing nothing and doing to their best to make sure other students in the class do nothing.

The rest of the day went well, which is unusual for the day before a three day holiday. I had a few rowdy students and realized my planned schedule wasn’t going to work out exactly right (at least in one class).

Then it was home to enjoy doing very little for a few days.

 

What Day Through Yonder Window Breaks

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It’s the time of year when I’m not sure what day it is. Even worse, I don’t actually trust myself to know where I’m supposed to be.

This week, starting with this past Friday, is Golden Week which four Japanese national holidays all occur in the same seven days. The 29th was Showa Day, which is named after the era of the Emperor the world new as Hirohito. The 3rd is Constitution Day, celebrating the 1947 constitution. The 4th is Green Day, which used to be on the 29th, while the 4th used to be a “bridge” holiday between the 3rd and 5th but that was all changed in 2007. (Confused? Now you’re beginning to understand my world). The 5th is Children’s Day which is actually in honor boys but, well, yeah.

The problem is that this big holiday season comes just a couple weeks after the start of the school year. Right about the time we get in a teaching rhythm, we have four days off (sometimes, unless the 4th is on a Saturday, then we don’t. Long story.)

Friday was a day off, but even She Who Must Be Obeyed said it felt like Saturday. Then we had Saturday which felt like Sunday, and today I woke up as if it were Monday (then went back to sleep when I remembered it wasn’t.

Even more confusing, we work tomorrow, but then we have three days off, and have to work Friday. It’s common at this time of year to wake up in a panic and check your calendar several times to make sure you are where you’re supposed to be. Luckily, because it’s a national holiday and not a random day off the schools tend to have, you quickly calm back down and go back to sleep, laziness, sloth, etc. On the random days, you no longer trust your calendar or any other ways of tracking time.

The trouble is, I actually have to be some place tomorrow. At least I think I do.

Thin Bits of Ruination

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I bought a pen because I knew I wouldn’t be afraid to ruin it. Today I tried to ruin it.

The rabbit hole that is pen addiction consists of several steps that lead the addict from “Who the hell would ever use a fountain pen” to “why would anyone ever use anything but a handcrafted fountain pen made of gold harvested from asteroids”? (Something like that.)

One of the steps involves taking control of your pens by learning to do basic maintenance on them. This step usually comes after the step where you start using bottled ink and well after you learn what a good pen feels like. At this point you learn to straighten nibs and widen the gap between the tines and maybe even change nibs. You also remove the nib for cleaning.

In my case I’ve been interested in learning some basic nib care and to do so I bought a cheap fountain pen that I’m not afraid to ruin. My plan was to use a few tools I’ve acquired over time to tweak the pen and make it better and then change inks. That said, if it had been perfect I wouldn’t have messed with it, but it was kind of dry and didn’t like working on smooth paper.

I tried soaking it in pen flush but that didn’t work so I finally decided to try some brass sheets I acquired a while ago to clean out the tines and, hopefully, make the ink flow smoothly.

The problem is that poking around on your pen, even a cheap one, with bits of metal is not a natural act. (It’s kind of like a dentist scraping a metal hook around your teeth and gums in the name of “hygiene”: even though you know it’s supposed to be helpful, you’re kind of worried about long term damage because “metal hook”.)

I cleaned and flushed the pen and was surprised to see how easily it cleaned. I then had to poke around at it with the sheet of metal.

Whatever I did, it seems to have worked. The cheap pen is working well. Now I need to know if it was the cleaning or the ink change that made it work.

Frozen IPad and the High Tech Lessons

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Something’s going on in my house and as near as I can tell it involves education and nearly frozen iPads.

As I’ve mentioned before that, despite her relative average scores in math, our oldest earned entrance into a high school with a science focus. (Note: She may have been recruited to play flute in the brass band club; more on that in a future post.) Because of this, we’ve entered her into a correspondence math course that involves doing assignments on an iPad that’s been sent by the education company. This apparently makes it easier for us and the company to enforce a level of immediate accountability.

However, when the iPad arrived, it was surprisingly cold, as if the courier was also delivering frozen pizzas and couldn’t be bothered to carry a separate box or bag for the iPad.

That’s one explanation, anyway.

I’ve always maintained that one of the Tokyo region’s dirty little tricks is that it always get’s cold one more time. However, even I didn’t expect it to drop into the 50’s (15 Celsius) at the end of April. I also don’t understand why the iPad was cold enough to get condensation and/or preserve raw meat.

Of course, once the iPad was extracted, wiped down and warmed, it fell upon me, apparently because I own an iPod touch and that makes me, by default, an Apple “Genius Bar” worker, to deal with all technical issues.

The problem with that is that Apple tends to deny that problems exist. This means that you are often on your own when dealing with an issue, which also means my main solution to all problems is “turn off then turn back on”.

This time, though, the problem was with the Apps store. My only solution in that case is “do something else for a while”. Sure enough, after a suitable delay, the app store started working again and our oldest was able to download the software and start studying.

One that began I was unable to help as her math level is already higher than mine. (She’s still doing math with numbers, but there’s a lot letters involved.)

I just hope she doesn’t need any help with that. If she does, I’ll just refer her to the iPad.

Hurry Up to Wait

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I almost fell asleep, then I fell asleep, then I took a walk on my injured foot.

Today was the one week follow up  appointment for my broken toe. I had an appointment slip and my hospital card and that earned me a surprisingly quick check in using an ATM-style device. I was sent right to the waiting room where I turned in all my papers.

I was then surprised when I was called for my x-ray after only a few minutes’ wait. At that point I began to hope that I wouldn’t be there that long.

That’s when the wait began. Several people were ahead of me in line. The hospital has a white board that lists the doctors’ names and their rooms and has a couple inexplicable numbers on it that are occasionally changed. I think the numbers have to do with the waiting list but I’m not sure.

While I waited I tried reading but quickly began to drift as my brain began shutting down. I tried watching television, but someone had set it to an NHK documentary which is a bit like injecting barbiturates directly into someone’s bloodstream. Eventually I started dozing off and tried to find a position where I wouldn’t fall over and land on the floor, fall forward and smack my face on the chair in front of me, or drool on myself.

I finally had to stand up and pace a little, which is funny when you have an injured foot, but right after I sat back down my name was called.

The doctor asked me how my foot was (sore, but usable) and showed me the x-rays which seemed to show little improvement but no new damage, which the doctor seemed worried about. It also seemed to have set in a normal position and were healing normally.

I’m now scheduled to go back for another follow up in two weeks. I’ll probably go to that one, but avoid any appointments after that as Japanese doctors tend to try to bring you back as they make money per visit and want you to visit a lot.

A Little Less Conversation A Little More Food

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I had a big lunch because history has taught me that there wouldn’t be much food at supper. I didn’t count on the drinks coming slowly. I also didn’t count on there being rules.

I also didn’t count on my food trying to kill me.

Tonight was the welcome party for new teachers at the school where l work which meant everyone assembled at a bar for drinks and food. However, I spent part of the afternoon hunting for bottles of ink. I also had a sneaking suspicion that there wouldn’t be much food so I had something called the Chicken Chicken Platter for lunch. This involved two pieces of what e’d call “chicken fried chicken” back home and some chicken nuggets, salad, soup and rice. Then I decided to have ice cream because Baskin-Robbins was having a sale.

A group of us met for pre-drinks and then went to the party. We were impressed by the live seafood we had to pass on our way to our room but dismayed when our welcome was an unusual rule. Although the restaurant was “all you can drink” they required that the first drink be beer. After we finished a glass of beer we could order other drinks.

I do not understand why this was so but I suspect it was a way to force us to do the Japanese tradition of everyone pouring everyone else’s drinks in the spirit of camaraderie.

Then the food started trickling in and we quickly discovered two problems: 1) the food was only trickling in and 2) the drinks were only trickling in as well. We quickly learned to order extra drinks, but the wait left us with little to do but converse. Those of us who’d gone to the pre-party were, of course, relaxed and brilliant, but everyone else was way behind and, quite frankly, struggling.

Eventually, even those of us who’d attended the pre-party found ourselves struggling to remain relaxed and brilliant without the distraction of food.

The food itself posed an interesting problem. We had to grill it ourselves and, at one point, we were served fresh clams. They went on the grill and sat there doing very little until a couple of them decided to explode and spray shell fragments around the room.

Luckily no one was injured. The truth is, though, if the drinks had come faster, we’d have probably laughed about it and done our best to make the rest of the clams explode. Instead, we just ended up talking about how dangerous it was.

Hurry Up To Wait and Wait To Work

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The truth is, I’d be willing to pay money to make my work schedule a bit more difficult but that would actually make it easier.

To be more specific, one of the things I don’t like about my Monday schedule is I almost get it all over with and then have to wait. I teach first, second and third period with only the regular breaks and then all of a sudden it all comes screeching to a halt and I have little to do for the next three hours except some token planning and trying to keep myself entertained/awake.

This seems awesome, especially compared to the much more difficult schedule of teachers in the USA, but it has its drawbacks.

 

I personally would rather have all my classes in a row. In fact, I’ve volunteered to teach four hours in a row each school day if I could get them all done before lunch. This would allow me to be finished at lunch time and then all I’d need to do is take some time to plan the next day’s classes. I’d have more classes than I have now, but I wouldn’t be obligated to have to just sit around and get distracted by stuff in the office. (Or, in many cases, be the distraction.)

Note: We used to have a busier schedule at the school where I work but then the laws changed slightly and that caused our hours to be reduced to under 29.5 hours a week.

Note 2: This is a bit inside baseball/evil empire but, technically I am obligated to be at the school where I work for at least six hours each day for five days in a week which should add up to 30 hours. However, the five minutes of break I’m officially allotted do not count as part of the 30 hours which means I fall under the magical 29.5 hours “full time” voodoo level and am not eligible for full time benefits and salaries. 

Note 3: I was actually lucky to get some benefits the company I work for when I started at the school where I work. Confused? Welcome to Japan.

I suspect that once I settle in to the new schedule I’ll find ways to make my down time more productive. I’ll always wish, though, that I had more work and therefore more free time.