I haven't written in a while

I need to do more writing, and the truth is that I do write often.  But my evil computer often eats what I have written, censoring my words forever from the public eye...  I can be so dramatic (at times?).

So I am looking at just a week and a half left of work.  That means just one more Monday, one more Thursday and one more Friday.  I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  But the fact that one is seeing a light implies that one is currently in a dark space.  And so that's where I am now.  In a dark space, staring impatiently at that little glimmer, praying for it to grow... faster!

It's not that I am having a horrible time.  I still love Japan and everything about it.  It's just that my work is such a grind, and any break, be it a long weekend or, as in this case, the end of a contract, is like an oasis in the desert.  And I am so, so thirsty.

But the end is coming soon enough, so I suppose I should tell you where I will be headed for my last few remaining weeks in Japan.  I have to move out of my apartment on July 20th, and then will head to Nara to do a home stay.  Nara is in the Kansai region, near Osaka and Kyoto.  I am excited to learn some more Japanese.  I especially want to improve my listening skills.  I can figure things out pretty well on my own, given time and a dictionary, but even basic sentences in Japanese, when spoken, seem jumbled and impossible to decipher.  I also think there are a number of cultural factors at work here.  First of all, when I speak to people in stores, restaurants or on the street, they (surprise!) don't speak like a textbook.  That's true of all languages... or at least the one's I have studied.  One thing I think I am having a hard time with is that store clerks or phone operators or anyone in the service industry cannot speak to me, as a customer, in any short or simple languages as it would be rude.  So, for example, instead of just saying, "5", the person will say an entire monologue, very politely (based on the verb endings that I do catch) but completely unintelligible to my novice ears.  Seeing that I don't understand, some people will then give me a nice, clear, simple answer in English.  I know that I know the word for "5" in Japanese.  If they just would have said 5, I would have understood! 

It makes me think a lot about my students though, and the difficulty they have with circumlocution (being able to say one thing in different ways. Taboo, for instance, is a kind of circumlocution game).  I realized this the other day while riding the train home.  This woman was playing some English TOEFL Prep game on her Nintendo DS, and looking at the questions and how ridiculously hard they were, and how ridiculously pointless it was, it reminded me of my students.  The woman was agonizing over A,B,C,D- one was right, three were wrong.  Where was the ambiguity?  Where was the creative nature of language?  There was only one right answer, and if she didn't get it, she was wrong.  I suddenly saw my students, agonizing for what seemed like an eternity over a simple sentence, while in my head I impatiently churned over about 30 possible answers they could give.  But that was the problem.  My students weren't thinking about the possibilities, they were looking for that one right answer.  It didn't matter that the question was completely subjective ("What's your favorite color?" "Uhhh...").  Actually subjective questions usually were worse.  Why?  Because they were looking for the "right" answer to a subjective question.  And there is no right answer, so their was no answer.  I am glad I realized this, because it helps me understand my students a lot more now.  I also outlawed dictionaries because I was tired of students stopping the class to find words like "snow grouse" and "tone deaf" ('a bird' and 'a bad singer' would have been more than adequate in both contexts, despite not being the 'rightest' answer).    Dictionaries are counterproductive.  So, in my last week and a half in office, I will make sure that all of my students can circumlocute with their eyes closed (but I won't tie their hands behind their backs-they will need them for gesturing!)

I digress.  So, to recap my plans after my contract ends, I will head to Nara for a week, then fly to the Philippines for 6 days to meet up with Koichi.  He is working on research for his dissertation, which is in part on the Philippine national hero, Jose Rizal.  I will be relaxing, and hopefully meeting up with a friend who I haven't seen since Spain!  After that, I will come back to Tokyo to rest for 4 days before flying to Pittsburgh.   

But for now, my plan is bed and a full day of work tomorrow.  Good night world!  おやすみなさい！　また今度！