Free time problem? I don’t think so…

So you say you have too much free time?  You say it’s a problem?  I say you are losing a battle with creativity!

Description of my Japanese Office

I’m going to try to give a neutral descriptive analysis of my Japanese office because I think it might provide useful insight into a culture many westerners are unfamiliar with.  I should preface this with the fact that my own work experience is limited and I have not worked in a business office or government office other than the one I’m describing.

Facing Forward: Teaching Japanese

Since I wrote down my goal of teaching Japanese, and thereby set it in burnable, erasable, rip-up and throw away-able, yet tangible paper, I have seen the world around me with new eyes.

My Dream

I just finished reading Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art”.  Yesterday I listened in on a bit of a class taught to some of my elementary school students about finding and reaching your dream.  As both of these happened at the same time as I’ve been pondering what my next step after JET should be, I had a brilliant and simple idea.  I wrote “My Dream” at the top of a piece of paper and filled in my goal and steps to getting there below it.  I don’t know if I could have put this into words until now.

2011 Lunar Eclipse from Kochi, Japan

Last night my girlfriend and I went to the river to watch the lunar eclipse. The conditions were rather fantastic.  It was happening between 9-11 pm on a Saturday night.  The sky was cloudless, and it was only about 7-9 degrees Celsius out.

What do I want to do?

Right now I’m pretty happy with my employment setup.  The pay is good, the job is bearable with fun parts as well as irritating parts, as I can only assume most jobs have.  But it is limited to an absolute maximum of five years, two of which I have already filled.  I definitely have another year here before I’m forced to move on to other things, but I’ve been thinking lately about what I might do, and what I might like to do when the day comes for my contract to end.

Johnny ALT and his Adventures in Hidaka

I decided it might be fun and good study to make a comic with my adult Eikaiwa class.  The comic, or manga as they’re called in Japan, will feature a fictional American JET named Johnny ALT.  I just finished the character design this morning.

Spring Time

It’s spring!  Officially and seemingly.  The cherry trees on the mountain-sides are blooming, freckling the green and brown swathes with splotches of the season’s pink and white.  With spring comes YARUKI.

Teaching English: Must Versus Have to

So, I’m an assistant English teacher.  That’s my job.  In fact, more specifically my job is to be a native speaker of English to provide my students with exposure and the chance to interact with a real L1 (First Language) English speaker.  It also means I occasionally run into difficulties that the Japanese teachers don’t anticipate.  When you learn a 2nd language in school, at least in Japan, it’s mostly done by teaching a series of grammatical rules and drilling vocabulary which you can use to fill in the spaces of those rules.  Unfortunately the basis for those rules is often suspect or at least not really firmly rule-like.  Grammar should really be considered a set of guidelines, since people are always mangling them into newly invented monsters.  The monsters lose their hanging chads and polish off their rough edges over the course of time and use, but they’ll eventually change again anyway.

Another Nearby Hike

I hiked Naruyama (成山) in Ino town with a good ALT friend from Kochi city this past weekend.  It was a hiking target that has been on my list for a long while and I almost hiked it before but decided time was too short and the trail too rough for the clothes we had been wearing at that time.