Yeah, that sounds like a blast! Let's do it!

Full of what!?

How appetizing.

Something to hang your baby on.

Engrish from Hong Kong. I don't know what lunchednemt is, but it's got to be better than the crap fillet.

I think these next three stores must have been in some sort of competition to see who could come up with the worst name.

A coffee to make you depressed.

Diapers for your little goon.

From the makers of Cream Collon...

When I went to school, I got to see who had been replaced and who the new teachers are. All of the English teachers are the same, but most of them are teaching different grades now. For some reason, for my 7th classes this year instead of teaching with the current 7th grade English teacher, I'll be teaching with one of the 9th grade teachers. I'm not that disapointed that I won't be working with that 7th grade teacher though. Last year, when we were teaching 9th grade together, he came up with what was easily the most pointless lesson I've ever been involved with (at least I think he's the one who came up with it). He showed the Japanese dubbed version of the movie I Am Sam to the students. No English audio or subtitles or any English at all. I don't know what he was thinking. Anyway, I just hope that the 7th graders will be good in class even though my teaching partner will not be their regular English teacher. I think one of the problems when I was teaching all grades with Ms. Amimoto was that the students didn't respect her because they only saw her once a week. There were also other reasons why she wasn't respected much though, such as her age and the fact that she was from Tokyo. The other teachers didn't seem to respect her much either, and maybe that attitude rubbed off onto the students.

There is a new principal and vice principal this year. The principal isn't as warm and friendly as the one we had last year, but I don't have to deal with him in my day-to-day work, so I guess it doesn't matter. The new vice principal was one of the regular teachers last year. He has a few annoying personality traits, but he doesn't seem like the strict type, so I don't forsee having any real problems with him.

After I got home, Tomo and I went for a walk by the Ishi River and looked at the cherry trees, which were in full bloom. I forgot to bring my camera, but Tomo took some pictures and a video with her cell phone.

Early in the day, I asked her for her answer, and she said she didn't plan to go, but that she might change her mind at some point. Since I had already given her 7 months to think it over, I figured that if she hadn't already decided to go that she wouldn't decide to later either. So I accepted the idea that after I move back that she would no longer be a part of my life and I didn't try to change her mind.

But later in the day, she told me that she would go after all, but that it would be in July 2008. She said that she will start going to an English language school in Chicago then and that between now and then she will save money for tuition and living expenses (since she doesn't plan to work while she goes to school). She says she is 100% sure that this is what she will do and she gave me her word that she will go then no matter what. She said that even if her mother disapproves and tells her not to go she will still go.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to think of all this for two reasons. The first is that after having 7 months to think it over and then giving me her answer, she changed her mind several hours later. The second reason is that even if that is really her intention now, a lot can change in a year.

For now, I'll take her at her word and hope for the best.

Hugh, one of the two JETs who filled Hunter's position after he didn't recontract has quit his job early for health reasons, and Hiten's and my work load has increased a little, with each one of us getting an extra school. I'm not exactly thrilled about it, but it's less extra work than I was given last year when Hunter told the Board of Education he couldn't do all of the elementary schools himself. I think I can handle it.

Anyway, the main reason I decided to post here today is because my friend Locke and his friend Dan are in Japan, and we showed them around the area this weekend. On the first night they were here in Kansai, we took them to two Izakayas in town. On Saturday, we walked around Tondabayashi and went to see our friend Aodun's Mongolian dance performance. Yesterday, we went to Mt. Koya, and this time I remembered to bring my camera. Maybe I'll post the pictures on here some time.

Dan took some pictures and videos and put them on his myspace.

update: Dan wrote a a blog entry about their time here

I never liked the guy. He was always screaming horrible things at students when they broke little rules. I recall once he was verbally wailing on one girl, screaming things like "You're not a human being!" As I recall, her offense was chewing gum at school. Ms. Amimoto used to say that his way of yelling at students sounded not like that of a school teacher, but like that of a gangster. I always got the impression that he hated kids and got off on verbally abusing them. I don't know how he even became a school teacher in the first place. I was surprised when I heard that he was the one who had been stealing from the school, but not nearly as surprised as I would have been if it had been any of the other teachers.

In other news, I've been enjoying my job overall lately. In the 7th and 8th grades, I'm working with teachers who encourage me to make my own activities for classes, and the students in both of those grades are really receptive to what I'm teaching, so it gives me the motivation to be creative and teach the things I want to teach. Also, since I've been teaching there for almost two years now, I have a pretty good idea of what kinds of activities will or won't go over well, and I am now pretty confident that when there's something I want to teach, I will be able to come up with a way to teach it that will go over well both with the teachers and the students. Two of the areas I've been focusing on are two of the main things that I feel are lacking in the regular English classes: pronunciation and fixing Japanese English.

I think one big reason why students have trouble with pronuncation is because when their regular English teachers say English words to them, they say them with more of a Japanese pronunciation so the students have an easier time understanding, even though those teachers are more or less capable of pronouncing those words correctly. For example, even if a teacher is perfectly capable of saying the word "don't" when they're speaking to me, they will often pronounce it as "donto" when they use it in front of the students. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but almost all the teachers I've worked with do this.

This has multiple negative effects on the students. For one thing, if that's the kind of English pronunciation they get used to hearing, then when they hear a native speaker's pronuncation, it is very hard for them to understand. Often when I say something very simple to a student, for example the spelling of a word, no matter how clearly I pronounce it, they will have no idea what I'm saying. Another negative effect of this is that the students also have trouble making themselves understood when speaking to a native speaker, especially if that native English speaker isn't used to hearing English words spoken with Japanese pronunciation. For example, if you limit the way you pronounce English words to syllables that exist in Japanese, there will be no difference between pairs of words such as "bath" and "bus", and "rake" and "lake." Also, the Japanese pronunciation of "work" sounds more like "walk" to me and vice-versa.

At Daihou elementary school I've noticed first hand the effect of hearing teachers' bad pronunciation. I teach two 5th grade classes there with two different homeroom teachers. One of them is pretty shy and has no confidendence in her own English ability, so she leaves all the English to me. The other teacher loves English and uses a lot of English herself in the class. Out of the two classes, the students of the teacher who doesn't use much English seem to have better pronunciation, because the only English they are hearing is what they are hearing from me.

Anyway, in my 7th and 8th grade classes, one activity I've been doing is using word trees to help the students be able to hear and say the difference between words of minimal pairs (such as "rake" and "lake"). Also, syllables are thought of differently in Japanese than they are in English. For example, the one syllable English word "next" becomes the four syllable "ne-ku-su-to" when spoken with a Japanese pronunciation. To get the students to correctly think of syllables in English, I've started doing syllable counting activities where students listen to me say a list of words and count the number of syllables in each one.

The other area I think is lacking in the regular English classes is that there is little to no effort put into correcting common misconceptions about English, perhaps partially because many English teachers hold the same misconceptions. In Japan, it's considered really cool and modern to use English words in your Japanese. But since most people doing this don't actually know English very well, the meanings of the words tend to take on completely new meanings which people assume are the same meanings they have in real English. For example, in Japanese English "reform" means "remodeling." Also, words borrowed from languages other than English are assumed to be English. For example, many Japanese people (including many English teachers) think that non-English words such as the German "thema" ("theme") are English. Even the word "chakku" (meaning "zipper"), which is a native Japanese word, is assumed to be English. Lately I've been making my own activities to correct these misconceptions.

The one thing that I really don't like about teaching at the junior high school though is the current 9th grade. For the most part, they just make fun of me and don't listen to anything I say, and the teachers don't do all that much about it. I can't wait for those kids to graduate.

In other news, I just found out that this summer, two new ALTs will be taking Hunter's place, so from this fall on, I won't be teaching elementary school classes anymore. On one hand, I think I will miss the energetically eager students, but on the other hand, my job will be less tiring. Right now, my Fridays are murder. I have three 9th grades in the morning, which are stressful for the reasons I mentioned above, and in the afternoon I have two elementary classes, which have a positive atmosphere, but are pretty draining for me because of all the energy the students have.

On Wednesday I went to an event in Osaka called Intex Fair 2006 with Tomo and our friend Aodun (a girl from Inner Mongolia whose name is pronounced something like "ohd-tuhn".) There were several different things at the fair, including a large food court with venders serving many kinds of ethnic food. There was also a flea market where I bought an Engrish T-shirt, and an exposition with vendors selling various goods from many different countries. One of the booths was a Costco booth, which was giving out free passes to shop there once without a membership. This brings us to...

Friday. Tomo and took them up on the offer and made the trek out to Costco in Amagasaki. Being in that town was kind of surreal. In addition to Costco, there was also an almost American-style shopping mall and some other atypically-for-Japan large store in the same vicinity. Going into Costco especially made me feel like I wasn't in Japan anymore. I've never been to a Costco in the U.S., but my family does have a membership at Sam's Club, which is almost the same thing. Even though this store was in Japan, it was just like walking into Sam's Club in Matteson, Illinois, except there were a lot of Japanese people and some of the brands were Japanese. Everything was big, from the size of the store to the jumbo sized packages of food to the shopping carts to the tall shelves. There were many American brands too.

Even though the store was spacious, there were so many people (all pushing huge shopping carts) that the store was actually kind of crowded. It was probably because it was Golden Week and because its the only store of its kind for miles around.

At first we were only planning to buy as much as we could carry home by ourselves, but when we found out that they could ship stuff to us for a relatively low fee, we went nuts buying everything that caught our eyes. Among the things we got were dinner rolls, cranberry juice, lemon ice tea mix, Indian curry, nan (an Indian kind of bread which goes well with curry), and a lot of junk food, including cookies, a large pie, brownies, kettle corn, sweet and salty peanuts, and a case of root beer.

We didn't become members that day, but we discussed it, and we plan to go again some time and become members. Next time we'll probably be going with Tomo's friend Adams, who has a car.

Another thing I've done lately is made flight reservations to go to Chicago for summer vacation again. This time I'll be staying for all six weeks of summer vacation. Unfortunately, Tomo won't be able to go with me this time, but I'm still looking forward to being back home and catching up with my family and friends.

This year has gone really fast, and I have the feeling that next year will go even faster. And once it's over, I'm still not sure what I'm going to do next, whether I'm going to find other work in Japan or whether I'll move back to the U.S. Either way, I want to make sure that I make the most of my last year of JET.

Tomorrow, I'll be going with Tomo and Hunter to see two movies (V for Vendetta and The Da Vinci Code) in Osaka. We're also planning to have lunch at Kobe Ninnikuya.

Talk to you later.

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Yesterday, Tomo and I had a pretty fun day in Osaka. First we went to Osaka dome to attend what I can best describe as a pet convention. Pet supply companies had booths, there were pets for sale, various animals on display, and many people brought their own pets, mostly dogs. One thing I saw that I don't think I had ever seen before was dogs with parts of their fur dyed various colors such as yellow and blue.

After that we went to see The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, which is playing in theaters in Japan now. On the way to the theater, by pure chance we ran into Tomo's mother and aunt. It was the first time I'd ever met them. Her aunt made the observsation that Tomo had gained weight since they had last met, which apparently isn't considered as rude of a thing to say as it is in the U.S. Though Tomo still wasn't pleased to hear it.

The Spongebob movie was dubbed in Japanese, and I thought the dub was pretty good. I was particularly impressed with Spongebob's Japanese voice actor. It was interesting to note that some of the names were changed. For example, Mr. Krabs was renamed Kaani (based on the Japanese word for crab, "kani") Squidward was also renamed, but I forget exactly what his Japanese name was, but I think it was related to to the Japanese word for squid, "ika". Bikini Bottom was called Bikini Town (Though the town's sign still said "Bikini Bottom)

Speaking of name-changes in Japanese movies, It's very common for movies to be retitled for their Japanese versions. The new titles are rarely Japanese translations of the original title. Here are a few examples of the new titles:

Napoleon Dynamite = Bus Otoko (Something like "Bus Guy.")
Envy = Tonari no Rich Man ("The Rich Man Next Door")
Legally Blonde 2 = Cutey Blonde Happy MAX!!
The Karate Kid = Best Kid

Sometimes the retitling is only minor, such as "The Da Vinci Code" being renamed "Da Vinci Code" (without the "The") or "The Lord of The Rings" becoming "Lord of the Ring". (Though actually now that I think about it, that last one isn't really that minor because it changes the meaning of the title).

Anyway, I noticed a really messed up retitling when I was at the movie theatre:

Pirates of the Caribbean = Pirates of Caribbean

So apparently they thought the title was too long, and the best way to shorten it was to take out the word "the", which has no direct equivalent in the Japanese language and thus appears to be superfluous.

After the movie, we went to Kobe Ninnikuya in Umeda. Kobe Ninnikuya is a chain of restaurants (mostly in the Kansai area of Japan) which specializes in garlic dishes. Hunter (the current elementary school ALT) introduced me to the restaurant and it quickly became my new favorite.

Similar to movies being retitled, English words are often shortened or otherwise altered when they are imported into Japanese. For example, the pineapple juice I ordered at the restaurant was called "pine juice."

In other news, in this new school year my teaching has been going pretty well overall. Since all the junior high teachers I'm working with this school year are people I've taught with before, I'm already used to working with all of them. The 9th graders are still poorly behaved, but the lessons that Mr. Hioki has been designing for them seem to be better suited for them than the stuff Ms. Nakatani was having them do last school year.

I'm also teaching at the same two elementary schools that I taught at before, with some teachers I've worked with before, and some I haven't. My elementary classes got off to kind of a rocky start, but I think they'll start going better as I adjust. The difficulties I had in my first week were partially because I am doing the same lesson every time in each grade, but each teacher I work with approaches the lesson differently. Some of them follow the lesson plan exactly, some of them take liberties with it, some of them lead the class themselves and use me just to demonstrate pronunciation, and some of them stand aside and want me to be the main teacher. But now that I'm getting to know what to expect from the different teachers, I think things will start going more smoothly. Also, Mr. Tsuno, who was my favorite teacher to work with at the junior high last school year, was transfered to Kauchi Elementary, and I get to teach the 4th grade class there with him now.

That's all for now. Talk to you later.

In December of 2004, I spent a week on Hong Kong. It was very interesting. Hong Kong is like no other place I've been to. I think it's truly an international city, probably because it was a British colony for so long. There were people of many different ethnicities and nationalities all around, especially in the Kowloon area where I was staying. And while not all of the Chinese there spoke English, the ones who did tended to speak much more fluently than the average Japanese person who speaks English.

Comparing Hong Kong to Japan in terms of internationalization, I would say that Japan's internationalness (is that a word?) is only superficial. My impression is that Japan sees internationalization as an important goal, but is resistant to making the changes necessary to internationalize in any meaningful way. An example that I'm all too familiar with is the half-hearted effort which is English language education in Japanese public schools. According to the Ministry of Education, every Japanese high school graduate should be able to converse in English. But with the way English education is currently handled in Japanese public schools, I think that goal is pretty unrealistic. If the Ministry of Education really wants to get serious about English education, I think they should at least raise the standard level of English someone needs to meet in order to become an English teacher. And I think they should change the xenophobic law that only Japanese citizens can become public school teachers, and instead of using the JET program to hire people such as myself with no qualifications other than a bachelor's degree to be ALTs, they should hire qualified teachers who are native speakers of English. An additional step Japan could take towards serious English education would be to do what many other countries do: teach other subjects in English.

Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not saying a country's worth is based on its level of English. I'm just saying that if they don't take English seriously, they shouldn't pretend that they do. As a tangent of that tangent, one of my pet peeves is people who can’t speak English trying to look modern/sophisticated/smart/international/whatever by throwing around English words are phrases. To me, this just looks like pretentious foolishness. Though as a positive byproduct of this, a lot of entertaining Engrish appears on clothing, signs, and food packaging.

My girlfriend was saying something about education that I agree with. She thinks that students at a younger age should be able to choose a specialization. If a student has no interest in a certain field, be it English or Science or whatever, why should their their time be wasted studying it instead of being used to study something they're actually interested in excelling at?

Anyway, I was going to talk about Hong Kong. The weather was great. Though Hong Kong is in the northern hemisphere, it is close enough to the equator that the winter weather feels like Chicago’s or Osaka's mild summer weather. I mostly wore T-shirts during my time there. Though apparently that kind of weather must have felt cold to the people of Hong Kong, many of whom were wearing coats and jackets.

In Hong Kong, I got to hang out with my college friend Alison, whose invitation was the reason I went there in the first place. I got to meet her family and friends, and she showed me around. I think that's the best way to experience another country, to just hang out with someone who lives there or is from there.

It was a great trip, but it definately would have been more fun if Tomo could have come along, but I had only just met her about a month before. I did get to meet some friendly tourists, one of whom was a German who lives in the U.S. and a Japanese guy who was surprised when I spoke Japanese to him. I have a lot of photos from the trip, and I plan to post some some time soon.

In spring 2005, my family came to visit me here. It was a lot of fun to see Japan through their eyes. I reminded me of how I saw it when I first got here. And I think they took a piece of Japan back with them, particularly my mom who seems to have developed a taste for Japanese food.

Last summer, Tomo and I spent three weeks at my family's house in the U.S. It was great to be back with my family and friends. Having been gone for a whole year, Chicago seemed kind of foreign to me in certain ways. I wouldn't say I felt culture shock or had much trouble adjusting, but a few things were surprising or awkward. Probably the first thing that hit me was how big everything was. buildings, streets, food and drink portions, everything seemed huge compared to what I had gotten used to in Japan. I was also somewhat put off by shop clerks' lack of politeness low quality of service. In general, they barely acknowledge you when spend money at their store, and when you ask them for something, they aren't very responsive to meeting your needs. For example, after making a purchase at a convenience store, I asked for a bag (which is something I would never have to do in Japan) and the clerk gave me a bag which wasn't even big enough to hold the items I had bought.

At a department store, Tomo had me ask a clerk if they had a certain style of shoe in her size. The clerk went to look, and never came back! Toto, I don’t think we’re in Japan anymore…

At a Mexican restaurant in Chicago, Tomo and I had an interesting experience. The waitress apparently thought Tomo was Hispanic, because she tried talking to us in Spanish. Tomo is one of those people who looks like she could possibly be many ethnicities which she is not. She has also been mistaken by Thais and Filipinos as one of their own.

At the same restaurant, I had sort of an awkard cultural moment. In Japan, servers typically do not collect the menus from the customers after taking their orders, which I had gotten used to. After ordering at this restaurant, as a force of habit, I started to put the menus aside to the side of the table. At the same time the waitress reached for the menus and gave me a weird look like I was trying to take them away from her.

Another thing about the U.S. which seemed new and unfamiliar to me was a whole year of fashion and pop culture which had passed me by. Suddenly everybody was wearing new T-shirts made to look as if they had been worn since the 1980s. Another thing that was omnipresent and I was unfamiliar with was Napoleon Dynamite. Since then, the DVD has come out in Japan (retitled “Bus otoko”) and I’ve watched it and enjoyed it.

Sasha, the elementary school ALT who came to Kanan at the same time I did, was unsatisfied with her job, and decided not to recontract. Last summer, she was replaced by Hunter, an American from Arizona who is my own age. He too is unsatisfied with the job, perhaps even more than Sasha (He complains about it more than Sasha did anyway). Because of his complaints, the Board of Education gave two of his classes to me in the later part of the last school year. I thought those classes were actually pretty fun. According to Hunter, that didn’t really lighten his load at all, because those two classes were some of few that actually enjoyed teaching. Needless to say, Hunter is not recontracting either.

I haven’t been told yet whether or not I’ll be teaching any elementary classes this school year. People seem to like to avoid telling me important things until the last minute (or sometimes not until after the last minute). Hunter said he heard that I probably wouldn’t be teaching elementary this school year, but on my new schedule, there are two days where two consecutive class periods are marked with asterisks, which I guess signify times when I might not be at the junior high school. But those might have been put there just in case I am asked to teach elementary classes again.

In my November entry, I mentioned a gospel choir I had joined called Mix Voices. After being in the choir for about a year, I quit for many various reasons. For one thing, the director rarely gave me parts that fell comfortably in my voice range. Too many of them were either so high I had to sing in falsetto, or so low that so low that I could barely project my voice.

Another thing that got on my nerves was the stupid comments people were often making. For example, once after a concert, we all went to a restaurant and while we were talking, someone was telling me that since I joined, the level of the choir had gone up thanks to me. I tried to answer humbly, saying that any improvement the group made had nothing to do with me (and seriously, I don’t see how it could, since I wasn’t one of the better singers in the group). Anyway, after I said this, there was this awkward silence. I wondered if what I had said was not what I meant to say, and I asked if I had said something rude. Another woman gave me the weird joking answer that the woman I had been talking with has an “English allergy.” This made absolutely no sense seeing as how the whole conversation had been in Japanese, and I wasn’t sure how to interpret it other than that her “allergy” was not to English, but to people who speak it.

Other reasons for quitting included wanting to have more free time for myself to do things such as work on my own music.

Well, that’s about all that comes to mind now. Talk to you later.

We took several trains and arrived at Kyoto Station on Friday evening. It's a very spacious and impressive station.

There are escalators or stairs you can take to a very high place in the station where you can look out onto the city. We went to a shopping center called The Cube and then a video arcade where we played Super Mario Bros.

We stayed overnight at a Japanese style inn. It's the kind of place where you put on slippers at the entrance. The rooms have straw mat floors, cusions to sit on, and futons instead of beds. It's the first time I've stayed in such an inn. It was very nice.

The next day, we went on a long walk around the city. We went to a handbag store that Tomo had seen on TV. Because it had been on TV, it had become so popular that people had to make reservations to get in.

We stood in line for a while, and when some people with reservations never showed up, we finally got in. I personally didn't see what the big deal was, but then again I'm not a handbag aficionado.

That day we did a lot of window shopping around the city and we also went to a park called Maruyama Koen, in which is a shrine called Yasaka Jinja. The whole place was crowded, and there was also a wedding ceremony going on at the shrine.

It was a fun weekend. I have more Kyoto pictures to post, but the script that automatically makes thumbnail images isn't working correctly right now. I'm working on getting it fixed, but if I can't, I'll just make the thumbnails manually. One way or the other, I'll post another entry with those photos sometime soon.

I go back to school on Monday. I won't have any classes and I think school will let out at 11, which probably means I'll get to go home early.

The main reason it's been so long this time is because of technical issues. In February 2005, I wanted to write a new entry, but first I wanted to upgrade my Movable Type script to a new version that would give me more spam control. The installation went awry and until now I haven't been able to update. Over the last few days, I've somehow managed to reinstall Movable Type and I can now write blog entries. Sorry to have kept you waiting.

The design still needs to be tweaked though. For example, the menu to navigate past entries has somehow ended up on the bottom of the page, and currently there is nowhere on the blog for you to enter your e-mail address to be notified when I write new entries. For the time being, if you want to receive notifications of new entries, please e-mail me through my Contact page.

My previous entry was titled "Where should I even start?" I am now asking myself the same question.

First of all, in case you were wondering, I am still living in Japan and working as an ALT at Kanan Junior High School. The first trimester of the new school year starts on Monday. Whenever a new school year starts, there are staff changes. Last year around this time, Ms. Ueda, who I also got along really well with was fired and Ms. Amimoto quit. She was replaced by a Ms. Yamada. That school year, instead of teaching with one teacher for all grades, I taught with different teachers for each grade. One one hand, I no longer have the close working relationship that I had with Ms. Amimoto, but on the other hand, team teaching with people who each class sees more than once a week has improved my rapport with the students.

For the 7th grade I worked with Ms. Nakazato. She wasn't always the most agreeable person to work with, but she made great lesson plans and was really good at keeping the students interested in their English studies.

For the first part of the school year, I taught the 8th grade with Ms. Yamada, who is also a really good teacher. Typically, she would plan half of the class and would have me plan to other half. This was really stressful for me at first, because I had never been given that responsibility until that time. But I eventually got used to it and I feel fairly confident in my ability to plan classes now. Unfortunatly, Ms. Yamada had some kind of health problems (I'm not sure what exactly) which forced her to take an extended vacation. At first, she was replaced by a substitute teacher whose name I forget at the moment. She had no idea what to do in Sougou Eigo (the name of my team-taught classes), and left everything to me. That, combined with the fact that the 8th grade students' behavior was starting to get worse around that time, was a real trial by fire for me. Ms. Yamada returned briefly, but soon had more health problems and was permanently replaced by a Ms. Nakatani, whose teaching style is somewhat similar to Ms. Yamada's. However, she's not as energetic in class as Ms. Yamada was, which makes it hard to stop the students from getting bored, and when the students of that grade got bored, they tended to behave badly. By the end of the semester, they had become almost as bad as the 9th grade class was during my first school year here.

For the 9th grade, I taught with three different teachers, Mr. Tsuno, Mr. Hioki, and Ms. Arakawa. Mr. Hioki, who was the head English teacher of the 9th grade wrote all the lesson plans, most of which involved the students writing presentations in Japanese, translating them into English, and reading them in front of the class. My main role in those classes was to help the students with their translations. I also was often asked to comment on the students' presentations. My comments usually were variations of "speak louder. I couldn't hear you." Out of the three 9th grade English teachers, my favorite one to teach with was definately Mr. Tsuno, who is definately the most laid-back and friendly English teacher I've worked with. Mr. Hioki is also pretty good. Ms. Arakawa on the other hand was pretty awkward to work with. She seems very uncomfortable using English. She and I have hardly had any interaction in our classes.

For special ed, two of the students graduated, and one of the remaining 8th graders stopped coming to school, leaving one boy, Yuki, who I basically gave private lessons for the whole school year.

Staff changes also happen in the Board of Education around the new school year. Last year, Mr. Nishioka was transfered to the Tondabayashi Board of Education and was replaced in Kanan with a Mr. Ueno, who I have had limited contact with, but who seems to be pretty lazy about doing his job.

Yesterday, I went to school to attend the Nyuugakushiki, which is a ceremony for the new 7th grade class. Just like last year, there have been staff changes. Ms. Nakazato is gone, but her replacement is none other than Ms. Yamada, who I am glad is doing well and who I am looking forward to working with again. Ms. Nakatani, Ms. Arakawa, and Mr. Hioki are still there, but unfortunately Mr. Tsuno is not. And unfortunately, I still have the same inconsistent, overly strict, and sometimes condescending Vice Principal that I've had since I started here.

The biggest change in my life since my last entry is that I have a girlfriend now who I have been in a relationship with for about 16 months now. Her name is Tomomi (I call her Tomo-chan). We get along well and we've grown pretty close.

She doesn't speak English, and as a result my level of Japanese has gone up considerably from what it was before. I still have a long way to go to get where I want to be, but I feel much more comfortable with the language than I did before. The fact that we only use Japanese tends to surprise people and leads to some funny situations. Many Japanese tend to think that the only way a foreigner can be communicated with is with their own language. Based on this assumption and their own lack of confidence with using English, many Japanese seem to uncomfortable with the prospect of interacting face-to-face with westerners. But I digress.

When people learn that Tomo doesn't really speak English, they'll often react in surprise with comments like, 'How do you communicate??' as if it's a huge leap to assume that we converse in the language of the country we both live in.

Because she's in a relationship with a foreigner and she, though being Japanese, does not have typical Japanese looks, people often assume that she is foreign too. One time, when the cable guy came to do an installation, he asked me if Tomo had moved here from the U.S. too. When I told him that she was Japanese, he was surprised that he was wrong and said to her in Japanese, 'You're so good at English,' despite the fact that none of us had said anything in English since he got there.

I've been doing more with my music than I had been at the time of my previous entry. I've written and have been in the process of recording several songs for my upcoming album, including taiko-based piece which I described my idea for in a previous post. Actually, my current vision for the album is for every song to have some kind of Japan connection. My working title is "Outside on the Inside," which is in reference to a Japanese world view of the world being divided into two places: the inside (Japan), and the outside (everywhere else, especially the west). This is reflected in the way people talk, speaking of "gaikoku" as is one homogenous place which Japan is uniquely different from. I am sometimes asked 'do people in foreign countries do such-and-such' as if being from the U.S. makes me the official spokesperson for every foreign country except for Japan. Even Ms. Yamada said something pretty silly in class which reflected this view. It was a 20 questions lesson, and my mystery object that the students were guessing about was a CD by the Japanese band L'arc~en~ciel, whose name is French, I believe. So anyway, after I said the groups name in what was probably a butchered pronunciation, Ms. Yamada said to the students in Japanese, "See, that's the real foreign pronunciation of the name." as if there must not be any difference between French and English pronunciation. But again, I digress.

Another song, which is basically completed, is a song I wrote in Japanese called "Jibun no ketsudan." It's a song about non-conformity and features me singing auto-tuned vocals in three-part harmony. It also features me playing keyboard through a talk box, one of several musical gadgets I've gotten since coming here. A few other gadgets I've gotten include MIDINES (an adapter which allows MIDI control of an NES or Famicom sound chip), a Roland Juno-60 analog synth, and a DJ CD player which allows turntable-style scratching. Anyway, you can listen to "Jibun no ketsudan" at last.fm, Monk Funk, and MySpace.

A third song I'm still recording is called SHC. It's got electro funk beats, scratching, auto-tuned 2-part vocal harmony by me, Nintendo sounds, and some interested chords and meter changes. I also plan to add piano, analog synth, and guitar.

Another song which I wrote recently and have only recorded the vocals of so far is a bluegrass song called "LET'S HAVE SUCH A COFFEE", the lyrics of which are all pieced together from weird Japanese English phrases found on signs, clothing, food packaging, etc.

I also have a few incomplete song ideas which I have yet to flesh out.

As many of you on my music mailing list already know, I've played several gigs here with my own live band, though I still don't have a steady lineup. You can read more about that in my Kansai Time Out interview, which can be found in the Press section of my site.

Well, I think that should do it for now. I have more things to talk about, and more photos to post, which I will get to in future entries. And this time, I won't make you wait a year and a half. Really, I promise.