Spectator sports?

Been busy, as usual. Nothing really special to report lately, beyond some standard interpersonal drama that I was only tangentially related to.

I did go to Gifu prefecture (about 2 1/2 hours west of Tokyo by bullet train) last weekend to visit a friend and see the traditional art/industry of Cormorant fishing. As a UNESCO-recognized "indigenous cultural treasure," it's not a bad way to spend an evening drinking beer with your friends. The whole point is supposed to be using these half tame water birds (called "Cormorants") on leashes and choke-chains to catch little sweetfish (called "ayu") by torchlight. Really, few things are as absurdly relaxing as taking an evening cruise on a warm summer night, drinking and eating with your friends, and watching a man in a grass skirt force a riverbird to cough up a fistfull of live fish by the light of a roaring wood fire suspended in an iron basket from the prow of a 18-foot boat.

Definite improvement in language use...

About five months ago, one of my private students told me she wanted to meet after work in Kawagoe to have the lesson over dinner. I was thinking "she's already paid my trainfare to Wakaba, so it'll save me 15 minutes riding."

So she suggested an izakaya, because she'd said she liked drinking. I figure teaching buzzed has got to be easier than teaching hungover, so we got some drinks.

No matter what tack to begin the lesson I tried, she was fidgety and distracted. And finally when we got to "what are your plans for the new wear?" she chugged down her drink, looked me in the eye and said "Maybe, I'm wanting to stop taking the lessons."

Yeah, she invited me out to a "you're dumped"dinner. She'd even practiced an "it's not you it's me" speech in English. I was so proud of her. Last year she was struggling with simple past. But she managed "If my life has changes, I'll call you maybe."

For $500: "Commodore Perry landed there and introduced Japan to American diplomacy over the barrels of some very large cannons."

So after, like, eleven months of just skulking around the Tokyo-Saitama Metroplex, suddenly I've gone to Yamanashi, Kagoshima, and now Shimoda. All within, like, a month.

Shimoda's nice, by the way. But don't let an overly genki Japanese student plan the trip for you and your coworkers. Otherwise you'll wind up with both karaoke and Japan's fifth most well-attended dolphin show on your itinerary.

By the way, the answer is "What is Shimoda, Japan?" I'll take "Strange Breakfast Fishy Stuff" for $200, Alex.

I have new respect for Karla

Last time I had checked in with y'all was a couple weeks ago, and I was (in case you can't recall or can't be bothered to read the previous post) complaing about the prospect of having to go and teach elementary school. Most of my experience up to now has been in teaching students with more years having had mastered toilet training than not. But as it turns out the kids are the least of my complaints.

And given that most of them are right around crotch height and fairly reckless with other people's anatomy, that's saying a lot.

Nah, what's really got my blood up is that I'm being shuffled around between 6 elementary schools. Since I've been reassigned to Chiyoda ward, a school disctrict that's been experimenting with english education in elementary schools for about three years now.

Which is all well and good, but since I'm spending one week out of six in each school, and forty minutes per week with each class, I'll see each kid about five times in a year. Just the thing for building a rapport with the little crumb-catchers. No, seriously. In general, those kids are so frigging cute I wanna say something less than sarcastic about them.

But I can't. So I'll include a link to some W.C. Fields quotes about children instead. Here.

Where was I? Oh yeah. The kids are fine, but I have to change schools every damn week. And since the schools want to get maximum use out of their new English machine (that'd be yours truly), I'm generally teaching 4 to 6 periods a day, out of a maximum of six possible periods.

Once again, I'm tired.

I have no idea how this particular role model has done it day in and day out for the last year and change. I fully expect a return to binge drinking and howling at strangers who talk in movies for myself.

Okay. That's enough self pity. Take a look at these instead...
Florida scholars?
Osaka teacher?
Japanese students make comics in English

Call Tech Support!

Damnnation, I need to get my computer fixed. It�s not like I�ve even got an internet hook up in my apartment, but it�s really not worth going all the way to the internet caf� to type these up. Not that I don�t value my correspondence with you all. It�s just, er, there�s other things I�m choosing to spend my time on these days. Like A People� s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. Or my search for the best ramen in Ikebukuro. (Can�t read it? Too bad. Me neither. Ha ha ha.) Or seeing a young woman of singular attraction.
Hoo-hah!

I must be hallucinating or something...

My new supervisor is an Alaska-born-1/5-Chippewa/Cree-Native-American-mix named "Angus" who looks EXACTLY like Samwise Gamgee from Lord of The Rings. And he was sitting opposite a Japanese accountant who looked like a criminally deranged John Malkovitch.

There's a lot of weird looking people working in education here.

Depth or Surface Area?

One thing that I have come to understand about Japan is that it's modern society was forcibly bent into shape by the triumphant US Army circa 1947. There's 2300 years of history and tradition here, but that's become the base material for the bastard child of pre-cold war, market-based-democracy that has become the setting for life here.

"What the hell does that have to do with you?" you may ask. As an assistant teacher hired by a private company and subcontracted out to work at public junior high schools, for me it may as well be the weather to a farmer or astroturf to a pro ball player.

The board of education chooses which company to lease foreign ALTs based on a number of criteria: availabilty, experience, recommendation, staff profiles,

money

and how chummy you are with the board of directors.

As it turned out, my current posting was due to a contract that was recently underbid by a company that specializes in 6-8 person lessons for adults. To supply ALTs for Junior high kids. In classes of 36-42. This company wanted the prestige of supplying ALTs to Saitama prefecture, so they bid below the cost of teacher salaries.

So next month I get to look for another job, or else trust my current bosses to relocate me. Which they claim to be able to do.

In Elementary school and kindergarden.

Realize that I am a 6'4" man with a sense of humor best described as "dark." "twisted" or "malicious." And I will be expected to teach English to tiny humans who can not yet speak their own language.

And how did this come to pass? An inefficient beauracracy installed by an inattentive electorate to try and sort out an atavistic "free market" in which the rules are set by people who make their living bending the law into worse shapes than a Thai sex performer and are then rewarded for squeezing a profit out of any public organ they can get a clammy, scabies ridden hand around.

But maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I'll have a great time teaching animal names and potty training. And maybe companies like AEON, Nova and Interac are actually interested in the education of children.

And maybe I shouldn't read so much Hunter S. Thompson when I'm already casting around for a way to describe an ugly situation.

From the Athens of legend to this? Eh, it's not THAT far off...

This hasn't been a good month for my sense of patriotism.

After finishing the "People's History" of the US (Zinn, great book), "Fast Food Nation" (Eric Shlosser, also excellent), and following what's passing for a presidential campaign, well, the thought of what passes for "America" turns my stomach. I wonder why people aren't trying to blow up embassies or fly planes into buildings or just howling in the streets. Then I remember that there's still a tiny bit of carrot on the end of the stick, and I guess that's enough to keep us dumb asses plodding on the track.

Rrrr.

I guess that can go in my file down at the office of homeland surveillance. I only recntly found out they can begin an investigation on a citizen based the claim that someone they have TOO LITTLE information on is a possible security risk. But we should accept that Bush doesn't have to account for his 8 month furlough from the national guard to work as
some politico's reelction tool is being pawned off as "noble wartime service" or that Kerry has proven himself to be a legislator capable of always bowing whichever way public opinion polls moved the day before.

It makes me ill to think that a democracy like THAT is the best people can do. Of course, I'm overlooking places like the Netherlands, Denmark and Luxembourg that seem to have found ways to not overtly abuse their citizens, but somehow I get the feeling they'd be just as moderate under monarchy, socialism or IWW-style anarchy.

But I'm rambling, aren't I?

Did I Mention Underwear Again?

I've been meaning to write for a while, but things have been really freaking busy. And I don't mean to use "freaking" as a nice euphemism for "fucking." I mean things have been busy in a way that caused previously abnormal behavior to appear normal, acceptable and even desirable. By way of example, let me explain something about my night job...

In order to increase "international competitiveness" (or maybe just to hand out a little pork-barrel largesse), the Japanese government subsidizes the fees for certain kinds of English language classes. If a school has a certain certification, presumably of the qualifications to teach people the kind of English that would enable them to do something other than just watch English movies (the second most common reason given when asked "why do you study English?"), then some of their students can receive partial refunds of something like 60% of their tuitions. Seeing as how the average English Conversation School can demand a $150 "membership fee" that'll get you the privilege to have them sell you their textbooks (at around $200 a pop) and charge you their class fees (to be in a four to eight person class for 50 minutes? Try $75 plus tax and up), you quickly get the sense that some kind of rebate starts to look like a pretty good idea. So, if a school can qualify for this certification, they can attract a whole bunch of business-types who otherwise would never bother coughing up a whole pile of dough to learn to speak a language most of them won't get a chance to practice outside of class anyway.

(Honestly, apart from the relative few who have to work in foreign-owned companies, most of these students are either using written English for e-mail and faxes or else are trying to prepare for an overseas vacation in a couple of months. Despite 6 to 10 years of English lessons in school, these folks aren't able to speak English well because they don't have to use it. Ever.)

Now, in order to qualify for this rebate, the students have to do a little something too. First off, they have to be ostensibly be working. Beyond that, they oughta have a job that needs english. Like a secretary at a company that sells car parts overseas. Or a researcher at a foreign-owned pharmaceutical company. Or a fireman.

Yeah, I didn't get that one either.

Anyway, once these students are all qualified, they have to complete their textbook within 10 months of their starting the class. Why 10 months? I have no idea. And what if they don't attend more than 80% of their classes within 10 months? What if they're not smart enough to finish in 10 months?

Zanen desu kedo, shikata ga nai.

Which brings us back to my job. Because I work in a place that claims to offer more flexible lessons, students can try book a class anytime they feel like coming in, and then the manager will try to move teachers in to meet those times with the highest demands.

Honestly, would you have imagined that so many of the hardworking, industrious, punctual Japanese would have put off so many of their lessons until the last three weeks before the rebate deadline?

Yeah, I wouldn't have thought so either, but there it is. If you're already working a 11+ hour day, with a 40 to 90 minute commute each way, it's pretty easy to let that twice-weekly lesson slide for two or three or fifteen weeks. So now the managers at my school are asking all teachers to work as many extra shifts as possible to help ensure that all these people will be able to get their classes finished, qualify for their refunds, and enable the school to keep it's certification so they can keep offering the rebate-type classes.

So, uh, yeah. I've been really busy. For the last couple weeks it's seemed normal to say "Yes, I usually don't work on Saturday afternoon. No, just the afternoon." It's not been unusual to see the same teachers and the same students for four consecutive days, and each time to have to ask "So, how are you? What have you been doing lately?" It's been acceptable to wash and hang up clothes at 12:15 AM because you're not going to be home between 6:45 and 11:50 for the next five days and you're wearing that 2nd to last pair of shorts that mean it's time to do laundry.

Man. I'm tired.

Taxing, Crabby Confessions III

In the last week I met, face to face, two different people after finding out they'd been reading this. One lives in America, one in Japan. One I'd never met before, one I'd known for a while. Suddenly that whole honnae/tatemae is starting to make more sense from a first hand perspective.

Usually, I try to write this like I was either transcribing an internal monologue or telling a story over a drink in my favorite bar. You know, that one bar where I feel really comfortable because I don't have to worry about acting cool to pick up girls because everyone is just there to relax. But generally here the only major concession I'm making to public appearance here is tone down my raving anti-Presbyterian sentiments to avoid charges of religious discrimination. Lousy Council of Presbie Elders... they'll only be able to keep controlling international grain export markets as long as decent citizens like you and me willingly blind ourselves to their sinister plans. It's always been about the bread, dammit...

...Anyway, the point I really wanted to make was that perhaps my carefully orchestrated, teflon-coated internet persona has been breached again. Maybe there's a whole bunch of people running around who've read this and having a good chuckle thinking that they know what I think, and they think I don't know that they know. You know?

So, in the spirit of the new year and new beginnings, I'm going to embrace a new policy of openness and honesty. I'm just going to lay all my cards on the table and tell you all my deepest thoughts and feelings.

The following people can cram it with walnuts:
My manager, Joe
Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank
The Owner of that Damn Rooster next door
The Inventor of the McRib
The Editors of Japanese for Busy People
Dick Cheney
The re-writers of Robocop 3
John Ashcroft
The re-writers of the Daredevil movie
Celine Dion
Whoever made Japanese girls think cute-ness is more important than anything else
Tony Blair (for having no stones)
The re-writers of the Hulk movie
The people who keep reality-TV shows on with their vacuous, sheep-like support
Henry Kissinger
The re-writers of Batman and Robin and Batman Forever

Wow. I sure feel better. It's like a big weight has been lifted off of my chest knowing I don't have to keep all that secret anymore. 'Cause really, that's everything that I've been holding back. Really.