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The experiences of a father and son struggling to communicate without a shared tongue. |
| What is it, beyond language, that is tested in the open, strained, by the stresses, the pushes and pulls of love? |
| We three went to a big fireworks display in a neighboring city two nights ago. It was great, but so crowded. I met wife and son there straight after work, and ate my dinner and drank a couple of beers on the beach. It was crowded, but not so bad, really, and not so hot, which was a pleasant surprise. We had a good time. Last night was pretty average, though a lot of tension in the air. Must be getting time for another fight. Had to let the wife know that most people, when they've had a bad day, look for a way to relax and not another reason to get frustrated. I think she recognized the truth in this and calmed down. Today I must finish the draft of a story. I must be productive. |
| As I sit in my small apartment in Japan, eating breakfast with son and wife, talking, in Japanese, with them about our busy schedule for today, and recounting my teaching schedule, and thinking how today is not such a good day in terms of money because I will only make about $120 out of three lessons, I remember sitting in my big apartment back in Idaho during the summer of my university days thinking how great it would be if I could bring home $100 every day instead of merely once a week, tired from moving sheet rock on the construction site, but content as it afforded my roommate and I a couple bottles of wine and a good dinner, a pack of smokes, and a nice long night playing chess, a game which would invariably involve lots of philosophical debate given that my roommate had been a philosophy major, now a shattered man, one of those beautiful, broken men, with long, curly hair, a tattoo that stated "I love butterflies," and a couple stints at the insane asylum under his belt, and he worked at the construction sites with me, and we had a great time, though tired, and we never had enough money. I still don't have enough money. I am still scrapping by, as I have been all my life, it seems. There has been only about one year where I had enough money to pay all my bills on time without worry, and that was long ago. If only I had two students in each lesson today, I would make $150 dollars. Three in each lesson, $225. The magic four, $300. Oh, to make $300 a day: I wouldn't have to worry so much. I could indulge myself a little, and buy all the books my friends have written or recommended. Maybe even go out for a drink at some nice bar, meet some people, maybe have time to make a friend. I miss having friends. My best friends all live thousands of miles away over huge expanses of ocean, and I see them maybe once every couple of years. |
| I was discussing the issue of Education with some students the other day. There was an older gentleman in the class, a retired military man who now teaches children English at elementary schools in his area. When the younger woman next to him asked if he thought it was a good idea to allow students to attend high school free of charge. "No, I don't. When parents have to pay a lot of money for school, it is only natural that they will push their children to study harder." Well, yes. That does make sense, doesn't it? Another form of discipline is the morning radio exercise program children are encouraged to participate in during summer vacation. I asked my wife why we should make our son get up at 6 a.m. just so he could go out and do some stretches with the other kids to a radio program. "It keeps kids from becoming lazy during the vacation. If we didn't do this, they would just sleep all morning and waste half the day. This way, they stay ready for when school starts in September." Well, yes. That does make sense, doesn't it? |
| Bad fight with son this morning on the way to day care. I just couldn't understand why he was angry, no matter how many times he explained. I lost my temper with him eventually because he was walking behind me muttering angrily, and I couldn't make out much of what he was saying except that "papa doesn't listen." I blew up. "You know what? I hate living in Japan. I hate working all the time and not having any time to study Japanese. I hate not being able to talk to you..and I really, really want to talk to you. But I don't have the time. And I really hate fighting with you." After that, I gave him a hug, because he was crying. I felt terrible. But I was so tired of hearing about how I don't listen. It's not that I don't listen, son. It's that I can't understand. I am sorry. |
| Bad fight with son this morning on the way to day care. I just couldn't understand why he was angry, no matter how many times he explained. I lost my temper with him eventually because he was walking behind me muttering angrily, and I couldn't make out much of what he was saying except that "papa doesn't listen." I blew up. "You know what? I hate living in Japan. I hate working all the time and not having any time to study Japanese. I hate not being able to talk to you..and I really, really want to talk to you. But I don't have the time. And I really hate fighting with you." After that, I gave him a hug, because he was crying. I felt terrible. But I was so tired of hearing about how I don't listen. It's not that I don't listen, son. It's that I can't understand. I am sorry. |
| Just had a very interesting discussion with one of my students. She's in her sixties, and she has a daughter living in Australia, about to have a baby. Because of my student's age, she has many conservative friends, but she herself is not conservative. In fact, she's one of the most liberal-minded people I've met. A friend of hers asked her about nationality the other day, specifically about the nationality of her soon-to-be-born grandson. "Will he be Japanese or Australian?" She asked me to help her with the question. I had to tell her that I don't know the laws of Australia, but if it were in America, then the child would probably have dual-nationality until it reached eighteen. "But why is your friend worried about this?" I asked. He's worried that intercultural marriages might be dangerous for Japanese women. It seems her friend has been reading articles defending the practice of Japanese women kidnapping their children back to Japan. The article, it seems, states that it is difficult for Japanese women to get their children because of nationality. I couldn't understand this, and asked my student to explain. She couldn't. So we continued talking. I explained to her the issue of child abduction as it is seen around the world, and how Japan has gotten a really bad reputation recently over the issue. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children have been abducted by one parent and then hidden in Japan, and the Japanese government has done nothing to help the "left behind" parent locate or contact these children, even if the left behind parent had legal rights to do so in their home country.She knew nothing about this, which didn't surprise me because the Japanese media never talks about this issue in this way. "In Japan, we feel there must be a good, dark reason behind the kidnapping. That is why we think it is okay." "So, if my wife just suddenly decided to kidnap my son and hide him from me, everyone in Japan would assume I am a wife-beating, violent man, especially because I'm a foreign man?" Nervous laughter, but no denial. After an hour of discussion, we seemed to narrow down the underlying warrant of the argument that it is okay for Japanese women to kidnap their children and hide them in Japan: Japanese women are a minority in America, so they don't get protection. Now, I was very tempted to say, "That's ridiculous," but I couldn't. "It's possible," I said, knowing as I do the long history of racial inequality in America and, especially, remembering the Internment of Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor. "It's possible," I said again. "But it remains for the writer of this Japanese article to prove the trend exists. It is irresponsible for them to be spreading the idea without proof to back it up." We ended the lesson there. I felt really good. Now I understand more of the thinking in Japan--of course, that also makes me more uneasy, but, hey, that's the price I pay for being here, being a minority, being a likely wife-beating criminal. Then again, I could be Middle Eastern-looking in America. Not sure which is worse. |
| Yesterday was a good day. That was nice, because the previous two days were so bad, they had me IMing my friend in the States to see if he had a spare bed I could take. I was done, tired of the fighting, tired of feeling unappreciated...whatever. I worked from 10-2. At work, my coworker tells me he's thinking of taking another job in Kyoto--I tell him he should. He just moved to this town, but his wife divorced him soon after that and there is nothing to do here. He's young, intelligent, and full of energy. He needs to get away from here. We talked about his situation for a while, and it was nice to be able to give some advice. After work, I picked up son and took him to a haunted house downtown. Summer is the time of scary stuff in Japan, because they belief begin scared chills to body, fighting off the sweltering summer heat. Son really enjoyed the haunted corridors and bloodied mannequin heads. He was scared a little, but I found the place unimpressive. Still, he enjoyed, and that's why we went. After that, we drove to the beach and spent about two and a half hours swimming and playing in the cool water. It was so hot and humid yesterday, the beach was full but not crowded. He is getting better at swimming, and braver. One thing I saw at the beach that disgusted me: a mother and father and their two children. The children couldn't have been much younger than son, maybe five or six years old, but the way they treated them, you would've guessed the children were about one year's old and made of fine china. There's a small water slide at the beach, depositing adventurous children into a part of the water about waist-high to an adult. This mother, dressed in a long-sleeved shirt, hat and (I couldn't believe my eyes) white gloves, presumably to protect her skin from the sun, stood in the water near where her children would splash down. The father stood nearby, dressed in a body-covering surfer's wetsuit, smiling. The moment, the instant, the children would come down and hit the water, even before their little heads could get covered by water, the mother was lurching over and holding them up, asking if they were okay. I just sat on one of the buoys, shaking my head in disgust. Thank you's to the one mother who was kind enough to wear a bikini. Much appreciation from the fathers and other men at the beach. You were beautiful. After exhausting ourselves swimming, playing tag and having splash fights, we went to the store, bought ice cream, and then went home for a dinner of friend soba noodles--my favorite. Wife is back from the times of frustration, anger and accusations, back to acting nice, knowing full well how far away she pushed me this time. I've refused to talk to her about it, though, not until she finishes the semester in about one week. She can wait until then to see the consequences of her uncontrolled temper. We ended the evening watching, and laughing, at Toy Story 2 on TV. It was a nice way to end a good day with son. I am happy. Must be productive today, though. Fallen so far behind on writing projects. The summer heat is not conducive to creativity, perhaps. |
| Yesterday was a half day at work. Worked from 8:30 a.m. until 2pm. After work, son and I went to one of the local beaches for a few hours while mom stayed home and studied and cooked dinner. It was a great time. The weather was perfect: hot, but not too sunny. The beach had a lot of people but wasn't crowded. We swam a lot, went on the slide, played Frisbee and even gave the kite a couple of tries (not enough wind). We had a good time, and were famished by the time we got home for dinner: pizza. Later, I tried to get son interested in watching a movie with me, but he preferred to read t\one of his joke books--his thing, recently, is to not watch any movie that's in English, even though he used to enjoy it. Frustrating, but I think I understand. Today, I am working on a couple of articles while he does homework. When he finishes homework, all three of us will go to some museum exhibition and then to lunch at some restaurant (son wants McDonald's; mom and I wrinkled our noses at the idea). Later, son and I will ride our bikes up to the big park on the other side of town. Hopefully he can find some kids to play with while I hunker down and work on this story that's been driving me nuts. Zero writing energy recently. Too much online poker. |
| Son laid a pretty good guilt trip on us as we all laid down to be last night. "I am sad." "Why?" "I don't have any brothers or sisters to play with. I always have to play alone." The air between wife and I is pregnant with so many unsaid things, particularly the number of times we tried and failed to get pregnant again, and the child we lost. Son doesn't know that, though, and we aren't about to tell him. But we do feel a little sorry for him. It is not easy being a kid in our house, which is always busy and stressful. Yeah, we felt a little bad, but the feeling passed quickly. |
| Rainy day again. Been raining heavily for a couple of days, and it's expected to continue until the weekend. Today we try an experiment. Not of my choice. Wife is off to school today, and told son he should come directly home after school. "Are you going to be here?" I asked, because, usually when she goes to school, she doesn't come back until the evening. "I will try." Well, I am nervous. I have visions of son waiting outside the apartment on a rainy day (in a dry spot, though, because he is not stupid) for hours waiting for mom to unlock the door. I worry too much. But I do worry. Anyway. The subject of emigrating came up again during breakfast. I showed son my coffee cup from Antwerp, decorated with famous images of the city, and asked if he wanted to go back there. He wasn't sure. Wife said it would be easier to emigrate there than Switzerland. Our eyes met. We both know we'd love to live in Switzerland, but the questions remain: can we get in? and what would we do for a living? Last night, we watched a bit of our home movies from our trip to Disneyland three years ago. Son was such a cute 4-year-old. No real desire to go back there, though son said he would like to ride the roller coasters again. My friend in San Diego wants me to move there (he is of no opinion about wife, though I think he would rather see us separate). Have to get some writing done. Have been wasting so much time playing poker on Facebook! Argh. Addictive personality when it comes to games. Need to crank out 20 articles this month, submit eight stories, revise one, extend two others, and draft three. Lots of projects, but discipline has lagged. I am probably just tired of wondering what we are going to do; tired, too, of working every damn day. Well, I have a week's vacation this August. Taking son camping for sure. |
| Public schools are winding down for the summer holidays. Next week I teach my last lesson at the elementary schools in the city next door until September. I am a little sad about that, for two reasons: 1) no income from that source until October, and 2) I actually have a lot of fun teaching these kids. That second reason has really surprised me. I was not trained for teaching children; never in my had considered teaching children; nothing in my abrasive, intense personality marked me as a person who could enjoy teaching kids, but there you are. Not only do I enjoy teaching kids and making a fool out of myself often to keep them engaged, but they, too, seem to enjoy my methods and seemed a little sad to say goodbye until September. Unexpected, really. But not the end. So. Have requested a couple of days of in August around the time of Obon. Going to take son camping for the first time. Already chosen the site. Nothing fancy. I've had this huge desire, recently, to get him outdoors, teach him some of the things I learned in Boy Scouts (where, yes, I did reach the rank of Eagle Scout), get him interested in making things, looking at stars, etc. Hoping to go on two over-nighters this summer. Hit an incredibly creative period in writing, but I have such a backlog of projects I need to revise and submit that I can only get the story ideas as notes on paper--nothing fleshed out. The new ideas are good, though (I think). The consideration to emigrate is on-going. Getting feedback from friends in various countries. Part of me just wants to take the easy way: go to America and look for work as a writing teacher again. So many bad points there, though. But it would be closer to family, and I want son to experience my family more. Son and I are doing better communication-wise. No major blowups recently. He's even taken to asking if I understand things, and explaining when I don't. It's slow going, and I feel guilty for making him do it, but there's no other way. I cannot catch up to him in language ability, and it is far better for me to be writing than to be studying Japanese--yes, I still feel that way. None of the troubles we have experienced have changed my resolution in that regard. |
| Recently, a friend of mine from university informed me he was posting some music I recorded at university on YouTube. Thought I'd share the links with you, give you a further peek into my creative life. from the album "Interpretations of Life": --"Rift of Night": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMRG5LwhZ48 with The River Project (see if you can guess who I am in the pictures): --"Voices" (from CD): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKj7E3PfHys --"Job" (from CD): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSmjBvurKVo --"Breaking the Law" (from CD): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNNub_X26iY --"Why Can't We All Try" (from CD): http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=_e5_LSr79ro&feature=related There are other videos with other music I participated in. You can explore if you like. I hope you enjoy. |
| I was walking home from buying coffee this morning, when an old lady in our neighborhood stopped me and asked me how son was doing. "He's good," I told her. "He's in the second grade now." "He is so cute. I love little boys. The second grade. Wow. Time flies, doesn't it?" "It sure does. Makes me sad." "Well, don't worry, you have time to make another child." And here I just didn't know what to say. How do you tell someone that while you might be young and fertile, your partner no longer is, and that every time you see a baby, even though you are a man, you feel a longing so strong for a baby of your own that you sometimes start to cry? How do you say you love your child more than anything and sometimes feel guilty for not being happy with just one? What do you say about any of this when you haven't mentioned it to your wife? Do you tell a stranger? What do you say when you know you don't have the language skills to convey the ideas? You say nothing. You smile. You wish the nice old lady a good morning and go your separate ways. And you remember, she probably has more regrets behind her eyes than you will ever, hopefully, know. |
| Another question we have to face regarding our possible emigration is: "Why would we want to move to the U.S. when we were really happy in Europe?" In the summer of 2009, we visited friends in Switzerland, Belgium and England. It was incredible; some of the most beautiful, interesting and exciting places I've ever visited. Switzerland may have a bad reputation in Europe as a boring, conservative place, but...damn it if it wasn't the most beautiful country I've laid eyes on (and I grew up in the natural beauty of the U.S.'s Pacific Northwest, so I think I have some notion of what I'm talking about). Wife said that she might be able to find a position in a Japanese company with a branch in Europe and we could then move there. The idea really appeals--but, then again, what would I do for work? Write? Sure, that would be great, but there's almost no money in it (notice I have revised my previous estimates from "no money" to "almost no money"). I could teach English, and that might be interesting in a different culture of education. I have started checking into what it would talk to immigrate to Australia as well. We have friends there, and of all the roommates I've ever had, my Aussie roommates turned out to be some of my best friends. I loved the attitude, and the country is beautiful, also. I would prefer to move to an English-speaking country, not just for my ease, but so son can learn English, a skill which will make his life a lot easier in the future. Why not England? Why not? I don't know. But the only place I would consider living in England is London, and that is incredibly expensive. Got a friend there doing really in the electronic map field (he recently met the prime minister and had his article on Hati published in The New York times--yahoo!). He said living in London is great, but expensive, and there are so many immigrants creating all kinds of troubles--well, I could be another immigrant, sure, that wouldn't bother me at all. Where do I want to live? More importantly, where would I want son to grow up? Yes, I notice I keep thinking of wife and son's needs first. It's my way. I can't seem to be totally selfish. Sometimes I wish I could be: wife offered to support me through a Ph.D. program and I shrugged it off. I really need to think about that, actually. I will contact my old professor friend; she's dean at a university in New York; see what she advises. When deciding where to live, these seem to be the questions (just as they occur, not in order of importance): 1) Can we speak English there? 2) What jobs might I have? 3) Do they have public health insurance? 4) How's the food? 5) What of interest is there to do? That last question is a puzzler. Wife and I both want to live somewhere interesting. We've lived in this (relatively) countryside town in Japan for a long time, and we have grown so bored of the fact that to do anything interesting requires travel plans. However, we are both aware that living in a city is not what we want to do to son--we both seem to be of the belief that though a city offers great opportunities to a child, the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. So, we should live in the countryside, right? But that would be boring for wife (not really for me, because I spend most of my time in my head writing). Argh. What do the States have to offer? We can speak English there (according to some people, we absolutely MUST speak English there. Idiots). I have a chance at many different kinds of jobs, though there seems to be no jobs right now. They do not have public health insurance. There is, to be fair, the option to eat healthy food, but the surrounding food culture is so toxic that the pressure to eat unhealthy food at great quantities is almost irresistible, especially to the young. There's a lot of interesting things to do--if you live in a city, which, frankly, carries a host of dangers neither wife nor son are really prepared for and which will likely come as a huge, sad, shock. But, I want, strange as it may sound, to be near my family at some point in my life. Recently, I've been keep up with some of them on Facebook, but the fact is I haven't lived near my family in, oh, 15 years. I look at the pictures on the Internet and wonder: who are these people? It's obvious to me, from their comments, they have no idea who I am. I'm that weird, educated, liberal guy who moved away--that's about all they know, and they seem to have developed all sorts of theories and stories about me, none of which seem to be true. I would like to show them who I am and what I have learned by moving the hell away from the Pacific Northwest, and especially Idaho. Argh. |
| The question of whether to pull up stakes and move the family to the U.S. is weighing on our minds. Japan looks as if it'll go the same way as Greece in terms of debt, which means kissing all that money we've poured into the pension system goodbye. Job prospects here look terrible for me--and, quite frankly, if I have to keep teaching English conversation for another mercenary company seeking easy profits and cheap teachers, I might just have to hurt many small woodland creatures. For the wife, job prospects in Japan are great: she speaks fluent English, is graduating from a high-prestige nursing university, and has lots of work experience. The same simply is not true for me. So, if we move to the States, will the situation drastically change? Yes and no. Still, the wife will have great job prospects, but I will not. I mean, I might be able to find a better job, but I'm not sure the pay will be better. I may not have to kill myself out of sheer desperation or boredom, though I'm not sure of that. I might be able to find a job teaching writing at university again. I've still got a few strings to pull. But the chances are slim, the work exhausting and low-paying. But I've been dreaming of doing that again for years. Hmm. Wife has great prospects; I'm the dead weight. Argh. But what would we be moving into? The States are a mess compared to what I left ten years ago. Many of the same problems remain, problems that have kept me from putting son and wife into that country: the terrible food culture, the greed and individualism, the near-total absence of public transportation, the absence of a public health insurance system... Argh. And how do you take a kid out of a system in which he seems to be excelling and thrust him into a place where he hardly speaks the language and knows nothing of the history? Argh. Difficult. |
| This morning I decided to go downtown to write at the train station--they have a nice, quiet room there to work in, I needed to get out of the house, and my wife was home all day to study so I didn't want to bother her or her bother me. But once I got downtown, I noticed how depressing and depressed the whole place seemed. Most of the buildings have "vacancy" signs in their windows. There were only a few people wandering the streets, and they were all old, slow, and gray. There was even one building that had burned recently but no one had bothered to repair, or even clean up. I hadn't bothered to go downtown in several months because, frankly, since my job down there had gone bankrupt there was no reason for me to venture there. Now it is dead. Such a contrast to the vibrant, colorful and loud scene I encountered when I first stepped off the train into my new life in a different country ten years before. July 15th, 2000, I found a city full of people of all ages, the streets full of shoppers and people selling things. So many restaurants, cafes, and fast food restaurants. It had amazed me. I'd grown up in small towns in the U.S.A., and though the town I'd lived in just before coming to Japan had boasted a population of nearly 200,000, it seemed sleepy in comparison to Tokuyama. Now, Tokuyama is dead. Well, it's a zombie, really: it still moves, but bits of rotten meat are falling from its shambling corpse. I couldn't get any writing done, the scene was so depressing this morning, so I came back home, and the wife and I got to talking about the town and how both of us do not want to live here anymore. We are smart people, moderately talented. We could go anywhere and make a decent living. So why don't we? Well, she's still in school; that finishes soon, though. But there's also the parents: in their 70's and not so healthy. It would be best to set them up in a nice condominium rather than the hovel they currently live in. Is that stopping us? No. We are ready to leave. But where to. We joke about moving to Europe, though we have no idea what to do for work there. She might be able to get a position with a Japanese company overseas and I could tag along. We could go to the States, and she offered to support me until I finish my Ph.D. I passed on the idea. There are just no professorships available these days, I think. But the States do look attractive to us. It seems likely that we will move there in a few years. My heart is relieved by this turn of events. The job is killing me, and she knows it. "When's the last time you've been happy?" she asked. I couldn't remember. The conversation ended with her asking: "Do you know why Japan has the highest suicide rate in the world?" I answered that I knew that before I even came to Japan, but know I understand it in my bones, and it's a cold, gray knowledge draining me of hope. But we have said it. We have to get out of here. She has said if I find a teaching position in the States (somehow) then I should just go and don't wait for them. That gives me hope. I will start contacting some professor friends and see what they can do. I am so tired of the hopelessness of this place. A little glimmer of light, ne? |
| Sorry it's been so long, but the household schedule has been crazy with wife's training and my writing and working. We are coming to the end of it, though. Today is the last day of her training. After this, things may get a little easier. One of my stories was published last week. Happy about that. You can read it at thirstforfire.com, just look for Dis-Ease. Taught at the tiny elementary school way up in the mountains this morning. Still can't get over how beautiful it is up there, but I was so sleepy, I kept falling asleep in the teachers' room. The other teachers wisely let me alone until my classes started. Son is doing so well, but I feel guilty. We are not able to spend much time with him because of our schedule, and the grandparents, tired and sick as they are, have to watch him a lot more these days. No, I'm not happy about that. |
| Yesterday, I was teaching an elderly woman (she's about 72), when the subject of pollution came up. She said that when she was younger, this area of Japan was very polluted, but things are better now. "But the children now, they will have a bad environment. It will be very difficult." "Do you feel guilty about that?" I had to explain what "guilty" meant. "Why?" she asked. "Well, it was your generation that polluted a lot at first and then continued to pollute with a higher, consumer lifestyle (which we'd discussed in a previous lesson)." "Yes, we pollute a lot, but it can't be helped." "What do you mean?" "We will always pollute." "So, we shouldn't try to stop polluting?" "Oh, no. We should try as hard as we can to not pollute and to clean up environment." "But you said it was pointless (shouganai)." She laughs. "It is Japanese thinking way." Strangely, I got it, and it depressed me. In Japan, many people really do think life is a ceaseless struggle with futility, but that they should struggle as hard as possible against it while having no real hope of overcoming that futility. That is why I still call this place the "gray palace of destruction". They really do need a burst of fantasy in their lives--as Americans have--that things can change, that things can get better; even if it's just fantasy, it can help humans get through? I don't know. It just depressed me. Argh. Have to go to work today at the job I hate, with the constant fear in my mind that I might never get out of this situation because of my debts and total lack of employment prospects back home in the States and my child and elderly in-laws in Japan. I'd love to talk about this fear with my wife, but this is our anniversary week, and also she is swamped with coursework and training. So, I keep it inside, but it's eating away at me. I see 40 approaching soon. Am I wasting my life? I don't even know if I am doing the right thing (a particularly tough question because, not being Christian, I had to decide my own standards of moral conduct, and they are strict). Argh. Argh. And that really sucks: not being Christian, I don't even have the prospect of going to Heaven if I do all the right things (by me). No matter how well I treat and respect others, I have no hope of getting some kind of eternal reward. Everything will not work out alright in the end. No wonder people say I am almost Japanese. |
| Today's schedule (6:04 a.m. Friday morning right now): 6:20-7:35 Wake up son, make breakfast, do dishes, hang laundry, fold laundry, wash bath. 7:40-8:40 Finish article for Demand Studios, shave, 150 push-ups and 100 crunches, get dressed, take son's clothes to after school daycare. 8:40-9:20 Deliver son's clothes to after-school daycare, drive to Hanaoka Elementary School, meet with teachers, discuss today's lesson plan 9:30-12:30 Teach English to elementary school children 12:30-2:00 Drive back to my own lesson room, eat lunch, teach English to elderly woman with crazy intonation 2:00-4:20 Vacuum, go shopping, make soup for dinner, write (?), get son's gym bag ready, prep English lessons 4:30-6:30 Pick up son and take him to gym for exercise class, teach English to two-time former shogi (Japanese chess) master of Japan 6:30-7:45 Pick up son and take him home, feed dinner (soup and pizza) 7:45-8:30 Teach English. 8:30-9:30 Come home, take bath, maybe play a game with son, say hi to wife, go to bed 10:30-1 a.m. Wake up, write. |
| Warning. You are about to encounter an example of my humor at it's worst. This joke came to me after a bad day teaching, when I'd had to encounter just one too many bored housewives who, after spending huge amounts of money on learning English, but no effort aside from attending a lesson once or twice a week, complain that they are not making as much progress as they would have liked. "Do you watch movies in English, for example?" I asked, looking for a way to help. "Yes." "Do you watch them with subtitles?" "Yes, of course." "English subtitles or Japanese subtitles?" "Japanese subtitles." "Well, there's your mistake right there. You need to watch with either English subtitles or no subtitles at all. This will help you listening and, especially if you take the time to listen and repeat what you hear, your pronunciation as well." "But it's hard." "Lady, learning a language is a lot like dealing with a penis: it's got to be hard if you're going to get anything out of it." Okay, no, I didn't say that last sentence. But I wanted to. Oh, I so wanted to. |
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