Category Archives: Life and Stuff

International Bring the Pain Month

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This month, because I don’t have enough to do, I’ve decided to write a novel. I only have 30 days.

This month, for the uninitiated is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). The goal is to produce at least 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. This is not to be confused with Movember, where men get paid to grow mustaches for charity or the 3-Day Novel Contest where the goal is for masochists to produce a 100 page novel in 72 hours. (This is the equivalent of “Black Friday” for the caffeinated beverages/energy drinks industry.)

This means I have to write at least 1,667 words a day until November 30th.

Now, if you’re keeping score:
1) I have a day job and winter, er, exams are coming;
2) I’ve committed to write at least 300 words a day on this blog;
3) I occasionally am expected to speak with the members of my family;
4) I’m now writing about 6-7 typed pages of text a day.

The good thing about the challenge (which given the international participation should be called IntNoWriMo) is that it requires the participants to write without thinking–I recognize that look so shut up–and learn to use free time to meet the daily quota. The idea is that the rapid pace required shuts down all internal editors (ha, as if) and the participants just generate words.

In my case I’m what’s known as a NaNoWriMo rebel. I’m finishing a project rather than starting a new one. I still have to produce 50,000 words to “win” and I’m only allowed to submit the words written in November. This was something only recently allowed as the true spirit of the event is to start from scratch and produce 50,000 words. I’ve heard of writers who finished one project and then started another and somehow got to 50,000 words. (To give you a sense of the size of this project, my current novel is at 17,227 words–7,925 written in the last four days–and is 80 pages long.)

After everyone is finished, there used to be a follow up event called National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo) but it appears to be on temporary hiatus.

Wish me luck. I already feel the madness setting in…

Busy is as Culture Does

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Culture Day is one of the holidays in Japan where no one actually gets to rest.

Like all holidays in Japan, it is tied to the birth of an Emperor, in this case the Emperor Meiji who modernized Japan and crushed a rebellion of samurai by mistakenly having Ken Watanabe killed instead of Tom Cruise.

Overtime, Culture Day became, or at least Culture Day weekend, became the time when most schools host an annual Culture Festival/School open house in which 1) Everyone shows off the crappy art they’ve produced over the year; 2) someone gives a speech (someone always has to give a speech) and 3) the crappy boys rock band apparently issued to every school (because every school I’ve worked at has one) plays and everyone feels embarrassed for them and especially for their parents.

Teachers typically have a lot of extra work preparing for Culture Day as it’s one of the few days attended by large groups of parents. Therefore, since, well, crap rolls down hill, this means the students have a lot more work as they practice and prepare for the festival.

Even if you’re not part of the Culture Festival, you may still be busy. Many sports clubs have their annual tournaments on Culture Day, including my karate style. In fact, when we meet for our semi-annual tournament, there are usually three other tournaments, including Kendo and Judo and another karate style taking place in the other arenas as well as a Japanese archery tournament in the archery range. (Someday, i want to see a pervert try to grope someone while that crowd is waiting around for the arenas to open.)

This, of course, means extra practice and sacrificing a day off. One year, I took part in four different events in our style’s tournament (kata, fighting, bo kata and defense against groups) and by the end of the day I was so tired that actually going to work suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

That’s pretty tired.

Standing Exciting Sitting Boring

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Today I watched a brass band play and had flashbacks to high school.

Our oldest’s school hosted a bazaar and band performance that was, in a word, bizarre. First, the PTA, including She Who Must Be Obeyed, set up a used goods flea market inside the school dojo. They chose the dojo because it offered limited access and the best security. They then handed out numbers to interested parties and (via the corruption of easy access) to family members, including our youngest.

When the bazaar opened, we had to stand in numerical order and then change shoes and raid the used goods. At the same time, a group of people with the next 50 numbers was lined up to get in and She Who Must Be Obeyed and other PTA members were selling hot dogs, fried chicken, fried noodles and doughy octopus balls (which sounds funnier than takoyaki).

The bazaar was scheduled to open at 9:30 a.m. However, at 9:00 a.m., the Junior High Brass Band put on a show that included comedy sketches and, well, we’ll get to that.

Because She Who Must Be Obeyed was busy with bazaar, Yours Truly was handed our youngest, a video camera and voluntold to record the show and watch our youngest whilst simultaneously making sure our youngest didn’t lose our number 47 (which by colossal coincidence is my age for about 15 more days).

The band performance opened with a comedy routine that mimicked most Japanese comedy duos and teams (lots of slapstick based on puns). The performance was actually pretty good–which given how much they practice they’d better be–but the trumpet player clearly got nervous during her solo at the beginning of the less than rousing, obligatory performance of Let it Go. As a former trumpet player, I felt her pain (I also felt she could have used some vibrato).

The show featured, though, one of the more puzzling things about being in band: having to stand up at random times to seem cool/add excitement. I remember having to do this in both Hayden, Colorado and at my high school in Kansas. In some cases, during a Glen Miller song, we’d have to stand up and swing our horns left and right which actually made a kind of sense (swing tunes, swing horns).

It was the random standing that got to me. I understand if a soloist needs to stand up because then the audience knows who is playing but I don’t understand an entire section standing up. It’s as if the director thinks the music is boring so she makes a section stand up and suddenly, like magic, the music is exciting.

Try randomly standing up and sitting down during a conversation once and see what kind of excitement that adds to the conversation.

In some cases, one section stands up and then another stands up in front of them in a kind of dueling sections that pisses off the parents trying to get clear video of their oldest daughter playing flute and piccolo.

In the end, the band was asked for an encore (which is obligatory and involves more standing) and then they said goodbye to audience on the way out.

Next year, if our oldest is still playing, I’m going to try to get the audience to stand up at random times. Won’t that be exciting?

Working At Where You Do Not Work For

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Every now and then, I get tired of not existing.

To understand this you first have to understand that although I work at a school, I don’t work for the school where I work. Instead, I work for a dispatch company that assigns me to the school where I work.

This is a fairly common state of existence for a lot of teachers in Japan. The schools like it because someone else is doing the hiring and firing and reference checking and disciplining. If the schools have complaints, they will find at least one sympathetic ear in the form of the salesman who will quickly relay the complaint to a higher up who will pass it down to a lower down who will dump it on the teacher receiving the complaint.

This makes it easy to get rid of teachers the schools don’t like. It also puts most of the pressure on the teachers and the dispatch companies to develop all the lessons with, according to the law, little or no input from the schools.

If the teacher has a complaint, however, well, if it’s not life threatening, it will probably get dealt with eventually and until then “thank your for your hard work and cooperation and we really appreciate your effort” (translation: your complaint has already been shredded and incinerated). My company even has two layers of human firewalls whose only job is to absorb complaints and deliver bad news. (There used to be one layer, but that layer decided it needed a layer of protection as well.) The firewalls don’t have the authority to make any decisions. They simply pass messages along, or at least they claim they do, to the people who can make decisions.

Basically, I’m the English teaching equivalent of a plumber. I’m sent to a place to fix the pipes but if the clients want their pool fixed, I have to call my company and get permission. If I’m at the place for a long time, I still take orders from my company not the clients. However long I stay at the place, I’m still not part of the family, just a guy there to clean crap out of pipes.

The companies like it because they get a decent amount of money for the contract but don’t have to pay a decent amount out. As teachers, we find that the schools couldn’t care less (if they did, they’d hire direct) and the companies don’t care as long as they have the contract. The companies also like that they can change terms and conditions at their whim. (Our previous statement is no longer active and if you don’t like it, we will just cut your pay if you don’t comply. Thank you for your cooperation.)

If you don’t like it, tell it to the firewall. Someone will eventually get back to you once it’s too late to actually do anything. (No, really, I don’t work for the government.)

For the most part, because I got in reasonably early, this situation has been pretty good for me. (For example, I get full pay during the summers.) The problem I have, though, is that sometimes the clients expect to have more control and start giving instructions and the company looks the other way but if something goes wrong the clients don’t really care and the company blames me if the clients complain.

 

 

The Month Has Dragged You Down

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The past few years I’ve noticed that something about October has been playing havoc with my psyche. Apparently I’m not the only one.

Last Sunday five of the six foreign teachers at the school where I work got together for the school festival and later we went for a couple drinks. I think we were all surprised how much we actually needed a drink and how much we ended up drinking.

One teacher described how he hadn’t been feeling like himself and lately we’ve all commented about how long even holiday shortened weeks have felt. This isn’t just the usual after summer grind; it’s something to do with the season.

Last October was when the full after-effects of my father’s death hit. Looking back over the past few years of diary entries, I seem to have a lot of “confusion journal” entries in October. I’ve also noticed that a lot of new habits and practices tend to fall apart in October and I revert back to my bad old ways.

I’m not sure why this is. It could be the changing weather and the frequent up and down temperatures, random typhoons and the periodic fits of humidity. It could also be because  weekends also tend to get busy with school events from three different schools.

I also wonder if it’s connected to the random days off we have in October making it hard to get a good life and teaching rhythm going. (Note to all bosses: I’m willing to keep experimenting with this if you’re willing to give more random days off.) I don’t mind not knowing what day it is because I’ve had a long weekend, but it does mess up my thinking sometimes.

That said, January and February have more random days off, but I never feel as off center then as I do in October.

November generally settles down and I feel a lot better. Even when I have my birthday.

 

 

 

A Business Run Like a Government Office Run by Committee

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Today I took She Who Must Be Obeyed and our youngest daughter to Tokyo Skytree to make up for not taking them back in August.

Although we had a great time, even with a foggy view, and I even walked across the dangerous death glass floor twice, the trip was complicated because Tokyo Skytree is run suspiciously like a government office with half-nods to high tech but nothing that could be described as a full-nod.

First, we decided to see if we could reserve tickets on Sunday night for Monday. It turns out that all reservations have to be made three days in advance or they can’t be made. In the era of the internet, I do not fully understand the reasoning behind this.  Because it’s off season, every day for the next two months shows a circle, which means there are lots of tickets available, however, rather than providing a convenience, the Powers What Are at Skytree would rather have you stand in line.

This brings out something else I don’t understand: reserved tickets are 500 yen more than non-reserved. By shutting down the computer reservations, the Powers What Are at Skytree are actually losing money. Adding to the fun, reservations can only be made with Japanese issued credit cards meaning the tens of thousands of foreign visitors arriving every year have to stand in line.

Once we got in line, there was another odd thing I didn’t understand. Although the “maze” started as the usual narrow path, it suddenly opened up to four or five people across before eventually squeezing back down to a narrow path. This allowed people who’d got in line later to cut the line with the full blessing of the Powers What Are at Tokyo Skytree.

Imagine a Department of Motor Vehicles line that suddenly opened up and let people cut the line. It wouldn’t end pretty.

I suspect this is because Tokyo Skytree’s main purpose is to broadcast terrestrial digital television not to provide entertainment for tourists, especially those from outside Japan. Tokyo Skytree was funded by Tobu Railway (who I’m guessing provided the property) and a coalition of six television networks headed by NHK. It’s the NHK connection that I think is telling. NHK is a “publicly owned” and “independent” corporation that everyone is technically, sort of, supposed to support via fees that are technically, sort of mandatory. Its annual budget has to be approved by the government.

This means there’s no real interest in making Tokyo Skytree user friendly. It will continue to exist even if no one visits it. And, in defense of the Powers What Are, a lot of people visit it every year despite the annoyances.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and Listened Once

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I started dating She Who Must Be Obeyed by accident. In fact, it’s fair to say she chose me long before I chose her.

I’ve already described our less than impressive first meeting and mentioned how we accidentally started dating after a night of karaoke that was also, sort of, an accident.

A few months after that first meeting/public temper tantrum She Who Would Eventually Be Obeyed joined my Thursday night adult class. At that time, I still thought she was cute but love at second sight also hadn’t happened. During one of our class Christmas gift exchanges (where we put in a slip of paper with our name and desired present on it and then drew names) I joked that I’d put my list in.

She Who Would Eventually Be Obeyed suddenly went “List?! List?!” I didn’t think much of it, other than she was the only student actually listening to what I’d said. Somewhere in the back of my head I heard my mother’s voice telling me stop chasing and start looking around for who was looking at me.

I, of course, immediately ignored that maternal advice as my usual form of pursuit was to pretty much hang out near a woman I was interested in until she mistook me for a helpless puppy and took me back to her house and had sex with me. I eventually realized, though, that a woman who would do that isn’t the kind of woman you want to take home to mother, especially if your mother has pets.

A few months later, after the night of karaoke, as She Who Would Eventually Be Obeyed and I were sharing a back seat on the ride back to Nou Machi, the conversation somehow turned to dating. I remember mentioning to She Who Would Eventually Be Obeyed that if we were dating, or serious or something, I’d cook if she’d do the dishes.

I didn’t think much of it but she took it as an opening because the next morning, without any warning, she called and told me she was coming over. I had two reactions: 1) What have I done? and 2) Why does it look like a bear lives here? I cleaned the house up and she arrived and actually started to do dishes (because I hadn’t for a while).

I told her she didn’t have to do the dishes and took her to a restaurant in a nearby town. We kept dating after that.

 

 

On and On, On and On, On and On

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Some where in the archives of the local television station in Nou Machi Japan is a video of me losing patience with a long speech.

To understand why, you have to understand that although the Japanese are not particularly good at giving speeches, they are surprisingly fond of them.

A typical, formal Japanese speech involves a steady monotone that reminds me a great deal of Poet’s Voice. The speaker also reads directly from a text and rarely, if ever, looks up at the audience. This style happens at school opening and closing ceremonies, graduation and even New Year parties. To make matters worse, in the case of graduation, there are actually a number of speeches: The Principal’s Speech; the PTA Head’s Speech; the Student Leader’s Speech; and the Special Guest’s Speech.

In the case of Nou Junior High School, the guest speaker was the principal of one of the local elementary schools. He blathered on about Indonesia and the Asian Financial Crisis and a list of things his mother had served him for breakfast since he was five for about 20 minutes. (Well, maybe he didn’t talk about his breakfast but it actually was that long.)

At minute five I began to get restless. At minute ten I was repeatedly staring at my watch. At minute fifteen I was making a show of staring at my watch. By minute twenty I was shaking my head in exasperation and tapping my watch.

Mercifully, he ended (or he’s still talking and my brain snapped somewhere around minute seventeen and I’ve only imagined my life since then). A week or so later, at my adult class, some of my students commented that they’d seen me on television. They said I looked restless and impatient. I was surprised because I hadn’t noticed the camera being aimed at me; of course, I was too busy staring at my watch.

A couple month’s later I taught at the speaker’s school. He was cool, but polite and I got the impression everyone was watching us to see what was going to happen.

Luckily nothing did; mostly because he didn’t have to give a speech.

Homecoming Parades and Artistic Disasters

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My first chance at creating public art ended in an unrecognizable disaster.

About a thousand years ago when I was a freshman at Hayden High School–or perhaps I was a sophomore–the entire class was gathered together to design our homecoming float for the annual homecoming parade. This was a bad thing for my class.

For some reason the class of 1985–at both HHS and later at Southeast of Saline HS where I would eventually graduate–had an intense dislike of planning such spectacles. I don’t know if this is because we lacked a leader or because, as I suspect, to a person we couldn’t have cared less about the parade. When asked to come up with designs we just kind of stared at each other and went “you decide”.

Eventually, someone, I think his name was Randy, suggested we just have a float with a giant fist in the center and nothing else. Because no one hated the idea, that became our plan. The next step was to find someone to design the float. Because I was interested in drawing random things, everyone looked at me and I was chosen.

If you are keeping score: for sports I was chosen last; for bullshit jobs I was chosen first.

I had no clue what I was doing but managed to produce a sketch of a fist made with chicken wire and we all met at someone’s house to build the float and “pomp” it. For the uninitiated, pomping involves twisting bits of paper and tissue into chicken wire to give the design “shape” and “color” and “life”. It is also one of those jobs where no matter how long you do it, you never seem to make any progress. In fact, it’s the closest you can get to Purgatory without experiencing physical death.

Things became complicated when our faculty adviser (I don’t remember his name) decided that the float needed more than just a fist. In fact, he decided, the fist should be punching the mascot of Whatever The Hell It Was High School (not a real school). This prompted a redesign and pretty much all my effort was ignored as all my designs were thrown out the window. (Many years later I’d read The Fountainhead and realize what I should have done to protect my vision. I could have even given a sixty page speech at my trial.)

For reasons I don’t remember, I wasn’t able to go pomping more than once. Apparently neither was anyone else in my class. The final float looked half finished and no one understood what it was supposed to be. We finished last in the judging. I don’t remember anyone caring much about that.

Once Upon a Time a Blatherer

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One of the joys of being a Dad is being able to use Daddy Phrases. The more ridiculous the Daddy Phrase the better.

You grow up hearing these phrases. What you don’t realize is how much fun they are to use. You also don’t realize that they are a kind of test to see not only if you can hear, but also if you’re actually listening.

The old standbys are especially fun. “If you fall down and split your head open, you’re not getting dessert.” (For the record, this is factually correct.)

“If you break your leg, you’re getting a spanking.” (The trick here is leaving off the “eventually”.)

“Don’t talk to your mother like that!” (Even I don’t get to talk to your mother like that.)

My favorites are still “You can have that when you have a job and can pay for it yourself.” Eventually the child gets the money and you say “You can’t have that in my house. When you have your own house you can have anything in it you want.”

That dialogue leads to “Do you want a spanking?” Now, this one is tricky, because although the obvious answer is “no”, it often tricks Tweens and Teens into sarcastically saying “Yeah” and the results are, well, the results. This ends with me saying “Don’t say I never give you what you want.”

And the final classic: “You’ll never be too big to get a spanking.”

It’s also fun to invent your own phrases. When our oldest was learning to walk, we dedicated certain dangerous areas as forbidden zones. When she stumbled into one, my phrase was “That’s a forbidden zone, Oldest. You what that means? It means it’s forbidden.”

Once again, this is a factual statement that still manages to confuse children. That’s the most fun, especially if it means they are actually listening to you.

In the end, what I like about Daddy Phrases is I get to play the fool (which I am disturbingly good at). Then, when I suddenly reveal that I know everything my girls have been up to, it makes me seem kind of psychic.