Woah, You Really Mean That?

So today's entry is largely an attempt to waste the last 45 minutes of work while pretending to be busy. That being said, feel free to skip today's events. That also being said, don't skip today's entry, you would miss out on all the wonderful things I have to say about Yoko Ono, historical inaccuracies, and the library challenge.

I suppose I should preface the first part of this entry by saying, I do not like Yoko Ono. I think her music is vile and her art is nonsense. All things considered, she is praised like a god here. In one of my many first-year reading classes, the teacher is using a textbook which claims that Ono Yoko, a.k.a Yoko Ono, is the most famous Japanese person in the world. I refuse to believe this. If this is true, I just might lose faith in all of humanity. I would much rather have Ken Wantanabe sing the Carpenters' love songs in falsetto than listen to the squealing noise that Ono puts out. (I am almost certain that Mr. Wantanabe, seen in The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise, does not sing Carpenters' love songs.) I do not believe she is the most famous Japanese person. If it were not for John Lennon and the Beatles, and a more sordid affair there is not, she would be some obscure hippie with nothing of any real value.

Now that I have brought up Yoko's relationship with the Beatles, I think I should state my own personal opinions on this matter. Since my childhood as a Westerner, I have never heard a good word said about Yoko Ono. Every mention of her name was usually followed up by the inevitable, "She broke up the Beatles" argument. But here in Japan, she is loved. Her history and story have been altered like so many Japanese history textbooks to look favorably on her as an artist and musician. Shenanigans.

On a less gut-churning topic, today was a difficult and busy day, filled with failure and hilarity. In an attempt to waste the next 4 weeks of class in my Oral Communications class, the teacher and I have decided to start a persuasive argument presentation unit. This basically means that every day, we will go to the library and the students will pretend to work on their presentations and speeches while the teacher and I walk around the library looking for the English book section, which I unfortunately found. Yes, that is in fact the entire English book section. Sixteen books. Sixteen illustrated plot summaries. Fantastic.

But I digress. I bring all of this up because one student, the same student that is constantly a troublemaker, was trying to hide from me the whole class period. I am not a stupid person, I knew exactly what he was doing. I was a student myself not to long ago. I know all the good ways to make it look as if you are working, but really playing video games on the Nintendo DS. The reason I pace my classrooms like a prison warden is because if I did not, they would sit on their cell phones and e-mail each other or play Nintendo DS. And this kid was just really bad at hiding his activities. He knew that I knew what he was doing and did not care. That is what pissed me off, not that he was playing video games when he should have been researching in the library. So every so often I would walk by him and stop and stare down at him. Eventually he would notice that I was hovering over him and he would look up and smile, knowing that I could not stop him from doing what ever the hell he wanted (yet another significant difference between American and Japanese schools, not to mention my own lack of power as a pseudo-educator). It just comes with the territory. Eventually, the librarian caught him and took away his video game, which actually made me laugh maniacally so that the entire library turned at looked at me. I gave them the stink eye and continued my goose step-esque gait, dodging backpacks and umbrellas. I would have been right at home at the Ministry of Funny Walks.
(Tune in next time for a something much more exciting)