hey all,
Tomorrow is Saturday, but I'll be at work. Saturday is a monster of a schedule. 9:30~10:20, 10:30~11:20: 11:30~12:40, 1:00~2:00, 2:00~2:30, 3:00~3:50, and 4:00~4:50. As I said, there's not much free time there. If you actually do the math, there is 90 minutes of it, but only 30 minutes of it is stuck together and that is lunch time. The rest of the time is required to get from one class to another, and get materials organized, etc.
The week has gone pretty well so far. As always, it wouldn't be life without the drama, and it seems that especially life at my school seems to abound in it, and there is always private drama.
Probably the best news is that I have gotten one of my problem classes to focus for me using a combination of swamping them with material, being strict, and never giving the answers to their homework questions to them in class. This is the graduating class, and they need disciple and they need to be given as much English and material as they can take, since they'll be leaving and going to Japanese public schools where everything will be in Japanese. My problematic afternoon class has also gotten much easier, since the boss has said to reduce the pace and to be more lenient with them; they are only 3 years old, and they have to sit for 4 hours and write and speak English. By the time I get to them after lunch, they're exhausted. Something cool for me is that I'm building a working Archimedian screw from cardboard discs, duct tape, a pencil, and a plastic pop bottle (I'm a little out of touch on this. Are they called PET bottles in other countries as well, or just in Japan? I can't remember.) I'm currently teaching the kids about Archimedes, and my recent visit to the Da Vinci museum had left me with an urge to build something.
Sunday should be kinda exciting. Michi and I are planning on visiting some temples in a nearby town, drawing some Buddhas and maybe some sutras, and also visiting an island that has an origin story similar to that of Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan.
Totally random jibe at Japan: for all that Japan seems to be a country about convenience, I sometimes find myself asking Convenient For Who? I went to a bank recently to try to pay a health insurance bill that was 742 Yen, which is something like $9. Yes, they bothered to send this bill to me, and yes I took a train that cost 120 Yen to get to the bank (and another which cost 120 Yen to get back to work). And they told me that it was after 3PM (it was 3:04, and they had made me wait for 10 minutes), and they couldn't pay the bill because they had to call the ward office of the prefecture where the bill was from in order to confirm the payment. How and when am I supposed to pay this thing? Why should I bother when they are stacking the cards against me this way? The banks don't open at all on Saturday or Sunday, and I can only pay at a bank. Most bills I can take to the convenience store and pay there, quickly and simply, any day at any time. Do they really expect a sane person to take time off of work to pay a 742 Yen bill? There is no option for mailing it in. And as a teacher at a private school, how am I supposed to find someone to cover for me before the afternoon? It could be done, but I'm not going to ask someone to do this so I can waste time and money paying a bill that has been PURPOSEFULLY DESIGNED TO BE DIFFICULT TO PAY.
Phew.
Cheers,
