I was asked a while back what I was going to do for a week long vacation period starting tomorrow (known locally as “silver week”). I pondered for a bit then thought, you know I should go up to Hokkaido. I like Hokkaido a lot, and it would be good to make it up there when many people down here have never been.

My plan starts today. Silver week and my car’s bi-annual inspection just happened to collide. So instead of getting fussy, I instead made it work. So anyway, I’m supposed to take my car to the car inspection place where they’re going to fix a (supposed) oil leak. The whole operation, they told me, would take about 4-7 days (a prime time to travel by train). Hopefully that’ll be a painless affair of just dropping off a car and leaving– but who knows.

Once the car is off I lug my backpack on my back and hike to the train station where I’ll be waiting for my bus to take me to Ooma in Northern Shimokita.

My plan is to camp tonight up in Ooma  then take the earliest ferry from Ooma to Hakkodate. From Hakkodate I buy a ticket to Sapporo and chill out till the train arrives. Once on and sitting down– it’s a 3 or so hour ride to Sapporo where I’ll get off at the big station and make my way around to a Backpacker’s Hostel I booked for the week called “INO’s PLACE.”

In Sapporo, I don’t have much major planned. Mostly I want to go around to places I used to hang out at. Also I need to: drink a coffee at Starbucks, watch a movie at the movie theater, and go to a BIG bookstore and check out ENGLISH books. You know, things you can’t do here. Then I want to do some side trips– Like go to this one coffee shop in Otaru that I’ve only been to once. If it’s still open I want to go in and take another picture. Then, if I have time, I want to go to Jozankei Onsen again and take more pictures of that village.

So that’s my plan for silver week.

Cheers

~J

I suppose I’ll figure it all out when/if I get there (lol).

When I was England I thought it would be proper to look for a book on English grammar usage. I mean I would be English teacher in Japan soon, maybe it would be a good time to brush up on my basics.

While at the British Library I found a book titled

Mend Your English: Or What You Should Have Been Taught at Primary School

by Ian Bruton-Simmonds. The book seemed good so I bought it.

Several months later, and a delivery of the finest Seattle coffee from home, I’m sitting on my couch and I begin reading the book. About 22 pages in I become very self-conscience about my English. I couldn’t read any further in shame– This made writting my last blog entry extremely tough (editing over and over).

At least the coffee was excellent.

~J out

Today I learned an interesting word I’d like to share. 臨機応変 (Rinkiouhen). It’s meaning is “to adapt oneself to the requirements of the moment”; “to play it by ear.”

I believe Elementary teachers work to come up with, “Excellent Plans.” I really do. However, no matter how many eyes have glanced over these plans, they often require non-native Japanese speakers to implement them. This is a bottle neck in an otherwise perfect Japanese system.

The plans I’ve seen typically read out like scripts. Something you would practice for a skit or a play. I’ve seen some well done ones, as well as some that were left blank. I find most of them to be idealistic in the objectives they want completed for that particular class.

This is where Rinkiouhen comes in. Thinking on my feet to come up with an activity that’s fun, stimulating, but unplanned for. Rinkiouhen has to be well thought out, prepped, and executed in less then 3-5 minutes before chaos erupts. The ALT (me) needs to be coherent enough to dictate, in Japanese, things he needs to burn time, till the bell rings, to the teacher and the students. Typically, if it works out, the kids are laughing and the teacher is happy when the bell goes off.

This seems like common sense stuff, however because I’m in Japan there’s always a layer of complexity to it. I’m learning that it’s easier to not reveal what you really thought about each class, its kids, or the teacher. Just mentioning rinkiouhen to the teacher next to me was enough for him to lecture me on why being extemporaneous isn’t necessarily a part of my job, and that he regretted that I felt compelled to do so.

I think I’ve found one piece of Japanese honne here. The truth might be that the objective of staff and faculty is to make it look like everything was well scripted and polished. Something so finished that you could hand it off to anyone (like a principal, or someone at the Board of Education, or a curriculum coordinator)  and be merited for such fine work. However, in practice, everything is different. I need to give prompts to teachers to keep on them on their game sometimes. And despite what I was told, I just might need to bust out a little rinkiouhen to make it to the next bell.

Confucius once said, “The superior man, in the world, does not set his mind either for anything, or against anything; what is right he will follow.” Chapter 4;14 Analects of Confucius.

~J out

I’m still here, well in the flesh really– but not so much mentally. I starting to believe the teaching process is a lot more difficult then I first imagined. This week often has reminded me of a dam of language holding back a world of knowledge written in English. Trickles come out periodically, but they’re so basic that it hardly unlocks the inquisitive minds of children.

A part of me wishes I could teleport a few kids to America where they could see the futility of an English only world. It would be really tough, but then again I live in the exact opposite situation.

There’s a thing, I suppose, to be said for that. Japanese, like Americans, live in a cushion of their own language. If there’s something we don’t understand in the US. (like Spanish) we dismiss it, because the pool of English speakers is larger. In Japan, kids live up until Elementary school (nearly 6 years) in a solid cocoon of Japanese. Here kids form Japanese words and slowly develop the inability to learn western pronunciations.

I even caught myself talking to a 4 or 5 year old in Japanese– then thinking to myself that this kid now thinks big white men with brownish-blonde hair also speak Japanese. Ya-ta! My world is perfect.

In other news– my small insignificant dent here is getting bigger then a dimple it seems. One of my students from Summer Break, who was practicing for the English contest held today, won first prize for pronunciation. I couldn’t be there, but when I heard the news I was so proud of her. The story was a real tough one to read and we went over and over the smallest details until she got them right. I knew she would do it, she just needed the confidence which I hope she got from out sessions.

Sweet..

~J out