William Matheson's Journal

05:36 pm - little sisters + knowing things

We had the girls over here last night. They were quite a handful! Ila's a little bit unhinged, and Rae gets scared and upset about the slightest things. But they're nine and seven respectively, so I suppose it's to be expected. Probably what really gets me is when I see in them behaviour that I used to exhibit as a child. Seeing what other people probably saw in me mortifies me to no end.

I visited J. and L. down in Dundas today, after dropping off the girls and their boatload of belongings (including two sacks for superfluous stuffed animals - one or two critters I could understand, but two whole bags full?). J. and I were talking about various things, and she suggested that I become registered as a substitute teacher. In PEI, as it is in New Brunswick but not in Nova Scotia, one can substitute with only a university degree, and maybe not even that, as the form for PEI suggests sending proof of 30 credit hours / 1 year of "post-secondary education." My stars.

So my problem isn't so much that I'm not certified. I could be teaching right now if I wanted to. Unfortunately, a larger problem is that I don't know anything. There is exactly one subject that I have a background in: English. The form for the Eastern School District alone has room for six subject preferences and three subject specialities. Somehow, I don't think writing "English" and "English" is going to make me look like a hot prospect. Now, this hasn't stopped a lot of people from teaching anyway. But it may stop me, for now.

In going to Dal this summer for continuing ed courses, I'm basically turning back the clock to Grade 11. I may well end up going to my 10-year high school reunion and saying yeah I've got Mr. MacDonald for chemistry. Well, that's if I can hack it and don't drop out on the first day. =) Ha-ha. No, I'm going in full throttle. I'm sick of being a simpleton.

Current Mood: hungry

09:29 pm - Mini-Ice Storm

Got some freezing rain and horrible winds this morning. I was actually afraid that my bedroom window was going to burst open. Dad just lost the glass from the back window on the cap of his truck - perhaps the freezing temperatures did that in (it was -20°C for what seemed like days). It's not that cold today, though. Even now that it's dark it's still only -6°.

I trundled out the front steps in order to move the cars and shovel the walks and the next thing I know I'm nursing the arm that I put out to break my fall so that I wouldn't hit the edges of the steps squarely with my back. When I went across the street to get the cars I nearly slipped again; the mall parking lot was a skating rink. The road between was covered with a brown, salty / sandy goo.

Aunt Shirley was going to bake cookies but got called into work instead. So this ice storm cost me cookies. No fair! =) But yeah, we didn't get the newspaper, schools were closed, and I'm ashamed to say that I didn't get very much done either, except that I did help Uncle Shane get his teacher certification upgrade request in. I was able to get the form he asked for and fill it out. It was hard because my crayon wasn't very pointy and the boxes were kind of small. And four is my lucky number, so I picked the c4 option for good luck.

Let's see if I can get the Miyajima photos done tonight!

Current Mood: restless

12:43 am - Internship Essay

I took Grandma’s car for a spin to the post office to get the mail – it barely started, the temperature was around -20°C – and while I was out I got a Rockstar Juiced, drank it, put the finishing touches on this essay, and now I have the shakes, probably due to the cold and the caffeine... Aunt Shirley’s in bed, so I’ll just turn this thermostat back up a little... ;-)

In 2008, I was an interning primary school teacher at a nominally bilingual private school in the quiet Ojin Town neighbourhood of Tokushima City, in Tokushima Prefecture, on the charming, picturesque, friendly island of Shikoku, in the fine country of Japan.

Now that I am back in Canada, I am finding that it is not as easy to process my experience as I had supposed. Perhaps all my grey matter has leaked into my hair. A lot of people say that the first year of teaching is the toughest. I have to agree. It takes time to learn how to think in three dimensions and how to anticipate challenges and setbacks before they happen. It takes experience to become efficient and effective. I’ve never been to teacher’s school, but having learned on the firing line that was my job, I feel that, say, a two-year post-degree education programme is at the same time far too long and far too short.

As I begin to write this report on a Sunday night, it is the start of a whole new workweek in Japan. At 7:34am Monday morning the trains and streets are busy, and the people are going back to their jobs – including my old job. As I type through the top of the hour, my former co-workers are standing up and dronely reciting “I will work selflessly in my life for others. Others’ lives are affected by the way I conduct my life. The light that I seek is found not around me, but within myself. Only after we have found the light inside ourselves, can we accept it from others.”

Though I am safe in Canada, though, my job is not yet finished. As part of my agreement with my university, I am to leave some sort of legacy, such as the essay you are now reading. If you are embarking upon my internship or a similar venture elsewhere, perhaps you will find this useful. I had a wearisome experience complicated by politics and my naïveté and inexperience. I should also say that this was a year that I do not wish to repeat, even knowing what I know now. However, this fact alone should not be a catalyst for your decision, one way or the other.

So here’s the hypothetical deal: ( the rest (which you may have read two posts prior - the revisions are minor) )

Current Mood: cold

11:16 pm - Report, Second Attempt

I'm not quite up to the suggested length, but I might try to get away with a version of this. What say you? Internet Land, are there any questions you want me to answer - not so much work stuff, but about living in Japan in general? It'd really help. 01/26: A tenth “coping strategy” has been added.

As I write this (Sunday night, 6:34pm, in Souris, Prince Edward Island), it’s the start of a whole new workweek in Japan. At 7:34am Monday morning the trains and streets are busy, and the people are going back to their jobs – including my old job, as a (interning) primary school teacher at a “bilingual” private school in Tokushima, on the homely isle of Shikoku.

This is one morning meeting that I’m happy to miss. But my job is not yet finished. As part of my agreement with my alma mater, I am to write a report on my experience. I know, I know, this is so meta. You hate reading about writing what you’re reading as much as I do. But in this case I feel it’s important to note that I started this report before, wrote a few pages, and then gave up by cause of exhaustion. I was determined to paint an accurate, unsentimental portrayal of what my job was like – or what it felt it was like, and do so without coming off as spoiled or spiteful.

It was impossible. What’s more, things are such that… well, nobody cares to read about negative experiences that with foresight one could have avoided. If I’m to do this, I ought to focus on the positive – like, how I coped!

I mean, besides alcohol.

<Krk-ksssh!>

So here’s the deal, like it or not: You’re in Japan, you’re on a contract, they paid for your airfare, and if you leave you’ll not only be liable for that but you’ll also be putting your coworkers in the lurch for as long as it takes for your employer to lure a replacement. Running out like a thief in the night isn’t really an option – the question there would be how much kerosene would you like to go with your bridge. Here are some things that helped me.

1. Foreign coworkers. Considering that we were just random people thrown together, we got along remarkably well. I didn’t always agree with them, but the perspectives that they brought to bear both on the job and to the city and country were invaluable. Sometimes I didn’t want to do the things they wanted to do, but we did enough things together to make ourselves feel like a family of sorts. We stuck together – and yes, we were stuck together.

I can honestly say that there is no way I would have even considered staying for the year were it not for the care and support of my foreign coworkers. Even a simple statement like, “You can do anything for a year,” worked wonders. While we may not exchange wedding invitations, we will always be close in a way that transcends ordinary friendships. We all pulled together, and we survived.

2. Pre-existing connections. I think it’s fair to say that you will have a different experience in Japan if you have connections made here that have a place over there. One of my coworkers had a very good friend whom she met in Canada, and there were lots of comings and goings on that front – such that she felt completely welcome in Japan in a way that your employer alone can’t, and probably shouldn’t hope to express. I had a connection as well, and it was nice to know that someone in Japan cared about how I was doing. There were a few times when that was all I had.

3. Staying connected. In this Internet Age, there’s no need to speak of the how, the only question is how much. It can be a double-edged sword; if you’re spending all your free time checking up on your hometown friends on Facebook, that’s time that you’re not experiencing Japan. Still, keeping in touch with your mates once in a while helps you keep a certain kind of perspective.

4. Getting out. Get out a lot. Try to go out even when you don’t feel like it. I also recommend organizing (and <ahem> budgeting for) trips when you happen to have a free long weekend – Japan has a lifetime’s worth of things to see and do. Shikoku has more than its share of pretty, quiet places, and it is also the home of the fascinating 88 Temple Pilgrimage. I made it to 54 out of the 88, thanks to weekend trips, side trips, and long bicycle journeys. In general, having something to think about besides work makes life a lot easier.

5. Learn Japanese. I actually didn’t do very well on this objective. In the beginning, we had a coworker of Japanese background who’d been learning the language for years and was also a gifted teacher – he was able to teach us from our perspective, and use his experience of having to know the nuts and bolts (as many second-language speakers do) to our benefit. He took a job at another school in another town, though, and then we had to go to city lessons on our own. While it was good that the city offered lessons, they seemed to target Chinese workers more than alcoholic Canadians. (Clearly, the Chinese had an advantage.)

6. Smile. At my workplace, there was a dearth of warm, sincere smiles. There were some, but there could have been many more, and I should have endeavoured to let a smile be my umbrella more often. It’s a cheap coping mechanism, but it often works wonders. It’s also good to bear in mind that no matter what may go wrong (say, with a class), it’s really not so serious – there’ll be a chance to try again. If you’re being condemned, do what you can and wait it out – they’ll find bigger fish to fry.

7. Be Confident or Feign Confidence. Just because your employer hired you as an intern does not mean they want to be reminded of it, especially if they’re letting the parents assume that you’re all accredited instructors in your home countries. Any appeals to your inexperience when under pressure will backfire tremendously. If you don’t know what you’re doing, and you’re in a similar situation, act as if you do know. If there’s anything seriously amiss, they won’t hesitate to correct you. If it’s something minor, well, it’s minor – best to live with a small mistake than a major blow-out.

8. Listen more than you talk. You have an opinion, and it is important. Unfortunately, you’re swimming upstream even at the best of times. In this context, not only are you probably young, but you’re not even from the country. Your opinions are informed differently. Bear this in mind when you do speak up.

9. Budget. You’re working a job and your pay might be pitiful and you can’t leave. Fight back by budgeting! Japan is actually a very easy country to budget in, as the economy is cash-based and the ATMs have limited hours. I withdrew about 60% of my net pay from the ATM on payday and used that for my expenses for the month (save rent, which was deducted directly from my pay prior to its deposit). When you can actually see the notes coming out of your wallet, and know how much hard work is behind them, you spend less!

10. The kids. Establishing an atmosphere of mutual respect with your students can be an ace-in-the-hole. There were days when the only thing that made me get out of bed was the fact that I wanted to be there for them. On a more practical level, if the kids like you, the parents like you, and that’s one of the royal roads to job security in a private school! (I ruffled enough feathers through my, er, exuberant innovations in the art of office survival as to virtually guarantee an intracontractual departure had things been otherwise.) My “tactic,” if you could call it that, was teaching the children as I would have liked to have been taught. I strived to meet that goal as best I could – of course, sometimes I would fall short and at the same time gain a better appreciation of the realities (especially time and resource constraints) that might have held my own teachers back.

Incidentally, giving in – not that I’m advocating as blunt or obtuse a strategy as “never giving in” – is not a way to earn respect. It’s a slippery slope, and you could give in to the point where the class becomes utterly pointless and still not have any cachet. Fear, though, works – until your back is turned, that is. And, I’m almost sorry to say it, but as a foreign teacher you’re more or less a toothless tiger anyway.

Therefore, I recommend a humanistic approach. Have a bit of fun. Be fair but firm. If they ask why, tell them why. You’d be surprised how much they understand, even in this second-language situation.

Children, although they are only just learning the politics and subterfuge and tactics of adults, have an uncanny ability to see through hypocrisy and deceit. Their views and reactions and behaviours have taught me a lot about life. And yet for their undeniable virtues, there are times you just wish they’d smarten up and bring their books and do their homework.

* * *

As these things usually go, your mileage will vary. Being open to new experiences, patient, and being able to change into a fully-aware cybernetic super-sensei are plusses. While we’re at it, having one of those little fish that you can put in your ear to translate everything would be cool, too. But in all seriousness, if you chose to teach at this school or another school in Japan, or any school anywhere, you’ll be amazed by what you learn. Even if you have a trying, difficult, thorny experience, you’ll be richer for it. You’ll be able to take the experience and apply it to your life back home. I apologize for having to use so many platitudes, but almost everything you need to make the best of a trying situation is present in our vernacular, and the rest, for the most part, is up to you. Good luck!

Current Mood: calm

11:12 pm - Report, First Attempt

I really don’t know where to begin with this.

Don’t give them an inch – don’t admit you’re an amateur, because they resent the fact they had to hire you on that basis. Once they get a leg up on you, you’re done for. You can’t admit you’re human, not even when your “boss” is out drinking with you: “Why are you telling me this?! Hello!”

People ask me what I thought of teaching, and my summation has been, “Teaching’s OK, I just can’t stand the politics.” People wonder what I mean by that. Well, in this particular situation, we were always combating a pervasive, institution-wide malaise. Things were such that it couldn’t be addressed – like everything else, it had to be covered up. You learn the meaning of the phrase “most ignorance is wilful.” Knowledge is paralyzing. Speaking out is suicide. Just put your head in the sand and finish your contract.

If things aren’t going well, the solution is always to work longer hours, and the blame is squarely yours. I came into the job with a self-effacing attitude, but I might have carried it too far as I began to be a magnet for rancour. I don’t behave like most people, either – even my contemporaries have difficulty understanding me, and many of the Japanese teachers probably thought I was an impudent little snot. I spoke out about things that I shouldn’t have and stood my ground when it would have been wiser not to. Eventually I learned to dabble in the low-grade deceit needed to survive. (For just one example, I couldn’t chase down every one of my students for every item of homework that they neglected to do and assign them extra homework like my predecessors would, and so I neglected this part of my duty but I also obscured it so that I would not be condemned again.) But unfortunately, the damage was done, both to my reputation and me.

Maybe I’m just not cut out for this sort of thing. I feel like I’ve been chewed up and spat out – just another (slightly squeaky, prone to seizure) cog in their wheel. All of the appearances and thank yous were there, of course, but it was all just for appearance’s sake. It was all counterfeit. So much of the actual job went that way, too. We weren’t even allowed to talk to the parents, lest they find out (again) that some of us weren’t accredited teachers in our home countries, and withdraw their students from the school in protest (again). Instead, everybody played this little game – well, I did, until I got sick of it and had nothing to lose. But then again, I would have felt kind of sheepish about it anyway, as those parents were paying good money and some of them were assuming that the school had changed its ways as it said it would and therefore I must be a real teacher, right?

It’s not that these little games and deceits kept me from doing my job. They just made me miserable about it, is all.

Among other things, I had to teach art, junior high math, and primary school science, and I knew embarrassingly little about any of it. If I had been trained as a teacher, I would have had to have some background in some or all of those things before any department of education would have admitted me. But I wasn’t, so I didn’t. However, I’m actually grateful for those experiences, however trying they may have been at the time, because they opened me up to the chasmatic gaps in my own, personal education. Because of what I lacked in math and science in particular, I determined to go back to school – not as a graduate student, but as a lowly graduated ever-student enrolled in university prep courses. (I must note that many of my friends are alarmed at this course of action. They’re wondering if I’ve thought about how it will feel to be nearly 30 and still a sort-of undergrad, with no career and few prospects (save returning to the Orient when I run out of money). Before I even graduated (the first time, in 2004), I was receiving criticism: “ur a loser cause u have no friends & have been in skool 4 like eva,” as one of my cousin’s friends once told me.)

Well, I feel that the best way to wash off the stench of failure is by succeeding at something, and I am bound and determined to spare no effort, no expense, nor leave any metaphorical stone unturned as I embark on my quest to become educated. I have to show people that I have some talent, some value, something to contribute to this world, both for my sake and that of others.

Your mileage may vary.

09:32 pm - Leaving Japan, Never Easy (Part 1)

Written on Christmas Eve in Osaka

I stepped out wearing my indoor shoes. I’d be pitching my old beat-up shoes, and I wouldn’t need a separate pair of indoor shoes anymore. I wasn’t coming back. Alone, I walked out of the genkan and out onto the driveway.

I saw S. and spoke to him. “You’re done? That’s it? Must feel good!”

“Yeah, but I feel like there’s more I could have done, but I guess I have to blow the whistle somewhere.”

I got back to the apartments to find the ball players washing and scrubbing the steps. I guiltily picked my way through them and into my apartment.

K. hadn’t returned my bicycle key and wasn’t home, so … I had to go back to the school again to get the other key from F. I hiked up the steps in my sock feet.

More teachers were in the staff room now than when I’d “left” - this was a good thing, because I’d said goodbye but as it turned out most of the Japanese teachers didn’t realize it was the final goodbye.

My first cooperating homeroom teacher was solemn and stoic. The vice-principal thanked me for putting in so much extra time lately (but it still wasn’t enough – my desk looks acceptable at first glance but it is quite messy on the inside; I wrote a brief apologia for this at the beginning of the 14 pages of notes I’d prepared for my successor). The other teachers said simple goodbyes with varying degrees of warmth and sincerity. I know that some of the teachers weren’t quite satisfied with the job I’d been doing, so it was an awkward experience all around.

I went outside again. I saw my third-grade homeroom class playing on the driveway by the gymnasium. I said goodbye and was prepared to walk away – I didn’t want to drag it out – but three or four of the girls came running to where I was and surrounded me. One nuzzled my mitt with her cheek and said “I am Canada!” (meaning that she intends to come and visit me if she gets her druthers).

I was overwhelmed. First there was the book the kids prepared on Saturday (when I naturally wasn’t there, so it was the perfect opportunity), and now this show of affection – it felt like love. Maybe it was. I certainly loved them. I’m not a professional, but if I were I’d hope that they forget about me, because I won’t be back except to visit.

Going home is a melancholy experience at best. Even finishing up at S.G. is like “winning” a war. I can’t complain, but that’s because I no longer have the energy to do so. That was the better part of the real reason I stopped writing – I couldn’t sustain the pace. I also felt guilty, as if Japan didn’t want to be exposed to my scrutiny and was punishing me for it. Now I realize that Japan wasn’t the problem – it was my job. To put it candidly, my former employer is spiritually bankrupt and can’t afford the slightest candor. (My new favourite anecdote is how the boss’ daughter and our translator were tearing the ¥700 price tags off of some junior high English books so that they could turn around and charge the parents ¥1500 for them.)

So I said goodbye again – I wished for a moment that I could stay… I doubt that very many of their many future teachers will be as obsessed about writing as I am, and the students felt that they had gotten a lot from me (I was even complimented about the science classes, which surprised me). I was giving more than I could sustain, though. As I write this, my right wrist is still kind of wonky because of the thousands of hours of corrections and suggestions and responses written in their journal books. Teaching demands sacrifice – sometimes unsustainable sacrifice.

I said goodbye again and got on my bike and drove to Awa Bank in the drizzle, whistling “Why Don’t You Write Me?”

I got to the bank and was thoroughly nonplussed by the service procedure – I expected there to be a machine to take numbers from but what was really happening was this: you’d give your passbook to the teller at kiosk #1 and tell her what you were there for, and the teller at kiosk #2 would call you back up to collect your passbook and your paperwork, money, or whatever. It’s not really analogous to a Canadian bank. Furthermore, the hours are ridiculous – the branch closes at 3pm, and ATMs have limited hours as well. Awa is not the worst - JPBank is now advertising that their ATMs will be closed entirely on the first, second, and third of January. (“Why?!” I exclaim incredulously at the TV. “Why do you hold your customers in such contempt? You should be advertising that you’re opening (certain?) ATMs 24/7!”)

So yes, you have to take time off work to get your in-person banking done. In this case, I had to transfer my hard-saved yen via furikomi to GoLloyds, who would then remit the funds to my Canadian bank account minus a handling fee. The rate is quite favourable right now, and in any case the direct remittance rate is always better than the cash rate.

The procedure was straightforward, and I could even sort of follow along with what was going on as the teller keyed her way through it on the ATM, but it would have been hopeless trying to do it myself, as the interface was unilingual Japanese. (Awa Bank is local to Tokushima Prefecture.) At the end of it, the machine spit out a new card that I could use for future transfers to the same account.

I transferred the entire contents of my account, minus a ¥420 transfer fee. You get nickeled and dimed everywhere; CIBC also extracts a $10 fee as they handle the inbound remittances. Still, with large amounts, it’s far safer and somewhat cheaper than exchanging cash (though that was my original plan – just what I’d need: even more things to worry about while travelling!).

And lastly, I hope GoLloyds isn’t taking me for a ride.

Downtown, I treated myself to lunch at my favourite place in the whole world – CoCoICHI curry! I took the pork cutlets, an extra 100g of rice, and ate at level 2. They give you a personal pitcher of ice water. At level 3, I’ve had to drink it and then some.

I went to the Awa Odori kaikan for gifts for Mom and Masae, then I went home. I still had to clean. I didn’t get much done before we left for the secret party we primary school foreign teachers had in lieu of the one we would have had (as the primary school teachers entire) were it not for Mr. O’s passing. I’ll write more about this later; suffice it to say that Japanese custom has it that social gatherings and observances shut down completely for a month after someone dies. Of course, in Western culture, going out for a few drinks in someone’s honour is a good thing. My homeroom cooperating teacher understood this perspective, but here such an outing is too necessarily celebratory and would therefore be inappropriate.

I also had to speak to Mk. again that afternoon, as I wasn’t able to contact NTT through their English help line. I’m not the only one having problems with it; it’s almost always busy. Anyway, Mk. called the Japanese line and at one point I was required to say, “William Matheson,” and “Yes, I would.” in reply to “What is your name?” and “Would you like to cancel your NTT phone line?” The call took fifteen minutes, but that wasn’t as bad as the Yahoo!BB internet cancellation call that took the better part of thirty. Japan: Life in the Fast Lane!

Another awkward goodbye: “Thank you for doing good job!” Meanwhile, I’d spotted contract extension papers in her arms that two of my co-workers presumably signed minutes earlier.

We went to an Italian restaurant – I ordered a terrific calzone; it took more than thirty minutes to get it, but it was worth it! The only down side is that most of the others were finished their meals by the time I dug into mine. They don’t follow our practice of holding all the dishes in the kitchen until they’re all ready, and then bringing them all out at once.

Singing at Casanova, F. discovered that the karaoke remote had a tone adjustment control. I’d been trying to sing the songs the way I thought they should be while the backing was flat – I sing by ear, so it was a disaster. But once we figured out the tone adjustment, it was like getting a new lease on life! It was then that I also realized the karaoke music here is entirely synthesized. Back home, most karaoke is CD+G based, meaning that the backing track is regular CD audio and is probably recorded in a studio – even though it’s almost never by the original artist, it still means a better and truer karaoke experience. It’s the one Japanese thing that I think we’ve improved upon. (There are hundreds of our things that they’ve improved on… =) The downside is that our system usually requires a karaoke operator to handle the discs. In Japan, you key in the songs on your own, and there are wireless remotes with which to do this – some even have a touch-screen on them so you can pick a song without looking through a book. Still, I prefer our system.

Anyway, I can’t explain how happy I was to find that there was a tone adjustment. Sometimes I’d sing and I’d be completely out of whack and I had to pause and think, “Gee, maybe I just suck.” Blaming the machine just sounded like a childlike, narcissistic way to avoid reality. But in these cases the machine may really have been to blame! Even though C1 said that I was the “Karaoke King,” I’ve had as many misses here as hits, and I’m chagrined to be discovering a possible reason why just as I’m leaving.

After we went our separate ways, I went to Komputa Taxi to catch a discounted cab. The cabbie didn’t know where S.G. was! We got into Ojin-cho and took a roundabout way to get there – I directed him, and I think I learned the Japanese word for “straight” – since he knew of “left” in English, we were OK. Even as we approached the school the incredulity in his voice was saying that he didn’t believe S.G. was where it was!

He may also have wondered why I was going there, so I volunteered: “Watashi wa ego no kyoshi deshta. Suiobi wa Canada e dekakemas.” (I think I was saying, “I was an English teacher. I’m going to Canada on Wednesday.”)

Anyway, it was a very comical end to the cab ride – “I’m sorry!” he stated and bowed repeatedly. Under the influence of good-humoured laughter I was in my apartment just ten minutes after midnight.

The next day: cleaning.

Drain cleaning was ick. And after I’d finished cleaning out the kitchen and the fridge, I discovered that I still had to clean the fan, the A/C filters, and wash the windows! My string of panicked exclamations is best left to your imagination. S. was coming to get us at 4 – it’s a good thing he was late, as I was still scrubbing under my fridge at 4 when I discovered that vacuuming just wouldn’t do.

S. was mercifully about fifteen minutes late and wasn’t in a hurry – he had a dryer and was willing to dry a few of my wet clothes, so I threw them in a trash bag and ran out the door. We all piled into the car and set off. He was hosting K. and I and other interested parties for a farewell, and K. and I would be crashing there as he lives near the Matsushige bus stop.

At S.’s we drank, ate, bitched, watched funny YouTube videos, the whole shebang. He’s got a great place; his washer is also a dryer, and it even weighed my clothes and estimated how long they would take to dry and acted accordingly. I am getting one of those. His fridge door also opens on both sides – you kind of have to see it to believe it; there are latches to hold it up on both ends, and they come out seamlessly when you tug on their particular end. You can close the door with the left handle and as soon as it clicks you can open it again with the right. I may have to get one of these too when the time comes. He and his wife were justly proud of their appliances and had brought them down from their previous house in Sapporo!

I was feeling a little bit sickly later on in the evening, and I was starting to wonder when the children would take themselves to bed. (answer: never =) I enjoyed playing with them, or rather, they enjoyed playing with me – they seemed to latch onto me for some reason. I was coughing, too – perhaps I’m coming down with something, and in any case I was definitely reacting to all the dust I’d stirred up cleaning. Mostly because of this and my fatigue / exhaustion, I didn’t have as much patience for them as I would have liked, but I tried my best to humour them with the energy that I had.

Oh, I should mention that S.’s older son had seen my Idol appearance! S. warned me that he might be singing “I Am A Rock,” and sure enough, he was. Gracious. I can’t go anywhere… =)

In the end, S.’s and his wife’s hospitality did a lot to ease my worries – I wanted to be home, but I didn’t want to go home, if you gather me. Now that I’m underway I’m feeling fine. (Although I wonder what will happen when Mk. discovers I didn’t clean my microwave… since the bulb in it is out it’s not really an aesthetic concern and I barely used it anyway. K. and I also put all our garbage out for collection even though this morning was only for non-burnables.)

S. took K. and later me to the bus stop – good thing, too, because he was able to look at my ticket and tell me that I had to get off at my bus’ penultimate stop. Itami Airport is north of Osaka, so going all the way down to Namba station would eat up time and yen unnecessarily.

In Umeda, I had a nasty bout with Osaka signage and got quite turned around and lost. Fortunately, there was an English-friendly information desk inside Osaka Station to put me back in the right general direction. I was very glad that I was only carrying handbaggage (my suitcases left Sunday by courier), and even that was onerously heavy. I would have been spitting blood had I been wandering around with my suitcases.

And now I’m on the departures concourse at Itami! It seems like a small airport – I don’t think it’s any bigger than Stanfield. Sadly there is no free internet (although there are coin-operated kiosks and non-free wifi), but I do have the chance to plug myself in electrically and type. In my search for a power outlet, I pushed on a button by the window marked “PUSH” and suddenly there’s this clicking and grinding and I’m wondering if an alarm is going to go off and I’ll be hauled to security and sent to a Japanese jail (etc..) but then I look up and discover that all I did was open a window.

Speaking of security, if you bring something sharp through security here (especially knives, even the Swiss-army kind), you could very well be fined, to the tune of half a million yen. Ouch. I guess they figure that the time for simple confiscation is over and it’s time to put in a serious deterrent! So, as always, pack carefully.

OK, time for a bathroom break and a snack and then it’ll be time to board! It’s still a long trip yet – there’ll be another bus trip between the Haneda and Narita airports in Greater Tokyo, and I will be staying overnight at a seedy motel in Queens. See you soon!

08:47 pm - Social Studies Activity: Canadian Maritime Provinces

I found this Word document left open by a coworker and decided, in a fit of inspiration, to fill it out myself and save the copy in a new file.

12:13 pm - Final Debate Video Feed

Attention internet time-shifters (including me, because I was at work at the time):

If you want to watch an unadulterated feed of the United States of America's third and final Presidential debate, fire up Windows Media Player and paste this into "Open URL...":

http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/16493/canadavotes/2008/news-usa-presidential-debate-10-15-08.wmv

It should be good!

Update: Well, both candidates looked solid. McCain laid a few whoppers - one of his more colourful ideas is to start a "Troops to Teachers" program, in which US troops returning from war can transition to the classroom without having to take the examinations or obtain the certifications required in some states.

Uh-huh. I can't say much without breaking my self-imposed code of silence with regards to my current situation, but let's just say that from my experience putting "teachers" in classrooms without certification or experience is not a particularly good idea. I wish all the best for those returning troops (and congratulate them on their good fortune if they're coming home with all four limbs), but if they want to teach, they can go get their B/M.Eds like everybody else. The government would probably help pay for their further education anyway.

What's the rush to get into the classroom, anyhow? I was a fool; I wanted to rush into it because I thought it would be a good situation for me (speaking in general terms about teaching anywhere). I didn't condescend to apply to two year B.Ed programs - I was only interested in one year programs. What's the big deal? If you're smart (and I don't doubt that many US officers are), you can just teach what you know.

BZZZZZZT. Wrong. And that's all I'll say for now. =)

You can get your debate transcript and fact-checker here.

Current Mood: excited

01:15 am - 140. Frightful Friday

I was at the DeoDeo tonight shopping for new rechargeable batteries for my camera when I happened upon a section of the laptop department dedicated to Netbooks. Several models were represented, including the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, which I had been coveting for some time. I like my current Dell laptop with its 15.5” screen and capable keyboard (can you see where this is going yet?), but it’s too bulky to be considered conveniently portable. It’s a chore to take anywhere.

What I want to have is a word-processing and net surfing machine that I can curl up into a corner with. I guess this machine fits the bill – I’m sitting on my bed with it now because the table in my room is too high to type comfortably for long periods – but detaching it from its veritable menagerie of disparate cords dampens most “Quick! I want to write something!” impulses. What I need is something small that I can always grab. Oh, and the price can’t be outrageous.

So as you can imagine, I was about ready to leap out of my socks with joy when I finally saw these machines that I’d been reading about for so long. I could even try them out, and I did!

/greetings drim dEoDeo, Gosh darm it,s harf to tyype on this thing;

Nothing dampens Netbook enthusiasm as quickly as trying to type on one. The experience is akin to conducting an all-recorder version of Beethoven’s Ninth or mowing your lawn with scissors. Their right shift keys were the worst offenders, scaling in at about the size of a crossword puzzle square on the microfiche of an archived newspaper. The thought of actually trying to compose anything on one made me shudder.

It’s too bad, really, because aside from their keyboards these are capable little computers. But the way they are now, they’re useless for, say, taking notes in class, even though they’re just the right size to carry around to and between classes, and they’ll sit comfortably on top of Saint Mary’s famous porkchop desks.

Advice: Wait. Keyboards and perhaps even prices will improve. Eventually the ($500) netbook will be offered in a broader chassis that will accommodate a proper keyboard. Or you could get a used MacBook Air by then, provided you can find a local, deceased Apple enthusiast to pry it from the cold, dead hands of.

But maybe one can get used to the keyboards, undersized though they may be. I should go back and try again for a good solid fifteen minutes and see if my fingers get used to it. Stranger things have happened. If I can train myself to type on a Mini 9 as effectively as I can on my 6400, I’ll probably buy one when I return. If not, then fughedaboudit.

I had a truly awful day at work today. It’s not even really work’s fault – I think I’ve been taking things a little too seriously, for one thing. For another, I’m seeing how my youth and inexperience has put me in this position where I am made to feel somewhat exploited. But as Joe said, “Now you know.” I just wish the knowledge wasn’t so bleak and grim.

It’s eat or be eaten in the big, bad world, and even though I think I finally have it in me to switch sides (or at least begin the journey in that direction), many times I have doubts, and I had them in spades today. It didn’t help that all I wanted to do was go far, far away. My classes went fairly well, but I didn’t want to teach them at their outsets – by the last class, I was shaking and trembling somewhat, and I wondered what would happen if I just dropped everything and walked. The innocent enthusiasm and unconditional approbation of the children was almost all that kept me from finding a quick, vertical balcony exit.

Sometimes I think children are the only people worth getting to know. Ours are artless, principled, and generally of good character. Adults are always playing little games of one sort or another – I do too, but not as effectively. I’ll miss these kids. I wish I’d made adult friends here, but that’s hard: “What do you do?” “I work in office! 720 hours every weeks! It is very stress!” “Oh, um, gee…” and you put in platitudes while looking for the conversational equivalent of a freeway off-ramp.

The day started on the wrong note when one of the big shots started barking out cleaning monitoring instructions to us. She was speaking Japanese, and the “translation” came later, but the tone she took was outrageous. There’s no need to talk (down) to co-workers like she did. M. pointed out that it’s something that he finds tends to happen to teachers, and that’s a fair explanation, but I don’t think it’s an excuse.

[On the humorous side, the associated duty chart is entitled “Clean and the Fire Managers.” Wouldn’t that be a terrific name for a band?]

The worst part is, it’s not like this is unusual – she does this to us all the time. It’s really upsetting – it puts me straight into defensive mode, and it makes me curse her (silently) and curse the school (sometimes silently). And yet, I could expect this again and again over my final two-plus months here. (“Kill me with a hammer,” I wrote.)

I began to brood. I wanted out of education entirely. The system is fundamentally flawed, and I can’t fix it. Where would I begin? Besides, I don’t even know enough sometimes to know that I know nothing. I feel tired, frustrated, helpless, and hopeless.

And the last straw came when Mk. came by and delivered an application form to one of my colleagues who will be having a guest stay over. I was shocked to see that such a form was made – essentially in response to the colleagues’ asking if it would be okay. (Tip: Never ask permission for things here if you can help it.) The reality was that the ball players and other students we share these dorms with aren’t allowed to have guests over, period. With us, the question had never come up, but now that it has, the administration in their wisdom penned this friendly form:

Request form
(visitor @ S.G. residence)

Date:
Name of applicant:
Room number:
Name of stayer: [my favourite line]
Sex: [is this a yes or no question?]
Relationship with applicant: [see above answer]
Passport No.: [I suggested my colleague just fake this. Two random letters and six random digits should do it. I gave my old passport number and suggested its use.]
Intended length of stay:
Purpose of stay: [see field five]
Signature

I wish my camera was working at that moment, because I would definitely have photographed the form. I had to transcribe it instead. Now, at this moment, with a bit of sober reflection, I might not even do that, but at that moment I’m sure smoke was coming out of my ears. I’ve never had any outside guests in for overnight or multi-night stays, but if I chose to do that, I sure as ____ wasn’t going to ask the school permission. I mean, within reason, I guess. Having somebody in for a month or more would be a little weird. But this has been done. More to the point, in the context of much shorter stays, I feel that who we have over is our _______ business, not theirs. And… passport number? Really.

Anyway, my colleague was actually prudent to ask in this situation, and I was a fool to remark upon any of it. I’ve learned from this not to get involved in things that don’t concern me – my two cents were not wanted by either party. There’s no way to escape it: I looked like, and was, an ass.

Sankanbi Recap: I didn’t teach a sankanbi lesson, but I taught a lot that day, and I also had driveway duty – I stood by the road and smiled and bowed slightly to the incoming parents. This is spiritually crushing, because they are more often than not coming in driving Lexuses, BMWs, Mercedes… It was a long, taxing day, and at the end of it all we had to change classrooms – the West Building was open again! While that means no more having to change shoes twice to go to Year One and Two classes (and thank God for that), it meant we had to reshuffle everything – and we’d just decorated for Sankanbi! (What a waste! We should have moved everything, decorated, and then held Sankanbi. Still, it’s not like you can schedule renovation work that precisely.)

[The west building being open means that a certain Pokémon poster promulgating the food groups is visible again. I’d said that I didn’t like what it represented (and it’s advertising inside a school to boot), but I guess it is appropriate because Pikachu.]

As part of the preparations, we waxed the floors the night before – you learn something new every day with this job! All of the little extras lately have run me ragged. Even cleaning the male teacher’s bathroom today as part of my Week Duty was taxing. When I get home in the evenings, all I want to do is listen to podcasts, watch political pundits, and drink beer. My abortive posts would begin with, “I’m so tired…”

If the rain presently falling lets up, I’m leaving early this morning for Temples 20 and 21. The kindergartener’s sports festival is also this morning, so there’ll be no sleeping in anyway (gee, if ya think batting practice is loud…) – I might as well be on the road, and away from any reminders of work. Update: Still here. I was up too late last night fighting off sleep and composing this, and this morning I almost had to sleep until 12:30. Eeesh. I'll go tomorrow. This is a long weekend, so I have that kind of casual, easy flexibility.

Current Mood: microsleeping

10:34 pm - 139. Video Cafe Fire, Suicide-by-Death-Penalty, Awful Playgrounds- wait, this is starting to get bad

I had a pretty good day today! It was a Monday with a cherry, cream, and caramel fudge topping!

I’ve been meaning to talk about this for a few days – last week, M. told me about a fire at a “video café” in Osaka.

(“15 killed in pre-dawn fire in Osaka Japan”)

For someone who frequently stays overnight at similar establishments* (I’ve done so four times so far this sojourn), this is food for thought. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for the fire exit(s) and noting them before going to sleep.

From Japan Today:

Police arrested a 46-year-old man Wednesday on suspicion of arson and murder following a predawn fire that left 15 people dead and 10 others injured, three seriously, at an establishment for viewing videos in a multi-tenant building in Osaka.

Kazuhiro Ogawa, an unemployed man from Higashiosaka, Osaka Prefecture, is suspected of setting fire to a newspaper in his bag while using one of the rooms in the establishment, according to police. They quoted him as saying he had ‘‘got fed up with life.’’

All of the dead, found in individual rooms, were male customers and are believed to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning or inhalation burns, according to firefighters.

There were 32 individual rooms, each equipped with a reclining sofa, TV and video recorder, and 26 customers, two staff members and the manager were present when the fire broke out, police and firefighters said.

Most of the dead were found in the individual rooms, while several were found collapsed in the aisle, which is 1.2-1.6 meters wide.

A 37-year-old customer from Itami, Hyogo Prefecture who managed to escape said he had gone to the establishment at around 1 a.m. following work in order to stay there overnight. The layout of the establishment ‘‘is so complicated that customers who visited here for the first time may have found it difficult to escape.’’

At the fire-hit Osaka establishment, a customer could stay for up to 11 hours from 11 p.m. at a cost of ¥1,500 ($15)

When he was arrested, Takuma reportedly told police, ''I'm exhausted. I've become disgusted with everything. I've tried to kill myself several times, but couldn't. Give me a death sentence.''

Current Mood: awake

07:01 pm - 138. Movies, Politics, Japan, Messages and MORE

I was going to go to Temple 88 this morning, but I wussed out. I wasn’t awake until 10am, which I think is too late to get a good run at it. I’ve set my alarm for 7 and I’ll try again tomorrow. [No, I'll leave it. It's too far away. I'll get it someday when I return. (And it also ended up raining.)] Next weekend, the long weekend, I hope to get to 20 and 21. Then there may be a road trip to Kochi on the second November long weekend (the first is taken up by an open lesson).

I’m embittered yet happy. It’s an odd feeling.

I just watched Casino Royale – the original Casino Royale, one of the two non-canonical 007 movies. It’s a funny film, and by that I mean ‘odd.’ It’s got a terrific score, high production values, a cornucopia of sexy eye candy, and it sometimes works as a satire, but much of the time it’s just ridiculousness for ridiculousness’ sake. That approach has worked exactly once (as far as I’ve seen, anyway), and even the Holy Grail of meaningless satire unravels towards the end. I laughed out loud a few times during Casino Royale, but it wasn’t compelling and I waited for it to be over.

(The other non-canon 007 movie, Never Say Never Again, is far more satisfying. It’s a worthy instalment – Connery looked old in the tedious Diamonds are Forever, released 12 years earlier, but he looked to be in his prime in this one. It can definitely be called Bond 13a and put on the shelf between Octopussy and A View to a Kill.)

On Wednesday night we saw Hancock. It was OK, but it left me wanting. I could have used at least another half-hour of Will Smith ‘Tude. The main plot was workable, but the subplots (if you can even call them that) were thin and utterly disposable. And the origin story is revealed way too early. It would have been better if Hancock just was. I didn’t even care about where he came from – I just wanted to see him smash stuff around and make wisecracks. Oh, and Charlize Theron is hot.

The best part of Hancock was seeing the trailer for Quantum of Solace. I jumped out of my seat and cheered, thinking I’d be seeing it soon. But a second glance at the release date informed me that it wouldn’t be here until early next year. I go home at Christmas – I hope it will still be playing somewhere. I missed the chance to see the modern Casino Royale on the big screen because my “girlfriend” at the time couldn’t stomach it because her father also liked 007 movies. I saw it at home and when I tried to go to sleep that night I instead sat up handwriting a three-page sycophantic, rapturous “review.” I didn’t type it up and post it, because I feared it would make me look silly – much like these obsessive capsule-reviews probably are. =)

Election stuff: You’ve seen the Harpernomics ads. Those are a start, I guess. Why can’t the Liberals put out something like this, though? It’s so catchy!

Here’s something cute:
Harper Ad Spoof: Room for Everyone

South of the border, the VP debate was reasonably compelling – Biden was a bit restrained, and Palin performed respectably. Good for her, really. I wasn’t satisfied with either of their positions on gay marriage. Palin spoke of “tolerating” same-sex couples and perhaps begrudgingly granting rights such as hospital visits. Biden would grant marriage-equivalent rights, but not under marriage – he proposes what boils down to “separate but equal.” Um, NO. I’m sorry; I don’t find that the slightest bit acceptable. It’s every bit as odious as racial segregation was. Look, nobody’s talking about forcing religious entities to perform or even sanction same-sex marriages. We’re talking about allowing the same kind of social and political recognition that straight spouses are entitled to. There’s a big perception difference between, say, “boyfriend/girlfriend” and “husband/wife,” and we should afford gay couples who want to be married the same perception and recognition – we should extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. Oh, wait, we do. =)

People must like getting married – they do it so often and repeatedly! Allowing gay couples into marriage will hardly destabilize the storied, lifetime commitments made in the straight world. =)

School stuff: The pay discrepancy here is just retarded. I’ve talked about this before, but it’s getting more and more irritating by the day. Now, it’s one thing if novice teacher x gets a modest, liveable salary that’s only half or a third of what experienced teacher y is getting. I don’t categorically object to that. What drives me up the wall is that I’m going to have $5,500 saved for university at the end of this year of living off cup noodles and instant oatmeal. Not only is it a drop in the bucket, but if I were one of the local hires, who this term have one – one! – more class per week than I do, I would have been able to save $17,500 and not have to worry about tuition ever again. (I can thus safely say that the “intern” label is just a way to get people to do the same work for much less money.) Okay, if I were making more money, I’d probably be tempted to spend more, but I’d still make an effort.

When I was talking with one Western parent (which I suppose is a breach of the rules, but I’m almost daring these shysters to fire me), he said, “Oh, you guys can’t go anywhere, can you?” “Well, we have our mama-charis.” “Ha-ha, how quaint.” Stupid parents and their cars. =) Not that I need a car, but I can only dream about affording one, and I love to drive. When I take the children out in the afternoons to cross the street to the parking lot (God, that’s poor design, isn’t it?), I have to work hard to keep the resentment off my face when I see the Mercedes and Volvos and cavernous Toyotas come to pick them up. The whole setup here is a recipe for exploitation, and I am a target. If I could quit without severe consequences, I would. If I were fired, at least I could leave with my head held high. But surviving is not a bad option, either. There’s really not that much time left, and I’m still learning a lot of valuable lessons here.

One thing that sticks in my craw is the lack of congenial, relaxing space at school. Back in Canada, we actually have teacher’s lounges. Staff rooms have comfortable couches and are a place to eat, chat, or maybe do some lightweight work.

Here, if I’m feeling tired, I have to sneak up to the top of the East Building stairs (where the doors are to go out onto the roof) and have a quick nap there.

K. was telling me that some of the public schools here have lounges, and they sound like they could be better than Canada’s. They’re well appointed because they’re used to receive guests and have tea, but they’re also used by the teachers. The same cannot really be said of our well-appointed nook, because it’s the principal’s office. Generally speaking, you need permission to be in there (although right now that’s been relaxed because of the renovations that force us to use the room for utilitarian purposes).

I’m just, you know, getting tired of working under the eye of someone. I feel like I always have to look busy. It’s utterly stupid. Nobody can be effectively busy all the time. I feel like I’m expected to scurry about and look like I’m doing a million things at once. Gah, that’s no way to work!

OK, breathe. I’ve got a lot to be thankful for – yes, mostly in spite of the situation, but that’s still something valuable. And it’s not like the teachers or even the bosses are all bad, it’s mostly just the system that’s screwed up.

I wonder if the late Mr. M. knows how resentfully I eye his portrait that hangs in every room. If there’s clairvoyance in the Great Beyond, he’ll understand. (I say this knowing that I am in need of such clairvoyance myself. But… ( read on! )

You know something, though? Remember when you said "Yes, Will, run away from your problems, that's the answer." Or something like that. Of course you were being sarcastic. But in a way, I've found that it works! You can run away - to another country, another society. You bring your problems with you and discover new ones.

But when you're away from your home society, you get the advantage of looking on it from afar. I've given a lot of thought to where I was, what I'd done, and where I was going, and I'm learning a lot of things about myself and about other people and why they do and say the things they do.

I now see the opportunities I missed, the zigs I should have zagged, and why people have seen me the way they have. I can't correct everything, and I have decided to become unapologetic in pursuing my obsessive, odd interests, as that is the only way I'm going to accomplish anything with my wiring.

I can't wait to get back and apply my newfound knowledge. I had the same experience with Poland and Ukraine - after I returned, I found myself much more aware, and with Japan I think the same thing will happen again.

Sometimes it's good to sit out of things for a year, you know?

Current Mood: chipper

06:03 pm - 137. Wet Wednesday

Tonight we're celebrating L.'s birthday - we'll be meeting at Fuji Grand in about 90 minutes. We may go see Iron Man - word is it's pretty good.

This morning was dark, dreary, and rainy. It made me wonder what the consequences would be if I just didn't show up. I'd also woken up just minutes before my alarm. Don't you hate it when that happens?

When I got to the teacher's room, I sat next to F., and she asked how I was. I gave about the most dispirited "OK" reply imaginable.

"It's one of those mornings, isn't it?"
"Yep."
"I had to call two people who I know love me."

I get into class, and R-kun announces that he doesn't want to do our midterm test. Well, lah de dah. "You know what? I don't want to give the test, either. I want to go back to my room, have a beer, then catch an airplane and fly back to Canada."

Well, that shut him up. The students should realize that we're just as trapped and helpless as they are.

So here I am, teaching Year 3, and administering a test. The first item on it has students pick out the short vowel sound from a series of words; for example: "Sky, Flute, Cup" - you're supposed to pick cup. My own Grade 3 teacher taught us that long vowels are the ones that sound like letters, whereas the short vowels don't - but today I realized that was a gross oversimplification. What about "flute?" - we don't have a letter "oo." It's more about duration - hence the terms long and short! And this snapped into my mind after I'd given that set of questions! So I clarified that it was about duration, and went back and read it all again. It's my PEI education rearing its ugly head again.

Small mercies abounded today - the Year 9 math class was cancelled for their monthly Japanese-curriculum tests. Years 8 and 7 weren't keen on math, either. Actually, the only class I can really be said to teach is Year 7. Years 8 and 9 basically amount to me rediscovering algebra and geometry on the blackboard while the students whiz through their worksheets. The Year 7s still have enough to learn that I don't have to appear completely incompetent.

I'm actually thankful for teaching junior high math, as it will really help me out next summer. I would have been going in after nine years without math - having this experience, it'll only be about five months. Science too, has taught me critical thinking - between hearing myself talk and the questions that the children ask, I've discovered innumerable gaps in my conceptions of things, and I'm starting to be my own watchdog. I do fudge things sometimes, but I try my best to be honest about that, because science and authority should have nothing to do with each other - nothing ever happens "because I said so."

I was having fun using basic algebra to find angles and their complements and supplements, even though the students didn't give a crap. I suppose I could be doing more to "make it interesting." It's hard when I don't even really know the material, but maybe I'll find a way. Sometimes, though, I'm just stalling for time until the bells ring.

When I left for lunch, the sun was back and beaming brightly. It was very nice to see it again.

Current Mood: hungry

05:47 pm - 136. Clank Clank Clank

Our friends with the drills and hammers are back, and the noises they make can be disruptive - when I was administering a spelling test today, comically so. M., though, caught a lucky break. Just as the word "clanking" came up in reading class, one of the workers outside started banging on a pipe with a hammer. Perfect timing!

A-sensei's USB key had been missing for a few days, and she asked us to keep an eye out for it. I joked that we have a saying, "It's always in the last place you look." She thought for a second, and then she got it. She found the USB key a few minutes later, at the bottom of her bag. "Thank you so much!" she exulted. "It's in my bag, and that is the last place I looked!"

I had Life class with the First Years seventh period. Kill me with a hammer. Erasers flying, Japanese speaking, pencil cases falling - it was a mess. One girl even wrapped up some paper into a makeshift miniature noisemaker and tweeted it incessantly until I caught on.

To be fair to them, they weren't interested in what I was trying to get them to do, and I started off in an arcane fashion. I tried to get kids to read aloud from the handout for the rest of the class, and it was a disaster - in the two seconds it took for me to glance down and help a student with a word, there'd be ruckus all over the place. It was like being the Little Dutch Boy with his thumb stuck in the hole in the dam.

I got a plurality of the class working, somehow, but by then it was 3:00.

I felt like a disgrace to teaching. Aside from the fact that it was a learning experience for me, the whole thing was a waste of time all around - there were about a million things that the students and their teacher would rather have been doing.

Such is work.

Current Mood: sick

01:24 pm - 132. Reflections

I’m having too much fun following the elections. All this week I’ve been staying up way past my bedtime trolling for information. There are now three concurrent elections to follow: the obvious one, ours, and Halifax’s. O the punditry! The polls! The stakes! The spending! The debates!

I put together an essay for the S.G. website from snippets of prior writing. Mk. admitted she had overestimated the number of words required to constitute an “article,” and that’s quite understandable. There’s probably also a vast difference between what one could express using 1,200 to 1,500 Japanese characters and 1,200 to 1,500 English words. M. and I thus wrote beyond what she had in mind to ask for, but there shouldn’t be a problem.

The article was well-received, which delightfully surprised me. I thought my candor would be inappropriate, and I braced myself for the worst. But then I’m told that it was funny, and engaging, even though the reader had to use a dictionary. Yahtzee! That’s just what I’m looking for. I have a few readers for whom English is a second language and I often wonder if they get anything out of these posts. Since the essay is largely made up of material from the posts, perhaps I am doing something right.

Still, it was amazing to me how much a ‘slight’ change in audience affected the final prose. I was doing a surprising amount of formalizing – e.g. “kids” became “children,” and of course a lot of my observations were just too frank insensitive to make the final draft.

I wrote a note to Angela about how things are going:

( the note… )

So… the job’s going okay, and knowing that there are only three months left helps greatly. There are just four little things I’d like to talk about this morning:

1. I think there is a teacher in the Primary School who is convinced that I’m an idiot. Truth be told, I do (usually knowingly) err on the side of ridiculousness. I want to do my best to disprove my own Grade Five teacher’s notion that life isn’t just fun and games. (My own rant after the transcript shocks me. My arrogance and ignorance was, was then, and is still a liability. I deeply regret the comments I made and would delete them, but that kind of concealment seems unfair. So, read at your own risk.) I like being “out there.” It’s just part of the joke. I’ve embraced it. I don’t, of course, feel that “I’m perfect the way I am,” but I do feel that this is the way I function best – keeping a healthy humour and a marked affection for the sublime.

This teacher gets on my nerves almost every day. Or if she’s not doing that, she’s just plain frightening. I can sometimes hear her screaming at her class from two stories below. And when we’re working together, I don’t get any credit for having any prior experience or present intelligence whatsoever. Ideas coming from me are summarily rejected – they’re coming from me, after all.

A former employee I talked to characterized her as “so not my favourite person,” and I have to agree. Sometimes I walk down the stairs wishing unspeakable things for her. But in a way she is a tragic figure. She is unapproachable, and will never change, and S.G. will allow her tyrannical narcissism as long as it serves their business interests. (Sigh.)

2. Good news: I’m teaching in neither the sankanbi nor the open lesson. I’m off the hook for the former because I’m teaching junior high math that day, and for the latter because M. didn’t teach during the last open lesson and I guess they want to show off the Year Threes doing math. Although I felt sympathy for my colleagues, each of whom will be teaching in both, I danced a jig when I read the sheet – the open lesson in particular was the one thing I dreaded, and now it’s not a factor.

So far this term, I think I’ve been given a fair shake and all the breaks. If I keep my eyes on the prize, I’ll make it.

3. Ch., bless her, is intently focused on homework completion. I was, too, when I began, and again when I started with my current class, but in the face of abysmal compliance, I almost had to relent. I don’t have the time to haul children in every recess and make them do the work, and many of the children are hopelessly illiterate anyway.

Ch. was told before she started that there was one child who, “doesn’t do homework.” Yes, present tense: habit. But Ch. managed to coax this child into doing homework! And good for her, and good for that student.

She was also told by a departing foreign teacher that we shouldn’t say “doesn’t do homework” on the report cards. “Then how about ‘lazy as sin?’” M. quipped. No, it would be better to write something like, “If the homework improves…”

I’ve already talked about the politics and chicanery inherent in our report cards, but this got me thinking about something I wrote for the brilliant boy in my previous class.

He has the problem of being gifted – he’s bored by school and accustomed to things coming easily to him. When things come along that require focus (no matter how smart you are), the hard-workers will outdo him. When work of a cumulative nature starts to pile up, he could find himself in trouble. This is exactly what happened to me when I was his age.

This is part of what I wrote:

“His need to follow his own path, can, occasionally, lead to minor problems.”

I deeply regret saying this and I hope it does not imprint on his psyche. There is a problem – but it’s not him, it’s the system.

4. We’re hopelessly far away from becoming an immersion school. The kids speak Japanese to each other all throughout our classes, and we’re basically powerless to do anything to stop it. The Japanese teachers sometimes tell us to “Be stricter! Be stricter!” but that is a crude ‘solution.’

When Ch., M., and I were having our chat, Ch. brought up that there is also no differentiation between where they play and where they learn. Where do they run amok between periods? In the classroom. Where do they play games? In the classroom. Where do they eat? In the classroom. The kids need a proper playground, not a dustbowl and a few jungle gyms. And shorter school hours, and more holidays. The list could go on.

If I were in charge, the first thing I would do is cancel the IEC program outright (it could work, but the school is unwilling to do what it must to make it work effectively) and replace it with supplemental English based on student ability. I’m basically suggesting that English be separated from the grades and put into its own “pass-a-test, go-to-the-next-level” system – the way languages are successfully taught in the civilized world. In my system, instead of “Grade Three” English, I would be teaching Level Three English. The illiterate members of my class would still be in Level One (and they would stay there until they “get it”), and the brilliant ones would come to be at Grade One, too – Eiken’s Grade One.

But maybe the brilliant ones will succeed anyway – but it will be in spite of S.G., not because of it.

S.G. has a responsibility to put aside its administrative feuds and show innovation and leadership. But that’s probably not going to happen.

Current Mood: hungry

07:27 am - The Hesei 20 Sports Festival

The Hesei 20 Sports Festival
by William Matheson

( Full article )

08:26 pm - 131. Writing + Intrigue

I had a slow weekend – I used it to veg out and catch up on my writing. It’s good to be caught up, but now I’m looking around for something (I want) to do! I could get into organizing photos, but I’m tempted to just leave the whole job for when I return. It’s the kind of work that I like to switch into nocturnal mode to do – and I can’t do that when I’m working 8 to 5. Plus, when the evenings come, work is the last thing I want to do. But we’ll see. It’s imperative that I stay caught up on the writing, as mental impressions are not nearly so permanent as the photographic kind. I let the Ukraine photos sit for almost two years (I won’t do that this time), and there really wasn’t a great loss for it. There would certainly be if I’d tried to write about Ukraine two years after the fact. Most likely, it wouldn’t get done.

Actually, I just remembered now that Mk. asked us to write an essay about the sports festival – 1200 to 1500 words. Gah. I think it’ll be copypasta, but I’ll share it with you behind a cut if there’s anything new in it (or even if not).

Oh, the child from the incident is moving away to a new school – it doesn’t have anything to do with me, but when he came into the staff room with his parents this afternoon for what I later learned was a wrapping-things-up meeting with his homeroom Japanese teacher, I was sweating bullets. It wasn’t the prospect of getting fired that frightened me; it was the inevitability of having to deal with the senseis. And Mk. in there, too, “translating.” Gah. Gah. Gah. Fortunately, this did not come to pass! (And there’s one less problem child to deal with.)

So yeah, I had a pretty slow weekend. I didn’t get out much, but by a twist of fate I wasn’t around when F. knocked on my door about going out with the gang to an Indian restaurant in town. Later, when she was getting in touch with S-go, he said, “Oh, Will’s here!”

“Really?”

“Yes, he’s on a date!”

So F. and Ch. are intrigued, and their anticipation mounts as they go into the restaurant, and they see… two men. F. wondered if it was that Japanese English teacher I sometimes hang out with. And then they finally discovered that it was the other Will. It probably didn’t take them long - he’s black, and, yes, quite gay. He’s cool, so I’m happy to be confused with him.

Today’s exhortation, delivered over the PA: “Let’s keep our bodies clean!”
I turned to R-kun, a native speaker. “Kind of personal, isn’t it?” He got the joke.

Current Mood: anxious

10:41 pm - 128. Typhoon Approaching

The remnants of Typhoon Sinlaku are currently drenching Kyushu and are headed for Shikoku. Over the next twenty-four hours, we’re expected to get up to 350mm of rain – that’s 35 centimetres or almost fourteen inches. Think what you could do with all that rain! =)

Tomorrow’s classes may be washed out – but don’t worry, we’re still expected to go to work as usual! It’s not that bad for us, but it could be a huge pain for those who have to commute – it’d be too wet and treacherous to cycle, and public transit of all kinds may be shut down. Some also have the care of small children to consider – M. is in a situation where his son’s day care is usually cancelled on typhoon days, but he and his wife will still have to go to work, and he can’t bring his son to school for liability reasons. He was advised that he could take one of his remaining five paid holidays.

Please, if I ever get the notion of coming back to settle down in this country once I’m home again, slash the tires on the shuttle van, disconnect my phone, and chain me to my house by my ankle.

While we were working on costumes for the “Y.M.C.A.” dance, we got on the subject of holidays. M. mentioned to Mk. that teachers in Northern North America get July and August off, and she was shocked. She couldn’t even envision such a thing.

It’s not just that Japan demands workaholism – it goes further: they don’t actually want you to have a life outside of work. When M. was a JET ALT at a public school in Ehime, he knew a Japanese teacher who loved to travel. And she would travel – she wouldn’t be going to Disneyland; she’d go to far-off places like Madagascar or Alaska.

Unfortunately, there was an administration change at this school, and the new principal was far less permissive. Oh, she’d have the same holidays as before, but the principal declared that travel was too dangerous and that she’d need to get his permission to go anywhere. She still travelled, but now she had to do it in secret: “I’m going to Alaska… but don’t tell anyone!” Less omiyage to buy, I suppose.

As you might guess, M. and his JET colleagues were instructed to report all travel to their city hall – where they were going, when they’d be leaving, when they’d be back, and that sort of thing. It make my heart sink a little to hear this – until now, I’d been thinking of coming back to Japan as a JET participant, but it’s sounding only slightly less draconian and perhaps even more futile than working here at S.G. When I go home, I think I’ll stay in school until I learn to do something useful.

Futile, I say? Well, for the large part, yes. I have six or seven students in my class that are at an appropriate language level to have English as their medium of instruction. Unfortunately, that leaves sixteen or seventeen that struggle, to varying degrees. I said that my problem student left, but even now I still have three or four students who can’t even read. How am I supposed to teach possessive pronouns in writing class (e.g.: "Her eyes are blue.") to people who can’t even read them aloud?

I wish the classes were set up according to ability. I’d love to help kids learn to read, but third grade isn’t really the time or place for it. I really hate that there are so many choices I have to make in the classroom every day – if I give one student the attention they need, I’m depriving the others of the attention they need. I’m starting to see the classroom model as something fundamentally flawed, for this and many other reasons.

I wish the evaluations here had teeth, but as things are the school has no incentive to set any standards. There’s an entrance exam, but it’s purely ceremonial – the results are ignored. As one other foreign teacher put it, the only thing that’s being examined is the parent’s bankbook. This is why many private schools are actually worse than their public counterparts. When I had my arm broken by the son of an Elmsdale timber tycoon at Sandy Lake Academy, that thug still went on to "win" the Most Improved Student Award just a month later, and yet he may have deserved it. I should have realized that this sort of bottom-line thinking rationalizing would apply in Japan as much as it ever did in Bedford, but fortunately nobody here is making any visits to the ER (moving accidents aside).

God, I was so naïve in coming here.

On the mellow-bright side, I really will miss my kids – I think they’re terrific. Perhaps it’s best that I will never teach again, as they can live on forever in my memory as the high-water mark. The kids are so endearing that they make me want to set up a proper school that would address the needs of children first and management second. In my system, there would almost be as many teachers as children. The teachers would be highly specialized, and allowed to excel. The students would have individualized programs, and they would receive an appropriate balance of agency and guidance. But my system is and will probably always be a fairy tale.

Maybe I will teach again, but I will never again allow myself to be so asymmetrically exploited in the interest of making someone else money. Honestly, I would have run away screaming long ago, but then I would be failing my colleagues, as they’d be forced to cover my classes during the long wait for a new foreign teacher. We must all suffer together. =)

Current Mood: contemplative

04:14 pm - 117. Temples 87, 86 + Journey to Hiroshima

(Written from notes taken September 5th)

On Friday the 5th, there was a nice cool breeze, and rainy skies. Because of this respite from the sun, we were better able to appreciate the Shinra-like qualities of the opening march. The sun came out again just before noon – mercifully, it wasn’t around long enough to roast us again.

The relay, a source of frustration the day before, was a lot of fun this day. We completed two whole runs in less than forty minutes, and finished ten minutes early. I got to run in the relay – I stood in for A---, the slow dresser from the previous day.

The relay format is ingenious. It’s structured so that everyone participates: Years One through Three run quarter laps around the track, then Years Four through Six run half laps (and they really book it). The entire school is divided into six teams, and I guess that means there are three teams representing each main team (Red and White). Every time it’s run, it’s anybody’s to win, and it stays thrilling right up to the very last lap. It’s a great event – it’s arguably the most exciting thing in the festival, and so it’s the last event on the program.

As luck would have it, I didn’t have any classes scheduled for the afternoon, so I used my time from the open lesson with the kinders to have the afternoon off and leave early to see some temples in Kagawa on the way up. I was going to catch a train at around half past twelve, so I had a few minutes to fold some clothes and pack, singing Quad City DJ’s to myself while grabbing my necessaries.

The train ride into Kagawa was gorgeous – the tracks go through lots of small villages and hidden valleys, and the mountain pass on the prefectural border is something else, with its periodic tunnels and glimpses of greenery and the Inland Sea. I’d been on this line before, but it was at night – I knew we were going through tunnels and sinking into valleys, but I had no idea it was all so pretty. Unfortunately, I was fighting with my camera batteries during this time and have no pictures of any of it.

Temple 87: It’s a long walk from Zoda Station on the JR line, but it’s near the terminus of the Nagao Line of the Kotoden Railway. I was travelling JR, so I had to take the walk. I arrived at the station at 1:52pm and left again at 3:56. I’d recommend budgeting at least that much time, and more if you’re not a fast walker.

Once I got a few blocks away from the station, I was really aching for a place to stash my duffel bag and umbrella. Luckily, I spotted a house that had a very narrow walled-off part of its “lawn” next to its garage – like absurdly narrow; you couldn’t stand two people abreast in it. There was no car in said garage, so when the coast was clear I tucked my things in on the other side of the wall and continued walking. There was nothing in the bag but clothing and toiletries – nothing I couldn’t replace, but I doubted the bag would even be noticed, unless the owners made a habit of peering in the nook beside their garage every afternoon.

I was working my way to the temple based on a photo I took of the locator map that was beside the station, and even with that I took a wrong turn and went on for some minutes before I realized what had happened. Luckily, this was in the early going, so it wasn’t cause for panic.

The temple was lovely – its attached cemetery was in the process of being reconstructed, so there was a lot of equipment and caution tape around. The temple office was being attended by a bona fide young monk – he stamped my book about as expertly as could possibly be imagined. Outside, there was a tour group of pilgrims – they go from temple to temple by bus – and what got me was that for this one shrine they stood off to the side of it in the shade and worshipped from there. That kind of pragmatism in a religious setting surprises me.

On the way back, I found my things right where I left them, and I got to the station with more than ten minutes to spare. The walk was flat, quiet and really gave me the chance to see the area. In the end, I can safely recommend accessing Temple 87 from Zoda Station – just be sure to budget some time.

Between 87 and 86 there’s a place and a station called Orange Town. Isn’t that the coolest thing? It’s like you’ve just stepped into a Pokémon game or something.

Temple 86: Getting off at Shido, you find yourself in a small port town, and there’s a large marina along the walk to the temple. I stashed my things under a row of trees between two parking lots at the marina.

The temple grounds are expansive and filled with trees, and with the setting sun it was hard to get many good pictures, but I managed a few. I got into the temple office just a few minutes before 5, and I’m sure I was the last stamp of the day. The person there had a neat mechanical counter that he thumbed after he stamped my book; I should have asked to see it.

Back at the station, I got my ticket stamped – no more “free” rides for me, I guess. =) But I did hop on a limited express to Takamatsu – thereby making it there non-stop instead of with eight stops. It was lightning fast and would have been worth the extra ¥320, but nobody was checking tickets, so I got away with this one. With such a supreme advantage in speed, no wonder the express surcharge to go all the way from capital-to-capital is ¥1150 – and that’s on top of the ¥1410 basic fare.

Takamatsu: Beautiful! I think I could live here – there’s a really nice waterfront, and the downtown is very walkable. My camera batteries were crapping out again and I was reduced to a kind of Lomography (I couldn’t use my viewfinder), but even shooting blindly I think I caught a few interesting things.

There are all kinds of transportation connections – high-speed ferries were going in and out almost by the minute. The train station is really nice, too. Tokushima’s is in a good location, but it’s not nearly as new-looking once you get to the tracks.

At the station, I had two ¥100 burgers at Lotteria – their ¥100 burgers are slightly better than McDonald’s ¥100 burgers, but most McDonald’s have power outlets – sometimes at every seat! Lotteria’s were sparse and capped-over. I’ve gone into McDonald’s several times just to charge my batteries, so I definitely see power outlets as a way to attract customers.

I was getting on a Marine Liner here – I noticed that after the train pulled in, either the boarding passengers or a JR employee would go up and down the cars flipping the seats around. With just a push the seats and benches on many cars go from facing one way to facing the other way, which is an essential feature on these railways where they don’t turn the cars around for their return journeys.

So far, so good – my adherence to my itinerary was 100% so far. I felt that the real challenge would be coming back. I would have all day Saturday in Hiroshima, which would mean that I could sort of relax, but I’d have a lot of things to cram into that day, too.

Okayama: I had just under an hour here, so I got out onto the streets and took some night shots. There were lots of teenagers hanging out and playing music in the underground passages. I swapped my rechargeables for single-use batteries, and suddenly my camera problems had vanished – I had bought these 2650 mAh Duracell Ni-MH batteries thinking that they’d be an improvement over my fading Panasonic 2100s, but it hasn’t turned out to be the case. When these Duracells give up (and it looks like they are already doing that), I’ll go back to Panasonics.

I was a little bit later than I expected in getting to the local train that would continue the journey – as expected, there was a huge crowd on board, and I didn’t get a seat until just before Fukuyama, when another big crowd got on.

Mihara: I had to switch trains here (from one local to another) - when I first got out and looked at the clock I thought I would be missing my transfer! But it turns out I just misread the analogue clock in haste. And then I realized I’d left my umbrella on the first train. Damn. Well, umbrellas are cheap here – people are always using them, losing them, and just picking them up.

I sat down near the back of the car and smelled something – what was it? Did someone puke or is there some rotten food… and then I noticed that this is one of those local trains that has a toilet on board. Ah. I then moved to the other end of the car.

This was a looooong train ride; I was starting to feel half-dead and we were still a number of stations out. I couldn’t listen to music or podcasts, because my earphones let in too much noise. I made a memo to myself to buy better headphones after payday.

I may haha "bite the bullet" & go back to Okayama on Shinkansen cuz this is ridiculous. It really was. Back in Kansai, the rapid services between Himeji and Maibara are slick - but in this area there’s next-to-no rapid service. Anyone who wants to get anywhere quickly and comfortably is forced to use the $hinkan$€n. I don’t know if the ticket I was using is good for basic fares on Shinkansen, but the basic fare from Okayama to Hiroshima was ¥2940, and the surcharge ¥2410, for a potential charge of ¥5350. OUCH. It reduces a three-hour trip to forty minutes, but still.

Hiroshima: I arrived at Hiroshima at 11:35pm, and was greeted by a dark but lively plaza. I had some difficulty finding the cybercafé I wanted to go to, and when I got there it was full – not to mention that along the way I had the misfortune to walk past a gang of miscreants who tried to frighten me and then laughed about it. I’ll never forget their wicked expressions and hollers. After the first place, I had to carefully pick my way to the second place, and I very nearly didn’t find it as a lot of its complex was closed for the night and the cybercafé elevator was tucked away on the far side of the building – I only got there because one of the all-night-music-store employees helped me find it.

I got to sleep, but I had to fool myself into it – my trick was pretending I was in my aunt’s spare bedroom in Souris, and I was tired enough that I could convincingly delude myself into feeling that way, and so soon I was asleep.

05:22 pm - 126. The Sports Festival Rehearsal Incident

I feel like I’ve overstayed my welcome in Japan. Whenever I go places, I do so with a guilty conscience – deep inside, I wonder if they know what I really think about Japan, what I’ve written about it – that I’m showing the severest ingratitude in the face of the privilege of being allowed to come here. I’m starting to notice the way people look at me in general. I don’t like it anymore.

I’ve always been an idiot-savant, but in terms of my job I feel like people just see the idiot and not the savant. I’m beginning to be viciously mocked by the junior high students – ball players, too, not just the IEC students – and there are even a few primary school students who are doing so as well. I was made fun of quite a bit in Poland and Ukraine as well, so this shouldn’t come as a great surprise, I suppose.

I have to be able to take a little bit of mockery, though. If one’s modus operandi is ridiculousness, it goes with the territory. I wish I’d known back when I was in junior high that I’d always be ridiculed to some extent no matter where I went. And, you know, what’s the big deal? Nobody ever kicks a dead dog – maybe they are seeing the savant. At least sometimes, I hope.

I should also make an effort to be less negative about things. Back when M. and I were joking about the questionnaire, F. stopped me and said, “You know, there’s a lot of negativity coming from you,” intoned with an unspoken, “Stop. It. Right. Now.” Well, you can imagine how I (wanted to) react to that.

I limited myself to, “Well, that’s my business.”

“Yes, but if you express it, it becomes our business.”

Oh, well lah de lah. Is this another thing about what I’m allowed and not allowed to say? And since when do I have to take orders from you? Who made you the Grand High Poobah? It took every bit of strength I had not to say these things.

Somehow – I forget exactly how – the situation became defused and we were joking about it:

“I was tempted to reply, ‘Nyah, nyah… This is why I hate working with other people-’”

“‘- and having to behave,’” she interrupted. “‘Where’s my lolly?’”

Ouch. That hurt.

(By the way, people who tell you to stay positive are usually just trying to tell you to put up with something that you shouldn’t. Just a tip.)

Friday was eventful. We started off with a late morning meeting. We foreign teachers had been waiting in the office for it to start – I almost advised M. to go ahead with it (he was on week duty, so it was his job to initiate it and lead us through kengaku no seishin), as the principal was there, but we waited until quarter after, and then we finally were given the go-ahead. And then, in the course of the meeting, H-sensei lambasted us for not being outside helping them set up for the sports festival rehearsal: “You all work for the primary school, so when you see…” Her tone was completely unnecessary – it was an innocent mistake: the morning meeting usually starts at eight, and it’s a very bad thing to be late for, and while I saw them outside moving stuff around, I didn’t know – nay, none of us knew – whether that or the meeting was the more important thing. (And why are you giving us shit about what we’re supposed to be doing when you – habitually! – won’t tell us what we’re supposed to be doing until after we’re supposed to have done it? All they had to do was tell us the night before or even shout to us as we were walking in, “Hey, please, jump in, don’t worry about the meeting.” Sheesh.) I explained about the not-knowing-what-was-the-most-important-thing to H-sensei and W-sensei after the meeting, and she was like, “Oh, OK.” In my opinion, she erred, but we make ten times as many mistakes as she does, so whatever.

So before long we’re outside under the hot sun again for our “dress rehearsal” for the sports festival. I think the sun and the previous experience with H-sensei had me on a short fuse.

A kid from Year Two came up to me, pointed at my chest, and said, “Mr. Matheson, chikumi!” It didn’t need translation.* I grabbed him by the shoulders and yelled, “You… never… say that!” and with a growl I shoved him away, and he was picking himself up off the ground.

All I saw was rage. I wanted to throttle the little bugger. Of all the sore points he could have hit…

I saw the other foreign teachers talking, and soon F. came up and all but dragged me to the office. Take your water bottle with you. He’s just a kid. You can’t do that. You’re supposed to be the adult. You’re the disciplinarian. You’re supposed to set a good example. She went in to speak to Mk., and it was then that I began to think that this might have been my last day at S.G. This would be a great, worthy excuse to fire me. There was a precedent, as one foreign teacher had been fired for hitting a kid. Maybe I wanted out so badly that I took it out on this kid.

I wondered if anyone there knew the hell I’d gone through to get here. Well, that kid had no way of knowing. He’s a congenital shit disturber – in countenance very much like my cousin Colin when he was that age – but he’s just a kid. I can’t be lashing out at people like that. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Maybe I’m just not fit for polite company. I’m still the same old screaming, immature piece of crap I was in high school. Who knows what I’m capable of doing? I could suddenly hurt or even injure someone! No, I wasn’t fit for polite company anymore. It was now time to go back to Canada and live in that shack by the river that everyone always saw me living in.

F. and Mk. emerged, and as F. returned to the sports “field,” I sat down to have a very interesting meeting with Mk.

After I talked about my own mistakes first, she allowed me to vent my frustrations – I don’t mean the way that some people do it when you get up in the other person’s face – no, not that, I just took deep breaths and went over the frustrations and contradictions blow-by-blow. In one way or another, I mentioned most of the things I’ve mentioned here, although probably in a more polite manner.

Her answer to some of the questions I posed was, “Management can’t disclose why they do what they do.” Hoo-boy. I mentioned the specific issue of telling the parents or letting them assume that we’re real teachers – it seemed like chicanery, if not outright dishonesty.

Well, this is a private school… parents have high demands. Well, why not raise tuition and give them what they want? Oh, but the tuition is already high – eight times higher than public school tuition.

“How much does a typical public school cost?”
“Um… I can’t say.”
“Don’t know, or can’t say?”
“I can’t say how much public school cost because then you would figure out how much S.G. cost.”
“But I work here. I should know that.”
“Well, you can look it up.”

Well, in any case, I already have an idea how much S.G. costs – about $800-$900 a month, I think (and there are discounts available for the children of staff (50%) as well as second and third children from the same family) – a princely sum, but I’ve heard worse. There’s also an enrolment fee that’s the better part of $1000 and various other dings, but any hardworking family could afford to send a child or two here without having to live off millet rice.

I also admitted to Mk. that I would have left some time ago were it not for the facts that it takes three months to get a new teacher and that they have my airfare hanging over me. But I did confirm that I was still prepared to finish my contract. Yes, I can do this for three more months. (That’s not that long of a time, when you think about it.)

No, there was no talk of me leaving, except what I brought up myself. I wanted to apologize to K-kun out of principle, but she said to wait – sometimes such “discipline” is necessary by Japanese standards. She’d talk to H-sensei about it. And in the end, H-sensei agreed with Mk.’s sentiment: “He did something bad to you, so he needed to be disciplined.” Since he wasn’t hurt and went back to enjoying the festival rehearsal, I wasn’t to apologize and undermine the ‘discipline’ – unless his parents were to complain, then all bets would be off, as they were when that other foreign teacher was released.

Mk. confirmed that they really wanted to keep me for the three remaining months – mostly for the kids (and mostly my homeroom kids, presumably), as they wanted to keep me. Well, jackpot! If I can only have one or the other, I’d much rather have the love and respect of the innocent children than of management. That they find room in their hearts for a curmudgeon like me really says something. It looks like I’m safe for the time being.

I left the meeting, returned to the sports festival rehearsals, and spoke to F. I said that it looked like I wouldn’t be packing my bags just yet. Oh no, she exclaimed, that wasn’t it at all. I thought she was carting me off to be fired – but she was really just acting to defuse the situation, as well as acting in my interest, too.

Things settled down, and the rest of the rehearsal went by without incident – save a dust devil that blew through, knocking some things around and scaring some kids. I’d never seen one before; it wasn’t very big, and it lasted less than a minute, but it was quite the thing to see up close.

In the afternoon after classes were out, we had a very, very long meeting about the sports festival. The principal brought us some tea and Calpis to ease the pain. They could have just given us the Coles Notes afterwards – it was also frustrating because we had to sit in a circle to get the odd translation while the other teachers, at their desks, could do other work (like correcting things) while the meeting went on (and on). They finally let us go just before 6:00, and after that I started working on my preparations for Tuesday. I finally got out at 7:30. “You a very hard worker!” A-sensei exclaimed. “Sometimes,” I grinned.

Just one more little thing that bugs me (and this’ll be it for today, I promise): It’s really annoying when someone is ordering you to “please focus on their pronounciation.” It’s enough to drive you straight up the wall. I think it’s an effective acid test concerning English – you have no business talking about pronunciation if you can’t even pronounce it. =)

Tomorrow: Hiroshima!

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* - During the meeting, Mk. confirmed that, yes, he did mean “tits.” I knew he did anyway because some of the other year two kids were giving me a hard time about it the last time we went swimming, enough to effectively ruin the experience. My homeroom students, to their credit, either didn’t care or were polite enough to keep it to themselves – so the one time when it was just them, I was able to have a happy experience. And yes, call me a hypocrite – I don’t want to suppress my own negativity, yet I condemn these children for pointing out my bodily irregularities that will be sending me to the gym as soon as I get back to school. I think I’ll take the equivalent of four full-year courses instead of five and dedicate the extra time to fitness classes – they’ll be free, so why not?

Current Mood: restless

01:17 pm - 125. September School Stuff

Over the past two weeks I’ve racked up pages and pages of notes about S.G. With apologies to Paul Lutus, there should be a standard frustration form for S.G. teachers:

• I simply cannot believe this school has / doesn’t have / does / doesn’t do ________________,
• That my ___________________ university put me here on the basis of their __________________________ reputation,
• Especially when they pay us ___________ but their tuition costs _______________ megabucks.

Current Mood: uncomfortable