Everything there is to talk about

Previously, on Ohayo an tSeapain, I emigrated to Japan. It was awesome, after some adjusting. Since then: I didn't recontract, I recontracted, March 11th earthquake, (previously planned) evacuation to Osaka, return to Shiz, I unrecontracted and now this...everything there is to talk about.


I thought about posting a blog entry after the disaster. It would have had the title 'Japan earthquake and tsunami March 11th'. It would have gotten a million hits, from people looking for legitimate, useful information, people like my family, wanting information because they knew someone in Japan. So there was no blog post. Instead I consumed media. I subsisted on a diet of NHK and BBC live news feed, YouTube videos captured by Japanese mobile phones, of tsunami waves churning infrastructure around, of the sea enveloping farmland up to 10km inland in Sendai, of the Japanese parliament as the earthquake struck. Actually, to be honest, I didn't look at most of that until later...what I focused on first was Fukushima Daiichi.

Ironically, although I felt the 3/11 tremors in Shizuoka, I didn't realise that such a large earthquake had occurred until almost 20 hours later. My Dad informed by phone from Ireland. Had I seen the news? No. What an incredible highlighting of one's vulnerability in a place where they don't speak the native language. Of course, I saw the initial TV broadcast at school but, not understanding the announcements or the text, I relied on translation. Unsurprisingly, the primary concern of the English teachers at that moment wasn't translating for me. When I finally grabbed one and asked what was going on I heard, 'There's been a small earthquake in Mie-Ken. There is no damage.' Satisfied, I went back to my work that afternoon. Later that day, I didn't bother to check online for information. After all, there'd been none available in English when I'd tried frantically Googling for it...because it was only a small earthquake...

Of course, I'm sure the teacher didn't intentionally mislead me. During the commotion, maybe NHK wasn't yet broadcasting the facts, maybe the teacher had heard incorrectly, or maybe it was me that misheard her. Whatever the reason I was amazed later that evening, to notice everyone in Fujieda train station crowded around the solitary TV above the turnstiles, staring. It was like some pseudo-realistic scene from a disaster movie. But still, it had only been a minor quake, hadn't it? The following morning, after the phone call from my Dad, I finally went online and realised the extent of it. I discovered that the map of Japan, still being unanimously broadcast by all TV channels, with the flashing red/orange/yellow along the coastline was a tsunami warning. You see, it's not just language but pure inexperience that cuts me off from news sources.

Two days on, 'out of dodge' in Osaka, the obsessive live news feed monitoring began. Going on a preplanned holiday, we met people on the train who were fleeing westward. They had IPhone4s with data...and checked the news constantly. Once in the Kansai region, our 'safe days' were numbered, or were they? In the end, we delayed returning for 3 days, booking a new hotel each day that we decided...no, not today, let's not go back today. Scarily, we had to move hotels each night because many were booked up, full of foreigners on the next flight out via Osaka airport. Should I also be leaving Japan?

It was hard to know, far away from and out of touch with Shiz. Certainly, the online debate I saw was polarized. The foreign media were blowing things out of proportion, freaking our friends and family out...or was the Japanese government and TEPCO with-holding information? There had been protests in Tokyo. Ultimately, we did a lot of research, and decided that while the nuclear situation wasn't stable, the scientific sources seemed to rule out the kind of mushroom-cloud shaped meltdown that constituted the West's 'worse than Chernobyl' worst fears. Shiz was safe, according to scientists. Worst case scenario and Shiz was still safe.

We headed back on the 24th. Teachers at school were amazed to see me. They thought I'd left the country. So that was OK. They asked if I'd been advised to leave...yes, but here I was. (Fukushima) nuclear fears (largely) allayed, my media tastes changed. I began researching the Tokai earthquake again. Again because, like I assume most Shiz JETs did, I looked it up a lot after our earthquake initiation at Kakegawa Orientation. First year JETs got to ride an 'earthquake van' back in August. Though no more dramatic than the average roller coaster, the lack of being strapped in, coupled with the fact that it was simulating an experience we were predicted to have suddenly, unexpectedly, made it infinitely more terrifying. It had inspired me to get an earthquake kit.

In fact, before leaving Osaka, one of the conditions of our leaving Osaka, was stocking up on all those things I'd meant to get for the kit but never gotten around to buying. The purchases seemed very urgent all of a sudden. Back in Fujieda, I placed the upgraded kit on my bike to bring it everywhere with me. Placed a torch and helmet beside my bed. Bought a Swiss army knife and kindling..so that I could make a fire to boil water on the top of a hill that I'd evacuate to as a tsunami precaution if the Tokai happened at night...you see I was a little freaked out. You might say that I was paranoid if what had happened hadn't happened, but a new frame of reference had been established. Each day as I cycled to school, the small saucepan hanging from my backpack clinking against my metal bike basket I thought, can I continue to live like this?


The Tokai research continued and I discovered that I hadn't had enough information, and that even the information the Prefecture has, its 'predictions' are likely to be revised, are currently be revised. The extent of the Tohoku tsunami was totally unprecedented. Seismologists said that further research needed to be done, before they could say how much stress on other fault lines (ie the Philippine/Eurasian plate fault line, location of Tokai quakes) had increased..but it had certainly not decreased. Troublesome. Worst of all was/is the location of the Hamaoka Nuclear Power plant in the south of Shizuoka. I'll post on this specifically soon, but suffice to say it's 50m from the coast (tsunami risk hello?) and the epicentre of the Tokai may well be directly underneath it. Meanwhile the BOE was bombarding me with what was supposed to be comforting information. While I doubt they said anything untrue, there was a sense of alterity of motive in the messages that was obvious a mile away. Please don't run away, they were saying. In truth, it was hard to know what or who to believe.

The biggest meanwhile has to go to the people in the Tohoku region. 3 weeks after the disaster, I was only beginning to imagine their suffering, though it had been going on less than 300 miles away. Of course, I'd donated money. I'd watched the body count rising, but these were faceless numbers initially. Maybe the most striking thing I read about the entire disaster was on NHK: 'The number of victims is expected to rise because officials in some coastal areas devastated by the tsunami still cannot calculate the exact number of missing people." Whole towns, extended families, groups of friends, places where people were born and lived their whole lives...I suppose you would call them 'communities'...whole communities had been washed away. Was that even sad? Some of the dead aren't being mourned because everyone who knew them is also dead. They haven't been reported as missing because no one misses them. Now that's hard to comprehend.

I've heard about tragedies before. The Holocaust. The Rwandan genocide. The Omagh bombing. I'd felt sad about all of them, but never before had I had to face the possibility of the same thing happening to me, of exactly the same thing being predicted to happen to me. Here in Shizuoka, the predicted Tokai earthquake is 8+ magnitude. It will also be a mega-thrust quake, caused by another plate (the Philippine plate) subducting under the Eurasian plate on which Japan sits...just like the Tohoku quake. Imagining the devastation such a quake would cause is one thing, but watching and reading news reports of it is another entirely. We can watch video footage of the tsunami hitting and read the names of the people who have died.

With all of this in mind, I was going about my daily life in a bubble of heightened and simultaneously dulled reality. At school, I'd periodically check NHK and BBC websites for further news. At the staff farewell party, which was held in a coastal hotel in Yaizu, I found myself nervously gazing out at the sea. Whenever I went out without my emergency bag, I'd be constantly assessing escape plans. What will I do if the Tokai happens while I'm here? How will I cover my head? How will I get to higher ground? Each time I saw a place in Fujieda for the first time since the quake I couldn't help but imagine it flooding, a huge wall of water engulfing the supermarket, my school, the station. All the while, a truly horrifying realisation was slowly dawning on me. I wasn't going to be able to stay in Japan.

Initially I thought, I'm just in shock. The shock will wear off and I'll be able to forget about the Tokai earthquake again and live normally. I have and I am now, for the most part. The problem for me was how to differentiate paranoia from reasonable survival concerns. I spent hours pouring over Tokai data and evacuation plans and I still believe that while obviously, people living in Shizuoka can't live in a constant state of terror, if they did so their terror wouldn't be irrational. There's nothing irrational about wanting to avoid involvement in a large scale natural disaster. It's merely basic survival instinct.

But what about the Shizuokans? This is a thorny ethical issue. Whatever way you look at it, when I told my coworkers that I'd decided not to recontract because of the Tokai earthquake, the subtext was, I'm going to leave because I don't think it's safe..eh, but good luck to you, I'm sure you'll be grand. Beyond that, putting yourself first is never really appreciated in Japan. I suppose the bottom line is that despite this, I find it acceptable. I find it necessary where personal safety is concerned. We can extrapolate then that having lived here for 8 months, I am still not turning Japanese.

But other foreigners are staying? Yes. Most of my JET friends are staying. Some of them..most of them, are in love with Japan. They speak Japanese, they love Japanese culture. They had a burning desire to come and live here and they adore it. I guess you could say they're part of communities here. It's different for me though. Like the awkward end of a relationship, I've had to let Japan know that while I love it, I'm not in love with it. I came here on a whim. I haven't really learnt any Japanese. I'm not integrated into my community. I'm not very friendly with my coworkers. That's not to say that I haven't had the experience of a lifetime or that I don't have amazing friends here, but if I were to make a list of 'things I couldn't live without' or 'things for which I would live in the predicted focal region of an 8+ magnitude earthquake', Japan wouldn't make it.

I'm so happy here, but I believe in my ability to be happy elsewhere too. So I'm leaving, not now, not all of a sudden, but in 3 months time when my contract ends. It's a decision that has alienated me from my coworkers and surprised my friends. At last, I think I've told everyone. It was a lot to think about, and it's a lot to talk about.

Marathon Day

At my old secondary school, if you'd asked all the students to run a 7-10 km marathon you would have gotten a lot of absenteeism, some sit-in protesters, several middle fingers and maybe 5 volunteers. In Japan, the same request prompted every student in 1st and 2nd year to run 7-10 km.

The marathon meant that I got to leave my desk for the morning, not that I could really afford to with marking stacking up but still. First off, the teachers watched the students as they lined up in their utterly straight lines on the dirt pitch, in order of HR number of course. Kocho Sensei did what Kocho Sensei does and made what I can only assume was a speech that was both charming and motivational. As usual, he held up several props, this time fans with Kanji written on both sides of them. During this, I milled around on the raised area behind him along with the other teachers, most of whom were wearing tracksuits rather than work clothes. Why did nobody tell me that we were supposed to wear tracksuits?

After the speeches, the students began their warm-up, lead by a particularly stern PE teacher barking instructions into a megaphone. A few teachers even joined in, God bless them. Only one teacher volunteered to run with the students, which goes to show that Japanese people don't enjoy marathons any more than Irish people, and that the school admin are totally hypocritical. Still, I was very glad teachers weren't compelled to run. Could you imagine? I could..

Last year my predecessor ran, fair play to her. Unfortunately, this led to a bunch of awkward conversations, when various people guessed that I might be running. No, I'm 100% unfit. Which sport do I like? Can I say none...ok surfing then. Do high school students in Ireland run marathons? See above.

I couldn't help fondly reminiscing about the last time I tried to run any significant distance. I was 12 years old and it was Sports Day in my primary school. 6th class had to run maybe 200m. My best friend and I refused on principle to participate, but we were forced to. We expressed our discontent by ambling slowly around the course behind our classmates who were actually attempting to run. Fools, we thought, in our rebellious, almost-adolescent state. The spectators had to wait for us to finish before the next race could take place, and we took pleasure in their impatience as we strolled along the home stretch, long after everyone else had finished.

Actually, with 10m to go I sprinted to the line so I didn't come in last. I was a bad friend.

The 1- and 2- nensei boys took off first. They had to run 10 km. I watched from the starting point outside the school as they pushed and shoved each other at the front. Then Kocho-Sensei, standing on an upturned crate, shot the starter gun. No kidding, he actually shot a gun into the air like at the Olympics or something..those nearby covered their ears. The boys accelerated wildly.

5 minutes later, the girls lined up, poised for their 7 km run. They were a lot calmer and took off at a leisurely pace when the gun was fired. After that, it was a case of waiting around. Of course, I could have gone inside and gotten some work done for the 40 mins plus they'd be running for, buy my supervisor had randomly suggested that I help the school nurse. I can never tell whether his suggestions are spur of the moment whims or well thought out, okayed with the Vice Principle kind of things, so I decided to go along with this one.

The nurse is a lovely woman who speaks very little English and greatly over-estimates my Japanese competency. She tried to speak to me a number of times, each in vain. I ended up chatting to a group of 3-nensei students. 3rd years don't have to run the marathon because they're focusing on exams. Despite this, these particular students hung around all morning helping out. It was a good chance to speak to them because I only ever taught 6 3-nenseis and our classes are finished for the year. Like most students at my school, they were totally cringing at having to speak English but surprisingly good at it.

Together we personed (see previous posts for my de-patriachising of English), the injury station. It was a good thing that our biggest challenges were a girl who was tired and a guy whose pre-injured knee was sore (should he even have been running the marathon? I think not...) because I certainly had no idea what I was doing. When the girl arrived, drenched in sweat and collapsed onto the soft floor tiles we'd laid on the concrete, I was pretty concerned about her. She was panting and the 3-nensei students covered her with a blanket. I suppose the problem was to complicated to explain in their second language because they told me she was tired. Then again, she sprang up and left after a few minutes.

When a problem I could have helped with finally came our way I was useless. A student with a bloody ankle in need of cleaning, showed up nonchalantly. I knew where the disinfectant and wipes were, but all I could do was wince grossed-outedly at his wound and murmur 'itai'. The san-nenseis saw to him as I sucked in air through my teeth...eww...

On reaching the finishing line, each student was given a numbered card showing their placing. Afterwards, there was a closing ceremony in the gym at which the first 30 boys and 20 girls received medals and certs. I can only assume that the ratio of boys to girls in the school is 3:2. Don't get me started on the implication that the school comparatively under values girls sporting achievements if this isn't the case...I'm not even going to check.

As usual, we bowed and clapped and were lectured at by various people. I think it went on for about half an hour, ridiculously. I saw that the students had all changed from their PE clothes back into their uniforms for the sake of appearances. It wasn't for classes anyway, because the rest of the day's classes were cancelled. Hurray for the students getting the break they deserved for once!

The whole day served to remind me of Japan's cultural unfamiliarity. Following orders and respect for physical fitness are givens. I have to admit though, that it makes for a healthy nation. In my school, I'd estimate that less than 1% of students are overweight. Compare that to Ireland where around 20% or children are overweight or obese as of 2010. There's a logic to the disparity.

It also makes for some entertaining reactions...

'What did you do in PE in high school?'

'Well...I didn't actually even do PE in high school...'

'Ehhhhhhhhh!'

Typically..

A JTE finally came back to me to comment on the maths I've been using to correct students essays. She informed me she got it, and that the students managed to work out what it meant. The math/science stream ones had the upper hand in this, while the humanities ones were left confused. Fortunately, the students helped each other to understand. Unfortunately for humankind, and Japan in particular, the teacher also pointed out that the girls in the class had particular difficulty in understanding, but that they boys helped them.

Because obviously, girls are so woeful at maths.

Gender Roles in Japan

Before coming to Japan, I was warned of a possibly stringent view of gender roles here. While preparing for the JET interview I came across strange questions online, apparently often asked of American applicants. For example, if you were in the staffroom and all the female teachers began preparing tea for all the male teachers, and they asked you to join them, how would you react? This question proportedly weeds out the feminist applicants, those who will be rejected because it's suspected they'll shove their culturally insensitive ideas of gender equality down the poor Japanese people's throats. According to the online advice about JET interviews, it's best to suppress your inner feminist for their duration, if you really want to go to Japan.

You can probably extrapolate from my position on JET, that I was never asked this question.

In my staffroom, thankfully everyone makes tea for themselves. The cultural conflict with regard to gender roles has only arisen on several occasions. Questions about my parents were along the lines of: What does your father do? Does your mother work outside the home? While discussing teachers' extra curricular responsibilities at school, I learnt that males generally shoulder more of the burden of club activities because females have more household chores to attend to. One teacher asked me what the balance of genders in my university math course was, and seemed suprised to learn that it was roughly 50/50.

Then there's grammar. The already tough essay marking scheme is made more complicated when I mark students' use of 'he' as the ungendered third person singular pronoun as wrong. I'm aware that they were probably taught this by the JTEs. I'm even aware that there is no genuine ungendered third person singular pronoun to use instead, so I cross out 'he' and write 'they'. I'm patiently awaiting the moment when a JTE notices this and questions me about it. But even this is only the tip of the iceberg of my aggressive cultural insensitivity!

I've immensely enjoy raising gender issues during lessons. I'm convinced that it's crucial to broadening the students' minds. To my utter dismay, I find that unless I assign their seats, the classroom is divided down the middle, boys on one side, girls on the other. I appreciate that secondary school is a difficult time for kids, and they're pretty awkward. This could reasonably result in their staying within their group of friends, not in boys and girls consistently avoiding one another. Maybe I'm biased, because in my old co-ed school we formed mostly mixed-gender groups of friends naturally.

Of course, the fact that I'm teaching debating facilitates it all. I assigned some students speeches on feminism and was pretty impressed with the results. Women should be paid the same as men. Parents shouldn't dissuade boys from crying because it's girly. On the other hand, (and I had to assist the student to think of single bad point) feminism runs the risk of ignoring the real differences between the sexes.

The agree or disagree game was even more productive. Boys and girls should wear the same school uniform. Do you agree or disagree? I can't help but paint the uniforms as a villian in the tale of the separation of male and female at my school. It's a marker of difference. The girls wear a navy skirt, blazer and bow tie, while the boys wear a black military style jacket and trousers. (The military jackets still kind of freak me out. It's like they're little educational soldiers.) Ok so many schools around the world have different uniforms for boys and girls, but for me the final nail in the coffin of the school's uniform policy is that they're even different colours. I mean it's just adding needless further difference. Why not have everyone wear the trouser suit and make them different colours? At least that way we could avoid the classic skirt/trousers, passive/active role implications.

What did the students have to say? They all disagreed. Boys and girls shouldn't have the same school uniform. The whys were difficult for them to articulate. It's always doubly difficult for the students when we engage in interesting analysis of an issue. First, they need to account for their opinions, justify themselves to themselves in Japanese. Second, they need to express their chain of reasoning in English. The popular why was, 'because boys and girls are differnt, so different clothes suit them'.

At this point I asked for a show of hands by the girls who usually wore skirts outside school. A single student raised her hand. So why do you wear trousers when they don't suit you? Our class schedule didn't permit further probing just then, but I was satisfied that they'd actually thought about the issue for the first time.

I'm pretty excited about our next class, in which we're holding half a BP debate on the motion, 'TTHB boys and girls should wear the same school uniform'!

The Genuine Global Language

When you're doing TEFL, you can't help but hear all about how English is the 'global language'. Apparently, the fact that Spanish and Chinese are more common is irrelevant. I love English just as much as the next person, but in my view it doesn't deserve its international status. In the worst case scenario, I'm also a raging colonialist.

Of course, the genuine global language is maths, Esperanto aside. It's automatically included in every basic education programme worldwide. I've even been used it to communicate with students on a few occasions. Today, I was grading a stack of 3rd year work. They had to translate a passage from Japanese and part of the sample answer was, 'When we name things we bring them into existence'. I thought it was a pretty difficult, not to mention philosophical passage for a translation exercise but how and ever..the vast majority of students wrote something like, 'When we name things we bring them out of nothing and give them life'.

I assume this is a direct translation from Japanese, since so many students said it exactly. I began crossing this out and writing the sample answers instead, but the issue of explaining the correction loomed. Obviously, there aren't two different verbs corresponding to 'live' and 'exist' in Japanese, so how do we explain the difference without using complicated English? I ended up drawing this picture on their worksheets:


I have to admit that I hesitated before including Harry Potter, but I was unsure whether they'd have encountered the fact that the roots of negative integers are imaginary on their high school maths course. I don't think I encountered it until college. Fortunately, I was confident that they would have seen Venn diagrams. Also, thank God for that other international reference point, the boy who lived.

This was actually the second solution I came up with. I was unsatisfied with the first, which involved drawing 'there exists' and 'there does not exist' signs. I thoroughly doubt the students have encountered these yet.
Unfortunately, I do still draw them when a student tries to pluralise a word which has the same singular and plural form, by adding an s. Common blunders are 'persons', 'informations' and 'knowledges'. It's so much faster to write 'there does not exist' 'informations' than explain my marking otherwise!
I expected the JTEs to ask questions about the diagrams and random figures I usually draw all over the students work, but none have. I can only conclude that either they a) give it straight back to students without glancing at it, b) glance at it, follow it and think it's a grand way to give feedback, or c) they glance at it, wonder what it's about and are too embarrassed/not bothered enough to ask me. I'm voting for a) or c).

After my bout of necessary Venn diagram drawing today, I began Venn diagram doodling. I call this 'levels of reality', because I've just recalled that you're supposed to label Venn diagrams.



Interestingly, the outside is intimately related to the inside because it's humans, with imagination who make up imaginary things. Like J.K. Rowling inventing Harry Potter, or whichever mathmagician started playing with imaginary roots. This seems to imply that the 2 dimensional diagram is not properly conveying the information. Maybe if we folded it into a doughnut...hmm...

I miss you maths!

Special Needs School

With translation's slow catching up between one language and the next, it's easy to explain how political correctness gets left behind. I have utterly no knowledge of Special Needs kids, their varying types of abilities and disabilities, and obviously still...no Japanese to make the conversations I had to have more direct. The result was a meeting in which I was told about my visit to the 'handicapped school', where some kids had 'mental retardation' or 'mental and physical disabilities' (so vague!). Can they move around the room? Yes, some need help but yes.
I later realised that the Japanese name for my school, Tokubetsu gakko, actually means Special School, which demonstrates that though politically correct advances are made in Japan as often as anywhere, translation is slow!

From past experience, and (luckily) from the JET midyear seminar, I had a little more info. As a child I visited St Michael's House in Dublin. My primary school class used to visit and play games with the children there. One little girl, who I had become friendly with used to pinch my forearms. It was very difficult to get her to let go.
At the JET midyear seminar, which happened before I had a single visit to my Special Needs School, there was a workshop on Special Needs Education in Japan. Many JETs described their schools and students. From this I learnt that some kids like to touch you, hang off you, drool on you etc. It was important to design activities that everyone could do.

Armed with my minutiae of information, I made 4 visits to my school in November and December. The teachers I met were the loveliest people ever. I quickly learnt that most were regular teachers, transferred to the school as the Board of Education saw fit. They had no special extra training for the entirely different job they were then expected to do! Each of them had or had to develop amazing patience and boundless energy and enthusiasm to keep up with the kids. I was mostly supervised by ones who had recently been high school English teachers.

Each day, I was met by a teacher by the stone statue of Doraemon outside the school. I was treated like royalty, and served matcha in a meeting room while we went over the day's plan. Walking through the corridors, every kid we passed starred at me and wanted to shake my hand. In the classes, I was only required to make a short self introduction, using pictures. The JTEs would translate. The kids asked far more questions than my regular high schoolers had, and interesting ones too! Do you like Halo 2? What kind of animals do you have in Ireland? Do you prefer Ireland or Japan? (always tricky!)

Apart from my introduction, the lessons were planned by the JTEs and would usually involve singing a song or playing a game together and the students presenting something they had prepared for me. Oddly enough, unlike at regular school I didn't hesitate to sing and dance around with the students, wildly flailing my arms and generally looking like a complete fool..no one cared. All the JTEs did it. All the students did it. We had fun.

The kids were some of the worthiest human beings I've met in my entire life. They made valiant efforts to communicate with me, though we spoke barely a word of one anther's languages. At break time they took my by the hand and brought me outside. We played football and looked at the pictures hung up all around their classrooms and corridors. They were so excited to meet me. Everyone wanted to shake my hand, sit beside me, link me, stand beside me in the circle, talk to me and be my volunteer. It was a bit of a culture shock after the reservation and awkwardness I'm used to from students, not to mention the lack of physical touching in Japan!

I realised that I was kind of hopeless as a teacher there, as I had been at regular school initially.
During my first self intro, I tried to explain the significance of the 3 leafed shamrock with regard to St Patrick's Catholic teaching. I'm sure this would still be fairly difficult with an adult audience, whose language you were speaking!
During my second visit, I decided to try Irish dancing with the students. We formed a circle and I played Riverdance. When everyone was excitedly jumping up and down (not exactly the neat 1-2-3 I'd hoped for but whatever), I tried to coax them into 2 straight lines to dance the Haymakers Jig. Not a hope. Of course, we had a lot of fun free styling it around the room, and they did get to listen to Irish music!

At the end of the day, I think I can see why JETs have been reluctant to broadcast their experience of working in Special Needs Schools. I get the impression that comparatively little is said about it by people who go there. One reason is not knowing enough. For example, what sort of disabilities do the kids at the school I visited have? I don't really know the answer. Some had Down Syndrome, some were in wheel chairs, but beyond that I'm not equipped to answer. The JTEs' English wasn't sophisticated enough to explain.

Another reason is the sensitivity of the subject, the politically incorrect terms and the pitying or special tone that other teachers tend to use when they refer to your Special Needs School. Are the schools something shameful to be avoided in conversation? A difficult subject, with a high likelihood of offending someone?

Finally, my own lack of clarity about where the Special Needs line is drawn makes the system difficult to access and thereby comment on. Where do dyslexic students go? Students with ADD? There are no support systems to help kids with these problems in my regular school, for instance. So I worry whether they get a fair chance, or whether in fact children with intellectual disabilities get the best chance by being lumped together and branded 'Special Needs'.

Despite my ignorance and the questions I can't answer, I think it's worthwhile to convey my experience of the Special Needs School I visited. It's possible that by sharing what we do know, we can learn more.

Technical Difficulties..what's new?

The blogger dashboard informs me that I haven't posted in a whole 2 months, well screw you blogger dashboard. You live happily on an Internet server somewhere enjoying a constant and blissful connection to the web. Some of us are not so lucky..

Actually the first month of radio silence can't be explained by technical difficulties, unless I say that I was technically to busy to blog. Or is that stretching it? December filled up with exciting events (more in future posts) and counting down the 21 days til Ireland.

Post December 21st, while I was in Ireland, it was technically difficult to blog because I was suddenly surrounded by hoards of stimulating stuff vying for my attention. For example, living with 4 other people instead of alone, turkey, roast potatoes, Cadburys...and so on (as my students say). By the time January 9th, the fateful day of my re-emigration, rolled around, I realised that I hadn't checked my facebook page in over 2 weeks.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the packing frenzy...I neglected to pack my laptop power cable. I packed the laptop alright, battery fully charged and everything...but by the time I reached Japan I'd already used up most of it. In fact, there was just enough time to copy my lesson plans for this term onto a USB before it shut down, lucky, lucky!

But of course, obtaining the power cable was a simple task, wasn't it? Indeed I called my family as soon as I reached home (note: controversial use of 'home' referring to my Japanese apartment), and encouraged them to post the cable asap. Should they use tracker post? No...no need. Sure why would I need to know where the parcel was exactly? As long it came to me in the end it was grand, so we went with regular post. MISTAKE.

As I later learnt, the beauty of tracker post is that it gives the post office some accountability should your parcel mysteriously disappear. Given this, I have some advice for whoever's running the post office these days...You could actually increase your profits a whole lot by not bothering to deliver anything sent by regular post. Sell it on EBay instead why doncha?...but I digress...The post office told my family that the parcel would take 3 to 7 days to deliver. 10 days, and no parcel later I was freaking out. Would yelling at the post office staff help? Apparently not.

A helpful JTE then got me a map showing the way to an electronics shop nearby, so I went there, powerless laptop in tow. After a lot of deliberation, several employees at the shop shook their heads while speaking to me in Japanese. I took this to mean that they didn't have a compatible cable. I tried to make enquires using my basic Japanese (in-ta-n-to oh-da?), to no avail. Dejected, I crawled back to my unwired hovel.

Last Friday (21st), I grew tired of my desperate situation. I went crying to my supervisor (that man is a saint), and he consulted the IT teachers who ascertained that it was indeed impossible to purchase a suitable cable in Shizuoka. They suggested I order online. Just how I was supposed to do this through Japanese remained unclear. Later that day, my supervisor attempted to help me order online, but his tech unsavyness thwarted our attempts. (I was loathe to wrench his laptop from him and take over the task)...
Eventually I ordered a cable from America over EBay. Delivery time: 2 weeks.

The following morning the Irish cable was delivered to my apartment. I had mixed emotions, and somehow managed not to hit the postman or embrace the package in his presence. Ten seconds later I was online.

You might think that the breadth of my technical difficulties don't merit this post's title...but wait...

The next day at school, I triumphantly presented my cable to my supervisor, ignoring his condolences over the cash I'd wasted on the American cable. Unsurprisingly, the school Internet started being a pain immediately. They're doing some sort of overhaul of the system at the moment, in addition to chaining laptops to each teacher's desk. I was lucky to be spared this fate. The high angle of my netbook's keyboard, when I'd placed it atop the new Fujitsu machine, would surely have caused me a repetitive strain injury of the wrists. In any case, the school server wasn't being a friend.

The next day when I managed to beggar technical assistance, it turned out that my proxy server settings had to be changed because "technical jargon/Japanese". Grand stuff, everything worked fine after that...until I got home. Whatever the techy had done to my Internet settings, my laptop was suddenly refusing to recognise my personal LAN! It took almost 5 mins to work out how to fix it, bother.

I had lost online time to make up for after all.