High school evaluation

I visited a high school over the school year that is just ending now. There are some posts on here that I have written about the course. I just received a compilation of the course evaluation results. Couldn't have been happier, really. The students replied that the class was interesting; they did things in class that they normally may not have, and that it was easy to understand. Their only complaint seemed to be that we didn't meet more often. Several students suggested that there should have been classes once per week rather than once per month, a criticism that I'll take as a compliment.

What makes a good teacher

The other night in my late night class, the topic was education, a topic about which I have very strong opinions. I'm not sure that one of the students will return, actually. She opined that she thought that teachers should be married. I told her that I thought it was none of her business whether a teacher is married or not. She said that when she had been student a teacher and a classmate were married after the student graduated from high school. She said that it made her feel that teachers looked at students as more than just pupils. I said that if there were some kind of ethical problem there, then it was totally irresponsible behavior on the part of the teacher, and the teacher in question should be punished, but we don't expect our doctors, lawyers, carpenters, or any other profession to have mandated marriage rules. Why should teachers be any different? And even if they are married, does it prevent people from exhibiting inappropriate behavior? Not at all. Hope that wasn't too much for her.

One group did come up with a good list of characteristics of "good teachers.” Here that is.

• good human being- listens ot others' opinions. has ears to listen and eyes to see
• sense of humor, not too strict
• treats students equally
• teaches how to survive in society, social skills
• be respected, keep promoses, answer questions
• be interested in what makes a good teacher

Sushi Police

When you think that the politicians can't possibly find any other way to waste your tax yen...

It appears that the Japanese Agriculture ministry is finalizing plans to send agents around the world to certify restaurants that are serving authentic Japanese cuisine. There seems to be a number of restaurants around the world that claim to be Japanese, but don't sell authentic Japanese style food. I'm not sure what the criteria are for "authentic;" the commission will probably start their work in April, and I hope I can get a list of the criteria then.

I mean let's face it, accept for chestnuts, acorns, wild boar, and some other wild animals, everything has been imported from somewhere else and improved on over the years. For example, is tempura Japanese or a Portuguese import? Wet-paddy rice itself didn't reach Japan from Asia until around 300B.C. Over the years Japanese food has evolved differently over the archipelago.

If it were a private organization, I would get it, but they are going to spend our taxes on this charade. I have been to several Japanese restaurants in the US, and they all seem to have their little quirks that I would not expect to find in Japan. For example, I went to one restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona where the food was served in courses. First something like a salad, then the miso soup, then the rice and main dish. I would expect everything to be served at once in Japan. Then I went to a place in Georgia where the management shouted unintelligible syllables as customers walked in the door, probably to imitate the "irashaimase" greeting that one would receive at a Japanese establishment. The food wasn't great, and the management wasn't Japanese, but what are the Sushi Police going to do, expect everyone to give a blood test to be checked for Japanese genes?

The best case senario is that it would give customers a guide for good food. Any newspaper in any country could do that though, and without my tax money.

Kyoto Retreat with the English Club

Went to Kyoto with the English Club this weekend. We stayed at a place in Shijo.

Two or three times every year, the club gets together and does an English retreat somewhere. We have gone to Toba, Yunoyama and some other places. This year was Kyoto. I was up at 4:30 on Friday morning, and on the 6:09 train, heading for town. We all met in Kuwana, and headed to Kyoto on the JR line. That day we split into four groups, each with a different itinerary. My group went to Nanzenji, Chionin, and Kiyomizudera. I had never been to Nanzenji before, so that was a nice experience. I had been to Chionin and Kiyomizudera before several times, but I don't think I had been to Chionin since I went there with my brother nearly fifteen years ago. Good memories there.

Later that day we headed for the hotel, dropped off our bags and went to dinner. We ate at a nice Japanese style pub, and returned to the hotel for baths and bed. Not all of us went to be, however. Several of our members stayed up all night playing cards for canned drinks. (No alcohol of course.)

On Saturday we went to Higashi Honganji and then back to Shijo for lunch. I headed back home after that. We had a pleasant meal with some English Club alumni and were going to visit two more places, but that would put me back home very late, and I had work to do on Sunday.

All in all is was a great trip with some great people. I enjoyed it more than any other retreat we have done. I think, however, that if I go back to Kyoto again, it will not be to just walk and look. Been there, done that many times. I think it would be time to get into one temple or another for a good initiation into that particular brand of Buddhism. My not work that simply, but it would be worth a shot.

Japan scores better than US on reportcard from UNICEF

Yesterday the United Nations Children's Fund published their

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I'm not sure what happened to this post, but it got chopped badly. Some of the things that I had written originally were first, that Japan did not actually get a grade, because it seems that there was not enough data available. I'm not sure what that meant, but there are some figures available on Japan.

America's grade was abysmal, and a disgrace to the country.

Japanese Constitution, Article 9 Group in Komono

I participated in a panel discussion on Sunday about Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. In brief the article reads as follows:

1. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
2. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces as well as other war potential will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

The reason that there is an Article 9 group at all is that the Japanese government has turned its attention to items political, and has set its sights on the constitution. It is already editing education policy, but it also looks likely that the government wants to change the constitution so that it can wage war again. It most certainly is not in the best interests of the population in general to head down this slippery slope, and I begged the people in attendance to protect the country from the American web of deception.

A short article appeared in the Chunichi Newspaper.

Understanding Japan

During this next academic year, I have a class in Japanese and American Comparative Culture. I am really looking forward to it, and have bought some books on Japan for preparation. One of the books, Kata: The key to understanding and dealing with the Japanese! by Boye Lafayette De Mente, was a pretty good find, despite the title. His thesis is that the Japanese have ways of doing things, and if those ways are understood, then we can have an insight into what motivates their behavior.

The book is interesting enough, and I recommend it for Japanologists, but I was intrigued most, not by what this writer had written, but by a reference that De Mente makes to another scholar of things Japanese. In a subheading, he talks about "Clark's Curve." This refers to a graph that Gregory Clark, Vice President at Akita International University, has developed from his research into "...why the collectivist/communalistic, particularistic Japanese had been able to create an economy powerful enough to frighten us advanced, modern, individualistic, rationalistic Westerners.

You can find his discussion of this topic at his web site, which happens to be his life story. Terrific reading, really. He finally decides that societies don't follow linear progressions, but rather curved progressions, and that Japan has yet to reach the apex, where the best points of a village society and older, rationalistic society are in perfect balance.

High school presentation on intercultural topics

Went to the high school where I have been working with a special group of students on presentation skills. Today they made their final presentations. They started planning this particular presentations in October last year. I was really surprised by the level of the topics that they chose. Very interesting, sophisticated ideas, but they didn't flesh them out very well. Just not enough planning time, I think. Most read their stuff rather than read it, a problem with presenters in Japan at any age or venue. I was also disappoointed when it was obvious that some had plagerized the whole thing from the Internet. They didn't need to do that. It was obvious when they had some text on the screen, and there were several kanji that they couldn't read.

Overall the experience, which beggan last year in April was positive. I ahve been to high schools before for short periods, but not ever to do a whole course. The students were more lively and involved than those at other schools that I have visited. I have seen some surprising behavior in schools here, and I mean that in a negative sense, but this class was very promising. It also gave me a chance to compare my students at this university with those at a high school. I guess the biggest difference was attendance. If the high school students were absent, it was significant. For my class of repeaters here, attendance is significant.

Here is a list of some of the topics that the students chose:
Sesame Street
World Snowball Fight Championship
World after Death
Christmas
World Flags
Brands and their History
Cars
Childrens' Dreams of the Future
Dogs