Category Archives: Work

What Happens at the New Year’s Party Stays

Back when I worked in Nou-machi, because I worked for the Board of Education and at two different junior high schools, I got to forget the year three times.

I’ve mention before how Japanese parties tend to be formal and timed to the minute. They also tend to be rather boring. However, this time of year, even though clocks are still involved, the parties get a little crazier.

One of my favorite names for a party is Bonenkai. In Japanese, the literal reading of the letters is “Forget Year Party” and that pretty much describes what happens.

Instead of the usual two hours, the Forget Year Party stretches to three. There’s more food and more drink and lots of silly, drunken games. I’ve played drunken Twister; drunken rock-paper-scissors; and guess which poor sap got the big chunk of wasabi in his sushi. (This game involves lying and pretending and guessing who’s not really lying. Long story.) I’ve also heard stories of a naked principal climbing a beam and pretending to be a cicada. (I’m never invited to those kinds of parties, though, so I’ve never actually seen anything like that.) I have, however, seen men dance around while dressed as ballerinas. (I used to have a hat that proved it. Now I think I might have imagined the hat. Long story.)

The other thing that happens at the Forget Year Party is that once people start roaming around and talking in pairs, all their complaints come out. I remember one of my English teachers berating the principal about life in general and all the extra BS the teachers were expected to do that had nothing to do with teaching. The principal just took the berating and nodded in agreement.

At another Forget Year Party I was seated next to Ms. Yamazaki (not her real name) who taught home economics or something like that and who was mostly famous for her skill at dismissing the male teachers’ interest in her. (Let’s just say she had tremendous “tracts of land”.) She also had a dismissive “are you serious?” look that was part smile, party wince and part hiss and was scary even if you saw it from across the room. (And yes, she would get hit on in the office. More on that some day.)

We got along well but by then I was dating She Who Must Be Obeyed and had been scared away by that “Are you serious?” look so didn’t consider trying anything. Later, as people started moving around and mingling, the principal came up to me, poured me a beer and got very serious. We then had this conversation:

Him–I see you are sitting next to Ms. Yamazaki.
Me–Yes I am.
Him–Good luck.

At that point I felt as if I’d let down the entire school.

After the main party, there’s almost always a second party (also done on the clock). For this party whiskey and karaoke are involved. In my first year in Japan, at the Board of Education after party, my boss dragged me up on stage to sing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” I didn’t actually know the words or the tune, but I did my best.

Later, I’d learn that my boss didn’t remember singing with me. But that’s sort of the point of the Forget Year Party: You vent your frustrations and drown them in alcohol. Then you forget them and move on. (Or at least you pretend you do.)

 

 

Move Here Go There Drink This Do You I Do

Back when I was in Albania I was invited to a Catholic wedding in Northern Albania. The wedding took two days and involved lots of alcohol.

Because I had visited my friend Eddie at least once and had met his host family, I was invited to his host sister’s wedding. This started on Saturday afternoon with her getting dolled up and then sitting in a room that had also been dolled up and stocked with sweets and booze. Guests would then arrive and pay their respects and eat some sweets and drink some booze.

The tradition is that the bride should never be left alone which meant each visitor would stay until the next visitor arrived. Eventually the groom arrived and escorted the bride to the “Bride’s Family’s Party.” This party took place in the courtyard of a relative’s house, featured a band, lots of jokes, and lots of food and alcohol. The alcohol was served in courses with Raki being first. That was followed by wine, more Raki and, finally, beer. At some point everyone was expected to guzzle a glass of Raki. Or two. Or three. (Luckily, I guzzled one less than some of the others and managed to guide us all back to Eddie’s.)

The next day we weren’t hungover so much as trapped in perpetual slow motion. (More on Raki and its effects in another post.) We then took part in the procession of cars to the restored Shkoder Cathedral  where the bride and groom joined an assembly line of several other brides and grooms for a ceremony that involved the priest walking down the line and going “Do you? Do You? You’re married.” to all the couples.

After that was more driving around and honking of car horns followed by lunch. Sunday night was the Groom’s Family’s Party, which was a smaller, more exclusive event I wasn’t invited to. I stayed at Eddie’s place and relaxed.

There are Usually No Stupid Questions

Every now and then, during exams, students ask questions that are so stupid it’s all I can do to keep from laughing in their faces. I have, however, on occasion, openly expressed my disgust and contempt.

What usually happens during exams is the first 10 minutes or so of the 50 minute period are taken up by the listening portion. Lately this has me worried as a result of an incident that wasn’t even my fault. (Today, to make matters worse, the sound technician kept playing with buttons as if there was something wrong with the CD, and that had me stressing out.)

After the listening, those of us teaching that grade assemble in the teachers’ room to await questions and as a rapid reactionary force if an actual mistake is discovered.(Which happens every now and then.)

Usually the junior high first years (7th graders) have the most questions: do we have to print or should we use cursive?; can we use numbers or do we have to spell them? These are understandable as, for most of them, this may be their first exam in English.

However, my favorite questions have all come from high school students. Two happened today. First, my student wanted me to spell a word for him. I told him I could neither confirm nor deny the spelling. He went huh? Later, in the same class, a student asked a question that amounted to “Is it necessary for me to follow the instructions on the long writing?” I said “of course.”

At that moment, my student took a second shot at getting me to spell a word. I just smiled and left.

Last year a student pointed to an entire section of the exam and said “I don’t understand.” My reaction was “That is why you fail.

The best, though, was a high school second year student (11th grade). That term was speech contest term which meant every 11th grader had written and memorized a speech appealing to some authority figure to change something in the school or in the world. Because that took up a large portion of the term there wasn’t a lot of material for the exam. The long writing, therefore, involved person A appealing to person B to change something. (I don’t remember if it was a dialogue or an essay.)

Thirty minutes into the exam time I was called upstairs to answer a question. One of my worst students pointed to the long writing and said “What is ‘appeal’?”

Given how I felt, my look must have been something between “Is this a joke?” and “You are a moron”. I told him I couldn’t tell him but told him it was just like his speech contest speech and left him to his own devices.

He ended up not writing very much. (Which actually makes my life a bit easier.)

So Productive It’s Scary and Must Be Suppressed

Today I was productive enough that I almost finished marking one batch of exams. I’ll bet the last little bit takes me all day tomorrow to finish.

Today I had three basic tasks: pass back exams to 3rd year high school students and have them laugh at me about seeing next terms (long story) and then hand in their final marks; collect 2nd year exams; and sit around waiting for final marks to come back for final approval.

This plan left me with a couple choices: bail and go home and never come back leaving one colleague to check my final marks and correct any errors based on my notes; go home and come back around 4:00 and wait for final marks (which typically arrive an hour after deadline); or stay at school, mark exams and wait for final marks.

I chose the latter, which actually surprised me. I started with the worst part of the exams (the long writing on the back) and then marked the rest. By 3:45 p.m. I was 90% done marking when a shocking thing happened: the final results came back early. I quickly texted my colleague who appeared right as I hit send. (And you doubted my wizard powers.)

The final check involves making sure the OCR machine scanned our sheets correctly. If it did, we just write “OK” and run away as fast as we can.

I checked the marks, packed my tests and ran into the cold. Now I’m at home not finishing marking. Unfortunately, the quick arrival of the final marks interrupted my flow and it’s scientifically impossible for me to get it back until tomorrow.

To make matters worse, the devil over my left shoulder is reminding that because I don’t have that much to do there’s no rush. The devil over my right shoulder is going “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.”

My goal is to finish all that in the morning and be done for the weekend until the next batch of tests arrive on Monday. Before that, I’ll probably find a few other things to do.

Our Time Cometh Thrice

Final exams start this week which means we’ve been recording and editing and psyching ourselves up for the slog. Part of what keeps us going is what one colleague calls “our time”.

Basically, three times each year. even in the junior high school, students have to take our classes seriously. The rest of the time, especially in lower level junior high classes, students will talk and cheat and “forget” their book and basically make a lot of noise.

In their defense, junior high students can’t fail except on paper, and are always promoted to the next grade. Only at the end of junior high, when they want to go to the high school, do their grades matter. Think about your worst behavior in junior high and the behavior of the worst person you knew in junior high and the worst grades you ever got and the most boring teacher and imagine how you would have behaved knowing you couldn’t fail and could always play sports.

However, often at the end of each term, some students begin to realize they need to study because a test is coming. At this point, we have certain amount of control over them and we confer about how difficult to make the test. This is our time. We also decide how much to help the students prepare.

For the most part we help the students out quite a bit. We give them a review day and in junior high we even tell them what the long writing question will be and give them the opportunity to practice. (Essentially that means we give them up to 25% of their possible points for free.)

However, the compulsion to make noise and ignore the teacher often overwhelms the students. I’ve been in the middle of writing test information on the board only to turn around and see students wrestling or doing homework from a different class. I’ve been explaining what to study and had every student in the class talking in Japanese. My response is usually to erase the test information and wish them good luck on the test.

I’ve done this in high school as well.

I also let them know I don’t care if they actually study or not as it’s not my test, it’s theirs. I almost never get angry during review time (unless students are fighting) and just let them waste their time.

As I tell them, if thy get a zero on the test, it makes the math easier for me.

Note: the lowest score ever actually was a zero by a student who didn’t even write his name on the test. My lowest high school score was eight.

The Slow Drip Drip Drip of Loss and Annoyance

The school where I’ve worked for 14 years is slowly but surely trying to remind me I’m not part of the group. It’s doing it through sanctions on technology.

When I first arrived at the school, every teacher was given a school laptop for their desk and a network password. The laptop I had was old and practically made of stone and wood but it let me print, store files on the server and use the internet.

For one year, when the school made an attempt to modernize beyond the Optical Character Recognition system it uses for final marks, we could even enter final marks from our desks via a school intranet. (Well, most people could, but the laptop I had was too old to use the software and I had to go downstairs to the computer room.) To make matters worse, the program was shockingly unintuitive and the company went out of business meaning there was no longer any tech support. The school, therefore, switched back to OCRs.

Then, one year we showed up and the laptops were gone. Full-time teachers had shiny new laptops but we were informed that part-time teachers would no longer have them. (Remember, I’m technically part-time and work AT the school not FOR the school.) Instead, three computers were installed in the office for the dozen or so part-time teachers to share.

Luckily, I was able to bring my own computer and use the network and printers. All was still good (and in English).

Then we got the new school and full-time teachers had shinier newer laptops and the dozen or so part-timers had access to eight laptops we were expected to share. I decided to use my own computer (to free up a school one for someone else.) Unfortunately, we quickly discovered that our personal PCs had been blocked from the main server. We could print and use the internet, but we couldn’t access files. One teacher couldn’t access the network at all. We blamed Linux, until another teacher proved he could connect with a Linux system.

Then last week, our personal PCs were blocked once and for all forever from the network. We can’t even print.

I was told that this is because the IT people are convinced that a rash of viruses is the result of personal PCs on the network. I have my doubts about this (I think it’s memory sticks and people with less computer savvy) and it all smacks of “Pay attention to ME! I’m IMPORTANT!” bureaucratic rock pissing by the IT people.

That said, the sanctions will be lifted once I prove my computer can have safe sex with the school network.

Until then, I’m living back in the age before even punch cards. (Luckily I have lots of fountain pens.) My other plan is to grab a school laptop and hold it hostage until sanctions are lifted.

edited 11/30/14 to fix typographical errors.

Listening Past the Giggles and Glitches

As technology advances, I find myself losing patience with things that not too long ago worked really well but now have problems. This is especially true when it involves work.

One of the things we do at the school where I work is record our own parts for the listening portion of the final exams. This is a process that’s changed since I’ve been at the school.

It used to involve headphones, a four channel mixer and cassette tapes. That system required long recording sessions in which every word had to be perfect. If we made one mistake we’d have to do the entire section over. I remember more than once reaching the very last question and then mumbling or stumbling or forgetting how to read English and having to start the entire process over.

One of our number had a habit of improvising off script leaving the rest of us to wonder where the hell we were and what the hell we were supposed to say next.

If anyone got the giggles the entire process ground to a halt.

Note: if you’ve never had the giggles, you’ve never experienced the joy of trying cure them by reciting sad images like “dead puppies; cats squished by cars; starving children eating dirt” and instead causing the entire room start laughing and be unable to stop. That’s great.

I guess you had to be there.

Nerves frayed and we quickly learned to make listening sections shorter.

That gave way to a nice recording studio in the sound and light booth of the school auditorium. We had good mics and proper equipment and if we made a mistake, we just redid the bad part and spliced the new part in later.

The new studio, however, didn’t solve the problem of the giggles. One teacher usually had to leave the room when another teacher made a “BEEEEEP” sound or the recording session couldn’t be finished. One time a teacher had funny names in the listening and we laughed so hard he ended up changing the names.

The other problem was that right around December exams, students start practicing for the Christmas show in the auditorium and we end up having to come back another day.

The new school, however, was supposed to solve this with a brand new, sound proof recording studio. Unfortunately, it’s the old computers and, for some reason, the old computer doesn’t like the new room and has decided to add a buzz to all our recordings. (Old computers can be really temperamental that way.)

There’s a way to fix it, but it adds a step that shouldn’t be necessary. I actually found myself getting annoyed about that. Then it brought hope that a new computer will appear some day with a quieter fan.

There’s also no cure for the giggles, though. Technology can’t solve those. Even dead puppies don’t help.

Sometimes It’s Just Too Easy

Today was the first day of exams, which is kind of confusing since classes aren’t finished yet.

Basically, in the school where I work, the high school third graders (US 12th grade) graduate two-thirds of the way through the year. In order to do this, a few things happen:

First, the students finish early (classes finished last week) and start exams.

Second, if anyone is going to fail it gives the powers what are a chance to pressure the teacher into changing the marks/giving a second and/or third chance. There is no rhyme or reason for this, except possibly money (but that’s just me being cynical) or sending good athletes to university (also me being cynical).

Third, the early schedule allows time for a quick make-up examination that is part of the pressure from the second reason.

Whatever the reason, there’s a a lot of pressure to pass the students and, in defense of the school, most of the students are going to pass anyway. In fact, the only way to fail is to not attend class, although exceptions have been made for that (see second reason above).

Part of the problem in my class is that most of the points are based on work and performances done in class. However, I’m still expected to give a final exam. To help mitigate this, I make the final exam worth only 25% of the final score and let students know, within reason, what will be on it. Also, because there’s not a lot of grammar, my final exam is pretty easy as there’s not a lot to study. If anyone fails it’s because they fell asleep and didn’t finish all the questions.

By the middle of December, the students know if they are going to graduate or not. There is much rejoicing.

There is, however, one final twist. Although they know they are going to graduate, and although no more scores are given, the students are expected–sort of–to attend classes at least two more times in January.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter if they don’t as there’s no way to punish them.

Perfect Pitch and Sickly Sweet Songs that Sound the Same

Today, in high school English club, my job was to watch the club members listen to music. I also had to survive flashes of horror and flashbacks.

The reason I endured flashbacks is that, for reasons I’m not sure I want to know, the song chosen was “I Need to Be In Love” by the Carpenters. Now, although this was bad enough, what really shocked me was the reaction some of the students had when the very first note of each song was played. One student kept saying “Yes, I like that.” when the first note of “Top of the World” (I dare you to click the link and listen), “Sing” and “We’ve Only Just Begun” were played. It was like a nightmarish version of Name That Tune with teenagers. “Tom, I can freak the teacher out with just one note.”

Keep in mind, I wasn’t a big fan of the Carpenters, especially in high school, but at least I’d heard them almost every day from age three to age 15 (and then every hour for a year after Karen Carpenter’s death) so the notion that a Japanese high school boy born in 1999 could be a big enough fan to recognize each tune with only one note shocks me .

That said, a lot of bands find an odd second life here in Japan. One hit wonder Mr. Big has enjoyed a long career in Japan, including reuniting for a tour in 2009. Cindy Lauper remains popular and often appears on TV acting like, well, like Cindy Lauper. Jon Bon Jovi is also popular, especially thanks to a female comedian who used to sing a bad, yet oddly compelling chorus of “You Give Love a Bad Name” (You don’t need a link; it’s already in your head. Shot through the heart, indeed.)

Avril Lavigne also remains disturbingly popular.

As for me, I’m still stuck in the 70’s trying to songs out of my head.

Don’t Wanna Come Around Here No More

One of the odd twists of teaching English in Japan is that sometimes your worst students have the best English. The worst of those are the “returnees”, the students who’ve lived overseas.

Several years ago, I had a student who’d spent a good portion of his life in the USA. He hated being back in Japan so much he actually made his parents send him to a different school. One class he was there, the next class he was not and his friends said he’d gone to a rival school with a better building.

About that same time, I had a returnee who would finish his work quickly and then proceed to keep his friends from finishing theirs. If I assigned pair work, he’d make his partner do all the work while he slept. After several loud altercations involving me telling him to work or get out my class, he failed the term. This resulted in some attention from the Powers What Are at the school as they inquired how a returnee could fail English. I said he did it by being a “an obnoxious little shit” or “by lacking focus” or something like that.

Eventually he and I reached an agreement: as long as he finished his work and didn’t disturb anyone else, he could sit off to the side and sleep. Which he did happily.

In defense of returnees, they do tend to attract a lot of “why don’t you do this for me?” attention and they get tired of it. They also live in a culture where it’s not okay to stand out too much. I can tell, in almost any class of any age, who the returnee is because as soon as I give instructions, everyone in the room turns and looks at the returnee for a translation. That gets bad enough that I’ve actually told returnees that unless I ask them to translate, they don’t speak English.

The worst class, though, was my first year at the school. I made the mistake of calling my third year high school elective “Introductory English”. Every student but one was a returnee looking for an easy grade. I’d give them an assignment and 20 minutes later they’d all be finished and I’d still have 80 minutes to fill. They were pretty much like “Here we are now. Entertain us.”

It was good teacher improvisation practice, but it wasn’t a lot of fun.