二枚ずつ (ni mai zutsu)

It's Friday afternoon and the teachers are in their weekly meeting.

Just a moment ago, one of the older male members of the community entered the teachers' room - he's the basketball coach for the elementary school boys team. He handed the office lady two sheets of paper. He then asked her to make two copies of each. He was standing maybe eight feet from the copier.

I can't decide if (1) he doesn't know how to use a copy machine (he is an older fellow), or (2) he's just being old school and having a woman do his work for him. At first, I assumed it was (2) and got a little pissed off. Then I realized the whole interaction didn't really affect me in anyway. Nor did either of the parties involved - the old man or the office lady - come away from it in any worse of a mood. In this case, it was very interesting for me to observe my reaction to the situation and the way I thought it should have gone (him making his own copies) versus the way it did.

Ultimately, I realized that the only person who was affected by the whole exchange was me, based on my conditioned expectation about who should do what (man with paper makes his own damn copies). It's a small but significant realization, because when I'm faced with a much more serious situation, it will be nice to have the peace of mind and awareness to prevent myself from being ignited by any certain reaction, to face whatever whatever is happening and just accept the situation as is.

Rain

I washed my car yesterday. It was raining. Every neighbor that walked by (except the guy who stole a Zamami-salvaged vegetable planter from me) told me that it was raining. I nodded and told them that it helped me save on water use, as the rain would rinse the car for me.

There's something about being out in the rain. It's refreshing. So many times people hide from the things they find unpleasant - rainy weather, cold breezes, humid days. But these are natural phenomenon and experiencing them can be a great feeling. The sound of raindrops on my hood, the small stream of water that found its way into my pants, the smell of wet earth - all of these sensations that I would have missed had I simply sat in my apartment.

Just last week, on a walk back to my apartment from one of the local stores, I realized how much I enjoyed being outside, being in touch with the earth, having a connection to nature that many people seem to have lost. Sometimes, when I think ahead, about what is going to happen after JET, I realize that I don't want to work some soulless job in a sterile building with a/c and elevators. I'd rather spend all day digging in the earth, working closely with the place that I will ultimately return to one day.

Test Results

A boring post with a suggestive title...

In December, I took a test called the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (日本語能力試験). It is, from what I understand, one of the older (oldest?) proficiency tests for foreigners who wish to measure their grasp of Japanese, so its clout tends to come mostly from its longer existence (I hear there are other tests, more capable of measuring a students ability at things such as writing and speaking). Anyway, ...

I took Level 2, which is summed up as "mastering grammar of a somewhat high level, knowing 1,000 kanji, 6,000 words, able to discuss and read about things of a general nature, and being pretty awesome." (parts of this description might not actually be accurate).

I passed. Out of 400 points, I didn't get 400 points. There is definitely room for improvement, especially as the test really doesn't measure speaking or writing ability (writing is the worst for me, because I don't do much for it). Out of the three parts of the test, listening was best. I guess all those hours of Japanese music, podcasts, movies, TV and conversations with my students are paying off!

Paying For It

I was browsing the web some time ago and I decided to wander over to my alma mater's homepage. I graduated from Washington University in Saint Louis in 2002 (approximately 70 years after my grandmother graduated from the same school).

Anyway, I was curious about two things:

• how the school ranks (despite it's ranking, as you'll see below, when I was a senior in high school applying for universities, I had never heard of Wash. U, and especially not as a top-tier university);
  
• how much it costs to go there these days (I'm slowly chipping away at the remainder of my student loans, which I plan to have paid off by the end of this year at latest - September is the official goal barring the arising of unforeseen expenses).

Here's what I found:

"In U.S. News’ undergraduate category for 2008, Washington U. is ranked 12th among national universities." (link)

Educational costs, 2009—2010 (link)

Basic undergraduate tuition	$37,800
Student activity fee	$378
Student health fee	$686
Undergraduate room and board (average)	$12,060

Total cost: $50,924.

I guess they're doing all right in terms of rankings. And it seems they're doing even better in terms of ... raising funds (I jest).

I took a look at all this because of this years main financial goal - eliminating my student loans. Yes, by paying them off, not by faking a death or anything. It will be nice to be done with the only (and largest) debt of my life so far.

It's Okay to Fail

Every once in a while, I have a good idea (lol). Also, every once in a while that good idea doesn't turn out exactly as I want it to. Take, for example, today's 1st grade elementary class.

When I was a little younger (college days), I learned this fun little activity that I'll call the "Belly Haha" game. Starting with one person lying on the floor, the next person places their head on the first persons belly, and the line continues like that. The first person laughs "ha," the second laughs "ha ha," and so on. The goal is to get to the end of the line with each person properly laughing their number of "ha's." If at any point laughter gets out of control, the team has to start over.

If you can imagine this properly, the childish nature of the activity and the fact that the rules indicate "don't laugh" makes it hard not to laugh. It's really fun, it builds a little bit of trust (placing one's head on another's belly is kind of intimate) and it can be refreshing (laughter works wonders!).

So I explained this activity to the 1st grade homeroom teacher before class and she seemed to like it. In class, we practiced our numbers first, did some general review, then broke the class up into two teams (thank goodness for having pretty much even number of girls and boys). Me and one of the not-shy boys showed the class how it was done - they all started laughing! So once they lined up, we started the activity. But it wasn't going as planned.

First of all, little belly doesn't move as much as my example belly, so there was less motion to cause laughing. Second, some of the kids are kind of shy, so some of their laughs were almost inaudible. Third, not everyone gets along in the class, and when it came time for certain boys to laugh, they were too distracted with a minor squabble to remember their number.

All in all, it was a good effort and I think with a little more maturity, the game could be pulled off pretty well. That's why I'm thinking of using it in a junior high school class if I think the kids could use a good laugh.