Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 27 letters, bags, fail, fial, Japan, Language, letters, meetign the standards or American Way Magazine, owls, Teaching
Filed under: Japan, Teaching, Uncategorized | Tags: cats, feedback, happy, Japan, percentage, robots, scientist, service, smile-detectors, Teaching
Usually when you find a video about Japan on an English speaking website it’s either about robots, or something intensely bizarre–like a game show for cartoon rabbits. This, year I have seen everything from robot chairs, to rocket chairs, to a cat who had been designated the Honorary Station Master of a train station in Northern Japan.
I found the above video on the AP web channel and I liked it because while it was remotely insane, the story also presented two interesting social dynamics I have noticed during my time here.
The first and more obvious point of cultural significance documented is the immense value workers in the Japanese service industry put on giving good service, and the effort they put in to achieving that goal (as long as you don’t try to order off the menu). I can’t say I’m a person who even really appreciates good service. In retail situations I try to avoid the sales person for fear of being pressured into buying leather pants or disappointing them when I don’t buy the leather pants they recommend.
Still, the disparity in the level of service you receive in Japan, versus an average American experience is not only blaring obvious, but also it is often delivered in a way that isn’t overwhelming or distracting. For example, when I walk into the convenience store I am greeted every time, and thanked every time. This is a basic and decent amount of human interaction–especially if you want people to pay you money for things–and even brings a certain amount of honor to transaction.In the larger shops they even go as far as to walk you out of the store and thank you profusely.
There’s also the practical side of service; across the board the package you items carefully and efficiently, and when it’s raining they often wrap your bag with a rain cover.
Of course, there is the dark overkill said to service, but not having purchased a car or a home (or really any item large enough to inspire desperation in a salesperson) I find that this brand of sales tactic seems to be confined to the young womens section of the department store. I can only process these pop-driven, Girl fortresses as a series of blurry, glittering lights and the shrill sounds of intermittent high-pitched giggling between the sound a credit card swipes. Maybe the overkill approach appeals to this specific “tween” consumer, I don’t know and I am sure I wouldn’t know what it looked it. (full disclosure: I am a card carrying member of G.R.O.S.S, since 1988).
That niche market aside, I the level of service in America is more than a few god-awful training videos away from reaching the level of mastery where they work on refining their smile in a machine every morning. Let’s be honest though, refining your smile in a smile-measuring computer is entirely absurd; it’s like three stages away from Total Recall technology.
However, while the usefulness of this machine is debatable, the greater significance–for me–is the role of this machine in the culture of statistical feedback. As I have mentioned, Japanese people have an emphatic and remarkable work ethic, and this ethic is fueled by setting goals, and receiving feedback to help them set goals to achieve. While I have yet to determine the root of this characteristic, Japan as a whole seems to value quantitative information and feedback higher than the basic qualitative advice. I can understand this to some degree because numbers are an easy way to explain and measure things. If you boss says you are doing the job at 80% then you know where you stand, and how much (but perhaps not what) more you need to do. However, this can be taken to a fault; it can be applied in places where numbers don’t really work as a great system of measurement or offer insightful way to improve.
Recently in my science class we focused our emphasis on pronunciation. While it’s been a big help to some of the lower-level and beginning students, the head of the class introduced an exercise where the students repeat back to me the word we have just practiced and I give them a pronunciation grade. He asked me to give them a instant percentage grade on each attempt. However, this is class with many beginners; it became instantly clear to me that throwing out numbers could be rather demoralizing for some students who struggle with basic sounds–especially when we are practicing words ranging from “light” to “tuyere” to “thermodynamics”.
Also, my mind does not work in a way that it can break down individual word pronunciation statistically. I can’t quickly divide words by syllables or letters and then score which of those has been done perfectly, Furthermore, I don’t think that numbers serve or helpful method of measurement for aurual sounds. If I say it was an 80%, how does it teach the student to get a 100%? How is that even better than me just repeating the part of the word they have difficulty with and giving no score at all?
Having had my own troubles with pronouncing words in the past, I have come to the belief that grading pronunciation is better served by a system with the metrics of, “pass”, “fail” and “close enough that your friends or colleagues won’t mock you”.
Accordingly, I adjusted my feedback to four responses with that hope that this system was helpful, yet also encouraging. I settled on: “perfect”, “very good”, “pretty good” and then one–in the event that they get stuck or completely mispronounced the word–where I grimaced a little and repeated the word. If they get below “very good” I always repeat the word and emphasize the problem area until they are able to get it correct.
Of course, while my plan seemed like a great idea, it was just another example of me blowing against the wind. At first the students seemed to like my new metrics. They would sort of act cocky and brag if they got a “perfect”. Within the second or third go around of the new scale, the head of the class turned to me and asked, “‘perfect’ is 100%?” “‘pretty good’ 80%? 90%” “‘very good’ is 75%? 60%? which?”. As soon as I compromised and answered those questions he began following up my student assessments by yelling out the corresponding percentage points every time.
Add this to the list of those great “oh yeah, I am in Japan moments”. I’ve learned all you can do in those situations is reach into your motherboard, adjust the dial, and turn your smile up to 110% (“super-perfect”).
That’s right, we smile at 11 over here.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: america, Canada, cooking, hot pocket, Japan, Language, mcgriddles, mistakes, Teaching
Let me begin by explaining that the default personnel set up for my English school is this: one native English speaking teacher (me), one Japanese English speaking teacher, and one manager–to work on recruiting new students, and renewing students contracts and making sure the school is profitable.
Managers are always Japanese, and apparently it is rare that they stay at a particular school for very long. If they are successful, they get moved to bigger schools, and if they aren’t well… When I first arrived, the default personnel scenario was in place. But within two months the manager was asked to move to another school (not because she was successful) and never heard from again. Sans manager, the other teacher and I were forced to pick up some slack– and in terms of dealing with students this meant the other teacher had to pick up more slack because out of the two of us she was the only one who spoke Japanese. Then in December, we got another Manager, who was capable and successful.
Unfortunately, after two months, the powers that be, recognized her talents and transferred her to another school three days a week. Also, those same three days a week, the moved the other teacher to another school because she didn’t ave many students here. Thus creating a new, reformed power hierarchy at my school that consists of just me, alone, by myself. This essentially means that I am running someone else’s business in a country where I don’t speak the language.
As you can imagine, on occasion, this is ripe for farce.
Thus, in between faxing some forms (usually the manager’s job) and frantically trying to prepare for my class (my job), I was greeted by a visitor from the city office (I was stoked I could understand that much!). He was a wonderfully nice gentleman, who, happened to be friends with one of my students. He also knew less English then I knew Japanese.
He came armed with a series of pamphlets written Japanese, He explained each one, in Japanese pointing pictures of old people cooking and young Australian and Japanese children making arts and crafts together. It became apparent to me that he was in charge of some cultural exchange program, but beyond that I understood little of what he said.
This was a bit depressing; I have now been living in Japan for seven months, and have been taking private Japanese lessons. I study hard and try to speak when I can, but progress is slow, frustratingly slow. Every Japanese person I try to speak with is always patient and really understanding, and I try to be patient with myself as well, but I’ve encountered few things as difficult as trying to have a productive conversation with someone when we don’t understand each other”s language. It’s like playing the worst game Pictionary or Charades every three seconds, except you don’t even resort to such games because you end up drawing an entire stick-figure conversation or imitating Riverdance.
As soon as he moved away from the explanation of the pamphlets and into free form conversation the structural integrity of our conversation collapsed. The thick blanket of the linguistic impasse swiftly covered the room. I could see drops of sweat forming on his forehead as I tried to faun understanding to make him less nervous as he tried sentences in both quick Japanese and bits of broken English.
We got to a final sentence with only two words I understood, “Canada” and “food”. I asked him to repeat the sentence, but I was still to grasp those two words. Realizing we had hit the cul de sac of this conversation I panicked and I did what I usually do in these situations and said “yes”.
Now I know from a specific Seinfeld episode that this is a bad habit to have, but in situations of international exchange, I have the propensity to panic (I would make a terrible diplomat).
After I said, “hai”, he shot me a look that I briefly interpreted as meaning he understood that I did understand, or that I had just agreed to something.
Did he want me to tell him some Canadian foods? Were they going to make some Canadian foods and did he want me to come? Did he want ME to teach people how to make Canadian food and more importantly did he think I was Canadian?
After he repeated the question again for my benefit, I sucked in my pride and told him that the manager would be back on Friday and she could help translate. We exchanged formalities, he unnecessarily apologized for stopping in unannounced and he promised to come back on Friday. Afterwards, I thought about Canadian foods my list consist of this: Canadian Bacon, Poutine (gross) and some form of Canadian Syrup, also, maybe Ketchup flavored chips (does that count?).
Later my student, the who was an acquaintance of his, came to class and I asked him what his friend had requested. My student clarified everything, saying he wanted me to to either give a speech about Canada or teach peopel how to cook some Canadian foods. I replied to my student, who is very fluent in English, that I would be happy to do that, but I’m not Canadian. He blinked a few times, tilted his head–much in the way a canine does when it’s confused and said, “really?”.
depressing things: 2, Ted: 0 (maybe I get a half point for sucking in my pride instead of insisting that I would agree to teach a Canadian cooking class).
Also, I’ll find out tomorrow if the offer still stand to teach a ethnic American cooking class. If so what should I cook for the class, tacos or pizza?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Charlie Sheen, Japan, science, Teaching, Terminal Velocity
Today, in my class of scientist I was discussing free falls. Throughout this mini-lecture, one students happened to be particularly on top of the concept and familiar with the terminology. When he recalled the meaning and proper pronunciation of "Terminal Velocity" with minimal prompting, I praised him with a hokey and mundane stock phrase such as "someone read their book…"
Luckily, he was able to rescue the any semblance coolness of this conversation had with his reply, "Oh, no, I’ve just seen the movie called Terminal Velocity". Terminal Velocity is by no means integral member of the Canon of Awesome Man Action Films, but it does get an honorbale mention solely because it involves a scene where Charlie Sheen free falls out of a plane in a red convertible. I can’t recall the specifics of why Charlie Sheen drives a car out of an airplane, oh how he resolves this predicament, but the answers to both of those questions are irrelevant. The student and promptly interrupted the flow of the lecture to spend a few minutes regaling the class (really just ourselves) with discussion of just that scene.
seriously, it's not the fall, whoever told you that is wrong.
That’s when I realized that Charlie Sheen, in spite of all of his massively devastating, insanely public personal issues and body of work that includes numerous celluloid monstrosities and seemingly career ruiners such as Hot Shots:Part Deux and Predator: The Concert this man has ascended into the stratosphere of international lexicon and has become a cross-cultural symbol(albeit of a guy who sometimes drives cars our of airplanes for forgotten reasons).
Despite, the surprisingly amount of quality work (Navy Seals!), Charlie Sheen has done that might balance this out, and justify his status as a person the entire world can discuss, I’m not sure how comfortable I am with this. It’s just seems too strange an arbitrary that Charlie might be as recognizable a name as Einstein, or perhaps more recognizable than Aristotle. It’s kind of like when I was in the book store the other day, and in my perusing I noticed that The Wealth of Nations was 60 yen cheaper than The Da Vinci Code. I’m not going to sit here and whine and scream about how “culture is dead” (culture is dead), that “we’re all doomed” (we’re totally doomed), and “society is a sham” (serenity now) but it’s evident that we have some work to do.
In summation, I think the only way to make this okay is if Charlie just divides all the money that he gets from his hit soul-sucking clown make up infomercial disguised as a television program and gives it to every single person in the world. It’s the only fair. He can keep the money he made from all dogs go to heaven 2. Those dollars were earned.
all dogs go to heaven 3
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: accents, classes, intonation, Japan, pronunciation, scotland, students, Teaching
Getting In Character for Conversational Listening Tapes 3-6
Allow me to start by saying that I’m all for Scotland. Tartan patterns, William Wallace, tourist traps under the guise of the existence of mythical, ancient sea creatures are all to my liking. I’ve never eaten Haggis and probably never will, but I like the name, and I respect a culture that is willing to eat things that will gross other cultures out, it shows moxie and fortitude.
However, can we agree, they don’t speak “proper” English. In fact, I would go as far as to say, they don’t speak English; they speak Scottish.
Before we start tossing pint glasses, I want to make it clear that I’m not attempting to imply that their dialect is inferior or cacophonous, I merely want to illuminate the fact that their colloquial pronunciation and vocabulary presents some significant differences between itself and others forms of English.
I only bring this up because in my classes, the CD’s we use for listening sections attempt to expose the students to a multitude of accents. Thus we have employed Small World-esque collection of voice actors to have conversations about why they don’t get along with their brother or what time they want to eat dinner. This cast of characters includes Proper English Chap, Boastful Big-City American, Heady Australian Girl, Sensible Kiwi Woman and the most difficult Deliberately Slow Scottish Guy. (Please note, these names aren’t official, however, they are accurate.)
Out of this mixed bag, Deliberately Slow Scottish Guy tends to elicit some surprised and perplexed faces from my students. I consistently have to re-translate for my students which sometimes requires me to look over the transcript to see if he was talking about his “garage”, “carriage”, “marriage”, or something entirely different that I don’t even know about.
When my students signed up to learn English, I know they understood that there are a variety of accents to contend with. However, there is no evidence to suggest any of them came in with the intention or dream of becoming familiar with the finer points of proper Aberdeen intonation. Also, from a didactic perspective, if you’re trying to teach someone a grammar structure and some new vocabulary, it undermines your ability to teach and time management skills when you are constantly throwing them for a loop with new accent du jour each class–with special, exclusive intonation, contradictory word structure, and pronunciation.
I’m not trying to single Scotland out, but it’s a really difficult accent for my students to comprehend. It just not only a tricky one, but also a rarity for my Japanese students to encounter. If we want to prepare them for something they’re realistically going to be exposed to, we’re better off drilling them in in one of the various fancy boy euro-English accents than we are in recruiting voice actors from Edinburgh.
Also, if they’re really going to be a bear, they should be a Grizzly. On behalf of my various Caucused ancestors I’m outraged. Where’s Ireland? South Africa? The entire southern United States? Canada? Wales? Scouser? Cockney? The whole thing smells of elitism to me.
This whole mess really makes me put more faith in trusted tenants of entropy theory. How did we get from a series of inflected grunts to Latin to this systemic mess of linguistic phylae? One day we are going to evolve to a state where each with have our own personal colloquial telekinetic language, with individually unique intonation and vocabulary unique. At that moment the world will then explode into a quintillion tiny particles of living bio-stardust that will be unable to have conversations with other bit of bio-stardust because they can’t decide if crisps are chips, and chips are fries or if chips are chips, and fries are fries, and crisps are nothing. Won’t that be wonderful.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1st grade, customs, dilatory, Head Shoulder Knees and Toes, I spy, Japan, late, punctuality, small talk, tardy, Teaching
But don't be late!
Punctuality has never been my forte. If my memory serves me correct, I embraced the dilatory lifestyle as early as 1st grade. These habits were undoubtedly passed down from father, but i hold no ill will towards him as a result; in fact, in retrospect, they may have been a popularity boon of sorts.
I’m not sure if at the time I found it cool to be the kid arriving late, but I think it distinguished me among my peers, and that made me cool. In elementary school, anything that distinguishes you and makes you the center of attention that doesn’t involve you having to wear a pair of pants procured from the Lost and Found or excessive teacher praise is an ethos to cool. Soccer skills were cool, burping skills were cool, and being late was cool. I was the king of being late.
This routine dominated a large portion of my high school and collegiate career, and even permeated into my early professional gigs; however it is not attribute that could survive in Japan. Tardiness is a sin that this nation will not stand for. f you’re five minutes late, you might as well have killed a kitten. Plan on spending the next ten minutes apologizing–it’s a 2:1 ratio at least, unless you’re married.
I tried my best to country with a fresh perspective. In doing so, I began to see Japan’s logic on the matter of punctuality. Namely, what is so important that makes you late? (I still answer “sleep” in response to this question)
I am proud to say that in compliance with the reigning colloquial standards I have shifted my attitude, routine, paradigm and everything else to become a person that–at least on a professional level–arrives on time, if not early.
On average, I arrive at work ten minutes early. I set up the school, and officially clock in about five minutes early. This is nearly a 4,000% increase over my record at my previous employer. It feels kind of good. Not really good, there’s no “punctuality high”, but there is a small sense of accomplishment.
However, despited the marked improvement, the punctuality gods still have a score to settle with me. They conspire several times a week to haunt me with over-punctual students.
These students exceed the newly-rigged adjective, “ultra-early”. Some of these students consistently show up 25-30 minutes before class. I hate show offs.
What’s even more perplexing is their motivation for doing this. I’m certainly not that interesting to talk to–in some cases I have another class before theirs so I’m not even in the lobby available for conversation, so that motive can be ruled out.Also, I checked around, we do not have a Nintendo Wii in the lobby, nor is their money hidden anywhere. We don’t even serve refreshments.
Now, I understand this isn’t the worse thing in the world. It’s just a little, kind, friendly human interaction. However we need a moderation of all things, and to be honest, in the Internet age, I’m good for about 10 minutes of small-talk, tops. Add on to that their limited command of English, and I have to start getting really creative just to sustain a five minute conversation.
At some point in the year, I wouldn’t be surprised if I am forced to break out “I Spy”. Once that happens, “Twenty Questions” and the daily riddle are sure to follow. If we add that to the weekly routine of “Head Shoulder Knees and Toes” (a classic!) that I already do and by February I will officially be the coolest (lamest) kid in First Grade…again.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creativity, cultural differences, culture, english, Japan, langauge, Nihongo, students, Teaching, Tokyo Gore Police, training, Transformers, Voltron
During teacher training, someone will undoubtedly bring up a situation highlighting how it’s difficult for our students to be creative. The trainer will say, “great question!” then we’ll delve our way into a spontaneous brainstorming session on how to create appropriate creativity channels, provide guidelines, and encouragement so that during a role-play, or in response to a general question the class isn’t stuck with three minutes of dead air while a student tries conjure up what he could possibly buy at a supermarket.
This training exercise can be quite helpful. There are few things more awkward than waiting three minutes for someone to say,”bananas” or “cereal” (really in any situation, not just the classroom). However, sometimes the tone of how this issues is approached and handled assumes there is a national “creativity deficit” in Japan.
I understand that Japanese culture is often more concerned about the group versus the individual, and conformity has it’s place social interactions, but I think in this case the “cultural sensitivity” perspective is taken too far. Japan may have slightly different customs, but Japanese people are still self-aware individuals, who watch television and live in the information age.
To verify my point, I fail to see how a country that can produce a movie like “Tokyo Gore Police”, is lacking in creative spark. Here, is a movie about mutants who can manifest lethal weapons from their own flesh wounds–and the Special Police force that hunts them down. Have we seen this movie in America before? France, you cinematic weirdos, you have anything like this?
don't worry mom, I haven't seen this movie.
Let’s not forget this is also the country that brought us Voltron, Transformers, electronic pets, and every other shocking game show tidbit you can imagine.
While I would agree that there are individual cases where students lack a bit of imagination, I think the primary reason thsse long pauses arise, is that when asking a student to be creative in English, I am asking them to use both sides of their brain simultaneously. Lnagauge and fantasy don’t originate from the same hemispheres. By asking a student to put a language pattern into their own spontaneous hypothetical situation I might as well be asking them to do interpetive math.
“Here are some numbers and functions. Scatter them wildly according to how this Coltrane Solo makes you feel, but make sure it follows a percievable, object-based function.”
Go ahead, be crazy and sane at the same time, try it.
I concede using both sides of the brain when learning a language is clearly an essential part of attaining fluency. Let’s not confuse it for some national cultural abnormaility, doing so would be a bit crass. Complications with total brain usage are not limited to a specific nationality, we’re all human
The other day at my Japanese lesson I was asked to pratice and langauge pattern and come up with some questions to find out what kinds of an object my teacher likes. Basic stuff, “what kind of music do you like?”, “What kind of food do you like?”
Under pressure, and with a limited vocabulary, on the fourth go-around I asked, “What kind of tigers do you like?”
Shocked, she fired back in english, “what kinds of tigers are there?”
“Shiroi (meaning white) and….” I paused, “How do you say ‘regular’ in Japanese?”
Sometimes I’m surprised more heads don’t explode in my classroom.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: english, Japan, politics, Teaching, The war
I’m heading to Kyoto for an extended weekend. Hopefully I’ll return with a boatload of pictures and a luggage case full of spiritual enlightenment. I heard a rumor that they have a few temples and shrines there.
I know I mentioned a while back that I was going to stage some sort of elaborate thesis on Japanese politics and the value of honor within Japanese society, however, I have returned to the old philosopher’s crux that the more I think about it, the more I realize how little I know. I’ve only been here two months, so maybe this is a subject I will return to when I feel more qualified to do so. I’ll certainly provide some highlights and insight on the upcoming Japanese Prime Minister election, especially if my students offer me any interesting information on the subject. So far I’ve mostly received sentiments of cynicism on their part. I can’t blame them, they have had something like thirteen Prime Ministers in the last twenty years. I’m surprised they remember who is in charge, or that they haven’t turned the whole election into an American Idol style competition.
In the meantime, today I stumbled into an unfortunate episode of “Ted Reilly, Language Detective”. During some pleasant lobby talk with another teacher and one of my students about text message abbreviations, the other teacher shared an anecdote about the encounters of her father as a young boy in Japan, with the arriving American GI’s. Her father told her he could remember three things they used to say to him, but he spoke no English, so he didn’t know what they meant.
The first one was “sunavubit”, which she had realized was probably “son of a bitch”. (Everyone in the lobby shared a polite chuckled when she said this.)
The second saying her father had remembered was “gudaamut”. She had determined that this was “god damnit”. (The students and I laugh, pretending to be shocked by the language.)
The third saying her father would recall, was “caasuuka”. The teacher then says that has never figured out what the one was and she is interested to know what it was and what it means. (All eyes in the room turn to me)
“Do you know?” asked the other teacher.
I stupidly replied honestly, not even remembering to inflect any sort of reluctance and answer until half way though, “Yeahhhhhhhhhhh, I know what it means“
My student, curious, eagerly urges me on, “What does it mean?”
“You know, it could be a lot of things actually…” I said.
“My father probably did something to make them angry, right?” asked the teacher.
“Well, you know, the army has it’s own language and it’s own way of speaking, it’s not necessarily a bad thing….”
“But it wasn’t a nice word, was it?” she finished my sentence.
“No, not really” I said, sheepishly.
I guess there were both better and worse places we could have ended the conversation, but we decided to do it here, at that point, I was comfortable with that. These days they might deport me for saying the word in question to a room full of Japanese women. Later, when I used the school computer I saw that the teacher had tried to use “Yahoo:Answers” to figure it out on her own. Someone should tell her about Google, although I doubt she wants to Google this finely crafted bit of slang.
You know, I knew this war thing might lead to an awkward moment or two, but I didn’t realize it was going to be a weekly occurrence. Thanks FDR.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: atomic bomb, Japan, living in Japan, robots, science, shopping center, Teaching, the indian restaurant
bridge to a future Robot factory?
This afternoon I was greeted with a sight that I am less than enthusiastic about. The owner of the prestigious Indian restaurant I frequently dine at, walked by rather swiftly with the head of shopping center security team (Ako’s finest no doubt). In his hand, the head of security was carrying a high-powered flashlight. Not a mag-lite or something you would use to subdue a hooligan, rather the kind of flashlight you would want if you were looking for something small….and perhaps agile.
At this point, any conclusion I come to is pure speculation, but this is not usually a good omen. When I saw the security guard leaving the eatery he had a bit of a hop in his step. It is difficult to interpet what that meant. My thoughts: either something was dropped some place dark and unmentionable, or more likely, they had summoned security to help them secure the kitchen area from an unwanted, and most likely, non-human intruder. Needless to say, I will be going on a short curry fast–for religious purposes, obviously.
I do want to comment that I think this would be one area where Japan’s robot infatuation would be handy. What’s preventing them from taking the “roomba” a step further and adding some heat sensors, small arms weaponary and a “kitchen sentinle” mode? Certainly not desire or demand…
In other news, it happened today. In my science class the proverbial “bomb was dropped and the bomb was mentioned. I must confess, I asked for it. We were wrapping up the unit on Nuclear Physics and I needed a short activity that was that was highly verbal, featured the original thoughts of the student, and cumulatively covered the unit. Invoking the spirit of Socrates, I went for “Benefits and Detriments of Nuclear Physics and Nuclear Technology”. For purposes of the class, this was titled “Nuclear Phsyics: Pro-Con”.
I had them write five ideas for both “Pro” and “Con” on a sheet and then went over them in a short class discussion, eliciting one idea from them each. Being the curious idiot that I am, I amd sure I secretly wanted to see how many students it would take before the “a” word was mentioned.For those of your scoring at home, (now is the time get out your “Teaching in Socks” bingo” cards!) the answer was four.
I know for a fact the first three all had “atomic bombs” listed on their sheet but omitted it. I even saw the second student I called on mull over his list, look at me, and decide to dodge that landmine. Not that he should feel ashamed or afraid to say it, but I appreciated the polite gesture in attempting to avoid something he decided would been uncomfortable for me.
I got to appreciate that sentiment for about 20 seconds. When the words “atomic bomb” were said, I replied, “un-huh” and wrote “nuclear weapons” on the board under the “con” portion of the list. I might have been subconsciously shaking my head, mostly in response to the internal though of “one year ago I never would imagined I’d be doing this” however, the students must have been keen to my body language, or just generally aware of the situation, as they started the ribbing the student who provided the answers with quite whispers of what I imagine translates into, “nice one” or “good going, idiot”. When I got to the next student, he claimed to not have an answer to contribute at all and the following students stuck to more medical aspects of the science. I don’t think it was all that uncomfortable, but I purposely misprounounced some words comically at the end of class to try and lighten the mood regardless. We’ll see what happens when I teach the class again tomorrow. I’m holding out for total mutinity.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: coffee, ice cream, Japan, Teaching, Vending machines
I’m going to keep it light for the weekend. Attached are images and descriptions of the vending machines that are keeping me alive.
Here is sector one.
The Grail
Nothing exceptionally special here, however i would like you to take notice of the volume of machines, and perhaps the ration of machines to customers at this given moment. It’s usually like this, and since I’ve arrived, I can’t recall seeing a queue, or small riot demanding more machines. Maybe I missed the great “storming of the machines” and there’s a holiday dedicated to it that I am unaware of but frankly I see five drink machines bunched up together. It’s a bit of an overkill. Perhaps even machine cannibalism.
I do enjoy the variety though. Within in these machines there are roughly around 100 different buttons you could hit that would provide you with a can of brewed, chilled coffee for 120yen. Would you be surprised if I told you that I caved to this dark master every morning?
That said, each variety has 2 buttons of territory, but you’re still looking 50 different varieties of coffee, all somewhat reasonable priced. We may not have a Starbucks in town (that I’m aware of) but this lonely mall corner caters to my needs.
Scientifically, this corner alone contains enough caffeine for a few third world countries. If only we could deliver it to them somehow it would provide that igniting spark of energy eventually leading to a repaired developing world with a new economy, government, agricultural practices, transportation infrastructure, criminal justice system. social hierarchy…but I DIGRESS (coffee does that to a man).
Back at the coffee corner I should mention that they have more than coffee. In fact there is a plethora of choices available: your typical selection of teas, juices sports drinks for the active shopper (Gatorade, however, is absent as it is not a global thirst quencher) as well as water–which happens to be the most expensive item of the lot at 130 yen. Typical.
Here is sector two, which is a mere 7 meters from sector 1.
The Moneymaker
This is really celebration station for me. In the center we have the juice box machine. This is the best value at 100yen a box, and is a panacea for the health-conscious sugar addict. I turn to this machine when I’m feeling guilty about drinking too much coffee, or more accurately, when people ask me why my hands are shaking and I realize that I’ve had too much coffee. In retrospect, I should probably make more use of this machine in the future because I have a feeling students can understand me better when I’m not trembling with the excitement of a caffeine buzz. My pronunciation is a little more articulate and my sentence structure perhaps a bit more diligent.
To the left, yes that is a cigarette machine.
On the right, is what I refer to as paydirt. Yes, you are seeing that correctly, those are ice cream cones in a vending machine. I have tried every flavor except the ones that look gross–namely Pina Colada and some form of fruit slush that I haven’t been able to deterine the fruit base of. Rule of thumb, if you can’t locate an exact citrus foundation of something orange and yellow and you are in a foreign country, stay away from it, it could be ANYTHING. There are no “safe” colors here. You have to remember that in Japan, no matter what color the food is, or the medium in which it is presented to you, it could always, I repeat always, be fish. Sometimes, you just don’t want fish.
Regardless, I have sampled the six other flavors fearlessly, and I have no favorites but tend to stray to the chocolate side of things (insert whatever inappropriate punchline you can think of here on your own time, this is a family site).
I apologize if this dissapointed. I know most of you were expecting a more otherworldy array of contraptions, like a coffee machine with a tiny dog baraista inside it, or perhaps a machine with an army of sushi making robots. Unfortunately, I haven’t found those…YET. In the meantime, this vending machine cornucopia keeps me alive, gets me through the day, and pushes me down the path towards early-oneset-diabetes. So worship it accordingly.
