This Saturday a bunch of people in 行田 (Gyouda) had a halloween party. You can find the pictures in my gallery installation but they're private photos so you'll have to have a login.
In other news I added a new plugin to my blogging system and now every post gives the reader the ability to "subscribe." In theory, this means that if you comment and want notification when others comment (or I change the post), you can subscribe. Of course, if you read my posts by way of RSS, this is made largely pointless I think. Some sites seem to update their RSS feed when new comments are posted, but I'm unsure if mine does.
I've read and heard a lot about the Japanese educational system emphasizing rote memorization, versus the "western" educational system emphasizing "thinking for one's self." I never thought my high school experience particularly emphasized being a real analytical thinker, but I wonder ...
I have a private student, and in most of my lessons I try to work on analyzing the readings we do and understanding the meaning, rather than pure memorization and regurgitation. Thus far, in almost a year of teaching, he seems rather incapable of analytical thinking. My regular high school students seem to exhibit similar patterns. Is it the age? The education system? Hmm ...
I know I'd sworn off of frequent link-posting, and since I haven't posted a link to a news story in quite a while, I think I can get away with squeaking this in.
I am utterly amazed by this article. I hope you enjoy it to the same capacity that my attention was captured. It's about "cybernetic" hearing implants ... directly in your skull.
I am all over the photo entries this week. Well, I guess it's more interesting for people anyway. Despite not many people knowing what it is or where it is, the town of Ashikaga (足利) has a lot going for it. It has Japan's first school (I think college, but I'm not sure), a bunch of interesting shrines and temples, and a really beautiful flower park. It's also just nice to take a walk around the not-so-busy streets.
Over time, I build up random pictures that I've taken singly but haven't been able to group with anything else. Like here and here and even here I've finally built up enough to group them together and label them as "Miscellaneous." To me, they're pretty entertaining. Some of them, I wish I had posted them sooner rather than forgetting about them.
I went running tonight for the first time in a while. 40 minutes out running in Gyoda felt so good. Maybe my legs will hate me tomorrow, but it feels good for now.
Considering Shinshukan's 12K "marathon" is coming up and I'm running in it, this should hopefully become a regular occurrence.
We had a small 27th birthday celebration for my friend Naoki at a local Okonomiyaki (self-made fried thickass savory pancakes, if you will) place. I thought it would be a good idea to show off the kinds of things we enjoy eating sometimes.
I'll eternally think you're extra-special (isn't that reward enough?) if you can comment and guess some ingredients that make up this masterpiece.
Extra-extra-extra-special bonus points if you can figure out how one eats it.
Anyone who has lived in/visited Japan doesn't count (sorry, those 3 readers, no extra-special points for you this time)!
The black surface you see is a heated frying surface built into your table.
I used to hate カラオケ (karaoke). Before Japan I hated it because it involved singing in a bar with some douchebag DJ who decided whether or not to play the song you wanted to sing to. It also involved singing like a fool in front of the entire bar.
Japan's version of karaoke is light years better, as the technology is better, there's no douchebag DJ, and you only have to make a fool of yourself in front of your friends in a private room. But I still hated it. Why would I want to sing over some cheesy synthesized version of one of my favorite songs, when I can belt it out over the real one at home? To boot, the karaoke places almost never have what I really want to sing.
The discovery I made rather recently was that alcohol (so often as is the case) is the key. I went out with Pete and Will for a Boy's Night Karaoke session. We got drunk and howled to our hearts' content to such classics that you would never want to be caught dead singing in front of your friends.
Now I've realized that karaoke can indeed be very fun. Just add a smattering of know-how (don't choose songs you want to sing but rather songs you think will be fun to butcher), good friends,and more than a sprinkle of booze.
So probably no one cares, but Jamiroquai is coming to Tokyo in November. I was sad because I thought tickets had sold out. It turns out I was just not understanding the Japanese page. Big surprise there.
For $80 (the most I have ever paid and hopefully ever will pay for a concert) they had better completely rock my socks. Hell, I'll even settle for "r0x0ring my b0x0rs."
It really is true that every time I go to the Post Office, something goes wrong.
This was a simple pay-the-water-bill expedition, which turned into a bureaucratic semi-nightmare. It involved people calling the tax office, someone telling me something about my savings account which I didn't understand at all, and a lot of waiting.
You'd think I would've gotten used to it by now ... or at least learned to remember my dictionary.
Lately I've been starting to study for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which I will be taking in December. I'm taking the "level 3," test, which is second to lowest. It basically gets you nowhere in terms of a job or whatever, but it'll be nice to know where my level is. I was emphatically assured by a number of people that I could ease through level 3 without a problem. Apparently they didn't know how bad my Kanji study has been.
I know nothing! Yipe! The upcoming months should prove interesting ...
Though in to be fair, 300 to memorize out of the 40,000-50,000 total doesn't seem so bad.
Again...and again! I lost arm wrestling matches three more times, to two separate students. The second one is a rather small student, definitely smaller than me. So what gives? My wrist hurts so much now I have trouble typing. But I had to redeem myself ... instead losing what little dignity remained.
On the bright side, I'm told it's not my brute strength that's lacking but instead, it's just that I have sucky technique.
Whoever thought arm wrestling involved technique?
Yesterday Shinshukan (my school) had its big yearly sports festival. It was very fun and tiring for everyone. You can see quite a few different games/races here. Though the teachers weren't in the competitions (I wanted to be but there aren't enough young male teachers to make up a relay team), it was still a fun time. Classes today have been difficult for students and teachers alike!
We went to Yokohama today to explore the biggest Chinatown outside of China. It was big and disturbingly clean. I've come to expect Chinatown to be smelly and crowded. While crowded, Yokohama's Chinatown was hardly smelly.
In other news, the Yankees lost. After the Red Sox got molested by the White Sox, that's all I had to hope for. Go Angels!
There wasn't anything really worth taking pictures of today except a
particularly interesting cat ...
My school had its yearly school festival this weekend. It was great fun. As you can see the students got totally into it! There were ghost houses, stores, movie houses, cheerleaders, dancers ... you name it!
My English club has a store to run tomorrow and Saturday, which is my school's yearly festival. I hope to have pictures of the festival up as soon as possible, because it's really amazing how charged the kids get for the festival.
For the store I went with the other club advisor (my favorite teacher, Ms. Ishizuka) to the bank to get lots of change. After all, you need quite a bit when most of the items you're selling (stuff I schlepped back from the States) are under 50 yen. At the bank, I discovered that they have machines that will give you change. I thought that was quite nifty, until I discovered that it requires the use of your cash card (why??) and only allows you to get change once in a day (again, why??). We didn't get enough change the first time and upon discovering this problem we went to the teller. We wanted 1000 yen ($10) more in 10 yen coins. She told us we get charged 300 yen ($3) for anything above 1000. What? Oh and you have to fill out this paperwork too.
We didn't fill it out correctly the first time and had to split the 1000 yen between us to avoid the charge.
Banking in Gyoda at its finest.
Last year, the genius factory down at my head office (Saitama prefecture's Board of Education) decided that it would be a great idea to combine a very low-level technical school and a moderate-level regular school. The results of the combination are the enormous school I teach at now.
Since then:
- Countless wallets and cell phones have been stolen from classrooms in the normal school.
- Tech school students wander the halls at any time, disrupt class, and mouth off to teachers.
- Fights, once extremely rare, are slowly becoming a regular occurrence.
- The school has become a disgusting garbage dump thanks to the tech students' littering.
- Teachers endure stabbing threats.
Let me make it perfectly clear (in case you already hadn't figured it out) that I do not like the technical school. The students are animals, not children. It is a complete waste of our time and the prefecture's money to try to throw teachers at them in classes they refuse to try in.
In trying to save a little money, the prefecture has succeeded. It has also succeeded in depriving hundreds of well-meaning and hard-working students of a decent learning environment. I'm sure they're pleased as punch about their money-saving decision so they can throw even more money at Wako-Kokusai high school (Saitama's notorious pet high school, which has multiple foreigners doing the same job as me for less students). Congratulations, assholes. Why don't you try to come here and teach for a week?