Various Topics of Recent Development

"Various Topics of Recent Development" means, "I do not really have much to say."

Weather:
February is a miserable month. It has been snowing, raining, windy and gray for 21 of the last 25 days. I am excited for Sakura in March and April.

Work:
There have been several not so interesting things at work lately. As the semester winds down, many teachers have asked me to come to their classes to fill in, i.e. waste 50 minutes of the students lives with a self-introduction lesson. That is fine with me. It gives me something to do other than sit at my desk and pretend to organize papers.

But recently, I started going to one first year reading class pretty regularly. This was really interesting because I think that in the short 3 week period with them, I was legitimately able to connect with some students and have some conversations, albeit one sided conversations (mostly monologues with the occasional one word answer and a nod). Those kids were mighty fun. It was a real shame that they were forced to a strict "reading lesson" format, which consisted of the students checking translation, listening to me read a passage slowly, repeating after me, mimicking while reading, and answering questions. I was able to inject a couple of games to get them at least half interested in the nonsensical repetition of day after day, after day of reading about Yoko Ono and organic rice farming techniques. Riveting as that may have been, I felt they needed something a bit more morbid in a hysterical fashion. So, I taught them "hangman." They found this simple vocabulary game to be a favored distraction from monotony.

As the teacher began to see improvements to my students reading comprehension in a matter of a few weeks, he invited teachers from around Kyoto to come and observe one of the lessons with this class. Throughout the day of the observation, teachers were coming up to me saying, "Are you nervous?It was at this moment that I began to switch to logistical mode. How in the unholy nine hells of the Underdark were we going to squeeze 30 additional teachers into a classroom only twice the size of my apartment filled with desks and pesky students. Some how they did it. Half way through the lesson I noticed that the head of my Board of Education was there and so were all of the English teachers in the school as well as the principal and the vice-principal. Yikes.

The class went well and I had nothing but rave reviews from my other teachers.

On a side note, they asked me, as a returning JET to go to Tokyo in July to pick up the newbies at the airport. I am not sure I want to do this because I remember how horrifyingly hot it was when I stepped off the plane. I will see.

Karate:
So as you may or may not know, I have been taking karate for one month now. I have been studying privately with my friend since I arrived in Japan, studying weapons. But now I have a real sensei. And some how in the middle of this weeks practice, we got on the topic of the origin stories of the first emperors of Japan and how the myths say that they are the sons and daughters of the Sun Goddess. That's all fine and dandy, but in reality we all can imagine that he was just some noble who took power way back in the dawn of the age.

The shocking thing about all of this was that, from what I could understand, my sensei believed and still believes that the emperor is the divine son of the Sun Goddess. I would never argue that topic with a man as ferocious and frightening as he.

I had to have my gi (uniform) custom made for me because my legs are too short, my waist too big and my shoulders too wide for a normal size. In Japan, like in the States surprisingly, I fall right in the middle of the gi sizes.

Additionally, my first test will be in the beginning of April. I will be asked to perform one kata (series of movements in conjunction) and the bunkai (the application of that kata in a pair). I will be testing for one of the high ranking white belt divisions. I hope that I do well enough that I can move on to a green belt level by August or so. It is pretty embarrassing being a total newbie. Digression: there are two kids in my class that are black belts. They cannot be older than 13 or so. I sometimes get envious of children.

Personal Life:
Nothing terribly exciting to report. February is terrible and as such, my motivation to explore, discover, photograph, and write has been sucked away. I am going to dinner with some friends this week, taking a break from my usual battles with my inner nerd.

Valentine's day was rather average in comparison to the many other lonely years. Nothing to report. I did go to dinner with several of my single friends. That was nice. We saw an extremely ugly westerner with a rather attractive Japanese girl. We all looked at each other and said, "I wonder if she knows that she can do much better." That was rather comical to me.

Books in Review:
Conan of Cimmeria vol. 1 by Howard - So far really good.

Okinawan Karate by Mark Bishop - Miserably boring. It is just a family tree of Karate styles.

A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe - Also pretty boring. I am not a huge fan of modern Japanese literature.

A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin - A really well written fantasy novel. It is the first of 5 books. I did not care for the story very much, although I loved the characters. The plot moved too slowly for me.

Gaijin by James Clavell - As much as I loved Shogun, I think Clavell missed the mark on this book. I got about half way through it but could not think of any really reason to keep picking it up. The characters were bland and seemingly unmotivated and the plot was left dragging. It sat on my bathroom floor for a good month before I shelved it.

The Musketeer Mystery Novels by Sarah D'Almeida - Sent to me by my grandparents came into good use. I read the first four books in a matter of two weeks. I loved every minute of them. Although I think Dumas' stories are overall more iconic, these 4 stories were great. Her writing style and sense of action resemble Dumas' so closely that it is quite difficult to tell that they were written a century and a half after the original stories.

Upcoming Blogs:
The Leper in the Sardine Can
What a Japanese Graduation Looks Like
And much, much more in future episodes

p.s. - Sorry I have not written in a while, motivation has been lacking of late.