Neglect

   I've been neglecting a lot of things lately, mostly due to work. I haven't been taking pictures (though I tried -- more on that later), updated my resume, exercised/worked out, cooked, worked on the proofing company idea with rav, or punched up my blog's layout. What I have been doing is a lot of work and kendo followed by vegging out and not sleeping well.

   Sleep is the thing that's bothering me the most; I've never been the kind of person who can take on life with only 5-6 hours of sleep -- I'm functional, but that's the most you can say about me. Lately I've been staying up til midnight not doing much of anything at all; I need to force myself to close the laptop and just stop around 10, if not earlier. In the mornings, there's a lot of movement in the parking lot five or six feet from my head; there's a lot more movement in the apartment above me. All of that translates into vibrations and thumping that vibrate through the walls and wake me up.

   As if that weren't enough, the sun's also doing the thing where it rises way, way too early in the summer. So I start waking up every morning around 4 -- and six hours of sleep gotten after waking up like that isn't anywhere near as good as just sleeping six straight hours.

   So yeah, my performance has been falling and it shows in my lack of focus, drive, and kendo ability. My speech (especially in Japanese) sucks too. Sleep is a priority.

   I've been spending anywhere from 10-12 hours at work lately, too, even though I'm only paid for seven. My old junior high school had 13 regular classes of about 30 kids each; my new one has 18 of about 40 kids each. There's a lot more preparation work involved and a lot more papers to be checked.

   Speaking of preparation, teaching is a lot different at this school. Most schools have three English classes a week; this one has four, with one of them being a "communication" class with the ALT (me). I'd assumed that it would be pretty much the same curriculum, though, with me helping the kids with grammar/textbook work, but it's not so far. I really miss being able to do the textbook since I have a lot of tricks in teaching grammar/spelling that I've gathered over the last three years.

   And frankly, I think "communication" classes with 40 kids at once are worthless. What it boils down to is that I run a class for about an hour and I'm supposed to play a game or something that gives the kids listening practice. I'm fine with that in theory, but when their practical skills aren't up to it, it's kind of a waste of time. Sure, it might be fun, and that might have its own value in and of itself, but there are much better things that could be done.

   One of the things that really bothers me is that math classes are organized by ability here. This is an oddity because, unlike my junior/senior high school experience, no other classes are. Everyone's lumped into the same class, whether it's English, History, or Science. Math takes a sensible approach; two classes take it in the same period and the kids are split up into groups depending on their ability.

   Now, if English could be taught like that, it would be a lot more rewarding for everyone involved, I think. I admit that I'm biased toward the upper-level kids, but honestly, if I could get a small group of kids who like and are good at English and do drill-type conversation practice, I think their ability would go up like crazy.

   In my dreams.

   But yeah, I have a lot of preparation/post-class work to do at school. I'm only at the school for 23 periods a week (five periods on Mondays, six on other days, one day at elementary), but of those 23 periods, I'm teaching 18-20 classes. Since there are four English teachers due to the size of the school, I'm actually teaching more classes in four days than some of those teachers teach in a week! That's not even including my elementary classes.

   This isn't to say that I don't like the school. I fell into place pretty quickly with both the kids and the staff; everyone's really friendly. A lot of the kids wave or shout "hello" when they see me, both boys and girls. I haven't had a lot of classes with the third-year kids yet due to weird scheduling reasons, but the ones that know me seem interested -- as interested as 15-year-olds get.

   I haven't really found anyone with stand-out English abilities, though.

   We had interviews for people going to Australia; there were only two or three people out of about 25 that I felt comfortable recommending, but the teacher wanted more choices. The level of spoken English at this school is much lower than my old school; I don't know if it's because of the teachers, the curriculum, or the background. This school is in a really rural area that was classified as a "village" before being annexed by the city, so a lot of these kids have parents who are farmers or blue-collar workers.

   In comparison, my old school was populated mostly by kids whose parents are doctors, teachers, or other white-collar professionals.

   A large part of me thinks it's their system and how they use the ALT, but I'm not exactly unbiased there.

   Another reason I've been staying at school so long is that I've been going to clubs again. I go to the kendo club regularly, though I wasn't able to last week due to lots of financial crap I had to get done in the city. I also stopped by the art club, which was very nervous with me around, and the literature club, which was nervous but willing to talk.

   The judo club practices in the same room as the kendo club, so I talk to them a lot too. The judo advisor is really nice; he's a few years older than me, but this is his first time teaching. Apparently he went to Africa with the Peace Corps after he graduated from university. He can speak some English, but more importantly, he's willing to try.

   Judo looks really fun, but I've got my hands full with kendo. I told him that if they have practice some weekend, I'll go join them, but I'm not willing to drop kendo practice for judo right now.

   The kendo club is really good; they practice at least three hours every day, but probably more. The results of their practice definitely show in their stamina; it's a lot better than mine. I find myself completely worn out after an hour of their practice.

   The practice at the junior high is a lot faster-paced than at my old dojo. Kendo is interesting in that there are three places that everyone can hit (head, wrist, trunk) and one more that people hit sometimes (throat). Everyone, regardless of age or rank, practices the first three constantly. That was pretty much what half of the practice at my old dojo was -- lots of basic striking.

   The other half was kata; kendo has 10. We practiced kata just about every time in the old dojo, with an hour going to kata and an hour going to actual kendo practice. Kata are said to improve distance, footwork, and balance; I don't know if that's true or not, because I suck at those. Then again, I'm just a beginner.

   At the junior high, they don't really do kata at all. The focus is on winning matches against other junior high schools, which means lots of practice focused on building physical reactions and stamina for match situations. So it's a lot faster-paced and a lot more demanding than the type of practice we did at my old dojo, which was more focused on building proper basics.

   Each approach has its merits and it's good for me to be exposed to both.

   That doesn't mean that the kids don't run me into the ground, though!

   More frustrating than my lack of stamina is the routine, though. It took me a while to get used to the old dojo's routine; I can't hear well with the helmet on and dojo tend to be echoing environments, making it worse. So I had to internalize the practice routine.

   It's not much help here. Not only is the routine different, but there are several of them! And they're all hideously complex. For example, one type of practice has seven steps for each side; if you don't know the routine, you can't do the steps smoothly, which means not only are you fucking up your own practice, but when you screw up as the receiver, you're fucking up your partner's practice too.

   It really makes me feel like shit.

   Nothing frustrates me more than knowing that I'm wasting someone else's time.

   The only thing I can do about it is to keep going, though. The guys are all good sports about it, but some of the girls seem pretty put out by it.

   I can only practice with them four times a week, since I'm at the elementary school one day a week. They also practice on the weekend, but those tend to be practice matches with other schools around the prefecture or in neighboring prefectures, and I'd just be deadweight there since I'm not a student. I'm busy on the weekends anyway; lately I've been doing translation work, plus I have my English lesson on Sunday.

   Somehow, my lesson got shifted from Saturday to Sunday.

   I've been biking down the mountain lately; it only takes me around 40 minutes to get to the center of the city, with about 20 of those actually being biking down the mountain. It's a rush, an absolutely massive rush. I speed down the mountain so quickly that bugs actually splat on my glasses. I love the wind, I love the feel of the gravel beneath my tires, and I love watching the cityscape below me.

   I don't love the bugs.

   Coming back, on the other hand, is a chore; there's a long gradual slope before the mountain that's a pain, and then the mountain itself. It may take me 40 minutes to get down to the city center, but it takes me nearly two hours to get back up. So I take the bus up and load my bike on it. Some of the buses can take my bike.

   Of course, I just have to be careful not to miss the last one!

   I tried to take an extremely large panorama of the city after my English lesson; the family I teach lives in a 14th floor apartment that's relatively centrally located, so it has a great view. Unfortunately, I screwed up and missed four or five pictures I needed to fill in gaps, so the panorama looks like crap. I want to try to retake them tomorrow if the weather cooperates.

   So maybe I'll have a large city panorama to share soon. If my computer doesn't give out... I need more RAM if I want to keep doing things this large; the file for the uncompressed panorama, as is, with holes, is over 1.5 GB. It takes forever to process it.

   That's my life lately in a nutshell. I'll have to talk about elementary classes in a future post.