randomwisdom.com

Well I made it back to America for Christmas. I got up at 7:30am, missed the bus to Sendai (which didn't stop for me, that bastard) and took a taxi to Furukawa instead. Then I took the bullet train from there all the way into Ueno (Tokyo) and mailed my New Year's cards before hopping on the Keisei line train and arriving at the airport about 2 hours before my flight.

This time I flew ANA instead of United. The latter is the standard U.S. carrier flying Boeing 747-400's between Tokyo and Los Angeles, and the former is the standard Japanese carrier flying the newer 777. Since both airlines are part of something called "Star Alliance", the tickets are the same price either way, so I asked specifically for the ANA flight.

Obviously the 777 is better in terms of legroom and movies (played on demand from a seatback screen in front of you, rather than on a big projector with people getting up to use the restroom every 20 seconds). But ANA completely trounces United on the service front, too. The food, far from being the typical unappetizing airline fare, was superb. While United usually gives you the standard dry and tasteless "chicken or beef", for dinner ANA served juicy sukiyaki with good rice and fresh vegetables with Haagen-Dazs ice cream for dessert, and a breakfast of yogurt and canned fruit with sausage and hotcakes-- with honest-to-God maple syrup. It probably cost them five bucks extra per customer, but the difference in quality was remarkable. Also, the serving staff were pleasant and efficient throughout the entire flight, and showed courtesy in seemingly minor ways. One that comes to mind is the obligatory "duty free" round about halfway through the flight. Usually about half the passengers are trying to get to sleep around this time, including myself; while the United staff obnoxiously bawls "DUTY FREE! DUTY FREE!" at the top of their lungs, the ANA staff showed enough discretion to say it quietly. As icing on the cake, and I know I shouldn't say this, they were also young and beautiful. It makes a difference whether you want to admit it or not. The combination of ANA's delicious food, better service, and more comfortable airplane makes the United flight look like a big cattle car. C'mon, United, you're making America look bad.

Customs folks were on the ball today, and I got my baggage quickly, giving me plenty of time to recheck it at the Southwest counter and claim my boarding pass... about four hours before boarding. Ugh. So I read a book for awhile but the fatigue was starting to kick in and I couldn't concentrate. A very tall older gentleman came up and started talking to me about the history of the Pacific theatre in World War II. Since I had plenty of time to kill I listened, and actually learned a couple things from a fellow traveler.

Finally got home about 5pm after 20 something hours of travel. We went to a local Mexican restaurant and then visited my grandparents before coming back home. I'm exhausted, and so I think I'm going to sleep now before I collapse on the keyboard.

I had a pretty good weekend.

I spent Saturday with the girlfriend (might as well come clean, pretty much everyone knows about it now).  We went out to the mall in Tomiya (a bit north of Sendai) until lunchtime, when we hit up what is probably the only real pizza restaurant in Japan.  By real I mean wood fired oven, real cheeses, good tomatoes, and made by a guy who lived in Italy for several years.  We went back to the mall to drink coffee and think about where we wanted to go next, and found ourselves in the middle of some sort of kids' boy band or something.  We both chuckled a bit, finished our coffee, and wandered around the mall for a bit longer.  She bought a CD entitled "Amazing Nuts!" and I tried to explain the double entendre to her but I'm not sure she believed me.  After that we just decided to hang out at my apartment until she had to leave.  I guess the benefit of only seeing each other on weekends is that when we do see each other, we don't really feel the need to do anything special; just hanging out is nice enough.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder, indeed.  She left around 8pm, and I drove into town to eat some curry and gather my wits.

Sunday was also pretty nice.  I slept in, but it was so cold and I kept waking up, so I don't think I really got the benefit of a full night's sleep.  I went bowling with the motorcycle crew.  I had the highest score of anyone in our group of 20, which also happened to be my personal best: 146.  The price included yakiniku at the neighboring restaurant, with beers included.  I held back a bit, but almost nobody else did, and by the end of the night a crowd of 3 or 4 of them were asking all sorts of questions about my sexual prowess and arsenal of techniques and what part of the female anatomy I liked best, among a slew of other lewd things.  One of the inquisitors was Yassan's wife!  It was an all-out interrogation, but I held out and didn't reveal any trade secrets.

I got a letter last month in regards to some local forum on elementary education. At least, I think that's what it is; it was all in Japanese so it's tough to say. I guess the administrators are getting together and all talking into a microphone like they usually do. I didn't know what this had to do with me, except that attached to the document was a single sheet of paper with a box and the simple prompt in English: "How can English Activity in Elementary School be made better? (sic)"

I would have let this one slide, but I've heard some really ugly things from my cohorts recently, word about outright dismissing all the elementary JETs, mandating textbooks (which means that the teachers will undoubtedly be expected to teach out of them), and basically the end of the only part of English education that I think has any real effect. So I wrote the following, necessarily brief because of space requirements:

I feel that elementary school teachers are doing an excellent job with limited resources. Students seem very motivated, they learn English more quickly than junior high or high school students, and they benefit from the lack of restrictions imposed by junior and senior high curricula and textbooks.

Recently there have been two nasty rumors circulating among ALTs in the Osaki area. The first is that a fixed curriculum and English textbooks are being considered for 5th and 6th grade elementary students. I strongly oppose such a measure, as it would smother innovation by pushing teachers toward a textbook-based lesson. We must trust our elementary teachers to provide the best instruction for each class; a better solution would be to provide a list of recommendations, written by junior high teachers, from which teachers and ALTs can plan appropriate activities. The second rumor is that many towns are choosing not to hire ALTs in the future, instead relying solely on elementary teachers to teach English. If this is true, it is a very unwise idea, as elementary schools are where we are most effective! The most important reason is that ALTs teach natural pronunciation and rhythm. While many Japanese elementary teachers know English grammar very well, I have not met a single one with conversational fluency. And recordings are a poor substitute for an ALT. Furthermore, ALTs give students a chance to become familiar with a foreigner and thus help break the tendency toward xenophobia. If money is an issue, pull underutilized ALTs from junior and senior high, and send them to elementary schools.

I'm curious to see what their reaction is, if they can even translate it well enough into Japanese. (I know I couldn't do a good enough job.) But most of all I want to meet the administrator who is trying to eliminate the elementary school JET position without having set foot in one of our classes.  I can say for a fact that the full-time elementary JETs work much harder than I do, preparing lessons to introduce material to these kids and traveling to a different school every day, and often with commute times of up to an hour on top of that.  If anything, they're spread too thin.

I am constantly astounded by the amount of bureaucratic bullshit I get to deal with in Japan.  This time, it's at work, specifically the elementary school. 

For obvious reasons, all the computers in the computer lab are connected through a popular filtering software.  In my junior high, they have some restrictions in the computer labs and any computer a student could have access to, but computers connected in the teachers' room have completely unfettered access.  This is as it should be.

For some reason, the idiot running the network at my elementary school has set up things so nobody can get anything done.  The computer lab is set up to use some pretty restrictive blocking, and students can only use them when a teacher is in the room; this is sensible.  Most teachers have their own computer that they bring to school to work on things... but the bureaucracy has decided that other teachers' computers can't be connected to the municipal network for "security" reasons (all the elementary schools are on one network).  This almost makes sense, except that there are cheap and simple solutions for such problems.  Instead of connecting the two networks with a firewall, they just have thrown up their hands.  On top of this, the one computer in the teachers' room that has access uses the same set of filters as the student machines.  That is to say that it blocks pretty much any sites in English, including most public webmail apps.  ("We block what we can't understand.")  I was trying to access Google Image search today to find some clipart of reindeer and Santa Claus, and every clipart site I tried to go to was blocked, at least when I wasn't getting intermittent "page not found" errors from google.com, the metric of reliability.  There is no technical reason this should be happening; it's a measure of incompetence and asshattery at its worst.  When I mentioned it to the other teachers they just kinda laughed it off, and suggested I say something to the principal.  We all know that would get nothing accomplished.

It would take a competent administrator about a day to fix the whole thing, and if I had a free day with no classes and free access to the wiring closet I'd do it myself.  I think I'm gonna come in on a Saturday and wire in one of those router/bridges flashed to use Linux.  I'll tell them I thought one of the cables was loose.  As incompetent as the admins are, it will probably take them 5 years to figure out what's going on, and it will be when they come in and see all the teachers actually using the Internet at their desks and being productive.  And by then I'll be long gone.

Here's something I found today.  It's the story of a guy from California who travels to Japan and walks the whole distance on foot, from the southernmost point to the northernmost point.  It's a long video, slightly over an hour long, but it's worth watching if you're interested in seeing what Japan is really like.  I think it shows more of Japan than all the Tokyo and Kyoto blogs with their photos of capsule hotels and temples and palaces.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3067683435545761102

Yesterday was my first visit to elementary school in a month.  I forgot how much I missed those kids.  You know, in spite of the first graders climbing all over me and stealing my glasses.

Some highlights of the day that had everyone in stitches:

• At lunch, I mimed with several of the 5th grade students using a piece of invisible "thread".  First it was a rubber band, then a lasso, then a fishing line (its hook got stuck in someone's mouth), and then we blew it up into a beach ball and smacked it around the room.
• After lunch I introduced a "baseball" game to the 6th graders.  Quite simple, really, two people from each team compete against each other to say the word from a card.  If the batting team shouts it out first a base gets taken, and if the "catcher" wins the batter is out, and in either case two new challengers come up next.  If both said the word at the same time, it counted as a foul ball and I held up another card.  One pair went for about 10 pitches before someone won.