Today is my one-year-in-Japan day! A circuit of the heavens has been completed.

The above brain-bending reading was my Monday ore. One of my JTEs drafted it after one of their class evaluations. My job was to extract the metal. The hardest bit was understanding the meaning with so many its floating around, otherwise, it was just some clause re-ordering.

Q1. What is your understanding of “Action Research” for language teachers?

• The action research is one of the means to confirm whether the class is suitable for the student. How the student feels it even if it is seen a good class cannot be confirmed. It is necessary that the teacher choose the method and the teaching material that always suits the sudent. It is the best method to ask the student directly to confirm whether to suit the student. To lead the class in a good direction while always confirming it, it is necessary.

Q2. If you do an “Action Research” by yourself, what research would you like to try?

• What activity is the student and I want to know whether to work effectively. Especially, I want to examine where to develop one’s faculties as something and a result with the activity to begin to attract saying as doing for the students with a low motivation

Q3. Why?

• The student with a low motivation has the cause of making it lowered. Is the class does not understand or a method of study or something other? Student’s approach on the class might change if the teacher learns it, and the solution can be shown. It is thought that it is an original purpose of the class improvement. A clear reason cannot be answered though why you hate study of English might be asked to the student sometimes. It wants to look for the cause that the study of English is hated through the action research, and to search for the overcoming method.

Q4. How do you think you will put that action research into practice effectively?

• I want to make time to look back on per hour and the class on the day. What how you should actually do has not been understood though the student’s reaction has been observed up to now. It can know why the student concretely wants it by making it write on paper. And, it wants to take it new, and to do the class improvement while seeing the reaction.

I can see me! For real.

The gallery remains inop (or borked if you’re as l33+ as me), so I can’t add the photos of earlier (Marutomo - still going strong) or the ones from FujiQ. Amazing in every aspect - amazingly long time to get there (trains and buses for a combination of 5 hours), amazingly long lines, amazingly cool rides, amazingly few rides ridden (uh, 3 in 5 hours).

[EDIT] Actually, the gallery isn’t borked. I switched image resizing programs and things are running smoothly. Take a look![EDIT]

Dodonpa was cool, but too short for the 2 hour queue. The acceleration was impressive, and it felt like air was entering my body thru my skin. It goes completely vertical for a little bit as well. Fujiyama was by far much better. Can’t go wrong with trad coasters. 79 meters of fall. 3 subsequent big drops after, a few 90deg banked turns, and S-curves made for an amazing last ride of the day. Didn’t have time to go to the haunted hospital, so that’s on the agenda for next time.

Finished all the renovation today as well! A new screen door and new screen windows will help keep the lower level cooler in the evenings. Also painted the concrete part of the shower room, which will keep it much cleaner (especially after I removed all the crap that got caught under the tub).

Lookin’ to be a good summer. And I emailed the new ALT that’s coming to Yaizu. He’s from NZ somewhere (I’ve yet to learn), and sounds be a great chilled out guy.

As my one year anniversary with Japan comes up, I’d say things are pretty good. Teaching feels normal now, tho a bit mundane at times (it would be nice to work with higher level students who were motivated). I think I’ve spent my free time well and saw a lot that Japan has to offer. Looking forward to seeing a few more places. Lots of cool perspective-expanding experiences and conversations. Anti-corporation views just don’t exist in my area. No one thinks twice about getting food from Maku Donaludo. I do appreciate how little drinking is condemned - at least some cultures are honest to themselves.

The culture shock waves still come and go like the tides. But, I’ve been feeling better about speaking now, and less worried about mistakes. I’m glad to be staying on another year so that I can explore this new confidence and finally get to the ‘learning’ the language bit. It’s like when you’re in high school and have to learn algebra and radicals. What a pain, right? Then, you get to uni and calculus makes things so much more interesting (easier in ways, more difficult in others). Language has been the same for me. Learning vocab and grammar can be a pain, but using it (like using algebra to integrate some crazy function) is really relaxing now. There are still days when I’m too tired to be bothered to speak Japanese (or even try), but I’m sure that problem isn’t so unique.

So, a good year to be had!

Lots of video encoding testing this week - I’ve decided to give back to the OSS community. It’s my first time that I can actually contribute, because tovid is a Bash script. Also, other upgrades in the house have begun: a new faucet in the kitchen, a new screen for the bathroom window (to let some air through the place). It’s in beta testing phase; if it survives a good wind storm, I’ll make another for the shower room.

Will buy materials for a screen door this coming week, too. Install should be relatively easy - just a pressure fit with wood and concrete. Can’t modify the concrete parts at all cos it’s a prefectural building.

But, tomorrow, I’m off to Fujikyu Highlands - one of Japan’s best amusement parks, and home to some of the world’s most extreme coasters according to coaster net (”find” fuji with your Edit menu/Ctrl+F).

These coasters in particular (other stats on the right):

Fujiyama

• 5th tallest, 6th highest drop, 8th fastest, 6th longest.

Dodonpa

• 1st acceleration, 3rd fastest.

s\/\/33+

In case you heard about the (recent) earthquake, I wasn’t affected. Didn’t feel it either. When you hear about earthquakes, and you’re worried for my safety, do what I do when I feel the shakes - see what happened. The earthquake that made the news was this one. In fact, you’ll see there’s about 5 quakes a day!

Photos will be up from the party, as soon as I speak with Carter (he broke Gallery again). Today I went to the Tanabata festival. Ate some good food, and bought a turtle! Yes, a little mini green turtle.

His name is Marutomo (丸友) - which means “circle friend”. When you get a chance to look at the photos, you’ll see why.

The leaver’s party was really good. The music was pure top-40 cheese, but whiskey helped me cope. Dancing till 3 or 4 and then a cab share back to a Shizuokan’s place. Poor Aroop stayed on, passed out in some hidden corner, and was unknowingly abandoned. The barman woke him up at 5am, saying that he had to leave cos they were closing. He went to the station and caught a train back to his home, but not after falling asleep onboard and missing his stop a few times!

I had a power nap, as I had a special secret mission this weekend for the prefecture. I was an interviewer for potential Japanese English teachers. I interviewed 13 people, and each interview was about 12 minutes. A little bit of small talk, then asking them to give their sample lesson snip, and then asking them about their sample lesson.

Overall, the candidates were pretty good. Lots of (just finishing) uni and grad students. They were quite nervous, as this interview is a huge part in determining their career. One rare shot at their dream. I think Japan’s English teaching is changing for the better, too. These new candidates had very good ideas and good flow. A few lessons were incredibly communicative - not just translation and recitation. I’m very optimistic about this.

Their English was very strong as well - most were better at English than the teachers I teach with. If I were to guess, I’d say that this is the result of the increase of more study-abroad opportunities in universities. Most of my teachers at Suikou haven’t spent significant time abroad. The longest was prolly one week. Not really so good if you’re gonna teach that language.

Maybe in 20 years, my job won’t exist….

Hrm, I guess it’s been a week already. What happened?

Food poisoning on Saturday - bad, but seemingly ok, orange juice put me on my couch for 3 hours (and in the toilet for about 10 mins). The rest of the day was low-key, reading [heaps] [of] [web] [pages] [about] [DVD] [authoring], cos I got a new burner! Yes, dual layer power, quite speedy as well. NEC re-badged IO-Data. Good stuff.

Oh, and the friendly guys at LAClinux helped me upgrade my kernel (indeed, custom compiled it) so that the system could handle me pulling disconnecting the DVD drive. Silly SCSI disconnect panics. I’m very satisfied that I’ve purchased from them. Support is fantastic. So, what am I running? A fiendish beast called 2.6.12-rc6-kmh-lup41a.1 . And the new kernel lets me use the hibernate/Software Suspend scripts. Turning off the machine to move it has never been easier, and coming back to my session is faster as well!

All of this computing has got we wanting to pick up developing as a hobby…. I like scripting at the moment, and there’s great documentation

What else? Finals started this week, so I’ve got some more time to myself - or DVD authoring. Dice returned to Japan, and I’ve talked with him since. Gonna try to meet up with him at some point. Looking at getting a screen door for the front - wanna have a breeze come thru without all the bugs.

This weekend is the leaver’s party. 100 JETs are leaving the prefecture, so in 3 weeks, 100 new ones will come in. A new guy/girl is coming to Yaizu - at Chuo High School. I’m excited to meet him/her and offer any help I can. I’m also going to stop by the sumo club this weekend. I talked with one of my 2nd years (who’s in the club), and I’m gonna watch, and maybe try!