Idioms

Today being the first day that's muggy enough to turn on the fan, we've been having quite the conversation here in the English department while enjoying the breeze. Amongst several interesting tidbits I'll share just a few that I wrote down (the rest simply got lost in my terrible memory, but anyway, here goes):

The Japanese have a nifty expression when speaking self-deprecatingly about their garden:



うちの庭は、猫の額ほどのひろさです。
Uchi no niwa wa, neko no hitai hodo no hirosa desu.
"My garden is as small as a cat's forehead."

Another interesting expression is used when Japanese wish to comment unfavorably on the small quantity or size of something. For example,


私の給料は、雀の涙です。
Watashi no kyuuryou wa, suzume no namida desu.
"My paycheck is as small as a sparrow's tears."

Lastly, though this one isn't an idiom like the two above, it's still relevant because I wouldn't have heard it were it not so hot out today.



暑いな畜生!!!
Atsuina chikushou!!!
"this weather's for the beasts!" Or possibly, "Damn, it's beastly hot out!"

I'm told not to use this last one in formal, polite, or any but the most casual of situations.

Perquisites

I just wanted to brag a little.



I came home for lunch and managed to get a photo of it before I ate it all. Salmon fried with pineapples and onions, a bowl of rice, and miso soup with a cup of houjicha tea...(only the main dish and the tea cup are in the photo, but you get the idea).

Indeed.

This is one of the best parts of this job. I live five minutes' walk from school and get a forty-five minute lunch break everyday. And on days when Laurie's not working, she makes things like this for me. All the time!

Onjuku Redux

This weekend I decided to keep the backpack on my lap.

So we made it to Onjuku Beach with all our stuff.

The weather was wonderful. The sun felt all the more warmer and closer because it was hiding right behind a waxy layer of clouds. Every once in a while it would peak out along with a hint of blue sky, but mostly it was a delightfully overcast day, the perfect atmosphere for being at the beach.

Friday night at eleven I'd started reading a novel, Eragon. (Laurie caught me around five in the morning sitting at the kitchen table with a headlamp--still reading.) So naturally, yesterday, I had two items on my agenda: finishing the book and having a nap!

I finished the last couple hundred pages as soon as we found a spot to lay down.

Then we played in the water for a while.
Next time I'll wear swimming trunks when we go to the beach.
(wet underwear makes for a sore train ride home...)

There were lots of surfers out, too. It looks really fun. If only surfboards weren't a thousand dollars...

Lastly, I had a nice lazy nap. Long enough for a weird uneven tan-burn to mar my otherwise lovely skin.

Onjuku

A lazy hour or so ride to Onjuku. The kind of train ride where, when you get off the train, you stretch, yawn, and look about with glazed eyes before plodding off to leave the station. The kind of train ride where, if you put your backpack full of the day's supplies (things like, say, "lunch" "swimming clothes" "beach towels") up on the train's overhead carrier, you forget about it when you get off the train.

Yup.

It was just that kind of train ride.

Star Wars III 1/2: Sith Vacation

Today the 1A students continued their journey to computer mastery.

We have been working on a tutorial where they learn how to find images on the internet, copy them and import them to Photoshop, and then manipulate them. Today we succeeded in finishing the tutorial with modest success. Overall, I am pleased with their performance. The force is strong with this bunch.

The finished result looked something like this:



They seemed to get a kick out of it. Of course, the hardest part was getting them used to the basics. From there they had few problems. Clearly, when students are interested in the subject matter, they can overcome almost any language barrier.

A Red Herring and Then...

Found this today at the Devil's Dictionary. For some reason I thought it was funny. It reminded me of a very productive hour I spent in philosophy class once. Something about Hegel, I think.

That, and I was just reading peoples' online opinions about the latest news from Apple (they are switching to Intel chips). Of course that was a rabbit trail which led to another set of opinions about the slow death DRM (Digital Rights Management) is causing the Fair Use / Creative Commons community.

But that has relatively little (if anything) to do with life here at Toke.

* * *

Today's classes were Monday's classes. That's because yesterday (Monday) we didn't have class.

Why not?

Well, because we had Tuesday's classes on Saturday.

Yup. On Saturday we had 4th, 5th, and 6th periods from Tuesday's classes during the same time that we normally have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd periods during the weekdays.

We had class on Saturday so that parents could come and see what they are like (it had something to do with the PTA I think). As Murphy's Law would have it, I had nothing to do from noon until 4 except be at work (the weather was lovely), and nobody came to observe the classes I was in!

もったいない. [That's Japanese for "such a waste"]

But I had a really great time with the students. For whatever reason it didn't seem to register with them that they were in school on a weekend. (All I can say to that is, when I was in school, weekends were sacrosanct. You couldn't get me to take classes on a weekend. That was a special kind of punishment.) So it was actually really productive. We did a warmup game and some brainstorming, and their enthusiasm seemed to really spark their interest in the lesson at hand. It was just the thing to raise my spirits, too. I actually didn't mind going into work after that. And sitting around all afternoon wasn't too bad, either, since there's always more lessons to plan and papers to shuffle.

June So Soon

Today is June 1st.

The past two days were rainy, cloudy, and cool. This morning, of a sudden, decided to change that into clear and mildly hot. By afternoon, Japan was back to its characteristic humidity. It's the kind of persistent humidity that never fails to bring to mind how a frog must feel. Not quite sticky, not quite slimy. Not completely uncomfortable, but certainly not comfortable. This kind of weather is the kind where, unless you're going to get sweaty via workout or hard labour, there is no perfect set of clothes to wear, because no matter what you choose, it won't feel right after twenty minutes anyway.

But lest that sound like a complaint, it's only going to get hotter. And stickier. And more humid.

Really though, it's not so bad. Myself, I've resolved to get used to it and I figure if I exercise enough then when I go shower it'll feel like I'm drying off, and when I dry off I'll feel like there's a cool breeze blowing.

* * *

This morning I began familiarizing the first year students with a vocabulary exercise. Basically, students stand in a group and pass a ball around. The person with the ball must choose an adjective and pass it to someone else, who in turn must say the opposite adjective (hot / cold, pretty / ugly, etc.). It seemed to go over well.

Also, Harada 先生 was kind enough to scrounge up an extra internet cable, so now Louise and I don't have to share. Immediately upon receiving it I ran a software update and I feel much better. Now if only I had wireless...

The photo library is presently undergoing reorganization, so I won't be adding any pictures for a little while. In seven months we've taken over five gigabytes of photos, and it's recently become a necessity to plan out a storage-retrieval scheme. I can only imagine what other people go through. I know a guy who takes three or four times as many photos and keeps up a website to boot.