T.G.I.F.

~Friday is my favorite day of the working week, although not for the usual its-the-weekend reason. My schedule runs from Tuesday through Saturday, with Sunday and Monday off, so Friday is not the end. It is, however, my least-stressful working day, and I always look forward to it.

In general, I group my classes into three separate levels of stress. High-stress classes involve groups of young children who think I'm a human jungle gym, classes which require all my energy to simply control the students and attempt to teach them some basic English. This is not to say that I don't enjoy the classes; rather, they take a lot out of me. If my job consisted of nothing but these kinds of classes and students, I wouldn't be able to handle it. Some type-A people are built for that. I am not. Thankfully, I only consider about 15% of my classes to be high-stress

Low-stress classes are private lessons with advanced students that I can hold regular conversations with. Although I put a lot of effort into these lessons, they don't require a large amount of planning or intense levels of energy. These classes are less like teaching lessons and more akin to tutoring, which I have a lot of experience with and greatly enjoy. About 20% of my classes fall into this category.

In between the two extremes are mid-stress classes, which include toddler and baby classes (taught with parents), group lessons of upper-level grade-schoolers, more challenging mid-level private lessons, and group middle- and high-school lessons.

Friday is not my lightest work day (I actually have fewer lessons to teach on Thursday), but it is very low-stress. I have two parent/child classes (mid-stress), followed by four private lessons. One of the private lessons is mid-level, but the other three are high-level and low-stress. In other words, Friday's classes are, in general, a pleasure to teach. And, as you can see, very hyphenated.

By comparison, Saturday is by far my most difficult day. I have two high-stress group lessons in a row, along with another three mid-stress lessons. Thankfully, the day is "bumpered" with low-stress lessons at the beginning and the end, which softens the blow a bit. By the end of the day, I'm usually in a semi-manic state thanks to the combination of having survived the high-stress classes along with the impending days off. This makes my final few lessons of the week very "interesting".

Well, another Friday has come and gone. I don't dread the coming Saturday, but I do always get a bit apprehensive. This Saturday is actually the last day in the regular teaching calendar, which means that I'll soon move to all-new classes. Perhaps my last remaining Saturdays in Japan will feature a bit less insanity. ~Oyasumi!

A Dime a Dozen

~Karaoke is, of course, a Japanese word (it literally means "empty orchestra"), and this country is where the whole craze started. For those of you who haven't experienced the "joys" of group karaoke, I actually do recommend it. Sure, everyone sounds terrible, but that's not the point: it's just something fun and a little silly to do with your friends. And believe me, after a few drinks, everyone sounds a lot "better".

Anyway, karaoke joints are a dime a dozen (a yen a dozen?) in all urban areas of Japan. Within a one-minute walk of my workplace in downtown Nagaoka, I'd estimate there are upwards of forty karaoke lounges, and several hundred within a one-kilometer radius. Many restaurants in Japan have attached karaoke areas that can be rented out for the night. Combined with nomi hodai (all-you-can-drink deals), it's an enjoyable night's worth of entertainment. Some of the more advanced machines will actually rate your performance on each song and assign you a score, and show how you measure up to others who've sung it.

But not all karaoke spots are quite so nice. For those on a budget, there's always this place:

^ Probably the most ghetto karaoke spot I've seen in Japan is this sorry excuse for entertainment. Each room is individually-separated on the edges of a parking lot, complete with tiny air-conditioners and heaters. Large windows guarantee minimum privacy. It's like a twisted version of the "trailer schools" that infest the Raleigh, NC public education system.

Going out to sing with friends is fun enough, but in Japan, you sometimes have to go with your coworkers, whether you want to or not. Overall, it's actually been quite fun on the few occasions when I did have to go. Workplace etiquette in Japan demands that what happens after work isn't considered to have really "happened" the next day, so you're free to make a complete fool of yourself; honestly, nobody cares. It's rather refreshing, although your ears may hurt afterwards. ~Oyasumi!

A Friend in the Darkness

~Planet Earth has a new friend in the vast emptiness of space: Comet Lovejoy. This newly-discovered comet was first detected on March 15th by Terry Lovejoy, an amateur astronomer in Brisbane, Australia, who located the comet not with a telescope but with a digital consumer camera! The numerical designation of the comet is C/2007 E2.

^ Comet Lovejoy currently has a magnitude of 9.5 (too dim to be visible with the naked eye), and is an interesting greenish-blue color. It is expected to become brighter, up to perhaps magnitude 7 during its closest approach to Earth in late April; that's still not visible to the naked eye, but easily visible through amateur telescopes. The above picture was taken with a more powerful telescope in New Zealand. Because of the comet's trajectory, it can only be seen from the southern hemisphere.

^ This computer simulation from NASA shows Comet Lovejoy's orbital path. Although it appears to go straight through Earth, bear in mind that the distances you're looking at in this image are massive. We're in no danger of being hit by the comet, I assure you.

Judging from its orbit, Comet Lovejoy is a "long-period" comet, with a highly elliptical orbit nearly perpendicular to the plane of the solar system's planets. Long-period comets originate in the Oort Cloud, a sphere of icy debris at the extreme outer edges of the sun's gravitational pull, perhaps up to a full light-year away. The recently-spectacular Comet McNaught is also a long-period comet, which none of us will be seeing again. Ever.

At the other end of the scale are "short-period" comets such as Halley's Comet, which swing by at small, regular intervals of less than 200 years. Halley's Comet, for example, has a period of about 76 years (which fluctuates a bit each time due to gravitational interactions with the planets it passes by). Since comets melt a bit every time they get close to the sun (that's what makes their gaseous tails), in astronomical terms short-period comets don't last very long before they melt completely or disintegrate. They usually (but not always) come from the Kuiper Belt, a rocky ring of comets and debris beyond the orbit of Neptune...which is a long way from Earth, though not nearly as far as the Oort Cloud.

^ Actually, I wasn't able to locate a period for Comet Lovejoy on the NASA site, but it's semi-major axis (the distance from the middle of the ellipse to the longest edge) is listed as "9.9999e+99 AU" (i.e., it's so far away that the number is not yet calculable). Not exactly a walk to the convenience store! The orbit is so stretched out that it isn't likely to swing by Earth again for millions of years.

An analogy springs to mind: when I was younger, I learned the difference between a "little-while friend" and a "long-while friend". A "little-while friend" is somebody you meet and are friends with, but only for a short time. Perhaps it's somebody you meet on a journey, or a family you chat with on a vacation. Ultimately, you have to leave them; you might promise to keep in touch, but in most cases both parties know it's more of a social nicety than a serious commitment.

In the case of Comet Lovejoy and other long-period comets, I don't really know how to classify their relationship with Earth. Are they little-while friends, because they'll only see each other for a brief instant before the comet sails off into the infinite abyss of space? Or are they long-while friends, since, although it may take unfathomable stretches of time, they will see each other again? What do you think? ~Oyasumi!

Bizarre Teaching Moment #11: Fifty?!

~Saturday is my most difficult day of the week. I have eight hours of classes to teach, including two classes of crazy little monkeys that I can barely control; I'm understandably exhausted at the conclusion of the day. However, there is a silver lining to my Saturdays: the first and last classes of the day are extremely easy to teach and are quite enjoyable. Starting off the day is my only adult student, who just wants to talk about American culture and food. Ending the day is a high-school student, from whom this latest Bizarre Teaching Moment originated.

This girl is extremely bright, and her reason for studying English is that she wants to study molecular biology in the United States. We usually play some word games to improve her grammar and pronunciation, and do a bit of reading out of her (too easy) textbook. We end each lesson by reading a few pages of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis (she bought her own English copy), and locate new words to expand her vocabulary. As I said, the class is a lot of fun and easy to run.

During last week's lesson, we were playing a game from the textbook, where one person reads a sentence and has to decide if it is true or false for them, correcting it if it's false. For example, "I want to live in the city", might be true, or you might change it to, "I don't want to live in the city. I want to live in the country."

The sentence in question here was, "I want to live to be one hundred years old." It was my turn, and, being the humorous fellow that you all know and love, changed it to, "I do not want to live to be one hundred years old. I want to live to be ten thousand years old!" This got some laughs, but what was really surprising was what she said next:

"I do not want to live to be one hundred years old. I want to live to be fifty years old."

At first I thought that she'd made a mistake. "You mean, one hundred fifty?" I asked, knowing that Japan has one of the the highest life expectancies in the world. "No," she insisted, "Fifty."

I queried her as to why she only wanted to live for another thirty-two years, and got this sad, sad tale: she has no interest in getting married and only wants to focus on her education and career. She is afraid that when she is fifty and not married, she will be lonely, so she would want to die.

I should add here that she is not ugly or abrasive in attitude, nor does she strike me as depressed or sad. She's just got a very peculiar and focused mindset. I tried to make her adopt a more positive attitude on life, telling her that even if she isn't married, she will have many friends, extended family, etc., and probably won't be lonely. I hope I managed to change her attitude a bit, although sometimes I feel less like a teacher and more like a guidance counselor...~Oyasumi!