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May 31, 2005

What a Difference a (Sunny) Day Makes

So, you know how I was all down about teaching 40 Japanese public high school kids at a time and being away from home and WHAT AM I BLOODY DOING WITH MY LIFE ANYWAYS? Well, the sun has come out, and I feel all better now. Go figure...

I'm getting all excited about projects for the upcoming year and possibilities they open for the future.

1. Correspondence Course
I just got a pamphlet about the upcoming year's free correspondence courses available through the organization which runs JET. I have to choose between a Japanese Linguistics and Pedagogy course (which basically trains you in the basics of teaching Japanese/TOO COOL) and a Japanese Translation/Interpretation course (also TOO COOL for BEANS). I would really like to take both at the same time, but I'm not allowed to do that. Sigh. I'm going to see if there are alternate and cheap correspondence courses similar to these courses, pay for one, and take the free one through JET.

2. Research Project/Paper for Work
Since I am at an Education Center which specializes in Education related research, I thought I'd take advantage of the resources and the teachers there to do a neat research project. Current idea: The affect of Juku (cram schools) on English language education in Japanese high schools. (This may be too broad of a subject for one year's worth of research. Any ideas on how to narrow it? Or if you think it is too narrow, how to widen it? Any input appreciated.)

3. Lots of Travel
Going on the advice of a friend, I think I will live it big and make the stuff of exciting memories which I will bore my little grandchildren with when I am 80. Honestly, at this point, I've lived too tame a life. (Don't worry. No plans to smuggle drugs and get thrown in prison. I will thoroughly wrap my luggage in plastic from now on before boarding planes!)

4. Possibility of a free Flute!
A coworker claims to have a damaged flute which he will give to me for free. The catch: It might not work. I might use it to play some jazz flute to have fun and to relieve stress. More news as it becomes available.

5. I WILL pass the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) Level 1, this year, with FLYING COLORS
I didn't pass last year. I have started studying. My goal is to pass with over 90%. I realize this is insanely ambitious.

6. Excited about introducing things into class which are highly amusing to myself and STOP stressing about this whole TEACHING thing
I accept that the "teaching" situation is way over my head, and I will try to leave other sorts of educational impressions on the students that will hopefully someday add up to something else they learn and become something useful. Or at least leave them with some fun memories. (If the Flute falls through, I might pick up the Ukelele and just sing in class all the time. He he.)

7. My mom is coming, SOON!
Like in a couple of days, she will, like, be here! I am psyched, even though my apartment is a total mess. Which reminds me, I should go clean it now. Tah for now, ladies!

Posted by Emarrific at 09:23 PM | Comments (2)

May 30, 2005

Hardo Gay!

Hey folks! Just when I thought I should dispair, throw in the towel, return to the States and start accomplishing things and earning gobs of money, I was halted at the door by something so spectacular it made my day. Something so wonderfully wrong it would never make it on the ninny conservative TV stations of the US. Something so utterly awesome, I may just have to stay here another year.

Hardo Gay Cooking! フ〜！

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Imagine this: This man running into a playground with a bunch of kids and saying "I am Hardo Gay! I am Hardo Gay! Gay Gay Gay Gay!" while thrusting his pelvis Elvis style in the faces of the kids. Can this get anymore wrong and wonderful? Meanwhile, the kids are practically falling over themselves with laughter.

Here are some image stills from the beginning of the show!

Hardo Gay Cooking! Image Stills!

Actually, our man Raymoan is actually here on a humanitarian mission, to help the kids get over their food phobias. So, one kid who hates green bell peppers and seaweed becomes his victim. First he just does his little elvis dance while saying "I'm Hardo Gay! I'm Hardo Gay! You will like green bellpeppers!" and then tries to feed it to him. That doesn't work, so he moves on to cooking. He stir-fries the green bellpeppers in peanut butter (to get rid of the strong bell pepper taste) and then makes a sushi roll out of it. Will the kid eat it?

Hardo Gay Cooking (Last Part) (AVI file... I highly suggest you download it instead of trying to watch it off of my site, as speed will be incredibly slow!)

AND... Here are some other videos of Hardo GAY!!! Doesn't it just make you want to throw down everything and move out to this god-forsaken country?! (All in Windows Media Player format)

Hardo Gay Taxi
Hardo Gay Solves the Sakura Blossom Party Garbage Problem!
Hardo Gay Ramen, Part 1
Hardo Gay Ramen, Part 2

Posted by Emarrific at 07:12 PM | Comments (2)

May 26, 2005

Beach and Moan

I was going to rant on and on about how depressed I am about how I can't get any satisfaction from my job (unchallenging and impossible at the same time) and how I've been going nowhere fast doing nothing except watching rental videos of the lowest class and eating craploads of food. But I won't because I'm over it. Is it that non-swimming time of month or what? I mean who's fault is it anyways?

Anyways, I bitched with my friends about it all night while watching the great film classic "Psycho Beach Party". By the way, you need to watch this movie, if only for the opening credits (great booby shaking to "Los Straightjackets") and the line, "A lot of meat but only one potato."

Also, if you haven't seen "Aquatic Life" yet, WATCH IT! It is breeelllliant! Well, maybe it's just me. It's like Jacque Cousteau and Royal Tennenbaums smashed together, except better.

Tomorrow will sit around all day feeling sorry for myself because I'm getting paid to do very little. What is wrong with me? Why can't I just go with the flow?!! Why can't people (like me) just be happy with what they have???! Or just shut up? Or find a solution?

At the very least, I will get a chance to learn more Japanese and finish the first book of Tezuka Osamu's "Phoenix" comic series. So yeah!

Posted by Emarrific at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2005

Dancing Movies

So lately I've been on this dancing movie kick.

It started innocently enough with "Shall We Dance?" (Japanese original) for my regular movie night. I've seen that movie three times now, and I still love all those wacky Aoki-san hijinks. I never get tired of watching Aoki-san (the short bald guy) walk around after an exaggerated tango dance fashion. Or watching Aoki-san dance like... some drunken guy reenacting "Tango Tango Until Death Death Death III"* Yes, I know that Aoki-san and many of the characters are stereotypes and are not terribly well-developed. Cold queen, まじめな(serious) sarariman, wacky comic relief, flippant but heart of gold woman, fatso, kind old lady... just to name a few. But the movie holds some kind of charm for me. It makes me laugh and what's more it kind of gives me this hope that it's never too late to start living the passionate life. I haven't totally given up on the idea that maybe, just MAYbe, I could live a juicy and passionate life.

*not a real movie

When I returned "Shall We Dance?" something moved me to rent "Saturday Night Fever". I actually hadn't seen that movie yet. Before I had thought that it was too cheesy, but now I was kind of primed for that kind of movie. After I watched it, I was totally psyched. I like it when I'm surprised by a movie. I had thought it was all about two kids getting together and winnind a dancing competition, falling in love along the way. But that wasn't really the point at all. It was more about growing up and moving on. And it was filled with some racy stuff like rape, suicide, and street fighting. Not to mention some awesome period clothes, cars and the 2001 dance club.

It kind of made me want to learn the dances of the 70s.

Then I gabbed on and on about it with my mom and a family friend who saw the movie when it came out in the movie theaters.

Then (Yes! There's more!) some demon possesed me and made me rent "Staying Alive" (Exciting sequel to "Saturday Night Fever"!!!) and "Tap". "Staying Alive" was ok... but somehow I couldn't get as excited over the cheesy-ness of the 80s professional dancing scene. It just seemed lame. I guess I lived through the 80s, and I never really liked the styles of the day. (I'm more a 90s/00s kind of girl) The dancing and the outfits and THE HAIR! Ugh. And even though it was billed as a sequel, I didn't get the sense that there was much connection between the two movies, besides a couple scenes with Tony Romano's mom. Could they not get the original actors and actresses? And what's more, there wasn't as much bite to the second one... just a lame love story and a anti-climactic final dance scene on Broadway. ANYWAY...

Then it was midnight and I put "Tap" in to the old VHS deck. Ah. I saw this movie a long time ago, but I had forgotten a lot of it. Anyway, the tap dancing was amazing. I couldn't tell who was really tap dancing or not. But it was really cool. It made me want to start tap dancing and doing some routines to newer musics like hip hop or R&B or J-pop.

And now I am contemplating renting "Strictly Ballroom", "The King and I", "Shall We Dance" (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers), and maybe some old old movies with dancing in them. Just for starters! Did I mention I am learning the Matsuken Samba II dance?

Posted by Emarrific at 09:16 AM | Comments (3)

May 14, 2005

Upgraded my foto account

I've just upgraded my Flickr foto account so I've been going crazy with the pictures for the last day. Check it out. I will be putting up more photos now because I have cooler options and more uploading bandwidth. More to be done with this soon.

Posted by Emarrific at 10:18 AM | Comments (5)

May 12, 2005

Teaching with your hands tied behind your back

Imagine trying to teach English under the following circumstances:

  1. 40 students per class
  2. Cannot give homework everyday or in significant amounts (because parents' get mad because it interferes with cram school or the teachers feel the students wouldn't do it)
  3. Lowly motivated students who hate English
  4. English is mandatory from junior high school until the second-to-last or last year of high school
  5. Government mandated textbooks that are difficult to use
  6. Only one week to one month notice about next year's schedule (no time to plan syllabus or develop cirriculum)
  7. Little experience with making course syllabus (other than sequence of page numbers in text books)
  8. Discouraged from using participation points
  9. Can't send kids to the principle or outside disciplinarian if they are being disruptive
  10. Will not see kids more than three times a week for 50 minutes
  11. No significant chance of students failing a grade or failing to graduate even if they do very little work and don't participate in class

This is the fairly impossible teaching situation many public school English teachers face in Japan, unless I am mistaken about some of the conditions above. To me it seems like a pretty challenging, near nigh impossible teaching situation. Only the truly brilliant could devise methods to get around these constraints and actually teach English to these kids. And be a workaholic. But I guess you kind of have to be a workaholic to be a good public school teacher given all the constraints you face in terms of resources and facilities and support. Man!

Posted by Emarrific at 07:35 PM | Comments (2)

May 03, 2005

Neighborhood friend, Sister, Frenchman and Japanese truck driver

These are the characters with whom I ate an unexpected outdoor spaghetti and meat sauce dinner last night. I spent most of the evening either arguing/discussing any number of the frenchman's funny statements or translating what was going on to the Japanese truck driver who is a neighbor of my neighborhood friend. For instance, Frenchman said it's a myth that it is dangerous for women to hitch hike alone, especially in Japan, if you are hitch hiking from parking lots and can pick your drivers. So he would encourage his girlfriend (my neighborhood friend's sister) to hitch hike alone in Japan if she wanted to. I personally think that it may be safer in general in Japan, but I just don't buy it, and neither did anybody else at the dinner. (Although the truck driver seemed aimiable enough and was implying that maybe the guy had a point.)

Actually, the sister and frenchman hitchhiked here from way south in Japan and were planning to go back that way... but, the Frenchman would stop off halfway and the sister would have to hitchhike for a significant portion alone. I don't think she's cool with that so maybe she'll take a bus instead.

The Japanese truck driver was pretty cool. He was pretty short, even by Japanese standards, but very wiry. He's into carrying mikoshi (portable shrines) at festivals. He tried to show us some pictures, but in all of them the people were covering up the portable shrines, so he was a little embarassed. He drives out to Saitama prefecture a lot, which means he has to get up at 4:30 a.m. everyday. Wow. That's damn early. He also doesn't drink very much, maybe because of his size. He says he gets drunk easily.

My neighborhood friend is really amazing... she can approach many different people and just start asking them questions and talking to them. I'm really shy when it comes to strangers and don't really approach them that often. I like having a context of some sort. Perhaps this stranger and I are in the same class, work in the same building, are at the same festival. In a sense, we are not complete strangers.

Other funny things the Frenchman has said:

People can get injured really easily using weight machines (not free weights, mind you) and that it is much better just to do pull ups and push ups. But then he kept on talking about how on the tenth set you are so tired that you just have to let go and everything comes crashing down and it is really dangerous... Well, I think it's pretty clear the guy just doesn't know how to use a machine. He he.

Victims often deserve what they get. Often it's their own stupidity and their bad vibe/fear which gets them into trouble and they compeltely could have done something about it. Like the guy who walks around in a sketchy part of Brazil with a big camera and wads of cash. He's asking for it.

You should always cook the ground meat in the tomato sauce because otherwise it will overcook on it's own in a pan. (Actually, the ground meat was nice and tender in the sauce, so I might experiment making meat sauce that way, loathe as I am to admit that that guy might be right. Hed hee!) This is from his experience with Italians. He says they always do it that way. So if the italians do it, it must be right!

Anyway, the man talks and talks. I don't remember ever meeting a guy who talks so much, although my memory is, admitedly, pretty awful. Unfortunately I got no time to talk to my friend or her sister as the conversation was completely dominated by me and the frenchman arguing. I feel kind of bad like that, but I can't resist that chance to tear down someone else's generalizations. Call me Poe Moe.

Posted by Emarrific at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)