Still breathing...

As I type this, it is 5 pm, local time, in Thailand on the 26th of December.

For those of you who may be following the news, there was a series of tsunamis that hit the area that I am travelling through in Thailand. The hotel I stayed at a few nights ago has been destroyed, and people are apparently stranded in a cave that I swam through yesterday, but I haven't been affected. We were really lucky, in fact. This one family staying at the place we did a few nights ago escaped with only the clothes on their backs. Our group gave them some clothes, sandals and money, but they lost all their documents (passport, plane tickets, etc). Lots of other people died.

Anyhow, I'm going to catch a sleeper train to Bangkok in a few minutes, so I gotta go. Just a quick note to let you all know that I am alive and well. Hope things are great back home.

Let's enjoying English club!

After working at this school for 3 months now, and making it clear that I'm happy to help out with pretty much anything, I finally got invited to join the English club the other day. Now, I will admit, that my perception of it was somewhat tainted by Ms. Hirose who had informed me that the members' English wasn't great, that they were more interested in drawing, and had joined the club 'maybe because it is an easy club'.

So, I walk in, and the first person I see is this one girl who, I have gotten the impression from class, absoluetly HATES English. She won't do any of the activities, and is resistant to answering questions directed at her, let alone volunteering to answer questions (more so than the average student, which is saying a lot). My impression of the other students (from class) is that they are fairly neutral towards English, and none of the students who seem to enjoy English (the few that there are) are in the club. No real surprise there, I mean I liked a lot of subjects in school, but never belonged to the _____ club because I was too busy playing sports.

Anyhow, their big introductory activity was to play musical chairs. Musical frickin' chairs. Let me remind you that these kids are the equivalent of 8th graders. Did you think musical chairs was cool when you were in grade eight? But, at least we did it to English music. What I thought was really funny was that none of them wanted to actually sit down when the music stopped. They kept fighting over who should (have to) sit down (maybe because they didn't want to 'compete' against me). Yeah, so I won. The last two people were me and the teacher.

Anyhow, then we played a bunch of other games that I had to come up with. Fun for an English class, but maybe not-so-fun for something to do recreationally. At least this confirms the fact that I wasn't missing out on much from all those clubs I didn't belong to while I was in school. Or maybe the biology club was secretly brewing beer and getting drunk all the time. Whatever.

On the bright side, I think the majority of the students have become normalized to my presence. They will now respond 'hello' or 'good morning' whenever I greet them, without giggling, covering their mouths, or running away.

So, I leave for Thailand-and-Cambodia on Saturday. Somehow, the 'realness' of this fact has yet to strike me. On a down side, the anti-malaria medication (you have to start taking it before you get there) has yet to produce the 'vivid dreams' as a side effect, but on the up side, I'm not feeling any more psychotic than normal.

Happy Holidays to everyone!!!

Contrary to your misconception, I'm not a complete moron.

So I thought I'd post a humorous story after that last one.

The school I'm at recently had their December exams. After offering to help design, administer, and pretty much do anything to help with the whole test-thing multiple times, I was finally taken up on my offer by the ninensei-senseis (equivalent to 8th grade teachers). After a confusing conversation where Ms. Hirose (8th grade teacher #1) asked me to give her something she was holding in her hands (I'm still having trouble understanding exactly what that conversation was about) she asked me to help administer the test. Basically, she wanted to use me as a human tape-recorder for the verbal comprehension part of the test. I was to say stuff, and the students were supposed to write answers based on what I said. So, Ms. Hirose gave me a copy of the test, and asked me to read it (for practice) in front of her.

The first part was fill-in-the-blanks, and one of the questions looked something like this:
We went to the park ________.
Easy enough. I read the sentence, and the students fill in the blank. So, during our trial run, I just made up words to go into the blanks (seeing as I didn't have the answers). I must have guessed right on the first two, but after saying the third one, Ms. Hirose cut me off, and said "Excuse me, Louis-sensei, but this is not the right answer. You must say the right answer so that the students can put it on their sheets." I tried to explain that I did not know the answers, so it was kind of hard for me to do. So, she agreed to tell me the answers, which I proceeded to write down on the sheet. While I was doing this, she said "Excuse me, Louis-sensei (Japanese people are always extremely polite) but these are the answers to the test. They are secret. You must not show them to the students." I tried to assure her that I understood that if you give the students the answers before-hand, or let them copy from the answer sheet, then the whole point of the test is ruined. But, she felt it was absoluetly necessary to remind me of the fact that the answers were secret THREE MORE TIMES!

Okay, fine, maybe she's just worried about the whole communication gap thing. Whatever, let it go. Then (even though it's in plain writing on my agenda) she points out when the test is, and says: "...so, you must be here during the test". Yes, I understand, if I am to dictate answers to the students, it will be important that I physically be in the same room as the students, as instantaneous transporter technology is not yet readily avaliable to the general public. I have to be in the room during the test. I get it. She then went on to emphasize this point to me THREE MORE TIMES! "...Louis-sensei, you MUST be here for the test. You MUST. It is very important that you MUST be here". Yeah, okay, I GET IT! This, by the way, is besides the fact that I spend the vast majority of my time at the office (while not relieving myself, getting water, or teaching) just sitting at my desk doing nothing (or rather 2 desks over on this computer), so it wouldn't take a friggin' genius to track me down if I suddenly came down with a severe case of "I'm a friggin' moron, and I need to be told that to administer a test, I must actually be present at the test, and not give the answers to the students" syndrome.

Anyhow, so the day of the test comes around, and Ms. Hirose is talking to Ms. Sudo (8th grade teacher #2) in Japanese (you think they'd spend some time talking in English, seeing as they're both English teachers, but nope! The only time they speak English is out of necessity to me, or in class (though hardly ever in class)). I can tell they're arguing about something. Then Ms. Sudo finally turns to me and says "So, Louis-sensei, you know that this sheet (meaning the answer sheet) is secret?". I lost it, and gave her a pile-driver, followed by a drop-kick. She went down like a sack of potatoes. It was really embarrassing.

The good news, though, is that the tests went off without a hitch!

On a completely unrelated note, I think I have discovered why Japanese people are obsessed with crime (despite the fact that Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world). Every night on the news, the only thing that gets covered is whatever crime happened that day (or a natural disaster, if one occurred). It's really sad; the networks probably do it to boost ratings, but they leave people afraid of criminals in a country that is relatively criminal-free.

More evidence that my job is a joke.

After reading over what was initially supposed to be a funny entry, this entry seems to be more about me venting my frustrations. There still might be some funny parts, though, I'm not sure. I blame Greg. Be forewarned.

So we had a meeting on December 1st, the main goal of which was to plan a meeting that will
occur in January (the mid-year conference). For this meeting, all JETs from all over the ken (think of a ken as being like a province) had to assemble in the capital, Tsu. Not really a big deal for me, because Tsu is only about 20 minutes by train. Others, however, had to travel over 2 horus to get here. After crossing our names off the check-in list, we sat down and waited around for a while (JET events all seem to require a certain amount of pointless waiting before someone finally stands up and explains what the hell is going on). Anyways, this Japanese dude stands up there, and very comically "warms up the crowd" by asking (the JETs who have gone through this once or twice before) "Who likes the mid-year conference?". Crowd responds with an utter lack of enthusiasm. Japanese dude (JD from now on) says "Well, I don't like it either. But, the National Government PAYS for JET, and they tell us that we MUST have a mid-year conference every year. " (laughs from the crowd). JD: "So, PLEASE sign up to be a speaker, and then we can have more free time." (ie we can go home early, but he's not supposed to say 'go home early' since it's very important that we all be at work until 4:15 pm [regardless of whether or not we're napping in the change room, writing a blog entry, or plotting to take over the world], and any suggestion otherwise is seen as inappropriate; appearances, you see, are very important in Japan). The crowd responds, again, with polite laughter.

Now, I thought this was a great way for JD to handle the situation. He acknowledges that no one likes the conference. Okay everyone, JD "gets it", please stop bitching about the mid-year conference. JD reminds us that their hands are bound. They MUST hold the conference. Oh, yeah, and the mid-year conference is part of your job description. So just do it, okay? But, JD said this in a humorous way, trying to get us all on side. I can still guarantee, however, that a whole lot of JETs are going to bitch about having to go. I think we get so used to not doing any work, that when we actually have to, we complain about it.

I digress. So the rest of that day involved a woman reading a one page sheet of paper to us regarding the re-contracting procedure (which contained no new information), and then the upper-year JETs explaining that during the mid-year conference, there would be a series of lectures. Someone please volunteer to give the lectures. The whole point of the mid-year conference is for JETs to get together and talk about various issues in the classroom, and have some seminar presentations on how to improve certain things ('classroom management', or 'student motivation', for example). This, to me, makes sense. What I found most interesting, though, is that at the end (this whole procedure thus far took less than an hour), a bunch of upper-year JETs stood up at the front of the room, and talked about social events. Keep in mind that this is all while we are 'on the clock'. The one announcment that absoluetly floored me was of this guy describing the all-night (and I mean literally all-night, people here drink hard-core until the first train the next morning) event that was planned the first night of the conference, concluding with "yeah, so all the seminars the next day are going to suck"...!?! And of course, everyone laughs. These are the people (the one giving the announcements) that have stuck around for more than one year with JET, who are supposedly an example to the rest of us.

Anyhow, after that was done (and we were finished really early), the people who took 2 hours to get to Tsu started boarding their trains (and I'd be pissed too, coming down to hear nothing that couldn't be done via fax, email, or regular letter). Another digression: I find that certain things in Japan are extremely efficient. Take, for example, the postal system, or the trains, or any sort of emergency-response to earthquakes (who, to paraphrase, are "pulling people out of the rubble while most of us are still standing around scratching our assess wondering what the hell happened"), etc. But other things are so god-awful inefficient that you wonder how the hell two such extremes can so happily co-exist (for example, the education system, and the conference that day). Now don't get me wrong, I like my job. I mean who wouldn't? Get the afternoon off to go listen to a bunch of upcoming social events, and catch up with old friends, have ample free time every day, and get treated like a local celebrity (less than 1% of Japan's population is non-native Japanese, so we stick out like sore thumbs). But, being encouraged to get shitfaced and be hungover at the only 'official' conference of the year smacks of the amount of responsibility we all have. The thing that gets me is that while everyone here bitches about the Japanese education system being garbage (especially for English), they seem perfectly happy to be pissing away their one chance share knowledge and maybe make our lessons more effective. But maybe I'm just being critical. I'll get back to you after the conference.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, no I didn't have any classes today, and I'm not bored at all.

Underworked and overpaid,
-lp