I’m back. Summer sure went fast. It’s cold here these days, carrying my luggage through Tokyo was the last time I’ve sweated in a week (only a week ago?).
The family vacation was good, my mom fell in love with Japan and my brother didn’t exactly (he’s a big old travel wuss, shared youth hostel bedrooms […]
It’s a beautiful day, too beautiful to bitch. Besides, some guy giving a lecture apparently said that as a short-term visitor to Japan, I spend way too much time objectifying, exoticizing and otherwise demonizing as a would-be expert on Japan. Well maybe, but it’s mostly self-preservation okay?
Anyway, I come to you today with the following […]
Spent last weekend in Tokyo. I hadn’t been back since the insane days of job orientation I vaguely recall from when I first arrived in Japan. From out here in the middle of nowhere inaka, north of Osaka on the Sea of Japan, it’s a 10-hour overnight bus ride.
Ever more the master of sleeping […]
A teacher I met at an enkai told me she works at a small alternative high school, for kids who didn’t make it in the regular schools for whatever reason. After the structure and uniforms and delineated student-teacher relationships that define even my non-academic, mid-level school, I was curious about the kids who don’t play […]
Winter in Japan is really cold, and next month will be the worst. Don’t be fooled by the fact that it’s an island in the Pacific. Northern Hokkaido nearly touches Russia, and even the south gets snow.
A little snow, what am I whining about, right? Before you start saying I’m losing my Midwestern edge, […]
If there is one thing that makes otherwise liberal and free-thought advocating folks bond with just about anybody else, that would be hating vegetarians. I kinda get it and I kinda don’t, but mostly I just wonder what gets people so annoyed about my stating a preference that doesn’t infringe on their liberties.
I have […]
And Happy Halloween. As my students now know, ãƒ?ãƒï½³ï½ªãƒ¼ãƒ³ã?¯ã‚·ãƒ¢ãƒŠå…ˆç”Ÿã?®å¤§å¥½ã??ã?ªholidayã? 。I celebrated with friends at a local bar, with about the best music I’ve heard at a DJ’d event in Japan.
I was a pirate. Unfortunately there were enough pirates for a respectably sized crew. For the record, I am in Japan, besides for web surfing I am […]
Or alternatively, “empty chairs at empty tables.” Where did the entire staffroom disappear to? Do I hear an assembly in the gym? Well, it’s a good thing I no longer give a shit about whether they include me in stuff here at school…
Briefly considered going home there, upon being ditched yet again at my […]
So I was ranting about how my students aren’t learning anything.
Is English just an exceptionally difficult language to learn, for native speakers of Japanese? I think that can pretty much be ruled out. Taiwan is also an island, whose language also has little in common with English, and the English I saw/heard in Taiwan (judging […]
I want this blog to be good. I want to say pithy things that are thoughtful and insightful and worth reading and worthy of commentary, and all sorts of other pretentious aspirations and pretty soon I’m as vain as a little starlet composing her Oscar acceptance speech. What will future generations think of me? Will […]