Here is my mandatory end of year report. I tried not to write it at all, but I got re-asked this morning.

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Based on my two years experience teaching here, there are a number of
suggestions I have for the improvement of English education and team
teaching. Unfortunately, many of these suggestions are constrained by
the dependence of the Japanese education system on poorly designed,
poorly thought out and poorly implemented testing. English in this
country is taught and evaluated with the same basic techniques as math
or science. Countless studies throughout the world have shown that
this is a poor method at best, and may actively hinder learning in
languages and critical thinking.

I also realize that no one really cares about my recommendations, and
that this letter is largely perfunctory because "everyone" knows that
year end reports should be written. If Japan was interested in
improving English education, then they would have started taking the
advice of ALTs and JTEs decades ago. Truthfully, I resent having to
write this at all, and think it is a waste of time for me and for the
few people out there who may actually read what I have to say.
That being said, hope springs eternal, and I do have some suggestions.

The first and most important is the removal of the separation between
speaking and grammar. English is not a dead language like Latin.
Nowhere else in the world is language taught with this kind of
segregation, and Japan lags almost last in the first world in English
comprehension. These two facts are not isolated. The lack of English
comprehension does not reflect on either the students or the teachers,
but rather on the system in which education is performed.
Memorization is not an effective way to teach a language. Stop
teaching English as a series of "sound bites" or phrases that need to
be memorized with little or no understanding of how they are used
contextually. Despite the similar use of the word "on", the following
phrases should not be taught together:
On Time
On Board
On The Table
I have personally seen this kind of grouping for memorization, and it
is pointless and frustrating for students.
Second, the text books for English are the worst texts I have ever
seen in my life as a teacher and a student of language. Instead of
starting simply and building in complexity, they merely give new
examples of word usage for memorization. I have seen almost no
complexity difference between the 1st year Junior High School book and
the 3rd year Senior High School text.

Third, English classes should be taught in English. I can't believe
how obvious this one is, and yet 99% of all English grammar classes
are taught almost exclusively in Japanese. If teachers aren't
comfortable teaching in English, they should be replaced by either
native speakers, or JTEs with a higher level of ability.

Fourthly, creative use of English should be stressed. Students should
be required at minimum to write as much as possible in English, and
speaking drills should not be memorized, but rather interactive.

In regards to my school in particular, there are a number of
suggestions that I feel would improve English learning. The first is
that ALTs at my school are incredibly under-used. I, and my
predecessor before me, taught less than 6 hours a week. My strongest
recommendation is that each class be cut in half, to double the number
of classes taught by the ALT and to improve one on one interaction by
shrinking the class size. It is impossible to teach spoken English
effectively in a class of 40 or more students.

In terms of the tests, exams should be graded on a positive scale
instead of a negative one. In other words, a student should start
with 0 points and gain points rather than starting at full points and
losing points for trivial grammar or spelling mistakes. The current
system encourages mediocrity, as students who play it safe and write
the minimum are much more likely to get high marks.

Finally, if the school were truly serious about teaching English, the
ALT would be used for 2nd and 3rd year students in addition to
freshman. It is incredibly sad that the average high school student
is best at English their first day at school, and that their ability
to speak and listen decreases throughout their three years in high
school.

Those are my suggestions for improvement. To tell you the truth, I
wish you would stop asking ALTs to write these sorts of reports,
because they just bring home to us how under-valued and basically
useless we really are. I have never in my life before felt more
helpless to enact change or to effectively do my job, which is
teaching incredibly intelligent and motivated students how to speak
and understand English. Clearly, the Japanese government does not
really want it's citizens to speak English, as they fear any change
that might reduce the country's "Japanese-ness".

Same student who wrote about the Dark truth of studying:

This week, his topic was "I disagree with the idea that Japanese High School should return to a six day school week."

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If happen this, the students won't know pleasure, because they will be busying studying and they won't play. I think that studying very very very hard is bad for the students.

If happen this, the students will surely become evil human.

I make an assertion that Japanese High School should not return to a six day school week.

Studying is good!? That's a complete fiction!

********

Fuckin' A. This may not seem great to you, but compared to the other essays in his class, it's *amazing* Not only is he using complex English forms, but he wrote a closing sentence! He had a rational argument that he defended...I love this kid.

Most of the essays were, "This should not happen because I like free time." - That's the level of difference we're talking about.

We did a photowalk today in Miyazaki City...and being me, I decided to shoot using something I don't normally take with me...extreme macro.

The following pictures were all taken with a 100mm macro lens with a 25mm extension tube. Most of them 12/14 were taken using all 3 of my magnification filters on top of that. At F/8, we were looking at an in-focus range of about 1-2mm. Oh, and I handheld all of these. I am a God!

For a size perspective, the ring in 6283 is my wedding ring, and it one of the two taken *without* the mag filters.



Extreme Macro Photography

Well, not really, but close enough.

As I said yesterday, some guy in the house right next to my school killed himself with poison gas. The cops and the fire department came by about 1:45 yesterday afternoon, and they made us close all the windows and doors in our school, which made teaching right uncomfortable (getting hot in Japan at the moment)

Found out a few more details in the news today...the guy was 20 years old, living at home with his parents, who were out when he killed himself. He bought the chemicals to make the gas at a hardware store, and the clerk called the police due to the fact that many people have offed themselves in this manner this year...the police broke into his house, but too late to save him.

I really want to show this sort of thing to the incoming JETs who are starting to post with wide-eyed innocence on all the websites. I feel like saying, "You know, if this is such a *great* country, why do its citizens keep offing themselves in record numbers?" Not only that, but they seem to enjoy killing themselves in ways that cause maximum problems for those around them.

I have no real issue with suicide. Hell, I've recommended it, semi-seriously, to some of my depressed friends on occasion. If you truly feel like your life has nowhere to go, then maybe ending it is the best thing....

But.

Don't fucking bother the rest of us with it. Last week in the neighboring prefecture, 70 people were hospitalized after some asshole pulled the same gas-bullshit. Several weeks ago in Tokyo, it was over 300 people.

You want to end it, end it. If you have the energy for grand statements, make them in person. Dickheads.

Oh yeah, still haven't found out who our successors will be, so we have no idea if they'll buy our stuff, or even if they'll be married and can thus have our apartment. Semi-stressful. I'd almost rather know I wasn't going to get a successor, then I could start dealing with stuff. I don't mind taking care of things, I just like to know when I have to.

In final news, I have to go to work tomorrow to SIT AT MY FUCKING DESK ALL GODDAMN DAY, BECAUSE SOME SHITHEAD [edited but left in so comments make sense] CLUB LEADERS HAVE TO GO TO A BIG SPORTS MEET. See, being Japan, it wouldn't be fair for some teachers to have to work, so the rest of us have to come in and jerk off all day, even though we have nothing to do. I'm going to slip out about noon and hope no one notices - it's not like any of them talk to me anyway. Worst that happens is I fall on my sword on Monday and claim I "forgot" to write down my half day of vacation.

I'm done. I still really enjoy teaching my classes, but that's a maximum of 5 hours a week. The rest of the time at school, I'm just thinking about leaving.

Arriving in JFK on August 5th @ 8:40, assuming all goes as currently planned.

Feels....weird...

So there's this great waterfall just down the road from us, and I've never actually been....so last Sunday, Corey and I went a'climbin'. Corey decided to play "smack the rock" with his face, and I got pictures of that too :)

Mukabaki Falls

Here are the picts from the Kimono party in Nobeoka today. There are a lot, but these were more for the people involved than to showcase my photography.

Kimono Party

One of our students killed herself this last weekend. She had just graduated, I don't know if she got into her college or not, but either way, it's a sad, sad thing.

It is interesting that almost all suicides do not occur when things are blackest. People wait until after the highest stress moment, and then fall apart. This girl was done...and now she really is.

I don't know which student it was, I never taught her, but she was in 3-5 with several kids I do know, and they have to be feeling it now..along with her parents, friends, home room teacher...the whole things sucks.

All parties this month at my school have been canceled, so no hanami for me this year. Which is fine, I don't drink anyway, but I do like talking to my teachers away from work.

I don't know if it bothers me more than other people or not, but when I was 20, I was more than borderline suicidal myself, and....I dunno...there's an and there somewhere.

This is Matsuyama-jo, in Ehime Prefecture. Check out the source as well as the matte, I did quite a bit of cleaning up. I really kinda like de-teching these castles and returning them to how they were in the 1700s.

Matsuyama-jo

Source plate

Ok, since it worked well, and gave me an ego boost, and 'cause it's dead slow here at work today, here's a second invisible matte painting based off my pictures from Okinawa.

Cliffside Temple

Here's the source:

Source picture

These are really too easy to do. It is kinda like applying the photoshop skills I learned with fashion models to terrain instead of faces. Still, the end result looks about 1000% better than my paintings ;)

An invisible matte painting is one where it looks just like reality - no Hudson River school stuff, nothing overly dramatic, just an attempt to recreate reality.

Takachiho-jo (Takachiho Castle)

Note: There is no Takachiho-jo in real life. Takachiho is the name of the town about 45km from Nobeoka where the background for this painting was shot. The castle is Shuri-jo in Okinawa.

If you're curious about the source plate, here it is:
Source plate

And here are some more touristy shots from our weekend. I didn't think people would really want to see 200 pictures of jungle vines, so I left the matte reference photos out ;) I didn't bring my mkII, so all these were shot with the point and shoot Olympus, apologies if you find the quality sub-par.

Naha City, Okinawa

So this coming Saturday is Graduation for my school....which, by the twisted logic of Japanese education, meant that I had today off. I went out Rt. 218 towards Takachiho, taking pictures of rivers and mountains for use in matte paintings.

This one kinda assembled itself. The foreground and background are different photos, and I painted the trees.

Mountain Trail

I'm going to finish the waterfalls tomorrow.

Just a very quick painting. I ripped out the valley floor and replaced it with a river, and then created the island and the foreground hills in Vue. Oh yeah, I increased the size of the mountains in the background too.

Japanese River
Comments welcome!

By which I mean, Hokkaido, the northern island in Japan. This last weekend was a 3 day weekend in Japan, and we went up to Sapporo to see the Snow Festival. The temperature hovered at just below freezing, and the weather on Saturday and Sunday was clear. Monday, it clouded over and snowed a bit more, but hey, that's kinda cool when you go to a snow festival, right?

So, those of you who have been to Japan probably know this, but for the rest of you - Japanese girls have what I would describe as a "bad" sense of fashion....they either look frumpy as hell, or like the trashiest of street walkers. Seriously. Forget Harajuku, that's not real Japanese fashion, those are the nerd-girls that get beat up in school. When I went to Jakarta last summer, the actual hookers looked less like hookers than the girls I see in big cities, particularly during festivals. Coochie shorts are the word of the day.

Also - Japanese women tend to have short, stumpy legs. Many of them hide this by losing incredible amounts of weight (Japan leads the world in anorexia), but nonetheless, they have what is typically described as "Daikon legs." Daikon is a big, fat radish btw.

Combine coochie shorts with daikon legs, and you have the anti-reeces pieces: Two bad tastes that taste bad together.

When we arrived at the airport in Sapporo on Saturday night, we started counting the number of "Dai-ta" girls we saw. What, you may ask, is a dai-ta? Well, Japanese people are also famous for creating short forms of words, things like "pursu-con" for "personal computer", or my favorite, "rori-con" for "Lolita Complex". Dai-ta is our attempt to join the fun, shortening "Daikon-legged retard" to "Daikon 'tard" to "dai-ta".

The rules for what qualifies as a dai-ta were simple: Any girl in shorts or a skirt at least 4 inches above her knee. No tights, but knee socks were acceptable. Keep in mind, it was BELOW FREEZING all weekend, and everyone was walking around looking at ice and snow sculptures outside.

In just over 24 hours, I spotted 94 dai-tas. I'm sure I would have found more, but I spent the last morning walking in an empty park taking pictures of snow.

(Incidentally, the male-equivalent to a dai-ta is a pi-he, or "Peacock Head" Vickie counted about 45 pi-hes during the same interval of time, so our dai-ta to pi-he ratio was just about 2:1.)

This has been your random update of Japanese culture.

Here are the pictures:

2008 Sapporo Yuki-Matsuri

So I was the official photographer for the wedding, 'cause he didn't want to spend $4000 on one ;) It was actually a lot of fun, the hotel he was married at took care of the posed boring stuff, so I just got to shoot like I wanted to :)

Hidaki's Wedding

It was a very Western wedding, which was ironic, 'cause people kept asking V and I what we thought of the "Japanese" style...we were like, "What, the Swiss Minister, the tuxes or the French food at the reception?"

*grin*

Remember, if it happens *in* Japan, it *is* Japanese.

Seen out front of a little store in 福岡 (Fukuoka).

Japanese people can't fucking park.

Behold, on our entry into the grocery store:



Now, on our EXIT from the same grocery store, 10 minutes later:



I would like to point out that neither car had a handicapped tag. I laugh at those who think that Japanese people follow the rules!

So, V and I took the train up and over to Nagasaki on Friday, since today was a holiday in Japan (Coming of Age Day.) Here are some pictures, these are more "touristy" than I usually take, but I only brought the Olympus point and shoot, so that's to be expected.

Initial reaction: Nagasaki is a cool, somewhat small place with a limited amount of things to do. Once you've exhausted the tourist-stuff, it's 'eh'. I had fun, but probably won't go back.

The biggest draw for Nagasaki is actually for Japanese people, and that's because it has a strong foreign influence, both Dutch and Chinese....so there are lots of Western-style buildings and other things like that, which are strange and interesting for Nihonjin, but for me, they're just like most cities I've grown up in, and it's not SO much like home that it helps with homesickness.

It was awesome to have a weekend with just V to wander around and relax :)

Anyway, here are the pictures:

Nagasaki, Japan

So my students are about half through the emailing process, and I just wanted to thank everyone who is helping again, you guys are awesome! In many cases, you are the first non-Japanese, non-teacher people they have ever communicated with, and they are REALLY excited about it.

They also LOVE pictures, so if you have any of yourself, or where you live, or your pet, or pretty much anything important to you, please, go ahead and attach them to your responses.

Again, this means a lot to me, and to them, so you thank you!