It’s a bad omen when you’re attending a teacher training conference and the people training you aren’t very good teachers. It’s also a bad omen when that happens pretty much every time you have to go to a teacher training. This is pretty much the curse of the JET Programme.

The problems started during the four (or was it only three?) day orientation we had in Tokyo, which should not be confused with the three day orientation we had once we got to Niigata (which requires a whole other post; until then all you need to know is power off at 11).

First there were the touchy-feelies. As a rule I’m not a big fan of touchy-feely teaching workshops. “Let’s all hold hands and tell secrets about what we ate for breakfast. This is totally a technique you can use in class!” or “Write down seven ideas for lessons based on salt. But you can’t write on the board!” (That last bit is supposed to be the challenging twist.) My attitude toward stuff like this is “I’m here to learn something, moron. Stop wasting my time so you can use up all of yours.” (Yeah, I’m a real hoot in the staff room.)

However, the worst lectures involved too much knowledge or too little.

During the Tokyo Orientation I decided to attend a computer workshop in order to have few basic questions answered: Should I buy a computer in Japan? Will all my stuff from the USA work if I do? Will my US computer work in Japan?

None of those questions were ever answered. Instead we got a presentation that would be roughly the equivalent of going to a Rolling Stones concert and having the the tour lighting designer give a detailed explanation of gels, gobos, and the various outputs of the various lights with emphasis on how the brackets were fastened and the metal content of the brackets on the PAR lights and the type of lubricant used to keep the spinning strobes spinning and the intelligent fixtures smart. Doesn’t that tickle your cuculoris? (Cue insider snort/laugh.) All this when all you want to know is “Why does Keith look blue? Is that your fault?” (Which, for the record, is more interesting to me than actually attending a concert.)

All I remember from the computer lecture is something about Dos V and PC-98 and how one or the other is not like the other one because it’s like Apple which means an Apple disc will work but not a Dos based disc and nothing, NOTHING will work on a word processor that looks like computer but isn’t so don’t even try oh and the hotel phone connections might fry your laptop modem for lots of technical reasons.  I thought I knew a reasonable amount about computers but came away knowing less than I’d known before the talk.

The other questionable lecture was at the Renewer’s Conference in Kobe. It was sold as a presentation about Japanese media by a man somehow involved in Japanese media. Instead, he admitted that the didn’t watch TV or read the newspaper. He also had a giddy hyper style with high pitched “oh ho ho ho ho!” laugh and I’m 90% certain he said “yippee!” at least once as he did a little hop and skip. It was all AMAZING! To make matters worse, when he actually did drop an interesting gem, such as about how Dentsu, Japan’s largest advertising company, controls TV ratings and therefore controls Japanese media, he would just move on with an “oh ho ho ho ho” and a skip.

Every now and then I made the mistake of volunteering to lead a workshop. I seemed to lose a lot of friends when that happened.