…sporadic bloggery

I think I’ve gone beyond apologising for the infrequency of my blog of late. My recent loss of internets on my school computer combined with Raiki and home stuffs has caused a considerable decline in bogging enthusiasm.

I had a fun couple of weeks though, I met the sunfall massive for an impromptu meet in Kyoto which was absolutely fabulous. I lived through yet another English Festival play which we had to cobble together from bad textbooks and naff props and I went orange picking with the family and the fearsome combination of Terence and Theo (in vaguely alphabetical order) where Terence accrued all sorts of prizes for apparent amateury (I jest Terence).

I think possibly the most interesting news however once again relates to the now legendary Mr. K.  His inverse genius is getting completely beyond control and comprehension. He recently held a student back for 10 minutes in awkward silence because she wouldn’t repeat the phrase “What page should I write on?” in English. When you become a teacher you learn when to let things go and when t stop the buck so to speak, although Mr. K evidently skipped that lesson. The student in question is poor at English, unbearably shy and has never spoken out in English class freely, hence one engineers the very easy questions towards her and picks moments when the atmosphere is slightly livelier. Unless of course you happen to be an ass faced loony. The incident spiralled out of control rapidly resorting in the student half crying, running out of the classroom and slamming the door ….never to speak to Mr. K again I am quite sure. Afterwards he then went and asked the form tutor for a meeting with the student in question so the three of them could sort it out. The form tutor later came and asked me sheepishly whose fault I thought it was (Mr. K or the student) ….to which I categorically told him it was Mr. K for being an imbecile. Unbeknownst to me this comes on the back of him being given a warning after several parent and student complaints about him resulting in a meeting with the head teacher, deputy head and the form tutors, the theme being along the lines of “Shape up stupid face!”.

To make things even worse, the following Thursday he came to the other school I work at to watch a research class I did with Mr. M, an excellent teacher with 30+ years of experience and an impeccable record. Most attendees left very positive feedback notes, with the very occasional constructive kindly worded suggestion for improvement. Mr. K, left 5 notes each with a very bluntly worded suggestion along the lines of “You need to do X” or “At this point it would have been more effective to do Y”. Now, this would be bad enough in the UK, but in Japan the seniority system is incredibly important. The tadpole does not tell the frog how to jump so to speak. On top of that, coming from a teacher widely regarded as not having the first clue as to what he is doing is frankly absurd. Even the mild-mannered Mr. M. seemed somewhat irritated by Mr. K’s random scrawlings. I think the worst thing about all this is that Mr. K thinks he is being helpful – and doesn’t realise the extent to how grating he is being.

Ah well, enough about him, I worry that I’m becoming slightly obsessed with the whole affair. Most new parents would probably smother their blog pages in baby pictures and coo over how he is achieving landmarks such as rolling over and being sick. I prefer to leave it to your imagination to guess how his growth is proceeding, it seems more interesting and mysterious that way….just imagine a baby. That’s pretty much what he looks like.

(Next paragraph meaningless to those not playing Tekken 6)

Tekken 6 is really quite good – it is however a little too easy to become obsessed with collecting bonus items in the Scenario campaign mode. And I can’t for the life of me beat Devil Jin at the end of the Nightmare Train level. I can give him a good duffing before Alyssa cops it in the face and I have no one to back me up while fending the hordes off resulting in my eventual death. Balls really. I probably shouldn’t have started using Armor King in the first place, now he has all the good items and if I want to level up another character I’m going to have to start again with another character I actually like. I do appreciate the way one can obtain random character endings just from playing the scenario mode though.

…of John Mclay. The first of you gibbons to take up the challenge and keep a blog. I temporarily salute you, know that this salute can be withdrawn should your blog remain desolate.

…Mr. K and his random teaching materials.

Mr. K is a mixed bag of tricks, I’ve spent some time deliberating how to approach my relationship with him and come to the conclusion that I should just treat him as an amusing monkey.

Today I bring no tidings of his random insanity. Rather I bring news of some cards he bought to use as a game in class to practice English.

The game is played thusly:

1) Kid draws card from deck. On the deck is a pose with the English name written on it.

2) The kid does the pose.

3) The remaining kids have to guess what the pose is.

So it’s like pose charades right? Easy enough yeah? OR so you would think. Mr. K is the only man in the world who could acquire such insane cards, and I reiterate that this is not a joke, this is the genuine contents of about half the pack. Read and weep/rejoice.

For Great Justice! Take off every Zig!

Say! How are you today? Oh I'M just twist cool today thanks.

or you will be killed!

"Where`s me Washboard then? 'Ave you seen it?"

Innuendo to the face!

and we can prevent the sky from falling!

and cower before me!

and your life span will be likely be halfed

lest it runs wild

w0000000000000000000000000000!

oh yay!

There was much rejoicing!

All key English phrases without a doubt.

Until next time.

It’s been waaaaay over a month since my last inane update. I have a few excuses prepared, but none of them are particularly good.

My mother came and went, her two week stay was very nice, it was just a shame that I couldn’t take a whole bag of holiday what with it being right slap bang in the middle of the second term, I didn’t feel like I had the time to be posting during that period, although a brief update wouldn’t have hurt. There have been a couple of public holidays of late and the efault plan for those recently has been to go down to Mayumi’s folks house for a day or so, that we I can delegate all manner of child based suties to those who aren’t constantly on call – I did this. Sports day and the subsequent drinking associated with it happened sometime too, it was rather run of the mill. The most powerful Typhoon in 20 years swept through the country, giving me a full day off into the bargain, although it has to be said that we somehow managed to avoid anything save a spot or two of rain and some mild breezes in our area. Raiki has figured out how to roll over, but not what to do once he has achieved this (see below). His current method out of this predicament is to cry until someone turns him over. He’s like a turtle or something.

Pick me the fuck up `for I pop you upside the head biatch.

Other stuff…trying to cram in study time for the JLPT again, hopefully this will  be the last time I have to drag my wretched self to Osaka to take it. Sunfallers Dave (Yubari) , Phil (Sengen) and Mark (Cyl) are in Japan as I type this, I’ll be meeting them for beers and much rejoicing next Friday evening. Much fun will be had by all. Mr. K is still basically an imbecile but has not done anything so incredibly stupid as to cause me to bleach my brain recently …or if he has I can’t remember due to said brain bleaching. I finished Arkham Asylum, it was very very good, one of the few games I really want to complete 100%, this maybe put on hold when Tekken 6 debuts in a little over 2 weeks in Japan as I don’t think I can quite resist picking that up. I’ve started reading Pluto, Monster and Ikigami recently under the vague guise of Japanese practice, they are all very good. I had a mild internal dilemma about Japanese values towards discipline (or lack thereof) after a 4th grade elementary class went wild and I put a stop to the lesson to have them sit in silence while I yelled at them. I was then told the reason for their bad behaviour was probably because “it was raining quite heavily” and that “it probably wasn’t necessary to discipline them so much”. So what is the country going to do when these people enter the workforce? Just not work on rainy days?

Also saw my first ever Japanese celebrities in the flesh at a comedy show in the city. Circle the ones you can recognise.

Anyway, I’m out for now. More updates to follow in the hopefully not infinitely distant future.

If you haven’t already, check out this wonderful 11 minute animated film entitled “9″ by some random named Shane Acker.

Living on a sparsely populated mountain as I do, news doesn’t travel especially fast, so maybe you’ve all already heard of the feature film that’s been made. I’m rather excited about it. Who doesn’t love Tim Burton? Except for Kim Jong Il.

…. better news.

I passed the kanji test that I took with the students at school last month, so I get a shiny official certificate and such, which is nice. I took the 5th level test (10=easiest, 1=hardest) which covers all the kanji that kids learn in elementary school, I want to pass up to the 3rd grade (end of middle school) by summer next year if possible.

I didn’t get the easy pass I though I would though, I was hoping for around 170/200 but I only hit 156 (pass mark 140). But whatever, a pass is a pass.

…a bit of a theme on this blog.

At the risk of turning this  into a place to gripe about workplace relations I shall once more chat a little about the surprising and ongoing idiocy of Mr. K (which would make a great film title and adequate film).

Monday morning:

I walk in the door and he tells me about a demonstration class at a famous junior high school he went to on Friday. He saw a teacher and some students talking via skype to students in Australia. Of course, being the man he is to get an idea between his teeth and run like a “hills have eyes” loony, he figured we’d do this with our crappy ass internet and English hating students. So the first conversation we had on Monday morning was: (I will be referring to myself as Sexy G for this conversation).

K: Gareth, I need a favor

Sexy G: What would that be?

K: Find me an Australian school to do video conferencing with then we will do it next week. OK?

Sexy G: Huh?

Well clearly his nutball plan isn’t going to work, it only takes a few seconds to illustrate to him it’s limitations (I will be referring to myself as G – Dawg for this conversation)

G-Dawg: So where and when are you going to hold the conferencing?

K: In the lunch hall so all the children can join.

G-Dawg: Is there an internet connection there?

K: ……… no.

Of course plans went downhill further from there once he realised he couldn’t install his web camera correctly to the schools crappy laptops. But still he wanted to charge on in and have me draft emails to Australian schools. I eventually just used the Ozzy yellow pages on t’internet to find some email addresses for 4 schools in Brisbane and drafted an email. Fast forward to a few hours later.

K: Oh Gareth! Have we had any replies from the schools?

G-Force: Haven’t sent the emails yet.

K: Really?? Why?

G-Force: Because you don’t have a place to do the conference, or a working webcam and laptop. So, it’ll be me that looks like a retard if you can’t actually prepare any of that.

K: Ah I see. I will call you tomorrow when it is working and then you can send the emails! (inappropriate handshake)

As I received no call today, I can assume that he has unsurprisingly failed to fix the camera or figure out where he can do it.

The unsolicited conference he called for  is still in the same state that it was last week. Completely unplanned with no place to go, but the inviting of important people from various wings of the prefectural education board and so on continues at an impressive pace. As has the contacting of media outlets. I can imagine the headlines, they’ll be something like: “Are your kids really safe at school?” and “Idiot does dumb shit”. I think anxiety is starting to creep into his mind slightly now as was evident by the Principal telling him to: “Stop it. You’ve got your hands full with this job.” and this sudden conversation:

K: You know Gareth, I was thinking we could do the presentation together. We could teach a demonstration class. Could prepare for it?
What sort of bullshit is that? The whole thing is about to go tits up and he’s trying to transfer some of the responsibility to me. This isn’t the first time he’s pulled this shit to be quite frank. His previous random idea to have class in a separate tiny dusty “English only” room (still hasn’t happened yet) was packaged as a “joint idea we will both take responsibility for”.

Further and totally separate idiocy that same day:

K: I was thinking today we could do a technique I learned about last week when I was watching this video.

Papa G: Wassat?

K: We can do “learn through dance” … I saw a teacher who got an award use it. Here’s the video:

Papa  G: ……….

K: What do you think?

Papa G: I can’t help but notice this has nothing to do with foreign language education. These kids are singing an election song, and they’re all native English speakers. This could be music class or something, in which singing wouldn’t be unusual.

K: But I think we can make an English dance that will be fun for the kids. Kids love to dance.

Papa G: They’re 15 and they don’t want to dance. I’m not doing it. (cue: minor explosion). This is your problem you know. You see an idea that’s worked for someone in a different situation and you just think it’ll work for you. It won’t work, you haven’t even planned this. You just have the notion of dance in your head.

K: OK…well, I will show them the video and see what they think. I think they’ll be enthusiastic though.

(fast forward to the class time)

K: Hey look at this video. What do you think, we can make an English dance.

Kid: Are you retarded? That’s so lame, there’s no way I’m doing that (chorus of agreement)

And then I did do a dance, it’s called the “I told you so” dance, and I did it to his face.

AAaaaaaand finally. The last piece of idiocy late on a Tuesday:

K: I was thinking of making a Poo Calendar for every kid.

Cap’n G: Like Winnie the Pooh?

K: No, no. A calendar they can put in the toilet when they go to take a dump. Each day will have a new English word to learn and some cut out origami or something.

I don’t even recall what I said in reply to that, I think I just lost consciousness at the very suggesting of a poo calendar. Silly fucker.

In other news: Batman Arkham Asylum still hasn’t arrived yet. Apparently it’s better than breathing though, which is great news because I’ve been breathing for 28 years almost and it’s yet to get boring.

…..it is made of fail and lame!

So I got my JLPT results back from the test I took at the beginning of July. And despite a good 3 months of solid work (mostly on my grammar and Kanji) I still didn’t pass this time. I did make it closer though … a whole 1 point closer. I came back with an impressive increase from 264/400 last year to 265/400 this year (pass mark of 280). However my marks were completely different from the previous year.  Last year I passed the listening by a country mile, failed the Kanji section with the kind of grace usually only seen in success and pulled a suprisingly reasonable result out of the reading/grammar section. This year I scraped passes in the Kanji and listening only to fall flat on my ass in the grammar/reading (I suspect the reading section to be the culprit frankly, but the test center don’t break down your marks for that section).

The good news of course is that if I continue to improve at this rate based on a twice annual test then in about 8 years I will have passed the damn thing.

..Assemble!

In what world is it a good idea for Disney to buy Marvel? It just makes the whole process of reading comics seem somewhat profaned. It does however create a few interesting crossover prospects: Captain America vs. Buzz Lightyear, Simba vs. Tigra, Iron Man vs. Wall-E …you get the picture.

Today was the first day back at school, I have enjoyed not talking to Mr. K for 6 weeks, but I felt refreshed enough to give it my damndest to at least grin stupidly all day and agree with everything he said. Needless to say after 8 hours or so of being civil and falsely enthusiastic I feel like a hollow shell of a man. In case his usual brand of incompetent cheeriness wasn’t enough to beat me down he has outdone himself over the summer holidays. He has formed (and I shit you not, this is completely true) a group called the ’英語嫌い防衛隊’　or loosely translated…..

…”The Hating of English Defense Brigade” ..there’s probably a better way of putting that, but he has started a group in order to get over the problems of kids that hate English. This would be more meaningful if he wasn’t the most obviously disliked teacher I’ve ever worked with. Proved beyond doubt by the fact that in their summer essays this year almost all of the kids took the time to write (correctly) “I don’t like English!” into the body of their text.

Further lunacy is on the horizon as he is performing this on a national holiday, one of the few days that teachers get off every year – and inviting a professional singer to sing for 30 minutes at the start of the meeting. The mind boggles! What the hell are the other attendants going to think of being dragged to a meeting on a national holiday to spend the first 30 minutes being sung at. It has literally no connection to the subject matter.  Did I mention the meeting is in three weeks and he hasn’t decided where to hold it yet?

I think the thing that stuns me most is that he is going to present techniques in order to make learning exciting when his lessons are among the most mundane I’ve ever suffered. I keep thinking that this must be some absurd practical joke. I may go just because it’ll be a complete trainwreck.

Other business: I just saw a man on the TV talking about responsible behaviour in order to prevent accidents. His authority on the matter was somewhat overshadowed by his wearing of a T-shirt that said “You little fuck, get back here” with little explanation of who the little fuck was or where they should be getting back too. The lesson is: Before you buy a T-shirt in a foreign language, be sure to make sure you understand what it says.

//

Just a brief expansion on the earlier post. The Democratic Party （民主党） have won a previously unheard of landslide victory against the ruling Liberal Democractic Party　（自由民主党） which means our new Commander in Chief is Yukio Hatoyama (Pigeon Mountain).

Here’s hoping that they don’t decide to save municipal monies by axing the JET programme altogether.