About Me

Ikawa-cho Miyoshi-shi, Tokushima-ken, Japan
I was recently accepted by the JET program as an assistant English teacher in Japan for one year.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

blog,
on the last day i have to work before my 3 week vacation with my girlfriend, who gets here tomorrow, i not only have to teach three classes back to back to back in the morning, but in the afternoon there is an "evacuation drill" that takes up two hours. also my right tail light is out. i guess putting a rubber band around my wrist is going to help me remember to take care of that. however i did get paid today, and it was garbage day. you probably want to hear more about japan and japanese things? listen, i have to stamp some english notebooks with today's date. all of the english teachers agree that there is something very wrong with english education in japan. it is going to take them a while to come around and make it better. basically i think you need to use a language for something daily, and mostly "everyday life" becomes the required use of a langauge, but when you are learning it just so you can use it in class and pass a test, you really dont need to understand it at all.
great!

Friday, December 11, 2009

keeping you updated

hello blog,
the e-prime experiment is over. some people don't like it, and it takes a little too much effort for right now.
today i went christmas caroling with all of the other foreign english teachers in my city area. we went to nine schools and sang about four classic christmas songs at each. i had to wake up really early but it was better than a boring day at work. we went deep into the basically uninhabited foggy river valley, and then back into my part of town. i am so glad that i dont live an hour plus away from a food market. i had a very big, delicious lunch of pork and rice and beef udon, which was only around $8 and so satisfying. it was a good day, mostly because of the social interaction and because we made so many japanese middle school students happy.
tomorrow i am going to clean the entire house, bottom to top, do laundry, take care of some minor errands, and get ready for liz to get here on tuesday. anything i dont finish tomorrow can be finished on sunday. i am waiting to take a ton of wet laundry to the laundromat so i can sit there and finish reading paradise lost while my things dry. i ordered a super mario vidogame for my DS which i hope gets here tomorrow. i know now that i should have used amazon japan which everyone says is much faster, and you can even pay at a convenience store, which sounds too convenient.
so monday is the last day i have to go to work this year. chatting with everyone here just makes me more sure i want to leave in july. i dont know what i want to try to do when i get back to america but living alone is just too lonely! ah i cannot forget to pay my rent this month. i have a few weeks still. i worry too too much about money and it should not be a problem at all. i am just much more thrifty than everyone i know.
happy new year, everyone
great!

Friday, December 4, 2009

e-prime no matter how you judge me

dearest blog of blogs!
another week in japan has come to an end. i had a good time at karate today, sensei said to only use 30% of our power for sparring because of the tournament that i cannot go to on sunday becase of work. on wednesday, sensei broke 2 pieces of wood and a baseball bat with his legs. this looked amazing, and i have photos. they will be posted, all in good time.
i asked a few of my wonderful professors for their insights wrt President Obama's decision to send 30,000 more American soldiers to fight Al Qaeda in afghanistan. the responses i have gotten so far appear very thought-provoking and valuable. i will put some time into crafting my own official opinion. i wish Obama the best of luck but i go back and forth.
what can i say about japan that i have not already said? tomorrow will become saturday, and i feel thankful for a day off to clean up and do some minor chores. if my posts sound less than enthused or satisfied, then you must understand that i miss my home country and have been experiencing the zizekian notion of how my homeland and culture is experienced as totally contingent and arbitrary. it can feel stressful and upsetting sometimes, but like my dad says, this experience has no replacement and i appreciate the chance i was given every day. self control seems like the most difficult concept i have encountered, maybe even harder than being true to oneself. socially i feel totally deprived here, but that will all become okay once liz gets here and i get three weeks, the same amount of time i used to got to know her with initially, to spend with her again and relax. today i had my last day of the year at tsuji elementary school, the one near my house, where i teach with a japanese teaching assistant who writes all of the lesson plans. it can feel like a difficult environment to teach in, but utlimately i feel thankful for her presence, as i rely on it. i heard that the job market in america has suffered less than usual this past month? that bodes well for my chances upon returning to the USA, hopefully it doesnt hurt the strong yen.
i will to buy myself a christmas/hannukah (confused because of secular japan) present tomorrow in the form of a small video game. this week and a half will go by very quickly. i will now go read paradise lost, the end of which i slowly appraoach, and then retire for the night. in case i forgot to tell you, i received my blue belt, second level, in karate on wednesday. it looks cool, and i feel good about it.
great!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

this post has 4 karate pictures and one landscape. also i try out e-prime for the first time on this blog!

welcome back, blog.
(note: here you can read about e-prime, something i heard about which i have decided to try as an experiment. this post has been composed, to the best of my knowledge, entirely in e-prime, and i will continue to try to do all of my writing in this language.)
december has finally come. does this mean winter has started? it feels cold outside, but it still feels more like autumn. i took a picture of a mountain after i went food shopping the other day. i spent more money during that food shopping than i have in any other since i got here. here you can see the picture. the leaves change, and japanese people sincerely love to talk about how much they appreciate looking at the changing colors.

the rest of these pictures i took before a karate lesson about a week or so ago. my left foot has almost reached its normal status again. i might not even have to favor the other one in karate tonight. i did get kickced in the nose last week, which did not feel like fun at all. i learned that the nose piece demands constant protection. every time before my karate lesson starts, the lesson for the little kids ends, and if i get there early enough i can watch them spar. i got some action shots here which you may enjoy.

sometimes they really go crazy and i like to watch such small kids use so much enegry. yamamoto sensei stands with his arms folded, giving criticism and encouragement.

those white things on their arms and legs, the supporters (sah-poh-taas), help absorb the impact of feirce blows. even with those on, a good fight can still hurt. and no, i had no head protector when i got hit in the nose. we don't use those. it would have been very nice to have had one then, i imagine.

here you can see the rest of the kids lined up, waiting their turn. those green shirts with yellow writing look great; they say seikoukai (the type of karate) on the back in yellow and "full contakuto karate" in white on the front, which i find funny.

and here you can see a closer shot of some kids hanging out. the japanese peace sign, or victory sign, has become ubiquitous. the boy on the right, sensei's son, seems young but will become strong one day.
and that would exhaust everything i have to show you today. yesterday i bought 2 bus tickets to and from osaka for christmas week, and even though i felt nervous about carrying on a conversation in japanese, i still got a compliment on my language ability, which felt great. today for lunch we ate a big piece of brown bread, watery vegatable soup, milk, an orange, and what the japanese call "american dog", which you would recognize as a "corn dog". i received two because i come from a foreign country, and the baseball coach laughed at this. i will probably eat gyoza and edamame for dinner. liz gets here in under two weeks, and it will feel so nice to not work and relax for a while.
great!