What to do with kids?

Over the last three months I've been slowly easing into my new job, with the support of those who I work with and the experience that I gain from each class. I must say that I feel very comfortable with it, and that it's turned out to be a good way of making money in the country that I'm living in right now. My goals have been accomplished: I can continue to learn Japanese and get good teaching experience while spending my weekends doing the things that entertain me.

That's the macro, now the micro.

Being a teacher should never be an easy occupation. Besides the hours in this new gig, which are actually really quite favourable given the stuff that I like to do, the one thing that keeps my toes going is the bad asses that I have to teach. My job would be dreamy if it weren't for two classes each week where the kids play fools. For those out there who don't know my past, I actually worked in a residential kids home before I came to Japan where the kids were way more than two of my handfuls. They drove me insane, and coming to Japan was initially a utopical break from what had gone before. The thing is, the kids in the last job were supposed to be bad asses, and we weren't supposed to be able to create utopical homely environments where the kids listened and went to bed on time. They were supposed to cause problems and the bosses and everyone knew it. The main thing that the managers were concerned with was that their staff stayed afloat.

In this job, the kids aren't that bad; some are actually angels. It's just that today, I decided to try a method of class control that I'm not sure about. This one girl was playing the fool today, and over the weeks I've thought about how I can 'control' the kind of stuff that she did. It's pathetic really, because all she did was stand up mid repetition and start wiping words off the white board. It sounds silly, but it doesn't happen in any other classes. In fact I wouldn't dream of it in some. So what I did was I took the girl into the corner where I sat her down in front of an educational poster and left her there while I finished that section of the lesson plan. It wasn't during a game or anything, which would be totally different because I love to see these kids act out during games; being stupid and childish and the rest. The thing is, it was a lesson at a Japanese English school (at my last school the kids were never given retribution for their stupid behaviour) where consequences for dumb behaviour are an extremely grey area. Like everything else, children misbehaving in class are overlooked and it is simply hoped that they learn to become just as inert and conformist as the rest of society in due time.

My view was that it was an English class and that I had to do something to bring this particular class into line with the rest. They need to learn the stuff that I'm trying to teach because their parents are paying good money for it, and in December I'm going to give demos to the parents.

It might sound petty, but in a new job in a foreign country, when you're working with kids you have to think constantly about what measures you should take. I am entirely responsible for these kids, there's nobody else there. And if they don't progress I see that as being an issue for me. Not necessarily my failure, but an issue.



Flakey teacher? Skin-deep, perhaps. The truth is, I think of all the kids I teach as fantastic. Some just have a hard time showing it. They're kids and I'm supposed to be an adult: what to do?

The people of Akakura Mountain

Another Monday, another fantastic day out in the sticks. At the top yesterday I met the Ghents from Itayanagi church. They happened to be at the summit when I turned up, and they had a big group of young folk with them enjoying the view.

On the way down I decided to take a few snaps of the religious figures that endure the weather up there twenty four hours a day, three hundred and sixty five days a year. Here's one of them, a female of some spiritual description:



She keeps that content and settled look on her face even when the snow comes down in sheets. Fair play. She stands right next to the mini shrine at the top:



Then there's this fella, who sit's tucked away behind tall grass:



I assume all of the statues up here are Shinto figures, though I wouldn't know for sure. I'm sure Bhudda has his men dotted about the place as well. This lady stands facing Hirosaki, never taking her eyes off us:



Yesterday I took a route less trodden on the way down. I cut off the ridge early and steeped my way down to Akakura river. It's a bit rough, and since the last time I took that route there have been a number of trees fallen. Rough, indeed, but very beautiful. At the bottom you come out onto the river, and the feeling of solitude gets more intense. Very few people take this route, though from now on it'll be my regular detour on good days.

From the river which runs out of the ravine, looking back up to Akakura dake:



What a day. Mountain days aren't always as beautiful as yesterday, but with a bit of luck this next month or two will bring some corkers. My favourite six weeks of the year start now.

And today, well, back to work again:

Human fulfilment and the worst ending I've ever witnessed.

I'll start by telling you that this Wednesday saw a great personal achievement. For weeks now, I've been trying to complete what they call タカ, or, the route that seperates the novices from the beginners. I've been getting my strength together lately, and right down there at the Rat wall I proved to myself that things can be done. Taka is a climb that most people take a while to get under their belts, and I'm no different. But doing it successfully has given me a great deal of ambition to get better at wall climbing and I'm confident I'll be conquering other routes, even more strenuous than Taka, in the near future. I go to the gym once a week and I know my upper body is getting stronger since the injury I endured about 18 months ago. Saying that, I know I'm still a small fry in the big pond of spidermen that dominate the wall climbing game.

I also watched a soul wrentching movie tonight called Touching The Void. Soul wrenching because for me, as a novice mountaineer, I would love to know what it feels like to have had a similar life battering experience as the poor bastard, or bastards, in the movie. It's about a couple of guys who attempt a ridiculous climb of some extraneous mountain in Peru. One guy breaks a leg on the way down, and then he goes through a five day period of brute, and I mean BRUTE survival. I was shocked, after seeing all the crap that this guy had gone through, that he managed to live to sit there, in front of a channel four camera man to tell the story. Absolute respect for men with such steely vains.



Then I watched another movie called Before Sunset. This was a dated follow on from the movie Before Sunrise. If you want to see the world's most shockingly lame ending to a movie I reccommend you watch this one. The movie itself, before the ending, and if you watched the first one, was quite touching. The ending reminded me a little of biting off my own ear, only to find that I could still hear the sound of my next door neighbour's house music downstairs.

I wrote out a whole long elaborate post about all sorts of things the other day, and when I came to post it it screwed up on me so I'm not in the mood to write much at this minute.

I went climbing with some local gaijin the other day. We went up the north side and down the south, having dropped one of the cars off earlier that day. These are the guys:



I bought a huge apple and ate it all in one sitting, driving back from the onsen in Hyakuzawa.



Bought a new bike from a place called Offhouse, just behind Denkodo. It's niiiice!! Needs some adjustments mind you, but it goes.




Found a dead snake when I was cycling around the mountain the other day. I've seen plenty of these babies recently, most of them have been alive and slithering:



Look after yourselves folks. Let's be careful out there.