Beautiful morning

It's another beautiful day in the neighborhood.

More meetings this afternoon, one with the faculty, and the other with some high school teachers who are coming to discuss some classes that I will teach for them next month.

Then I have to get ready for the retreat for students participating in this year's study-abroad program. We'll have that at a hotspring hotel at Yunoyama Hotsprings. Just kind of an orientation for them, what life with an American family might be like, how to prepare themselves linguistically to talk and make friends with people.

Got a call this morning from an NPO, "Kodomo no Ibasho," "A Place for Children to Be." That organization works with children who refuse to go to school or who have been refused by school for one reason or another. I will go over there and talk to them about doing some classes for them sometime. I'm kind of looking forward to working with them on some kind of project.

Did it

Went to the passport office and registered for my son's passport. One thing that makes me question their logic is that they wanted my American passport to confirm the English spelling of his name. I said that they had no business looking at my American passport unless they intended to have me arrested for visa violations. They didn't of course, but they insisted that they would need my passport, or they would spell his name as a transcription of the Japanese pronunciation in Roman letters.

Then the public servant at the counter says that we are lucky, because "normal" Japanese people can't apply for this, because they are not allowed to have the kind of name my son does. (He has a middle name, which is actually tagged onto his first name, because Japanese law does not yet recognize middle names. That makes his name especially long.)

After I suggested that he is indeed "normal," I suggested that discrimination is discrimination and the fact that he receives special treatment because his father is not Japanese is repugnant. Japanese people with voting rights should stand up and demand that the laws be changed so that they do not discriminate. She was quiet after that.

What a system...in a country that should be looking forward to hundreds of thousands of immigrants a year, they are nowhere near ready as a society to treat people equally. Not even their own people. Evidence: Minamata, resident Korean nationals, women, the list is extensive.

Special treatment at the passport office

The moment of truth. I have to renew my son's passport, his Japanese one. It expired, because when I called to find out what I needed to do to get him a new one last year, they told me. What they didn't tell me is that the rules are different if your parent isn't Japanese. Yes, Japanese children whose parents are not Japanese have to jump through extra hoops when they renew their passports. He needed his family registration. What is this? It is a thing that foreigners can't get. It is a record of lineage. My name will appear on his form as his father, but I cannot have one of my own. Nor can foreigners be registered as head of household on their residence registry. I won't go into all that mess right now. For more on that go look at Debito Arudou's site.

There is also grief about how to spell his family name. They must put his name in Roman letters, but they will want to spell his name as it would appear in a Japanese transcription of English words, not the way it is actually spelled. I know that this will entail a protracted discussion about whether they can have copies of my American passport. Not because they have any reason to be susupicious about my residence status in the country, but because they will want to have documentation of the way our name is spelled. The same thing happened when my wife got her passport.

Full report at 11.

More classes tonight

Back in the classroom tonight with Going to the Movies III, and English Speech Making III.

Tonight in Going will be a discussion of gender in "Shakespear in Love." A great movie to focus on with this topic. The gender line is always being crossed, and the rolls of women are so extreme that it will be easy to talk about.

Tonight's speech topic is fashion outrages. What is popular today?

今日はすごく良い天気！今朝うぐいすの鳴き声を聞いた。うめは咲いている。春は� くない、ね。
うぐいす＝nightingale
うめ＝plum

Immigrants in Japan

Don't like the word "foreigner," but I do like the word "immigrant." Kind of how I picture myself right now. Great article in "The Straight Times Interactive" about imigrants and their rolls in Japan. The numbers are startling.

February wasn't my favorite month when I lived in the West Virginia. It's usually dark and cold. What little snow there was is now melting. It isn't spring yet, no matter how hard you wish it to be.

It is similar here. It is dark and cold. The snow in the mountains is an ever-present reminder that winter is still with us.

Grade schools, junior high and senior high schools have classes, but universities are out right now. That means that there are lots of meetings and time for preparation for next term.

Third-year students in 4-year colleges are out, but their search for jobs is also starting about now. Poor kids. The job situation is awful. Kind of like the weather now. Cold, dark, messy.

More on entrance exams

It is a cold and snowy day here in the Suzukas. It is supposed to warm up to about 10 degrees, but this morning is cold.

I posted on entrance exams earlier, but here is another twist I had never heard of before. High schools giving or selling their students' records to cram schools. This articlesays that some schools routinely give or sell their students' exam results to "prep schools." (That's a pretty presumtuous term and does not mean the same thing in an English context. I will use the term "cram school.") This is supposed to help the cram schools prepare their students for entrance exams more effectively, a benefit that public schools profit from it seems. The article also says that neither schools nor cram schools seek the permission of the students or students' parents before exchanging such valuable information. This is an invasion of minors' rights to privacy, and also a violation of prefectures' prohibitions on such kinds of exchange.

Where does the money go? Into the principals' pockets? The teachers'? If anyone is going to profit from this system, why isn't it the people who paid for extra classes and the exams, the students' parents? Isn't it illegal for public servants to accept bribes?

There was one comment that I loved, in the final paragraph. One principal says that the cram schools can produce "very precise data" from the numbers that they give, and that in turn benefits their students. Well it certainly doesn't benefit the students who will graduate from their school this March. It certainly doesn't benefit their parents who paid big money to send their children to the cram schools. The only people who profit from it directly will be the principals and the cram school operators. "We receive cash rewards for your exam records for your own good." Sound a little screwy to you?

Just another example of the ways in which the exam system here serves the already wealthy and powerful, and creates a hegemony that promises, "If you play the game and pay with your time and your money, maybe someday you too will be able to profit directly from this scam."

Lord of the Rings

Lord of the Rings opened in Japan yesterday. Yes, Valentines Day. It opened in other places two months ago if I'm not mistaken. I don't know what took it so long, but it was worth the wait. Great film on a lot of levels. Great entertainment value. Great characters. Convincing effects. It was also a super film to see on Valentines Day, with the love interests.

I was ready to be disappointed. I had read the Rings series three times over, and it had a huge effect on me as a young adult. I couldn't imagine anyone being able to make a film that would rich enough to do the books justice. I couldn't believe anyone could put together Middle Earth and its people in a way that would make the place come alive even close to the way it did when I read the books. I was delighted with all three of the films. I'm going to buy a DVD player and copies of the Ring series when they come out.

They already had a leg up, because they were making a movie from a story that had captivated readers for decades. Really, they had only two options. Make a great movie that would live up to the books or screw it up. I am really happy the movie did such a great job.