I had some free time today and, because it was payday, I decided to do some running around/conspicuous consumption. Unfortunately, part of my conspicuous consumption was disturbed by bad clerks.

The first part of the day involved banking. Go to the ATM on one corner, encourage the Japanese people who are being slow because they don’t understand the ATMs to go to a bank, teach them how to “pick a finger”, get money and then cross the street to a different ATM and deposit rent money.

Except for the impromptu “gestures lesson”, that part of the day went surprisingly smoothly and we are now able to stay in our apartment for at least another month.

After that, my plan was to head to an electronics shop to buy some lens attachments for my smartphone because “boy” and “toys”. I found the lenses I was looking for but because Japan is such a safe and honest nation they were strapped together by plastic ties like those that keep the dangling labels attached to your clothes. That meant I couldn’t just grab them and head to the register. Also, because Japan doesn’t let me carry a pocket knife (legally. Ahem.) I was forced to try and find a clerk with a pair of scissors to cut the cord.

Despite the store having just opened and despite the fact there were only a few customers, I couldn’t find a clerk. I finally found one guy in a uniform but he ignored me as he is apparently only involved with shipping and/or repairs and/or being an asshole.

I tried to teach him how to pick a finger, but he wasn’t looking at me. I kept trying to find a clerk, but the only one’s I could see were working the registers or helping a customer.

After a few minutes of looking around, I gave up on the purchase and went to the next phase of my day. That involved a haircut and whisky and trying to find a safe place for lunch. (More on that in a future post.)

I have a high school second year class (11th graders) that’s ahead of my other classes. This is not because they are smart, but because they have more days off than anyone else and I’m having to move faster through the curriculum.

Today the students were supposed to present the superheroes they’ve spent three days creating. The presentation involves memorizing a short speech about and making a poster (usually traced from a template and then hand colored) of their superhero. To save time and give them more time to finish, I opted to have them deliver the speech only to me rather than  in front of the entire class. In classes where I have more time, it will be speech in front of everyone.

However, the superheroes assignment has its problems.

First, I had a student develop a superhero baby who was completely dependent on his mysterious mother who was not actually going to make an appearance in the speech. I pointed out that the baby had to do something because he’d be one of the stars of the final project. I sent the student back to rethink things but he didn’t do much. I also suspect that, because there are no templates for babies and he has to free hand draw the picture, he’ll soon be aging the super baby.

Second, another student keeps explaining that he doesn’t want to memorize the speech and I keep explaining that I want him to memorize the speech which means he doesn’t have a choice. That said, because this student has a lot of “issues”, I’ll probably let him get by with memorizing the first part and reading the rest.

Third, one student appears to have directly ripped off a character from Psycho-Pass, which means he’s got some ‘splainin’ to do next class. I don’t keep up with what’s popular in manga and anime, but I could tell by the reaction of his friends that something suspicious was afoot. I therefore consulted our local manga/anime experts (three other foreign teachers) about who the character might be.

Fourth, one student will probably not finish the project and that’s probably my fault. When he first brought his speech to show me, his superhero’s name was “Chin-Man”. in Japanese, this translates roughly to “Penis Man”. I saw the name and sent him back to make a few changes without reading anything else. He put his head down and went to sleep.

Today he presented the same speech with “Penis-Man” now dubbed “Turtle Man”. However, the backstory is still the same which makes the original name seem rather creepy: Turtle Man is an elementary school teacher who only helps little girls because he likes little girls. (Use the original name and you’ll understand.)

I said he sounded like a villain, as did Turtle Man, and noted that the speech was 60 words too short. The student came back later with 60 words of padding about Turtle Man’s house and neighborhood. I told him that wasn’t what he was supposed to write and asked him to explain how Turtle Man uses his powers to help, sigh, little girls. My student said he didn’t know and I switched to “loud mode” (a technical term) and told him he had to know because that’s what the speech was supposed to be about. I sent him back to make edits but he just sulked more and kept the guy behind him from working.

If it’s only going to be presented to me I actually don’t care if the students have questionable characters (several hundred years ago I was a teenage boy, too) but stuff like that disrupts the class too much so I don’t allow it to go in front of the entire class.

I do, however, expect them to do the work, especially when I told them on day one they couldn’t use “I don’t know” as an answer. Why do they insist on using it? I don’t know.

One of the things I always hated about algebra class at university, besides the fact that it was algebra class, was the notion of “showing your work”. On a couple occasions I got the correct answer on an exam only to lose points because during my “reasoning” process I’d made off-setting mistakes that somehow produced the correct answer.

I thought this was absurd until I realized I actually had to do the same thing in history and English classes.

In history and English classes we had to provide our own exam booklets, aka blue books, which we would use for the longest and most complicated essay questions. We were also required to write in pen which, in theory, made our handwriting slightly more legible, but also left our mistakes and second thoughts visible as glorious scribbled-out wounds on the page.

I vaguely remember crossing out most of a page after I realized I was heading in the wrong direction (i.e. suddenly remembered what we’d actually studied). My blue books were usually marred with lots of crossed out sections and several arrows and useful annotations to provide guidance to the professor and/or teaching assistant attempting to navigate the scrawl.

The only pens that were banned, unfortunately, were Erasermate pens that, although they could be erased, also tended to smear and seemed to be universally hated by lefties. (My attitude always was “I’m not a lefty so I don’t give a crap about their problems.” Remind me again, why don’t I get invited to parties?)

I always wondered if it wouldn’t be better to allow us to write in pencil as we could erase our mistakes and produce a much neater package. The only issues would be badly erased sections, crumbled sections and randomly torn pages, which, I suddenly realize would have been about as sloppy as what I produced in pen. Then there was that broken pencil problem.

After becoming a teacher and reading hundreds of essays written in pencil, I suddenly realize why professors were willing to live with the pen scribbles. More on that in another post.

As I feared, it was raining when I went to work today as Typhoon 18/Typhoon Etau (aka Tropical Storm Etau) continued its path across Japan.

The news reported delays on part of a key train line so I figured there were going to be some delays. Right after I got to school, I was told that, although it hadn’t been announced officially yet, classes were going to be delayed.

Then, at 8:00 a.m. the intercom speaker crackled and we were informed that, because of the delays, classes would start an hour late and the classes themselves would only be 40 minutes long. This was a bit surprising as it was the longest delay since I’ve been at the school. I knew the situation must be pretty bad.

I quickly notified the other five teachers right about the time one of them walked in the door. A while later, another walked in.

The others contacted us and we set about planning for the day and making assignments. I then got a message from one of the other teachers that the delayed train line had stopped completely.

A few minutes later we saw a serious looking “all hands’ meeting of teachers taking place just outside our office door. A few minutes after that we were told classes had been cancelled.

This prompted another round of messages and one “did I read that correctly” phone call.

The three of that made it to school spent the next couple hours planning tomorrow and next week. I tried to figure out how to squeeze 16 days of lessons in a class that was only going to meet 15 more times. We didn’t yet know about the levee breaches in Ibaraki.

After I finished that work I went home and worked on my home computer and that’s when I learned about Joso and the flood which made paperwork seem dramatically less important.

Our family’s hearts and prayers are with the people of Joso. We hope the rain has stopped and the waters are receding.

When I was at the ISOT, I found a product that seemed like such a good idea it actually won an award. It was also one of the handful of products designed to be used exclusively with fountain pens. It wasn’t until I got a sample home and started playing with it that I realized it wasn’t that necessary.

SUITO Cleaning Paper is manufactured by notebook and paper products manufacturer Kobeha. SCP is pieces of blotting paper cut into small rectangles with  scallops cut out at one end and perforations down the middle that allow for easy folding. It was popular enough that it won the Grand Prix Award for Functionality at the ISOT.

A pack of SUITO Cleaning Paper.

The idea is that once you’ve inked a pen, you can easily clean the nib with a piece of SCP.

A piece of Suito Cleaning Paper being dragged across a messy nib. (I didn’t fold it correctly so you can see the scallop.)

You can also wrap the paper around the nib and feed and wipe both at the same time. Although you still might get some ink on your fingers, you don’t have to worry about bits of tissue paper or paper towel getting stuck in your nib. You also don’t have to worry about catching stuff on a microfiber cloth. I found that one piece would thoroughly clean a nib with little mess on my fingers.

A piece if SUITO cleaning paper after cleaning a nib. (Note: not the same one as the picture above.)

The best part about the paper is that is allows you to easily clean small, thin areas such as the threads on my Nexus fountain pens.

The problem is that I can easily make this at home with a strip of blotter paper and a pair of scissors.

A piece of SUITO cleaning paper on a strip of blotter paper.

Although the scallop is useful, it isn’t really necessary and I have the same results cutting a piece of blotter paper off of a larger strip and just curling it around the nib.

That said, using blotter paper only works for me because I’m enough of a fountain pen geek that I own a rocking ink blotter (similar to this one) and have a couple packs of blotter paper for it. At $4.07 a pack for 30 pieces SUITO Cleaning Paper is cheap enough that it’s not worth getting a blotter if you don’t already have one.

That’s probably what the people at Kobeha were thinking.

I bought an exclusive edition fountain pen four months ago that has impressed and underwhelmed me. Lately it also doesn’t seem so exclusive.

Earlier this year Massdrop (if you’re not a member you’ll have to register to see more–it doesn’t cost anything to register) partnered with pen maker Retro 1951 to produce an exclusive edition of their Retro 51 Tornado fountain pens. The process involved Massdrop members voting for which of four or five designs they liked best. The design with the most votes was then offered as a drop.

Unfortunately for the companies, the acid-etched herringbone design that was chosen wasn’t my first choice–or even my second–and apparently didn’t appeal to most other voters either. The original requirement for the drop was 300 sales, but the total fell short of that by 50 or 60 sales (at least that’s what I remember. However, Massdrop and Retro 1951 apparently reached an agreement to go ahead with the drop and announced that the drop was a go.

Four months later I received my pen and was both underwhelmed and impressed with it out of the box. The pen came in nice packaging and was much better looking than I was expecting. I was pleased the herringbone pattern was actual texture and not just surface coloring, but I was surprised at how light and cheap it felt. Retro 51 lists the body as being made of “metal” without offering anymore specifics. It reminded me in weight and feel of a fake Montblanc rollerball my dad gave me for Christmas back in the late 80’s. It wrote reasonable well, but broke after about a month of every day use.

In all fairness to the Tornado EXT, I know better than to judge the quality of a pen by its weight. I’m used to heavier pens made of aluminum, acrylic and ebonite and the feel of mystery metal is a bit strange. Also, despite feeling light and cheap (to my hands anyway), the body doesn’t have any creaks or rattles. The threads on the cap and on the body feel smooth and well machined and I don’t get the sense the section will suddenly snap off like the old fake Montblanc’s did.

The Retro 1951 Tornado EXT Acid-Etched Herringbone Exclusive.

I like that, unlike my old Retro 51, the Tornado EXT can carry two small international cartridges and can use a standard international converter making it easy to clean and change inks. I also like that it has a twist cap and is thicker than my old Retro 51 200 series.

The Retro 51 200 series from 20 years ago next to the new pen.

The best selling point of the Tornado EXT is the stainless steel Schmidt nib. I chose an M nib and have been pleased with how smoothly it writes. There’s a little resistance on the page as it breaks in but I haven’t had any skips or hard starts. It is light years ahead of the nib on my original Retro 51.

Zooming in on the nibs. I never really liked the two-tone look of the original.

I’ve written as much as possible with it over the last week on different kinds of paper and haven’t had any problems. At 4.92 inches (12.5 centimeters) it’s a good length for my hand and because it weight only 17 grams (0.6 ounces) with converter and ink, it isn’t like lifting weights when you write with it.

My biggest complaint, and the only think I want to see redesigned is grip section. It is made of a form of plastic that seems to be slipperier than Teflon. As I wrote I found my fingers slipping forward toward the nib. To be safe, I have to grip the pen up by the threads which, luckily, are not sharp.

This is nice looking but slippery.

My final complaint is that Massdrop is now offering a second drop of this “exclusive” pen. I don’t know if I should be annoyed by that or not. It’s the same price, but it would have been nice to see them offer a second design, or at least give us first drop members a few more weeks of feeling exclusive.

Fewer things freak me out more than the thought of rereading something I wrote months ago, especially when I’ve been deliberately avoiding it.

First I have to describe my writing process: The initial stages involve fear, denial, distraction, more distraction, denial, British detective dramas and more denial. Once I pass those stages I actually manage to write something. I wrote the bulk of this particular work during last year’s National Novel Writing Month. Then, as is my usual procedure, I set it aside (i.e. didn’t print it out and didn’t look at it) for a few months. The theory is that when I finally read it again, I’ll have a fresh eyes and be able to look at it objectively and kill my darlings as necessary.

The problem is, with this work, which I printed last April, I read the first chapter and was overwhelmed with a mix of fear and disgust and doubt. The opening’s not bad as it is, it’s just the demands of the opening and the best way to present the necessary information all jammed together in one fit of panic. The other problem is that the typescript is too short to be marketable and I have to figure out how to add 20,000 or so words to it rather than figure out how to cut words from it.

With all this going on in my head, the typescript sat on my “to do/avoid” pile for a few weeks before I finally filed it away until I “had more time”. Then, this summer, when I actually had more time, I continued to avoid it until yesterday.

Because I had an unusual fear of the manuscript, I decided to try a different technique this time. Rather than reading it with a pen in hand, I would just read it like a book and then, if something bothered me, would track down a pen and mark the typescript.

This has worked pretty well. I can tell which parts need some work and have marked a few spots with purple ink and noticed which places seem to happen to quickly and which were just crap.

I also noticed which parts seemed pretty good. Those are the parts that scare me the most and I’ll have to give them extra scrutiny when I got through all this again some day.