I'll do double today

 Yesterday was a busy afternoon for me.  I met with two students, met with Taniguchi-sensei about the talk tomorrow, stayed late to play a game Yuko purchased when she was in the US 10 years ago, and then prepared the food for today's class.

I still haven't figured out the toaster oven, so the apple pie/apple turnovers are not really browned well.  The filling is cooked through and the flavor is fine.  I'm not pleased with the color, though.  The chili turned out well (I think), and the tomato, cucumber, onion salad looks and smells right.  I had to use a vegetable peeler on the cheese because the apartment does not have a shredder.  I'll go back home during the period before my class to cook the hotdogs, reheat the chili, and bring over the warm food.  Here's to hoping it goes well.

Happy 4th of July!

 This week I'll be giving my 4th year students a chance to try chili dogs, apple turnovers (instead of pie), and cucumber, tomato, and onion salad.  The last is something my mother makes during the summer, and as I know I'll never approach her potato salad, it's the best I can do.  In preparation for it I went shopping yesterday and today.

I found kidney beans at the regular grocery store by accident.  I had been looking for them for almost a month now.  I was at the salad dressings looking for Italian when another person came up and was looking for something.  Body language tells us quite a bit.  I could see she wanted a bottle of something my cart was blocking.  Since I was crouched down looking at the bottom row with little success, I stood up and took a step back.  Sure enough, she grabbed a bottle of something immediately and continued on her way.  As I was getting set to start looking down low I noticed canned corn.  I turn my head a little, and there are red beans with キデニー printed on it.  "Kidney."

I found the Italian dressing.  And cheese, buns (called "hot roll"), and all of the other pieces I needed to make the food except for pickle jalapenos.  That's okay.  I have some fresh peppers that I can make work.  This afternoon I went down to Tokushima station and the mall near there.  Jupiter is a chain here that has imported food.  I went looking for whatever I might find and I found sauerkraut.  Now I just need some sort of serving plates and flatware.  I have until Tuesday, so there's lots of time.

As it is the Fourth, I was planning to go to the beach with some students to set off fireworks.  On Friday it looked like it was going to rain, so they asked if we could change plans and go for dinner instead.  I said I'm good with either way.  One will pick me up at 5:30 and we'll head to wherever we are eating.  A common theme for me is people pick me up, and I have to trust that I'll end up back home by bedtime.

I was talking with Malachi this morning and pointed out that I'll be home in 28 days.  Sometimes it seems like I just left Michigan and other times it seems like I've lived here my whole life.  Most of the time the feelings are pretty "middle of the road."  As I was riding home after my Jupiter shopping trip I was thinking about how to talk with other faculty about doing this exchange.  It's very much worth all the... everything we had to go through for me to get here.  There's no denying it would be very nice to have my family here, but the experience of being alone so many hours on the weekends and evenings has given me lots of time to reflect.  I appreciate all three of the more.  And for that, I am grateful.

A Summary of "Keisei Awa no Naruto"

 This is from the English translation provided to me by the puppet theater.

    In this play, Jurobe and his wife Oyumi are living in Osaka.  Their only daughter was left behind in their hometown Awa province, present day Tokushima prefecture, and she is being taken car of by her grandmother.  Jurobe was ordered to look for a treasured sword of his master in the Awa Clan.

>>>This is where the segment of the play I saw begins.<<<

    While Oyumi is doing some sewing, a ten-year-old pilgrim girl comes to the house of Jurobe saying, "I am a pilgrim.  I am here to beg your favor."  Since the girl has speaks with the Awa dialect, Oyumi asks many questions and realizes that she is her daughter, Otsuru, who was left in the care of Jurobe's mother.  Oyumi learns from Otsuru that she has been traveling alone on a pilgrimage in the hope of meeting her missing parents.  Oyumi embraces Otsuru and almost reveals her identity, but then refrains for fear of involving Otsuru in a dangerous situation.  

    While Jurobe and Oyumi began looking for the sword, they disguised themselves at thieves.  Over time, they became real thieves so they were wanted by the police.  Oyumi, after an agonizing dilemma, decides not to tell Otsuru she is her mother and firmly tells her daughter to leave the place with a tearful farewell.

>>>This is where the segment I saw ends.<<<

    Jurobe returns home and says that he met a pilgrim girl.  He found that she had a lot of money so asked her to give him the money so he can make repayment (I'm not entirely sure what this means, but that is what is written).  The girl becomes scared and refuses his request and cries for help.  Jurobe then covers her mouth to make her quiet, unintentionally suffocating her without realizing it is his daughter.

The puppet manipulation, the music, and the tone of singing conveyed all of Oyumi's emotions without need to understand the words.  It was very clear where Oyumi was speaking with Otsuru and where she was speaking to herself in an aside.  Each puppet is controlled by three puppeteers.  The chief controls the head and right arm.  The second controls the left arm.  The third controls the legs.  The third has to perform in a half-crouch.  In the past it was about 10 years of training to be a second or third puppeteer and 20 years to become a chief.

Here is Otsuru coming to the house.

And here is Oyumi sewing.

This is after the play.

The music is primarily played on this three string instrument called a shamisen.  It is played with the paddle (at the very bottom) called a bachi.

Since the chief puppeteer needs to be able to work and see higher, he or she uses wooden clogs.  To minimize the sound from walking straw cushions are wrapped, kind of like rope, on the bottom.  If the chief is particularly short and the second is taller, these clogs may be as high as 15-20 cm (8") or more.

The insides of the puppet's head is very complicated.  By manipulating strings, the eyes closed and mouth can opened.  Since the default positions are open eyes/closed mouth, there are springs inside.  The easy ones to see in this picture are the black curved bits.  Traditionally they were made from baleen.

Before we watched the performance and toured the small museum there was an informational video about the history of puppet theater in Japan and Tokushima prefecture, specifically.  One woman had been interviewed for it.  She started a successful and long running group in Tokushima after she moved here when she was married.  Her father-in-law suggested she do it, so she started.  It was very interesting learning what she said about it.  English translations are always difficult to fully trust because there is so much nuance and implied meaning in many statements.  However, she said one thing she has learned is in order to perform well you must experience life.  Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, hope... you have to know all of it from your own life before you can express it in the puppets.  At the same time, the puppets help you know your emotions.  A creative outlet along with embracing life is important for us all.

Very short post

 I had a busy day.  Tech support/planning, meeting about thesis writing, puppet theater with Masami, and now dinner with Hachiro.  I will write about the theater later tonight, or more likely, tomorrow.  Here is a picture, though.

We saw one act of the play "Keisei Awa no Naruto."  According to the information I was provided, the full play is so long it was only performed once in the 18th century.  It is a tragic story, and I will tell you about it tomorrow.

Preparing a Thesis

 For Taniguchi-sensei's class next week - the one where we are combining our students - I will talk about how to prepare a graduation thesis.  This will include how to pick a topic, dig into some research, and craft a thesis statement.

One refrain I've heard here is some of the senior theses read like informational reports.  It is difficult to blame the students because their entire academic career has been focused on standardized tests.  They do some writing.  But the only time they really have to do anything research related is this one document at the end of their university degree program.  If you have no experience writing a thesis, it is almost impossible to do.  So, I will do what I can to describe the process.

As an armchair reader (and blog writer) it is easy to say "if students are expected to write a thesis, then just teach a class where they learn."  One statement made by one of the older people I've met here explains why this won't happen.  Japanese people may be willing to say something should change in this way or that way.  Their bosses/supervisors could be comfortable agreeing the change needs to be made.  And that's where it stops.  It takes a very long time to change anything here.

On top of that, once you sign up for or agree to do something, it is almost impossible to stop doing it.  It is easy to imagine being a professor where making changes to schedules and courses is difficult, if not impossible, with the added stress of knowing there is no "1-year commitment" to a project, and you don't really have time to devote to developing a new course.  If I were in that situation, I would be reluctant to work on making curriculum changes.  No matter how valid and important I might feel they are.  It just takes so much energy.

I have the advantage that everyone expects my courses to change.  The syllabus I submitted at the beginning is long gone.  Everything is different.  So I can pretty easily make one of my classes an outline of this process.

Early today I was talking with a student about her teaching practicum.  She explained about being nervous and trying to make changes.  She said one thing she figured out is that if she wants to teach English, she needs to figure out how people learn English.  This student had to miss some of my classes because she was out of town.  As a make up assignment, I asked her to write a short paper about how she learns English.  What does she do to build her skills?  What did she come up with on her own and what was she told to do?  How can she know if it is working?

At first she thought I meant for her to write about how she learned English.  The classes she took, the books she used, that sort of thing.  When she figured out what I was saying her response was "That is much more difficult!"  I agreed, but "if you think you need to figure out how people learn English, you would do well to start with yourself."  We will meet every Thursday morning to talk about her progress and what her thoughts are.  We'll see how far she can go.

Kanji Practice

 I started this post on Monday, but waited to Wednesday to actually publish it.  I've been working on kanji writing and recognition.  I'm basically giving up on speaking the Japanese, but if I can read 200-300 of them, that will get me through the Japanese Language Proficiency Test levels 5 and 4 (the easiest two levels).  I'd really like to proceed through level 3 because that is where the more abstract ideas are presented.  It's also where I'm told patterns start to break down.

Here's what I mean.  Here are the kanji for "mouth" and "thousand."

口          千

This is the kanji for "speak"

話

 It's actually two pieces (I see three).  The left side is "say" and the right side looks like "1,000 mouth" to me.  This picture is "say a thousand words."  I leave it to you to decide if it is worth that much.

I sincerely doubt I will find connections in even 15% of the kanji I learn.  However, native Japanese speakers don't seem to see these at all.  I pointed out to one person I could not read a particular kanji, but I knew it had something to do with the eye because the central part was "eye."  This person said they never considered that, but once it was pointed out they could easily see it.  The particular kanji was "head."  To someone who needs to know about 2,000 to function in society it is an exercise in mechanics, not necessarily a search for consistency.  In order to learn how to write all of them, they are taught a series of strokes and an order to follow for each.  Still, I think it would be enjoyable to try to suss out any connections.

When I had my calligraphy lesson I asked about this.  My student's English was not the strongest, but she easily recognized the various sub-kanji in many of them.  For example, autumn looks like "1,000 trees on fire," which is what autumn looks like.  Many that deal with water or water-related ideas have the same or similar three strokes on the left side.  "Pressure" is covered soil, and "ashes" is covered fire.  "Shout" is like "mouth" with an incomplete "ear" kanji.

I know the kanji are borrowed from Chinese, but they've been modified over time.  Do the patterns say anything about the culture?  Maybe.  I think this would be true especially if two kanji have related structure, but the ideas are only distantly related in English.  I recall reading that some early 20th century physicist (I think it was Neils Bohr) said he never felt he really understood a concept until he had talked his way through it in French, German, Dutch, and English.  The point being, each language approaches the connections between ideas in slightly different ways.  This, I think, must be true here as well.  Connections between kanji may reflect ways of thinking that are different from what I'm used to.

Something to think about going forward.

Calligraphy Lesson

 Today after my classes I had a calligraphy lesson from a student.  Here she is after the end of it all adding her name to an instruction sheet.

I asked her if I could keep that page because it describes and demonstrates how to remove the brush for the end of a stroke.

The first actual bit was a demonstration that I was to copy.  She asked me what two words I would like to write.  I asked her to write what two words she thought best described me.

The top is "laughing" and the bottom is "head."  She said it means "smile."  This is my copy of her paper.  While I was doing it she was telling me the angle to hold my arm, how to hold the brush, how to hold my wrist, how to sit, everything.  If I started drifting away, she corrected me.  It takes a lot of discipline to maintain the "proper" posture.

After this I did some practice with strokes, and she corrected me a bit.  Then she had me write my name in katakana.  Part of this was a discussion about "cursive" calligraphy compared to "printed" calligraphy.  I said we have two writing systems in English.  I first printed my name, and she read it without any problem.  Then I wrote my name (not my signature, but a decent cursive writing) and she said "I cannot read that at all!"  So, we did some cursive English writing.  When she saw how much faster you can write if you know cursive, she said it must be good for taking notes.

We also talked about signatures and compared them with hanko (name stamps).  My signature is not the same as my written name.  Many people are able to write my name, but very few can match my signature.  So it is used for important documents, just like the hanko is used in Japan.  The only thing is we don't have to carry a particular stamp with us when we need to agree to a contract.

When we returned to calligraphy she made me choose two kanji to write for me.

Above I'm copying one of them.  I'm not holding my hand correctly.  The wrist should be bent more so my palm faces almost straight out ahead of me.  Below are the two I chose.  She made me sign and stamp them as "mine."

The one on the left is "reading" and the right hand one is "thinking."  They are the foundation of learning abstract concepts.  These will go in my office at school as a reminder to all who enter, including and especially me.