Category Archives: Japan

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.

There’s a First Time for Everything

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It’s very rare that I find myself feeling relaxed after a school event, but today was one of those rare days. Today was sports day at our youngest’s school and it was remarkable for a series of firsts.

First, I somehow managed to get through a sporting event without getting angry. This is partly because, for the first time ever, I didn’t encounter any aggressive jerks or assholes. I’m not sure why this was, but the weather was almost perfect. It was 27 Celsius (81 Fahrenheit) and not humid at all. This made people more relaxed and calm, I suspect.

Second, for the first time ever, at any school I’ve been to in Japan, the schedule ran on time. Lunch started when it was supposed to and ended when it was supposed to In fact, things were moving so swiftly, I almost didn’t make it back from lunch in time to see our youngest take part in the Typhoon Race (which involves four people carrying a pole around a couple cones and then under and over everyone else on the team. Long story.) I’d budgeted for the usual “Well get there eventually” schedule and arrived fashionably late only to find out I was actually late.

Third, our youngest was chosen to design the flag for her class. This is also the first year the classes had flags.

The flag our youngest designed.

The flag our youngest designed.

Fourth, it was a close contest. For those who don’t know, on sports day the school is divided into the Red Team and the White Team. (Our youngest was on the white team.) Everyone competes in the events and the teams earn points based on how they place in the events. (Some events are individual, some are team events.) The prize is a trophy and bragging rights. This year the white team won by only 20 points. This, I believe, is the closest contest I remember.

The final results at the top. Red 660. White 680. (Notice our youngest's flag on the left.)

The final results at the top. Red 660. White 680. (Notice our youngest’s flag on the right, second from the top.)

Fifth, our youngest, for the first time ever, won her heat in the 80 meter dash. (Each class is divided into heats and the winners of each heat get a red ribbon and their team gets points.) Our youngest traditionally has not done well in the running. Last year she was second; this year she won, although she still has a bad habit of slowing down before the tape instead of running through it.

Our youngest crossing the tape. (After slowing down, of course.)

Our youngest (left) crossing the tape. (After slowing down, of course.) She just edged out a red team member.

After the Typhoon Race, our youngest watches the pole pass over everyone. You can see the red ribbon on her shoulder.

Our youngest in a later event. You can see the red ribbon of victory pinned to her shoulder.

Now we get five months to rest before our oldest’s school has her sports day. I usually don’t get angry during that one. (More on that in a future post.)

 

You Know You Make Wanna

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Shout.

That pretty much explains this morning.

As a rule, although I’m not afraid to let fly an angry “SHUT UP!” that echoes down the hall, I try to avoid shouting at students, especially those in lower level classes. This is because 1) the Japanese tend to react to angry outbursts with laughter that 2) leads to a larger angry outburst and 3) if it’s a lower level class, most of them don’t understand a word I’m saying anyway.

Today my high school classes went well but one of my junior high school second year classes was in a mood from the moment I stepped in the door. They didn’t get sat down once the bell rang and then some of them kept walking around during the warm up. This led to a very rare seat change and the first ever that occurred during the warm ups.

I’d been warned about a few of these students before school started during the traditional annual “Commiseration of the Class Lists” when we look at each other’s class lists and wish each other strength to get through the year.

To this point, the class had been noisy but usually did the assigned activities and work. When this happens it usually means that a day of reckoning is coming, which is what happened today. When I spoke several students turned and mocked 1) that I was speaking 2) that I was speaking English and 3) that they couldn’t understand me in English. (Note, this is somehow a joke on me.)

At one point, the boy who had to change seats was talking with the people who got him in trouble. This led to a Level Seven Shut Up–this one goes to eleven–which led to laughter in three different classrooms down the hall. (Note: Teacher’s leave the doors and windows open because this is the time of year when it’s just warm and humid enough to need air conditioning but before the air conditioners are turned on.)

I kept plugging through the book and the plan until a student asked me a question in Japanese and I answered in English. It suddenly dawned on them that I might actually be able to understand them. This prompted another boy to mumble something about me speaking in Japanese. I reminded him he was at a top tier school and there were plenty of public schools he could go to if he wanted to speak Japanese.

At this point they were openly discussing the fact I could understand Japanese. They then tried to press to see if I’d speak Japanese. I shrugged and said my classes were always in English.

Then I told them to shut up and get back to work.

 

Rules at School and the Law at Home

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Today, She Who Must Be Obeyed invoked school rules to explain why she’d confiscated our oldest’s Android tablet. I was prepared invoke my own rule that “when it becomes a problem Daddy makes the problem go away.” Unfortunately, I was already too late to make much of an impact other than point a finger and say “yeah, and don’t you forget it” at a teenager who wasn’t actually listening.

One of the things non-Japanese find difficult is the abundance of rules, both written and unwritten, involved with having a child in a Japanese school. These rules can be annoying and seem like interference in family affairs. (Which they are, sort of. You’ll see.)

For example, although there is no official curfew, students are expected to be home at a certain time. Parents take turns going out and policing parks and other popular hangouts to remind the kids it’s time to get home. If you gave permission for a child to stay out late, that gets around and you might hear about it at the next Parent/Teacher conference.

Since this week is mid-term exams at our oldest’s school, the powers what are at the school have asked students not to waste time on electronics until after the exams.

Although this seems like a good idea, I find it has a couple problems:

First, we’d already imposed our own ban. (More on that later.)

Second, the way the school suggestion is phrased, it allows for students to debate what the meaning of “is” is and argue that since they’ve studied a while they now get tablet time. Our oldest, for example, has interpreted the ban as allowing her to use her now neglected Nintendo 3DS and its limited internet access. (Her motto seems to be “No Twitter/No Life”. to which I respond with “Yeah, and don’t you forget it.”)

Third, once the exams are over the assumption is that the ban is over once and for all forever until the final exams. This, however, is false as our local ban will not be over.

Since our local ban will not be over–long story involving broken charging cords; stolen power cords; tablets stolen from She Who Must Be Obeyed; passwords on all our electronics; and Line calls from friends at 1:45 in the morning–we will almost certainly be involved in a fight over the appropriate amount of time allocated for tablet use.

In the end, though, I will make it all go away as I can simply change all the passwords. However, if the problem persists I’ll find a way to configure our wireless hub to accept only certain MAC codes and reject others (say, hypothetically, those on a certain teenager’s tablet and/or 3DS). I prefer this way because it allows me to turn access on and off without having to memorize a new password. (Enforcing rules, after all, shouldn’t be THAT inconvenient.)

And don’t you forget it.

The International Bank of Dad’s Good Intentions

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At some point when our oldest was still in elementary school, I came up with this plan to teach her something about money. The results have been mixed.

The plan was to give her an allowance based on her age. She got 100 yen per month for each year of her life. When she was eight, she got 800 yen per month and then she got 900 yen per month when she turned nine.

There were also a couple rules. First, she had to save 10% of her allowance (after doing the math to figure out what that was) and she had to set 10% aside to donate to those in need. This rule also applied to Christmas cash, New Year’s Money and any birthday cash.

I started referring to the 10% donation as “money for sick people” and when I say that, She Who Must Be Obeyed immediately starts coughing and saying “I’m sick. I’m sick” and I have to hide the money and pretend she doesn’t know where it is.

In addition to all that, I founded the International Bank of Dad. The 10% deposit in the bank, along with any extra savings, earns 5% interest per month. This means 100 yen will have earned an extra 80 yen at the end of the year. (No you may not open an account with IBOD; but if you have any bailout money, please send it.)

When our oldest entered junior high I doubled the money (she gets her age x 100 every two weeks now) and scaled the interest back to something I could actually afford.

When our youngest turned eight we started the age X 100 yen per month plan.

The mixed results come from a couple things, first She Who Must Be Obeyed was amused by all this but not especially dedicated to it. It was, and is, as far as she’s concerned, my hobby and not her problem.

Also, although she did well at first, our oldest is now a teenager which means, by default she’s a Keynesian and her motto is “Spend Baby Spend”. Being a true Keynesian, she’s also taken to borrowing from She Who Must Be Obeyed for larger purchases. (It’s amazing what you can do with other people’s money.)  Unfortunately, SWMBO usually makes the loan without actually working out the terms and arguments ensue.

Our oldest also confiscated money intended to be split with our youngest, although she simultaneously denies this whilst claiming our youngest donated that voluntarily.

The International Bank of Dad has intervened in a few instances by paying allowance directly to She Who Must Be Obeyed or keeping a large portion of it and facing the brunt of the argument.

I suspect that eventually the International Bank of Dad will be forced to intervene more fully. Debtors prison (dishes and housecleaning) and confiscation (her tablet will be mine) will ensue.

 

Earlier is Better than Later

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Today I felt as if I was being called in to work to substitute for myself.

To understand this you have to understand that every now and then, at the school where I work, classes get cancelled because of trips and we end up teaching a reduced schedule. However, although I do a lot of planning at home, there’s no real reason for  me to be at the school on these days until I actually have a class.

This often leads to the strange act of going to work around lunch time. Now a colleague of mine insists that a day of work is a day of work and it doesn’t matter if you’re working in the morning or the eventing. I respectfully disagree. There’s a big difference between finishing at lunch time and starting after lunch.

In the case of the former, you can look forward to relaxing at home or at a coffee shop in the afternoon. In the case of the latter, you can’t relax because you have some place to be. In fact, at best, it feels as if you’re interrupting a day off because you’ve been called to work.

I once volunteered to teach extra classes if I could get all my classes in the morning. The person in charge of scheduling said it was impossible and ignored all pleading after that.

There’s also the problem of going to work during the hottest time of the day. I walk to the station and by the time I get there I I’m sweaty enough that might as well have not bothered to take a shower and/or suddenly desperately need one.

This schedule, however, is only a May phenomenon. By June we are back in the grind and the days come without mercy.

It’s almost like having a job.

Some Things are Classic, Some Things are Just Old, Some Old Things Are Classic

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I went to Tokyo this afternoon to get nib work on two of my new pens. I ended up leaving with a pen that’s older than I am.

Although I like my Namisu Nexus Minimal fountain pens, both pens had nib issues. The Titanium nib was off center and the tines were misaligned. The steel nib was dry. I could have realigned the tines myself, but I had part of the day off and it was a good chance to get out of Dodge for a while.

I decided to go to EuroBox (link in Japanese) which is a small vintage pen shop right at the end of the Ginza shopping district in downtown Tokyo. It is in one of the old creepy buildings I like a lot. The stair case to the 4th floor (3rd floor UK) is hard to find and it’s narrow, low and creepy. If you go up the main staircase, you won’t find EuroBox, just a dark hallway with lots of suspicious empty rooms. EuroBox, when you find it, is surrounded by peeled paint and exposed electrical boxes.

The door to Euro-Box. Come visit us, Dwayne. Come visit us forever and ever and ever...

The door to EuroBox. Come visit us, Dwayne. Come visit us forever and ever and ever…

When I arrived, the proprietor, Eizo Fujii was helping a customer. This gave me time to peruse the displays of vintage pens. (I didn’t take any pictures as there’s a sign asking you not to. Because he was busy, i didn’t get a chance to ask him for permission. You’ll just have to visit yourself.)

As I was looking, he returned a tray of pens to the display and I noticed they were vintage Pilot Capless pens. My ears went up and I took a look at a black one expecting the price to be absurd. When it wasn’t–it’s actually cheaper than a new Pilot Vanishing Point–I started the pen buyer’s rationalization process: I expected that to be a lot more expensive than that therefore, at that price, that’s like getting a discount on it. That’s totally a bargain! I’ll take that but only because I’m saving money on that.

(Note: by that logic, almost anything, even a private jet with gold toilet fixtures, can be considered a bargain.)

When it was my turn, Mr. Fujii, who speaks very good English, fixed my Nexus pens as I watched. After he finished I asked to try to the Pilot Capless C200SW (manufactured August 1964 I believe). Unfortunately, I liked it enough I decided to buy it.

I then had to go down to Ito-Ya, one of the best stationers in Japan, to get a converter that fit the pen. (The cartridges it takes are no longer made.) After I got the pen home I had to soak it to clean out quite a bit of gunk, but now it works fine.

The initial impressions are good: It is slender but unlike other Capless pens, the clip helps you rather than gets in your way. I suspect lefties would have little trouble using this pen, which is not always true of vanishing point pens. It’s also a touch longer than my similar Vanishing Points.

The 1964 Capless compared with my mid-90's Vanishing Point.

The 1964 Capless compared with my mid-90’s Vanishing Point.

The nock mechanism is odd. You have to push it half way to extend the nib, then push it the rest of the way to release it. If you just push it all the way it doesn’t stay open and Mr. Fujii looks at you in a sad way as if you are an idiot (well, maybe that’s just me.) It has a Fine nib which I usually don’t like but Mr. Fujii smoothed it perfectly.

The pen with the nib extended and a brief writing sample.

The pen with the nib extended and a brief writing sample explaining some of the pen’s details.

The nib section, pre-cleaning. I like the odd facets on the nib.

The nib section, pre-cleaning. I like the odd facets on the nib.

The underside of the nib. You can see the surprisingly cool clear feed.

The underside of the nib. You can see the surprisingly cool clear feed.

I’ll put it in my pen rotation and do a long term review another day. Until then, there was a pink one She Who Must Be Obeyed might like. And a red and gold one other people might like. At that price they are real bargains…

 

 

Low Pressure Big Headache

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Typhoon Noul (aka Typhoon #6) is coming and it’s giving me a headache.

We’ve been having relatively cool weather recently, including a couple days that felt like Awesome rather than the usual Pleasant weather. This means the air was dry rather than increasingly muggy. It also means that payback is coming.

The last couple days have been cool but you could feel the humidity increasing. Only wind kept it from counting as Pleasant weather.

Today, though, we passed through Awesome to Pleasant to the Season in Which it Rains. Because of this, air pressure and gray skies have been playing hell with students and teachers alike. Also the wind has kicked up dust and pollen. We’ve been watching our youngest closely as the low pressure from typhoons has been known to trigger bouts of asthma. So far so good, but I was the one who got hit.

On the way back from work, about a 100 yards or so from the station I started to get my migraine spot. I swore a little and picked up my pace. Once I got home I downed a couple aspirin and a cup of coffee because, as fate would have it, She Who Must Be Obeyed had just made a fresh pot of coffee. (Technically, as SWMBO reminded me, that was for her not for me but in my defense, it was medicinal.)

Luckily, my ghetto treatment worked and the migraine was mild. I’ll go to bed early and, luckily, I get to sleep in tomorrow as the day after a migraine, even a mild one, leaves me feeling as if I have a mild hangover.

The other problem is that typhoons usually have to unusual effects. First they sweep the sky clean and leave it an impressive clear blue. Second, they drop off heat and humidity.

It’s enough to give a person a headache.

One Slowly Fading Slowly

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I have a student who’s bored with my class. In his defense, he’s the only student in the class.

I written before about how I’m apparently too good at scaring students away from high school third year classes and how I ended up with only one student in my class and what problems that was going to cause.

Unfortunately, the predicted problems have already come true and it’s only the fourth class. It doesn’t help that the student isn’t doing his homework. Basically, the deal I offered was that I would provide material for the first hour and, if there was a writing assignment, the second hour. (Note: the classes meet once a week for two hours.) His job was to bring something to do for the second. It could be a conversation topic or an article, but he had to bring something.

I kept up my part, but he’s been slacking on his. Last week I kept him busy most of the second hour and then he wanted to talk about Los Angeles because he wants to move there. (He doesn’t seem to know it’s built on an earthquake fault line and run by morons.) This week he just stared at me as if he was surprised I expected him to do something. I reminded him he was supposed to bring something to do or talk about and he gave me the teenager shrug.

I cut his points 50%. I’ll give him one more chance to do his homework and then I’ll start giving him work to do: Essays about his favorite actors. Essays about his favorite movies. Homework to research different acting schools and write about them. Or my personal favorite: Essays about why it’s more fun to bring things you want to do than write about why you didn’t bring something to do.

I suspect once the class finds its feet and I figure out how to teach it to only one student he’ll be fine. Until then, he’d better have a pen and some paper.

Once More Into the Seat

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I really should be disgusted with myself, but that would take too much energy.

Today was another in a long line of lazy days that occur more often than they should and also tend to occur when the weather is changing. (The weather’s been bouncing between warm, hot and cool the last couple weeks which has stolen energy away from everyone I know.)

The day started off strong with me actually getting up on time despite having gone to bed late. (This entry is being written on three hours sleep plus one 15 minute nap.) I made an omelet with ham, Mozzarella cheese and chopped fresh Japanese mustard spinach. (It was awesome, if I do say so myself.)

After that, I didn’t do much else that was productive. In my defense, I did proofread and rewrite a company brochure as a favor to one of my former karate colleagues. They make equipment for veterinary clinics so I learned a lot about their new animal ICU systems (link in Japanese) while trying to figure out, based on the English that was used, if I’d actually learned anything or simply misunderstood.

I also finished an online course that was interesting but nothing special and did the next module in another online course that I’m afraid will suddenly start seeming like work. (It’s a fiction course; long story.)

That took the better part of the morning and I couldn’t be bothered to do much of anything once that was finished. I played some games, watched an episode of A Touch of Frost, (which is, well, another post) and wrote random bits of stuff but nothing particularly coherent. I then cycled through all that again, leaving out the tv show the second time.

Besides the weather, I also know that June is coming and feel compelled to save my energy for the big push. Well, at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.