Sorry I couldn’t update yesterday. Yesterday was a really great day.
First off, I had my last class (since I had actually prepared in advance I was able to use my time in the train getting my hour of kanji study in). My students all presented their final projects (read short speeches out loud about which movie they thought made the best use of music, comparing it to one or more of the other movies we watched). I had been a little worried it’d be too much for them to handle and they couldn’t do it, but everyone at least made an effort, which is the important thing, and some did a really good job and had insightful things to say. Best of all, after the class finished, a couple of the students told me they wanted to have a class end-of-semester dinner with me, which made me feel really good. I mean, we all went out to karaoke before, but I instigated that and even offered them extra credit to come, but in this case they liked me enough to ask me of their own free will.
In general I’ve just been really pleased with how well the class has gone. I had such a negative preconception of Japanese university students when I come from everything I’d heard and read and been told about Japanese university students being lazy and not doing homework and whatever. But, when I put time into making my classes interesting and expected that they do the work, almost all of them really gave it a good try. I think the problem is much more that the teacher’s aren’t doing a good enough job making the classes interesting, which in turn may be because the system is set up so they don’t need to. It’s easy to see how when the system is that the professors don’t have to do much work preparing classes or grading and the students don’t have to try hard in class or on homework, everyone’s kind of happy with it, but it shouldn’t be that way. For example, one of the ryosei took the same class with one of the Amherst Fellows from three or four years ago and said that he just showed movies in class and asked a few questions while it was playing, and there was no homework. In fact, some of the students have told me that mine is the only class where they have homework… I can see how tempting it would be not to give homework, though… it’s actually pretty interesting grading them for the first 9 or 10 papers, then it suddenly gets really tiresome for the next 10 or 20.
When I talked to the head of the department about my planned syllabus, he suggested that it wasn’t realistic for me to get students to watch movies on their own for homework (or even set up a screening for them), and that I should just show excerpts in class. At first I did that, but later I asked the students to rent and watch the movies on their own and most of them did.
After my class, I stopped by the S-Cube student centre just to say goodbye since there was no peer mentoring. Just as I was about to leave, though, Kimura-san apparently got some kind of email offering free tickets to see this enka singer Fuyumi Sakamoto. She’s a real baller, one of the best in Japan (she was in the kouhaku utagassen at New Year’s and was probably my third favourite!) so it was so sweet to go see her for free! It was cool too, because it was my first real visit to a professional concert in Japan.
They started off with these manzai comedians (kind of like stand-up, but done in pairs), which I really didn’t understand at all. I was pleasantly surprised by how much the audience seemed to get into the concert and how much Fuyumi Sakamoto interacted with the audience. I hate the way music often becomes so separated between the performer and audience in many western concerts (ESPECIALLY classical music concerts) and I had kind of expected the audience in Japan to be more laid back than Western ones, especially since it was mostly old people, but they’d all yell out things some times and, of course, clap along (the Japanese LOVE clapping at concerts). Mostly it was on one and three, but there was one kind of reggae-style song and they actually clapped on two and four, so it’s not that they can’t feel that backbeat (as one of the ryosei claimed).
I was really impressed by the concert. She had such a great voice. I actually think I might like Japanese enka more than mainstream Japanese pop, because I think the Japanese voice is more suited to the kind of vibratoey sound because there is that tradition of Japanese music, and it’s less like they’re trying to fit Western sounds like many pop artists sound like.
When I got back, I made coffee for myself and the ryosei and talked with Ranbo about the worrisome future of the Amherst dorm and the strange disconnect between the administration and the students, and the general disconnect and lack of feedback between people in power and the people they’re in charge of in Japan (like the way the government doesn’t really reflect the people’s views). While I made the coffee Rick James’ “Super Freak” came on my iTunes and I couldn’t help but dancing like crazy. I don’t care who you are – that song is so damn funky, you just have to dance. I think that’s pretty much the reason that Little Miss Sunshine was so good.
Finally, before I went to bed, I folded laundry, chatted with Sawa and booked my plane tickets to China with my frequent flyer miles. This time and the time I called them a couple of days ago I noticed a subtle but very important difference between previous times I’ve called United to book things: there was still the same automated voice screening system that they make you go through and that never helps you do what you want to do and I still had to tell it to let me talk to an agent, but when I did that, I was immediately transferred to an agent with a very Indian accent, instead of waiting for like 20 minutes to talk to someone from the South or something like I usually have to do. I guess I just experienced first-hand the outsourcing of American jobs to an Indian call centre. I have to say, it seems great to me, because in the past I’ve always loathed and feared the times I had to call United airlines (or any US company) for “customer service”. I don’t really understand economics well enough to think about whether it’s a good thing for either the world economy or America’s, but I’m happy for now.
Today I had a nice relaxing day. In the morning I finally talked to my mum on Skype for the first time in almost a month, and that was very nice. Afterwards, I got in my hour of kanji practice – finally took my kanji test and am now set to start learning new kanji again – and hour of utai and shamisen practice. Afterwards, I had some coffee and listened to the second lecture in the Geography of World Cultures podcast. I was just going to listen while I drank my coffee, but it was so interesting I ended up sitting through the whole two hour lecture. (It was about the Indo-European language family). Getting to learn about a new culture by being in Japan, plus reading Guns, Germs and Steel ,has made me so interested in all the different cultures and languages and people (and music!) out there. That’s one reason I’m excited about this upcoming tirp to China – I’ll learn all about another new culture (that had so much influence on all the other cultures in Asia and even the rest of the world), and it’ll be my first time trying to travel in a country I’m not mildly comfortable with the language. Also my first real solo travel adventure. It should be a very worthwhile experience, even I do have a few troubles and mix-ups along the way.
After that, I got a call from my old Japanese friend Shinji who stayed with my family in Wellington. He was in Kyoto all day but I missed his call and couldn’t figure out how to reply to his message, so in the end I rushed down to meet him and only got to see him for like 5 minutes before he had to leave, which was sad. At least we got to do our special handshake, though…
After dinner and a nice bath at Sawa’s place (I went there to pick up her mail, since she’s up in Yokohama), I took care of some emails and booked a restaurant for a get-together next weekend with the Amherst alums in the area. Then, the ryousei decided to head off to a sentou and even though I had just taken a bath a couple hours before I went again and it was good fun.
Waaah, I wrote way too much. Anyway, tomorrow I won’t write anything because I’m going to try to obey my Sabbath. I’m thinking of going on a bike trip out to the Arashiyama area, since I haven’t been there yet. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow, but that might just make it more exciting and cool. I haven’t got a lot of exercise lately, so it could be good to motor it out there in the snow and get a good workout.
