There are five pugs in as many wagons.
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I talked with my little sister the other day and she was telling me about some article she read about how Japanese thinking is different from the normal way—I mean the Western way, and she mentioned two basic differences. One, which was tested by showing the test-taker a picture of a cow, grass and a chicken and asking them to circle two things that belong together (OK, so I don’t know the correct wording of the question, but indulge me), and the Asian students usually circle the cow and the grass because the cow eats the grass. Westerners circle the cow and chicken since they’re both animals. So the researchers propose that the normal way to think—sorry, there’s that prejudice acting up again—the Western way to think is in categories, while Asians are said to think more in terms of relationships. And I think mostly about getting out of relationships. Burn! No bail. (Family Guy reference).

And the ADD student who has been brought up on violent video games draws teeth on the grass and has it eat the cow and chicken while saying, “Grassman wins! Fatality!” I guess I’ve gotten more juvenile since I’ve been in Jpaan. Didn’t see that coming, did you, mom?

I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t intelligently say how Japanese people think, but I do run into differences right and left. It’s like a steeplechase. For example, I had to explain how to make a grading rubric for essays to every teacher. That’s one of the most basic teaching tools. So that’s one hurdle. It’s not that surprising, actually, since Japanese schools rarely (if ever) require students to write essays or papers of any kind, as most of the grading is determined my mid-term and term-end exams.

When I first came to Japan, I didn’t really know what I should do in lessons. But I knew what they were doing was BS. I experimented, with lots of bad results and failures in class, but over the course of my time here, with trial and error, research and stealing good lessons from other Americans, and also through my own Japanese language study, I think I’ve figured out how to give a really good language lesson. It’s really depressing that I have to ditch all that, since I’ll be teaching science come fall. Teaching English is really meaningful if you have willing students and you can watch kids improve. But it’s equally painful watching them struggle and lose motivation while a teacher who doesn’t know what they’re doing pounds them into place.

This year I have students writing essays, and third year students are writing journals. They write really great stuff. Some of it makes you want to cry, like when I get compliments I don’t deserve, “You cut hair is happy” (I’m glad you got a haircut), or laugh, like a student who did an essay on superpowers (I give themes like that), and she chose to have photosynthetic hair, and a guy who chose to have the ability to generate electricity so that he could charge his cell phone. Well it cracks me up. It’s better than reading example sentences from the grammar book, such as, “He made five mistakes in as many lines.” If I have to read that again I’m going to puke five times in as many toilets.