A few obligations left

 I am now finished with obligations at Shikoku until I am there.  Next week's national holiday means no classes.  As I write, it is Wednesday afternoon here.  Tomorrow morning I have to be awake around 3 am so a student can take their Physics final early.  This student's second dose of covid vaccine falls during the regularly scheduled final.  Originally they were going to take it at 6:30 this morning (here), but owing to Ramadan fasting and having two other exams that day, the student was not feeling up to it.  As I told the student, getting people fully vaccinated is far more important than me being adjusted to Japan time.  Then, at 5:30 am, the rest of the class will take the final.  By 8 am tomorrow morning, I will be left with grading.  (For my department colleagues, I have not forgotten the meeting on Friday.)

My second class was today.  It went well, even for Zoom class.  I had been warned the students would likely struggle with listening.  However, I asked them if they wanted me to speak slowly or at a more regular pace.  They wanted the regular pace, so that's what I'll use.  I hope they will let me know if I'm going too fast or if I say a word or phrase they don't understand.  Tami let me know her class enjoyed learning about food in the States.  I can talk about food.  But we're going to talk about TV shows instead.

Food and television is a nice segue into the pictures I want to share.  The first is for coffee in the hotel room.  I told Jen about it, and she said "Yeah.  Facebook has been advertising that to me for a while now."  I hadn't seen it and thought it was cool.  In any case, the room has an electric kettle instead of a coffee maker.  What is provided for coffee is this.

(See the cup noodles in the background?  I'm working on a post just about those.)

Tear the top off at the "magic cut."  That's what they call the notch in packets that helps you open them.  The white cutout cardboard is on both sides and you pull them out to sit over the edges of the cup. 

Pour boiling water into the packet and it becomes a single cup coffee filter.  The cups are tiny by my standards, so I save the filter in a second cup and get three servings out of each packet.  The third is getting pretty weak, but I let it steep for longer.  It's drinkable.  I thought they were neat.  Jen was all Mike Myers playing Linda Richman opening Coffee Talk.  "No big whoop."

As for television, NHK (the Japan Broadcasting Company) has an educational channel.  Today I saw a show where they were talking about the properties of triangles.  You may remember from your math class that right triangles have a 90 degree angle and two acute angles.  They also make it easy to calculate sine, cosine, and tangent because these can be defined as ratios of pairs of the sides.  In the US it's common to use the mnemonic SOH, CAH, TOA to help remember the relationships.

SOH - Sine of an angle is the Opposite side divided by the Hypotenuse.

CAH - Cosine of an angle is the Adjacent side divided by the Hypotenuse.

TOA - Tangent is Opposite divided by Adjacent.

This is what they showed to help students remember these expressions.

I recreated it in a notebook.  The angle to find the trig functions of is in the lower left.  The right angle is marked with the little square.  The script S at the top joins the hypotenuse and the opposite side.  C joins hypotenuse and adjacent.  t joins adjacent and opposite.  Any of you math teachers who have "visual" learners (even though the theory of singular learning types is probably not correct), try this.

Upcoming Posts

Most of the novelty of things has worn off, and I am not going to be interacting or preparing for students for a while.  The upcoming posts are going to talk about the television shows I've seen, the different foods I will be eating, progress with the DAQ card, and any changes in my room that lead to changes in view.  In short, some of these in the next week are probably going to be pretty boring.  I will keep posting them because keeping a schedule when you are semi-isolated is a good way to maintain sanity.  I'm aware of most of the people who have been reading and can send emails/messages/whatnot to let you know when things will pick back up.  If you're want to make sure I contact you, either tell me in an email or message, or you can leave a comment.