Languages of Dream

Last night I dreamt I was at Grossmont College in San Diego, the community college I went to before SDSU. I was in a little garden and I found a shaggy grey cat under a shrub, in a drain pipe. There was also a kitten but the kitten was exactly like the adult cat. That is, a scale miniature, with the head in the same proportion to its body as the adult cat. But the fur couldn't scale so it looked like solid, moulded plastic. It was kind of a pale plum colour instead of grey.

I've been remembering my dreams a lot lately after a very long period when I was forgetting them. The night before last, I dreamt the new Doctor Who episode was written by someone who wanted to skewer the Church of England but knew absolutely nothing about it. So in the story, Rose had a part time job as a bishop down at the local church. She had to wear black robes every day and her coworkers called her lazy even when she was working hard.

Here's a pretty music video one of my students recommended:

One of the most striking things to me about K-Pop is often the lyrics include English. It's a reflection of how much stronger South Korea is in English than Japan. Japan just recently ranked shockingly low again in English education. Usually when I ask teachers for their opinions as to why, they say Japan focuses too much on testing--that is, memorising grammar and vocabulary instead of practicing conversations and role playing. I would say that's part of it. English is kind of studied like a dead language and the rules are much stricter to be more conducive to memorisation. Yesterday, I was talking to a teacher who was stressing the importance of differentiating "shrine" and "temple". In Japan, Shinto structures are called shrines and Buddhist structures are called temples. It's useless for me to point out that actual English is far less strict and the words "shrine" and "temple" are applied to all sorts of things, well beyond the spheres of Shinto and Buddhism.

Mostly, there's just a pure lack of interest in truly learning English in Japan. You'll hear the occasional one or two lines of English in a J-Pop song--and quite often bad English. Meanwhile, in South Korea, pop artists are writing whole songs in perfectly intelligible English. There's a market for it and therefore an interest. I just don't see it in Japan.

Club Drawings

Yesterday was my last day at one of the schools I work at, though I'll be going back to this particular school in January. I've been working at this school since 2020 so I've formed a real attachment to it. I said goodbye to the art club and the colour guard, the two clubs I hang out with. I watched the colour guard practice a new dance until 7pm. It's great seeing how committed they are and how rigorously they repeated the same dance moves in the increasingly humid weather.

In the art club, I drew pictures for some students. Here are a few doodles I've accumulated this year, some things I've drawn in the art club:

A dragon.

I was doodling the Fourth Doctor on the right and explaining how to draw a cat to a new student on the left. I told her to study cat skeletons.

I'm afraid I blathered on about John Milton and my take on his daughter, Deborah, for my webcomic.

I was trying to find a way to explain how "view" is used as a noun in English. The text book, written by an esteemed committee of Japanese professors, gets it wrong, as it does many things. Some of the mistakes in the books are hilarious. My favourite is a page from the second year text book in which the students are taught sentences for offering assistance to tourists. One sentence they're encouraged to use is "What's the matter with you?" I found a supercut on YouTube of Robert De Niro using the phrase to explain why it's a very rude, unwise thing for students to say to tourists. For the rare occasion when a Japanese English teacher accepts my authority on a subject over a text book. I'm routinely reminded why Japan has the worst English education in Asia. It's not so funny when you remember how students suffer for it.

Deborah Milton again.

Visitors We Have Gotten

To-day I read the new Sirenia Digest which contains "Crotalus (Murder Ballad No. 13)" by Caitlin R. Kiernan. It was good, a mysterious, disjointed linking of recollections related to a strange occurrence. I thought of both Picnic at Hanging Rock and Tristram Shandy. One of the narrators of "Crotalus" also talks about getting off track from the intended narrative. Maybe it's easier for me to take from Caitlin because she isn't trying to tell a hundred jokes a minute. Also, the narrative skirting around a description of a sinister object in the sky is ultimately more interesting than the humorously hinted at destruction of Toby's genitals in Tristram Shandy.

I found myself also thinking of the Japanese junior high school where I work because the story features something we could literally call a UFO--an unidentified flying object--and one narrator is preoccupied with the proper use of past tense and past participle. In talking to another teacher, I discovered the use of "got" as past participle ("I have got a present") is actually the normal thing in most English speaking countries and has been since the 17th century and only we Americans have clung to "gotten". That's according to Google, anyway. Yet other English speaking countries still use "forgotten" so I don't get it. George Elliot used "chase-gotten" and "ill-gotten" as past participle adjectives in Middlemarch.

"UFO" is one of the new vocabulary words for second year students. The teacher I was working with asked the class if they'd ever seen a UFO. One girl said she saw one by a train station, that it was shaped like a triangle. A boy said his father saw one and took two pictures. It was visible in one picture but not the other.

I sure wish I would see a UFO. Especially one with aliens.

Here's a song I've been using to teach future tense:

Twitter Sonnet #1670

Encroaching rest absorbed the wealthy night.
Refreshing plants described the tower wall.
Enraptured vines assist the luckless knight.
Between the walls resounds a lover's call.
Before the dancer's choice was made she ran.
Beside the moving car a cheetah sleeps.
Announcements brought a golden cutting man.
Condemned below the house a secret keeps.
Director lists began the day with lunch.
Descending feathers pull the jerkin down.
Advancing humans ruled the beauty bunch.
Majestic seats reject the golden clown.
For golden busts, the treasure voyage stalled.
Asleep, the dreamer asks if devils called.

A Short One on Short Ones

A couple weeks ago, I asked third year students at the school I work at (students about 15 years old) to write short stories. Yesterday I started reading them and I've been surprised and pleased by the results. Some of them obviously copied off each other, a couple I suspect just put their favourite stories through google translate, and one student just copied Snow White verbatim. But several students made some really fascinating things that made me feel like I'm just getting to know some of them for the first time.

Several of the stories feel like dreams or nightmares. One girl, who I know spends a lot of time watching American YouTubers, wrote about the frustration of being lost in a forest where everything's fake. One boy wrote about a guy getting revenge on the owner of an orange tree by giving him a mysterious black orange.

Of course, several boys wrote about fighting while the girls wrote about princesses in distress. A few girls wrote about meeting idols or becoming idols. Mostly I'm just happy these kids seem to be having genuine fun with English.

Twitter Sonnet #1667

Across the sparkling surface ladies danced.
Resplendent rocks adorn the diamond moon.
Refined for purpose jewels were sure enhanced.
Her dazzled future filled a pewter spoon.
As sleep arose it buffed the blushing sprite.
Aboard the floating garden witches rest.
Against the beating waves a heart doth fight.
And little blinking tears inscribe a test.
Returning words approved a worthless dish.
Reversing food condemned the pipe to flames.
Quartets of chickens cheered the dogless wish.
Beyond the feather trail's a list of names.
Across a bridge of papers pencils crowd.
Released to-day, the felon band was loud.

Yule Approacheth

On the train lately, I've been reading MR James stories but I mixed it up a little bit a few days ago and read HP Lovecraft's "The Festival" again. I'd totally forgotten it's a Christmas story.

As the road wound down the seaward slope I listened for the merry sounds of a village at evening, but did not hear them. Then I thought of the season, and felt that these old Puritan folk might well have Christmas customs strange to me, and full of silent hearthside prayer. So after that I did not listen for merriment or look for wayfarers, but kept on down past the hushed lighted farmhouses and shadowy stone walls to where the signs of ancient shops and sea-taverns creaked in the salt breeze, and the grotesque knockers of pillared doorways glistened along deserted, unpaved lanes in the light of little, curtained windows.

This is one of several stories, most famously The Shadow Over Innsmouth, in which the horror is intimately related to the narrator. Revelations of his own heritage slowly increase his anxiety and give meaning to his actions beyond those directly ascribed by the narrator.

As I hung back, the old man produced his stylus and tablet and wrote that he was the true deputy of my fathers who had founded the Yule worship in this ancient place; that it had been decreed I should come back, and that the most secret mysteries were yet to be performed. He wrote this in a very ancient hand, and when I still hesitated he pulled from his loose robe a seal ring and a watch, both with my family arms, to prove that he was what he said. But it was a hideous proof, because I knew from old papers that that watch had been buried with my great-great-great-great-grandfather in 1698.

He hangs back, yes, but what drew him this far? The real horror is unstated, that he may not be in control of himself, or he may not understand his own motives and essential nature. It's a tormenting, existential problem.

I suppose the story would be a good example to present to someone who wants to know why HP Lovecraft is considered great. The simultaneous love and fear he evidently felt for old New England is endlessly compelling.

. . . endless labyrinths of steep, narrow, crooked streets, and dizzy church-crowned central peak that time durst not touch; ceaseless mazes of colonial houses piled and scattered at all angles and levels like a child’s disordered blocks; antiquity hovering on grey wings over winter-whitened gables and gambrel roofs; fanlights and small-paned windows one by one gleaming out in the cold dusk to join Orion and the archaic stars. And against the rotting wharves the sea pounded; the secretive, immemorial sea out of which the people had come in the elder time.

I get that feeling often where I live now in Nara, Japan. There's no shortage of old buildings around here, some hundreds of years old, "scattered at all angles". I don't quite get the same impression of malevolence that comes through in the impressions in Lovecraft's fiction. I haven't been everywhere in Japan, so there may well be such places, but mostly the places in Japan feel sleepy and sedate, a contrast to the always hustling and caffeinated people. I've been thinking lately of how much this place will change once the diminishing population and economy will finally loosen immigration policies. When I came to Japan, I felt happy to be leaving a dying U.S. to come to a place resting on a more solid foundation. Yet, even then I suspected my perception wasn't accurate and now I can see how this place is dying, too. I think a lot about the tragedy of Japan's weak English education system, how necessary the language will probably be to these kids who are dissecting English grammar like frogs in a science lab; a weird, alien curiosity. To-morrow that frog will be Cthulhu.

Ice Cream and English

I saw this snail dangling at the end of a branch one morning. I suspect someone put him there.

The rainy season has started here in Nara, Japan. So there's lots of humidity and lots of rain. Actually, there hasn't been so much rain so far. But yesterday it started to rain a little when I was out for a very long walk. I happened to run into a lot of students yesterday. On my way to the Twin Gate mall, I ran into a former student who graduated last year. I stopped and stared at her a moment to be sure I really did recognise this girl in an unfamiliar school uniform. Finally, I said, "Jellyfish?!" And she laughed. Near the end of her last year at junior high school, the students had had an assignment to write in English about what they wanted to be in the future. She wrote that she wanted to be a jellyfish, so that's what I've called her ever since.

She was also on her way to Twin Gate. I was going to see a movie that turned out not to be playing anymore. So I settled for getting ice cream instead at a fairly famous Okinawan place called Blue Seal. I've been there a few times now, it's pretty incredible ice cream. The history of the chain, according to Wikipedia:

The United States military created the ice cream for American soldiers stationed in Okinawa after the close of World War II, to boost morale and give them a familiar taste of home. Its first factory opened in 1948 on a US base. The Blue Seal products were only offered to Americans until 1963, when the company began selling to the Okinawan public. Their flagship store in Naha also opened that year.

Later on, the company transferred to local ownership and Okinawan flavors such as beni-imo (purple sweet potato) and Goya bitter melon were introduced.

Yesterday I had two scoops, Tropical Marble and San Francisco Mint Chocolate Chip". Maybe not the best combo but I wanted to try both flavours. They were all right but so far I'd most recommend Strawberry Cheesecake or Ube.

When I got onto the train on the way home, I suddenly found myself in the midst of the school volleyball team, on their way home from a game up north. I asked them if they won and they wouldn't tell me, which probably means they lost. The compulsive face saving in Japanese culture really is pervasive, it's like pulling teeth sometimes to get someone to own up to something negative. But they seemed to be in good spirits.

They were from the school I'd been working at since mid-April. On Friday, I was moved to another, smaller school where I'll be until the first week of October. Though really my time there will amount to about two months because my summer vacation begins in mid-July and ends at the end of August. It's been quite a shift, going from a school where I'm busy from when I arrive at 7:45am to when I go home at around 6:45pm. The school I'm at now, where I worked last year in the spring, is much more laid back and not quite as enthusiastic about help from a native English speaker. But the new first year students seem enthusiastic and eager to speak English. I often get the impression first year students are better English speakers than third year students, probably because of recent changes in the elementary schools.

Japan is ranked low among Asian countries in English proficiency. This article covers some of the reasons why pretty well, I think.

“I studied English in junior high school, high school, and university, and when I graduated college I didn’t speak English at all,” said Norihiko Inoue, the regional sales and marketing director at Education First Japan.

Fundamentally, I'd say the will just isn't there, however trendy Western things may be. It's so ingrained that I think some Japanese English teachers who really believe they're teaching English in good faith are really on more of a mission to throttle English to death. I've been in plenty of English classrooms where the teacher speaks Japanese 90% of the time to laboriously go over points of English grammar in a handful of sentences. There's lip service now paid to the idea that communication is the goal, not precise grammatical proficiency, but in practice, it's still usually all about mind-numbing drills and discussions of minor details. The Japanese word for "trivia" is mamechishiki, literally "bean knowledge", and I often think of it in English class. And in spite of all this emphasis on tiny details and grammatical perfection, I frequently encounter teachers making basic grammatical mistakes. The text books, crafted by a vast committee of esteemed Japanese professors, is full of grammatical errors.

Of course, if the will to learn English were really there, I wouldn't be seeing such prominent problems as this. But no-one really feels the urgency to change a system that's been in place for so long. Many students make no attempt to conceal their complete contempt and lack of interest in English. And honestly, I kind of respect them for it. They probably won't need English, ever, in their lives. There's no reason they should be raked over the coals of relentless, mechanical pedantry. There's no reason these poor kids should have to go home in tears to parents who will come down on them like thunderstorms because they got another 30% on an English test.

I remember one day in December last year, talking to a student who stayed late at school simply because she was afraid to go home and show her parents her test score. It really breaks my heart sometimes. Lately I've been watching a lot of music videos on YouTube and I actually, honestly teared up a bit watching Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall".

Pictures for Words

I haven't had much time to work on my comic but I make a lot of art for work. This is a series for teaching subjunctives. I made some drawings and broke the class into groups. Each group had ten to fifteen minutes to make as many sentences as possible for the picture currently on the screen. One point for each sentence, two points for using subjunctives, and the group with the highest score won the round.

One of my favourites for this picture was, "If I could eat my hair, I could live." There was also a sentence about cocoanuts falling on his head but I can't remember how it went.

Many students came up with simple sentences for this like, "There is a child," or "The girl with the black hair is the same height as the girl with the red hair." One of the more fashionable girls in the class came up with, "If I had style, I could dance." Which made me smile.

I also made a series of pictures for the difficult task of explaining present perfect to the second year students but haven't had a chance to put them in practice yet.

I made two sets to show somethings present perfect and simple past sometimes mean two very different things and sometimes they literally mean the same thing, that the choice to use one or the other is like choosing colours of paint.

This could be, "I crawled to Mama," or "I have crawled to Mama." Both would have the same meaning but slightly different emotion. I'm also planning to show the class U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" despite the fact that Bono says things like, "I have spoke," using the wrong verb form. I'm always trying to think of ways to show the kids how inconsistent English is for native speakers.

Twitter Sonnet #1515

Containing heat became the giant's job.
A silly man was drinking carrot juice.
Emerging whales requested air to lob.
Entire worlds submit a loose caboose.
Before the walking back, a path was wet.
For treasure's weight, the shell was hardened fast.
We settled late a sharp but festive bet.
The reel revealed the cats in love with Bast.
The thoughtful car could carry cases home.
We timed the cake to rise above the corps.
Our little talk reminds the lad to roam.
There's less to say when kings expected more.
The steady waltz progressed across the ice.
A loaf of bread could house the hardy mice.

The History of the Miss Mystery

I noticed something about all the English text books at the junior high schools I work at here in Japan. They teach the reader that the titles for men and women are "Mr." and "Ms.", the latter pronounced "Miz". No mention is made of "Miss" and "Mrs.". I told one of the teachers I work with that this is by no means reflective of my experience as a native English speaker in the U.S. But as I thought about it, I wondered if I had the appropriate background to speak to the issue. I see "Ms." regularly on online news sites, I'd just totally forgotten it was pronounced "Miz", I always thought it was an abbreviation of "Miss". I'd been disabused of this before and, as I now recall, soon forgot again, probably because I can recall no instance of anyone actually using the pronunciation "Miz" in real life. But how many opportunities have I had? When I was in university and community college before that, anyone referred to by their last names were "Professor" or occasionally "Doctor". When I worked at J.C. Penney, everyone went by their first names, even the store manager. I referred to everyone by first names in my teaching jobs in the U.S. The last time I can positively remember using Mr., Miss, or Mrs. is high school. I don't remember any "Miz" in those days and clearly remember plenty of "Miss" and "Mrs." I graduated in 1997. Could things have really changed so much since then? According to many of the sites that come up in google, they have. But I also see sources which claim they haven't and generally the difference in opinion on sources lines up with their political bias. I checked other countries, too, and found an Australian site where women polled were under the impression that "Miz" was reserved for divorced women and possibly lesbians.

The argument in favour of "Miz", a controversy I thought, until recently, had died in the '90s, seems to be that a woman is made implicitly subservient to men by adopting her husband's name. I know there are occasions where a husband has adopted his wife's name instead, though. Why isn't the answer to give men a marriage dependent honorific? It seems as much a commentary on the value of marriage, the concept of creating a single unit from two individuals, as gender. What last names should the children of a marriage have? Should they have to pick a side when they come of age?

In any case, I'm not convinced the English text books are conveying an accurate idea of native speaker English. I've noticed that ping-pong is referred to as "pinpon" in Japanese but the English textbooks force students to say "table tennis", I suspect because "ping pong" is trademarked. Who knows what other interests are invested in these text books?

Twitter Sonnet #1481

The ghost of curry walks despite its heart.
Thematic trolls traverse the plastic wood.
The panicked horse was hit by poison dart.
Alone, the playful maiden lately stood.
A cube of sand could crush a cherry dream.
The errant knife presaged the ribbon ring.
To lee, the prow's unlike the dame she'd seem.
Electric green permits the car to sing.
The image pizza blurred our waking talk.
A question card was cut to fill the class.
A phase around the mountain heeled the walk.
A team of horses led her 'cross the pass.
Evolving words are clamped in boiling lard.
The language fits a tiny index card.

Songs in English

And I watch music videos on YouTube. Last week I saw the new Billie Eilish video, which is a lot different from the last Billie Eilish video I wrote about:

I've been informed by various headlines that people are upset Eilish wants to show off her body and look glamorous after being known for looking rebelliously frumpy. Enough headlines have informed me of people's complaints to make me wonder if anyone's actually complaining at all. I'm certainly not. She seems to be channelling Jessica Rabbit with this video and song which basically seems to be a modern "Why Don't You Do Right?" The message conveyed is, "Look at these marvellous breasts you can't touch because you're a loser." And she has a team of girls with her seemingly cast for bust size to back her up. This video pleases me. I am pleased.

I've also been watching videos recommended to me by students, including the new video from BTS:

That video already has over 314 million views for something that's essentially New Kids on the Block all over again. It's not my cup of tea but I'm happy the students are pleased. What interests me is that the song is entirely English, possibly a reflection of the band's runaway success in the U.S. How often do American bands write songs in foreign languages when they become popular in other countries? I can't imagine Billie Eilish writing a song in Mandarin (though I have no idea if she's popular in China). The U.S. has been massively in debt to Japan and China for years but still, as I can obviously attest to, everyone's trying to speak English. I find myself wondering if the language has an intrinsic value. I'm aware of how differently thoughts are organised in Asian languages. Many assume that the continued proliferation of English is only a legacy of British and American tyranny but I'm not so sure. Maybe I'm biased because I love English so much.

Twitter Sonnet #1450

The cable nose retrieved the deepest sand.
And now the learning starts with noodle guns.
We built the arm to rightly end the hand.
Our masters baked the butter deep in buns.
The bottle saved a letter pack with sauce.
Remembered thoughts were wet with inky rain.
He changed a word when years promote a boss.
The restless crew was pink from daily strain.
Divided months became important seeds.
Referring noodle cups we ate the phone.
Behind the ducks we watched the gentle reeds.
Beneath the bark and leaves we find a bone.
The painted rope has slipped from colour space.
Behind the door there waits a stranger's face.

Brought to You by Rain

Anyone know what kind of bug this is? I think it's a cicada but I can't seem to find this kind with the pine needle wings when I google. I feel pretty sure I've seen them in anime before.

It's the end of a rainy week with more rain to come here in Kashihara, Japan. I was home from school for two days due to the emergency but luckily, unlike other parts of Japan, there were no fatalities here.

I've been seeing more and more cats lately. And spiders, especially these little green ones.

Here's a picture of me from a school poster. I'm on the left. I have absolutely no memory of what I was doing. No clue what my hands are doing.

Twitter Sonnet #1371

Remaining gold awaits beneath the sod.
The seconds ticked across the granite slate.
Impassive beats surround the nervous god.
A heavy question touched the burdened pate.
Reluctant webs deploy about the bug.
A shaky grid becomes a tangled mesh.
The fire wants a kind of liquid hug.
Becoming real requires bone and flesh.
The dance remembered floats upon the pool.
In sequence stars became a drifting line.
Along the branch we wrote a single rule.
We fell asleep beneath the silent pine.
Assorted bugs require certain smells.
There's certain songs would ring the wooden bells.

Finland is Lots of Miles from Japan

Behold, the fruits of an English lesson I gave to-day. I was asked to talk about Finland on short notice to a class of special needs students (I work at a junior high school in rural Japan). What do I know about Finland? All I could think of was the Monty Python song which, in retrospect, would've been pretty useful given that it specifically mentions Japan in the lyrics--the kids love it when their own country is referenced in the lessons. I also thought of Nightwish, the Finnish metal band I like, especially their stuff from when they had an opera singer on lead vocals. I drew a big bear (on the right) because I knew there were bears in Finland. Otherwise I had nothing until I remembered The Sampo.

Or as it's sadly better known in the U.S., The Day the Earth Froze, which is the version with bad English dubbing. It was famously featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. But the original film is based on Finnish mythology and was co-directed by the great Russian fantasy director Aleksandr Ptushko, whose films are criminally difficult to acquire decent copies of in the U.S. So I started by drawing trees and then the mountains and the lake. Then I explained how the hero rode on logs, and I explained what a log was, and told them how one day he saw a beautiful woman and how they both were victims of a witch's jealousy. It was easy to put it all into simple English and I think it was a pretty good basis for a lesson plan.

The Day the Earth Froze was always one of my favourite episodes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, a case where there was a strange blurring of the line between mockery and appreciation, at least for me. The film has some genuinely amazing visuals.

I remembered the host segment where Joel and the bots ask the audience to figure out just what a Sampo is. So when I came to my own version of the story I put it to the students--when the witch, who lives on a miserable island, jealous of the people in the village, demands the Sampo in exchange for freeing the beautiful woman, just what might the Sampo be? One of the students suggested, "Life."

"Maybe!" I said, "Good answer!" After all, you might say a big lump that spews endless quantities of salt and gold is basically life.

On a slightly unrelated subject, here's a giant bug I saw outside my apartment this morning.

I thought it might be dead so I tapped one of its antennae with the tip of my umbrella expecting it to scurry away if it was alive. Instead, the antennae slowly, lazily swung back. As though to say, "Yeah, I'm alive, and you don't scare me, human."