Swords and Eclairs

When I chat with the Japanese junior high school students I work with, I often like to ask about their dreams. Most of the time, they can't remember any dreams but yesterday a girl told me she dreamed of eating great quantities of eclairs. This particular student is always fun to talk to because comes off as genuine as an old comic strip character. I asked if she had a favourite pastry shop in town (there are many in Japan) but she said she can't shop at them because she's allergic to eggs. No wonder she was dreaming of eclairs.

Here are some of my recent doodles from the art club. As you can see, I've been in the mood to draw Nesuko lately. It's kind of nice living in a country where the comic industry isn't dead.

X Sonnet #1816

A line of hams await the casting brunch.
A glaze of ink adorns the creamy script.
Together, crews assemble fast a lunch.
The foam of lonesome black was full and tipped.
A nightly glow distorts the damaged main.
Armadas drift abeam of scuttled hulks.
Gelat'nous moons would melt to quickly wane.
The slinker cracks a jar then slyly skulks.
The blinking bat forgets to sleep in June.
As timing's right for flight, the sirens wake.
Aloft on leather wings, the creature loomed.
Presented late, the feature pushed a take.
As dusty sets amass a bloody dream,
The crew devoured steamy pastry cream.

Another Irrevocable Change

Yesterday was a long, bittersweet experience. It was graduation day here in Japan and I watched students graduate from junior high school whom I met in their first year when I came to Japan in 2020. Junior high school is three years in Japan, and it's the last period of compulsory education. So it's regarded as much more important here than in the US. I recently saw some video from my own junior high school graduation back in 1993.

I'm the blonde in the middle with glasses. To my left is my friend Tim. Everyone in the video looks restless and bored, a far cry from the formal series of bows and singing and speeches I witnessed yesterday.

After the ceremony, the teachers and staff make the "flower road" in the field outside, lining up in two rows for the departing students to walk through. Then everyone mills around, taking pictures and making final farewells before the students finally exit, officially no longer junior high school students. I spoke to as many students as I could. Some of them I'm really going to miss and am bitterly sorry I'll never be able to see again. I work at several schools but they all hold their graduation ceremonies on the same day, so I can only go to one. I went to the school at which I'd spent the most time but that still left out a lot of students I dearly wished I could have seen.

After lunch, I went to the mall and was delighted to see and talk to many students from many schools. Many of the girls were wearing tiaras and sashes. One girl, a kick boxing champion, had done her hair and nails to perfection, her nails having little silver flowers glued to them. I saw some students I hadn't seen since 2021, whose school I wasn't assigned to last year. That was an unexpected treat.

Even after all that, there were still several students I was disappointed not to see. In previous years, some of them flagged me down later throughout the year at train stations. Getting closure seems to be very important to people here. I can only hope I will eventually see some of these students. In particular, there were two I worked with after school, teaching them how to read Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury. I sure I hope I see them eventually. But there's every possibility I never will.

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.

Another Last Day

Yesterday was pretty amazing. It was my last day at one of the schools I work at, possibly my last day ever since the company that employs me hasn't told me where I'm going next. So I felt pretty heavy-hearted in the morning. It's amazing how much this school has come to feel like home after two years. But one reason I love it so much is that the students are absolutely amazing. The art club students made those two books above, one from first graders and one from second graders (13 and 14 year-olds, respectively). Many students gave me artwork and special messages. On my desk, I found two thick packets of letters from most of the second graders (about 300 students). That's quite a bounty. I felt terrific reading them.

I received some gifts from teachers, too. One of the teachers I work with gave me some incredible artwork by her mother as well as some t-shirts from the company her husband works for, Capcom.

I'd told her I still like to play Rock Man (aka Mega Man) sometimes which may explain this shirt.

The judo teacher invited me to join him at an izakaya after school to celebrate his retirement and 60th birthday. We were joined by another teacher and had some incredible food and alcohol. I had whiskey while he had beer and sake. The izakaya was run by a former student of his who evidently loves The Beatles because that's all we heard all night. We had plate after plate of tempura, sashimi, karaage (Japanese style fried chicken), tofu, and various creative items including some kind of cut roll with bacon and avocado wrapped in lettuce. It was quite a send-off for me but I still dearly hope to return.

What Words Have You for a Pie?

Lately I've been making these comics for first year students. They come up with their own English dialogue for the speech bubbles. I received responses for the above comic all last week and I was delighted by how creative the kids could be in English. My favourite has the woman saying that she baked the pie "too big" and the cat in the last panel says, "The pie is too big for them but it is the best size for me." Another kid had the cat praising the pie but remarking its filling shouldn't have been berries but cat food instead.

Twitter Sonnet #1522

The white replaced the powder blue at sea.
Misguided wrecks were filled with data drops.
The silver ones could never add to three.
The shoe alone from feet just barely hops.
A stack of stones reported life beyond.
Arresting clocks, the pieces pummelled grids.
A trillion frogs enriched the tiny pond.
The auction closed to count a trillion bids.
The question broke to three before the drill.
The little face was caught between the clouds.
With knowledge lost, the village lost its will.
But dancing happed when gone were human crowds.
The second bubble burst before the last.
Enlarging soap, they cleaned a paper past.

Meeting the Kids

Lately I've been seeing a lot of people talking about a Tennessee school board banning Art Spiegelman's Maus and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. As usual, the headlines make you think there are bonfires and goosestepping school officials chucking books into the flames. But then you read the article and it turns out the books are just being removed from the curricula due to depictions of nudity and incest. It's interesting people who are normally concerned about triggery content don't seem to be raising concerns about these things.

I certainly don't think these books should be banned. I'd absolutely make them available in the school library for students who are ready for the material. But speaking as someone who teaches eighth graders, the idea of making them required reading in a classroom strikes me as cruel. There may be a few students ready for this material but for most of them it's going to feel like punishment. I would argue the symbolism in Maus is probably too sophisticated for kids to whom you might need to explain that, no, Tom from Tom and Jerry is not a Nazi. And Toni Morrison I could see for senior year of high school, maybe, but overall I'd think she's college material, which is where I read her. And that's probably why young teachers are using her works--they'd just read her in college and lack the imagination to find books someone could appreciate from an eighth grader's perspective.

Why not teach Alice in Wonderland? Or Treasure Island? Why not make these kids excited about literature before hitting them with the hard stuff? More than anything, I feel there is a need to nurture a love for the medium rather than a need to expose kids to works designed as wrecking balls for concepts they're barely acquainted with and which probably seem irrelevant to them.

This isn't to say I don't think kids should be exposed to uncomfortable historical topics. One of the English books I teach from here in Japan has a chapter on Martin Luther King Jr. without any explanation of the history of race relations or slavery in the U.S. Japanese junior high school students naturally don't study U.S. history any more than U.S. junior high school students study Japanese history. So, when I've gotten to that chapter in the book, I've spent an entire class period giving them a lecture on the history of race relations and slavery in the Americas. But I don't do it using irony or complex symbolism. It's a straight forward lecture and that's what's appropriate for eighth graders whose reading level is currently Demon Slayer/Kimetsu no Yaiba.

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.

Locals on the Move

Turtles and fish were milling about in confusion yesterday. This was in the river near the school I just started working in. This is the fourth junior high school I've worked in so far. The school year begins in April in Japan so there are brand new first year students who still look like elementary school kids. Less than a month ago, I attended a graduation ceremony for outgoing third year students, fifteen years old and looking like young adults. I feel pretty lucky to have ended up teaching junior high in Japan and being able to watch so many kids in this period of transition.

I wish I could have said goodbye to more of the graduating students. Fortunately, I have run into some of them around town. I ran into a group of three girls at the mall, each one wearing her new school uniform--and each uniform was different. They're all going to different high schools. One of them is going to a school in Tenri, a good distance from Kashihara, so this may have been their last time hanging out.

I had to talk to them in Japanese because they either retained no English or they were just delighting in forcing me to speak Japanese. I sure hope it's the latter.

This morning at the crowded Kashiharajingumae station, one high school girl in a crowd moving in the opposite direction to mine called out my name and waved. I waved back though I didn't have time to recognise her.

Twitter Sonnet #1442

The perfect tea appears with time and leaves.
The wayward page was turned by thumb and left.
The pants were weak beside the mighty greaves.
The worthy phones have supple shape and heft.
As wires clamp the nose, the questions form.
But any nose was named the same for streets.
For running cards who paint the yoghurt warm.
And bleach the priceless plot of ruby beets.
A heavy lid could never stop the tea.
A viper locks the case of captain cards.
Between the wasps there crouched a bolder bee.
The hardened honey broke in crystal shards.
Convenience grinds the lunch to plastic pulp.
A battle nears to find the biggest gulp.

Critical Cats and Promising Birds

This cat continues to mock me. I turned another corner and there he was. What must I do to avoid the censure of his expressive wit, his wicked tongue? I left him some cat treats I've been carrying in my bag but didn't have time to see if he ate them. But why should I care about his approval anyway?!

This is my last week at the junior high school where I've been working. Then it's off to other work for the company that hired me. I didn't anticipate how great this experience would be, how really wonderful these kids are. To-day I did my best to tell one little girl how great her artwork is and I made the dubious choice of encouraging her to make manga. "Too difficult," she said. I told her, "The best work in life is difficult work."

These kids generally seem so much happier than the adults. I hope the machines of life aren't going to crush them a few years down the road.

The Long Picture

This is an unfinished drawing I've been working on in the art club of the Japanese junior high school where I've been working as an assistant English teacher. "You like love," said one of the students, looking at it. I guess that's true. I'm posting it now because I'll probably immediately give it away to one of the students when I finish as I've done with previous drawings. It's really relaxing drawing in that club and it's nice to be able to pass on some basic knowledge about pencilling and inking, the kind of stuff artbooks are reluctant to divulge. Though a lot of the kids need no help from me, wow. The kinds of drawings I see, I couldn't have dreamed of producing when I was in junior high. A group of girls sit with me while I draw and one of them likes drawing highly detailed clockwork dolls. All her drawings look like they came right out of a professional manga.

She joked that her friend is famous and, since I can't use my Japanese (part of my job is to create situations where the kids are forced to use English), I had to forgo the opportunity to use a joke in Japanese I actually managed to formulate, that for all I knew, everyone at the school was famous behind all the masks. It's a strange new world. It's gotten so it's positively weird when I see someone's face. When I leave school, I see lots of kids without masks while they're exercising--after two kids in China died from wearing masks while exercising in the heat, policy has relaxed to allow kids to remove their masks while playing sports. It's almost shocking to see so many bare faces. I have this strange impulse to cry out, "What are you doing, everyone? Hide!"

I'm really not sure how much good any of the rules are, though, when the kids are constantly hugging and wrestling between classes. It's kind of silly watching their horseplay one minute and then two minutes later watching them observe rules requiring them not to pass papers to each other. Hopefully the virus doesn't get too widespread in Japan. How do I tell kids not to hug each other?

Here are some of my recent photos:

I think I saw one of the fabled "murder hornets". It was dead.

Twitter Sonnet #1365

A paper bed confused the back at night.
The ocean spoke of heavy water eyes.
The mammals turned as motion bubbles might.
The darkest depths desist on open skies.
The numbers held in mind were one to ten.
Beyond the teens the dice create a void.
The mountains came to seem a woody pen.
The island served a cake too long enjoyed.
A little water floods the sugar sea.
The desert throat reports a set of sounds.
Entire drums of honey move the bee.
Another buzz precedes the lunar rounds.
The endless trunk contained forever leaves.
Resentful habit slights what thought achieves.

Life in a Land of Heat and Rain

I'm coming to the end of my first week working as an assistant language teacher at a Japanese junior high school. It's mainly been a very nice experience, the students are very sincere and well behaved, though it's a little difficult to tell them apart when they all wear masks and uniforms. Aside from the masks, the only sign of Corona virus is the new set of social distancing rules requiring no two students to sit beside each other, a little pointless considering there seems to be plenty of physical contact outside of the classroom. For a culture about which I've constantly been told physical contact is frowned upon, I see a lot more hugging than at American schools. This might be a new trend. Fortunately, Corona seems down to pretty low levels though there's been an increase in cases in Tokyo.

One of the teachers seemed to expect me to be missing America, based on the questions she was asking me. I told her I'm happy to be in a country where there are currently no riots and I went on to tell her that the riots in the U.S. seem to have pushed Corona off the front page in every major publication. I'm working in a rural area so most people don't seem to know anything about George Floyd or the riots. I generally have the impression that people here are more focused on here than on the world. There's more of a sense of a connexion to the town and community than I'm used to.

It sure is hot. I'm told the rainy season is off to a late start which has been a worry for the farmers. Supposedly constant rain will begin next week--it will be rainy and hot. I wish I had more summer clothes.