Horrible. Just horrible.
I have more than an hour left to myself to prepare for the classes at the university this coming semester and what do I do? Hop on my PS3 and finally reach 100% of inFamous. A worthy pursuit? Hardly. But I've been trying to reach 100% in any game for the past year or more and I finally did it. Took me a while but I did it.
Now, I just need to get off my butt and get my work done!
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
You Speak Good
Stopped by a little diner yesterday as I waited for the immigration office at Niigata airport to open for its afternoon hours. As I turned into the parking lot, I felt nervous. Not the nervousness that I would not be able to read the menu or that I would not find something I liked, since I had never been to this particular place before. No, I worried about what kinds of conversation I would have once I sat down. What kind of judgment would be given to me. People would invariably stare, mumble that “There’s a foreigner in here.” Probably they don’t get too many since it’s such a small place and not really in a place a lot of foreigners hang out.
Funny that after 10 years, I am still worried about that. Tells you what kinds of experiences I have had and which kind of experiences I still expect to happen to me.
Of course, when I got in and sat down, there were mumbles from the kitchen, and sort of hushed, pent up waiting…. Waiting to see if I would maybe ask for a cheeseburger or corn dog. But, I remained calm. Not so many people in there at the time, thankfully.
After I placed my order, I heard the cook from the kitchen exclaim surprise that I could read Japanese and kanji, and that he though I was erai, which means he thought I was a good person for learning to speak the language of the land. Maybe his experience with foreigners has been that of the typical lazy foreigner who takes no time to really get into the language. But behind his erai comment was another comment about my ability to read the language - not just I have taken it upon myself to learn it but that I could learn it at all.
Many Japanese people I meet have the same reaction. They are utterly amazed that I could learn this very difficult language. And I think that most Japanese have that kind of thinking. They believe that Japanese is so terribly difficult. And it is. But it’s not anymore difficult than English or Chinese or Swahili.
This kind of thinking sheds light on the language belief system many Japanese possess. It shows what they think about themselves as a language user and learner, how they organize language in their brains – as something unattainable, something elusive.
Due to my own studies in Japanese and of the language learning process in general, I am now more surprised at the vast population of monolinguals as opposed to bilinguals and multilinguals.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Cheater Cheater Chicken Eater
I am a gamer.
I wake up in the morning nearly every day around 430 or 500. Switch on the coffee, the TV, and my XBOX360, making sure that my Bluetooth Headset is fully charged and ready to contain sounds of explosions and/or death inside my ears.
I have come to accept this about myself and feel that it is not something to be ashamed of. I am here world, to tell you, that I love games.
A vice that me and many of my fellow gamers have is cheating. Some games are quite challenging and we want the satisfaction of simply getting past a level or unpuzzling a puzzle. I have been using cheat codes ever since Capcom let their 30-life secret out for Contra. I never really even liked using the word cheat, because to me, cheating was something wrong you did at school. Cheating was serious, but this was just... a game.
I am now in my 30's and have only recently joined back into the world of gaming. Turns out that that my mildly advanced maturity and time away from this childhood past time has given me a new perspective.
I have used only a few cheats with my current games. After each use, I was left with this feeling of emptiness and disappointment. I was a little ashamed of myself. Sure, I could reap the spoils of my cheating heart, but it was a happiness ill gained.
Here's the kicker: yesterday as I was wiping chicken grease from my fingers and attempting to finish my son's coleslaw, I had that cheating feeling again. There we were, a small family with a fridge moderately full of preparable food and we had opted for the Colonel. We had taken a pass at real food and nutrition and cheated ourselves out of another healthy lunch. I stood in front of the trash can - lid open and staring at the rumpled bags that previously held our french fries, biscuits, and original recipe breasts. I had an urgent sense to cover the evidence with coffee grinds and banana peels. But for fear that my wife might deem me a little mentally insane, I left the crap where it lay.
This is cheating, too, I said to myself.
My body, like any good video game, gives me everything I need to discover what it needs. I can, of course, choose to circumvent those previously installed clues, choose to ignore the signs and hints, choose to not think. But to do so will leave me empty and disappointed.
Unless I am eating Subway.
Or playing Contra.
I wake up in the morning nearly every day around 430 or 500. Switch on the coffee, the TV, and my XBOX360, making sure that my Bluetooth Headset is fully charged and ready to contain sounds of explosions and/or death inside my ears.
I have come to accept this about myself and feel that it is not something to be ashamed of. I am here world, to tell you, that I love games.
A vice that me and many of my fellow gamers have is cheating. Some games are quite challenging and we want the satisfaction of simply getting past a level or unpuzzling a puzzle. I have been using cheat codes ever since Capcom let their 30-life secret out for Contra. I never really even liked using the word cheat, because to me, cheating was something wrong you did at school. Cheating was serious, but this was just... a game.
I am now in my 30's and have only recently joined back into the world of gaming. Turns out that that my mildly advanced maturity and time away from this childhood past time has given me a new perspective.
I have used only a few cheats with my current games. After each use, I was left with this feeling of emptiness and disappointment. I was a little ashamed of myself. Sure, I could reap the spoils of my cheating heart, but it was a happiness ill gained.
Here's the kicker: yesterday as I was wiping chicken grease from my fingers and attempting to finish my son's coleslaw, I had that cheating feeling again. There we were, a small family with a fridge moderately full of preparable food and we had opted for the Colonel. We had taken a pass at real food and nutrition and cheated ourselves out of another healthy lunch. I stood in front of the trash can - lid open and staring at the rumpled bags that previously held our french fries, biscuits, and original recipe breasts. I had an urgent sense to cover the evidence with coffee grinds and banana peels. But for fear that my wife might deem me a little mentally insane, I left the crap where it lay.
This is cheating, too, I said to myself.
My body, like any good video game, gives me everything I need to discover what it needs. I can, of course, choose to circumvent those previously installed clues, choose to ignore the signs and hints, choose to not think. But to do so will leave me empty and disappointed.
Unless I am eating Subway.
Or playing Contra.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The Savior of Motivation
Professionally and personally, I struggle with motivation.
As a teacher, naturally I come across students with a wide range of motivational issues, though some are not necessarily issues. There are the over zealous ones who just cannot seem to get enough work and put very high demands on my already heavy workload. Others seem empty of even a soul, let along a cognizant brain capable of producing more than double word sentences. Of these two evils, of course the former is much easier to accept and handle while the latter... well, the latter seems to take its toll in a rather serious manner.
But, I'll get to that.
Far better are the middle ground students: highly motivated yet able to fend for themselves with the expert (?) direction I give them. They can take my seeds and grow their own mustard plant. The mental soil is rich, and knowledge just seems to grow naturally.
When I began working at my current job, a private language school, I brought with me the assumption that since the students have elected out of all the other options life has to offer to study English at this school, that they would inherently bring with them a high level of motivation and for learning, speaking, and studying the English language.
Indeed, I was sadly mistaken.
Though there are a large number of students who meet my expectations for motivation, a surprisingly large number of students fall into the unmotivated side of things. Why, I always ask myself, do they want to come here if they have no intention of taking my advice or working hard to study on their own. And work hard, they must.
On average, it takes 4-6 years for a fresh non-native English who lives in an English speaking country to become moderately fluent in basic interpersonal communication. It takes considerably longer if that same person were learning English in their home country. In order to reach that 4-6 year mark, that student must spend an incredible amount of time just being with English every single day.
60 or 90 minutes a week just ain't gonna cut it.
And so, I am bombarded with patrons of the school who have been students there for 7-10 years or more yet are still wallowing in the beginner and false beginner zone. I tell them how to improve, yet my words fall on deaf ears. They choose not to work. Eventually, that leads me to stop trying. Their lack of motivation has infected me and now I could care less what they do.
In that professionally lethargic state, I still ask the question; why do those students come in the first place? And maybe, just maybe, I have an answer.
I think that a common reason that people sign up for these kinds of schools is that they believe spending money will force them to see the value of their study. Especially in these economically dark times, they dare not waste a single coin. Their hard earned money will finally be matched with hard work for their hobby. While that may work for a select few, for the most part, it is a lie.
My sister-in-law is an amazing person when it comes to showing appreciation for other people. Whenever we visit her or send her some gift, she always sends us some kind of thank you, either in the form of a short note or a small present. And it comes quickly, too, not four or five months later. She also has a blog she created for family to keep track of her life and new son. She updates it regularly with pictures, video, and running commentary on the growth and development of the child. My own wife, who took more than a year off from work, toyed with the idea of doing that since she "had so much free time." But she never did.
I don't blame her one bit. I myself have serious problems keeping this blog up-to-date. But her inability to do that despite her time off from work brought me to understand the plight of my own students.
She did not have the motivation to do that to begin with. And so, just because she was able to, did not give her the motivation to do that. For my own students, it is very much the same. They had no impetus to study on their own at home before signing up. Their hearts were not directed toward the study of language.
But they wanted it. They wanted to want it.
And so, they come to me, in droves, seeking salvation from their unmotivated lives. They seem to believe that taking my class will magically transform their non-desire to white-hot desire.
It just doesn't work like that.
If you weren't doing it or truly open to it before, no amount of cajoling or advising is going to change those hard hearts.
Go away. Find some tangible motivation within yourself and then come by. You'll be happier, more proficient, and a little richer for having not wasted so much money.
Unless, of course, you just want to spend $100 bucks a month to have tea with me. Then I'll gladly take your dough.
As a teacher, naturally I come across students with a wide range of motivational issues, though some are not necessarily issues. There are the over zealous ones who just cannot seem to get enough work and put very high demands on my already heavy workload. Others seem empty of even a soul, let along a cognizant brain capable of producing more than double word sentences. Of these two evils, of course the former is much easier to accept and handle while the latter... well, the latter seems to take its toll in a rather serious manner.
But, I'll get to that.
Far better are the middle ground students: highly motivated yet able to fend for themselves with the expert (?) direction I give them. They can take my seeds and grow their own mustard plant. The mental soil is rich, and knowledge just seems to grow naturally.
When I began working at my current job, a private language school, I brought with me the assumption that since the students have elected out of all the other options life has to offer to study English at this school, that they would inherently bring with them a high level of motivation and for learning, speaking, and studying the English language.
Indeed, I was sadly mistaken.
Though there are a large number of students who meet my expectations for motivation, a surprisingly large number of students fall into the unmotivated side of things. Why, I always ask myself, do they want to come here if they have no intention of taking my advice or working hard to study on their own. And work hard, they must.
On average, it takes 4-6 years for a fresh non-native English who lives in an English speaking country to become moderately fluent in basic interpersonal communication. It takes considerably longer if that same person were learning English in their home country. In order to reach that 4-6 year mark, that student must spend an incredible amount of time just being with English every single day.
60 or 90 minutes a week just ain't gonna cut it.
And so, I am bombarded with patrons of the school who have been students there for 7-10 years or more yet are still wallowing in the beginner and false beginner zone. I tell them how to improve, yet my words fall on deaf ears. They choose not to work. Eventually, that leads me to stop trying. Their lack of motivation has infected me and now I could care less what they do.
In that professionally lethargic state, I still ask the question; why do those students come in the first place? And maybe, just maybe, I have an answer.
I think that a common reason that people sign up for these kinds of schools is that they believe spending money will force them to see the value of their study. Especially in these economically dark times, they dare not waste a single coin. Their hard earned money will finally be matched with hard work for their hobby. While that may work for a select few, for the most part, it is a lie.
My sister-in-law is an amazing person when it comes to showing appreciation for other people. Whenever we visit her or send her some gift, she always sends us some kind of thank you, either in the form of a short note or a small present. And it comes quickly, too, not four or five months later. She also has a blog she created for family to keep track of her life and new son. She updates it regularly with pictures, video, and running commentary on the growth and development of the child. My own wife, who took more than a year off from work, toyed with the idea of doing that since she "had so much free time." But she never did.
I don't blame her one bit. I myself have serious problems keeping this blog up-to-date. But her inability to do that despite her time off from work brought me to understand the plight of my own students.
She did not have the motivation to do that to begin with. And so, just because she was able to, did not give her the motivation to do that. For my own students, it is very much the same. They had no impetus to study on their own at home before signing up. Their hearts were not directed toward the study of language.
But they wanted it. They wanted to want it.
And so, they come to me, in droves, seeking salvation from their unmotivated lives. They seem to believe that taking my class will magically transform their non-desire to white-hot desire.
It just doesn't work like that.
If you weren't doing it or truly open to it before, no amount of cajoling or advising is going to change those hard hearts.
Go away. Find some tangible motivation within yourself and then come by. You'll be happier, more proficient, and a little richer for having not wasted so much money.
Unless, of course, you just want to spend $100 bucks a month to have tea with me. Then I'll gladly take your dough.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Absolutes
So, I'm sitting with this student of ours that comes in about three times a week and all he does is grammar. His attempts at any real human communication are laughable, if not passable, as his penchant is for understanding the deep mechanics of English grammar. As a self-proclaimed philosopher, he spends hours and hours picking apart the logic of entirely random sentences. In particular, he is fascinated by the use of negation in English.
I have to admit, his fascination gets my juices going at times. Thoughts of college grammar classes flash by and all I can see are endless chalkboards filled with fully diagrammed sentences. I am hypnotized by my own memories. Luckily, when I wake up from my stupor, he's still pouring pages of his work, too into grammar to notice that I was absent for a few moments.
The thing that really gets me is that he - but not only him, lots of people do this too - asks me these questions about the finer workings of English grammar and expects clear cut answers. Even as I rattle off these absolutes about language I can hear the English Powers that Be rustling in their lofty chairs, showering disapproving glances and finger wags my way.
And on some level, I really don't care. At some point, these "opinions" about usage will shift to accommodate new social norms and ideologies. The permanence of grammar is a myth, smoke and lights, something that Usage Nuts death grip because their jobs and their own sense of reality depend on it.
I've told this guy that grammar rules fluctuate and bend over time, so that his minute, nit-picky explanations of rules will only work for a short time. He intends to create a computer program that will automatically modify the grammar of a given sentence in a number of ways.
I only ask, why?
I have to admit, his fascination gets my juices going at times. Thoughts of college grammar classes flash by and all I can see are endless chalkboards filled with fully diagrammed sentences. I am hypnotized by my own memories. Luckily, when I wake up from my stupor, he's still pouring pages of his work, too into grammar to notice that I was absent for a few moments.
The thing that really gets me is that he - but not only him, lots of people do this too - asks me these questions about the finer workings of English grammar and expects clear cut answers. Even as I rattle off these absolutes about language I can hear the English Powers that Be rustling in their lofty chairs, showering disapproving glances and finger wags my way.
And on some level, I really don't care. At some point, these "opinions" about usage will shift to accommodate new social norms and ideologies. The permanence of grammar is a myth, smoke and lights, something that Usage Nuts death grip because their jobs and their own sense of reality depend on it.
I've told this guy that grammar rules fluctuate and bend over time, so that his minute, nit-picky explanations of rules will only work for a short time. He intends to create a computer program that will automatically modify the grammar of a given sentence in a number of ways.
I only ask, why?
Saturday, August 7, 2010
The Interesting Thing about Deaf People...
The other day as I loitered around the meat section at the local supermarket searching for a specific cut of chicken that my wife so desperately wanted, I saw a group of three deaf people huddled in deep discussion, possibly signing over the same conundrum I had found myself in. Using my vast powers of intellect, I assumed they were a family: older man with a bit of a metabolic-syndrome gut, and older woman who looked fed up with that gut, and a young woman who seemed to mediate between the two other meat seekers. I wanted to stare, investigate their signing - kind of a visual eavesdropping. But that never works in any situation, actually. You could get arrested for stalking if you kept it up for any decent length of time.
Just as this unquenchable curiosity was taking control of my better social skills, I paused to reflect on why exactly I was so interested in these people. Yes, they are signing to each other, expressing their hopes and desires with their hands instead of their mouths. But those hopes and desires are not about the true meaning of life or the secret to curing cancer - they're talking about MEAT! Still, we - "we" here meaning "me" - want to gawk and point because they are talking about meat in a way that hearing people don't. I am sure that the little Japanese kids eavesdrop on my wife and I when we are at the supermarket discussing the same supper-related matters.
I've been reading Pinker's book The Language Instinct and have had the chance to reform opinions regarding humanity's use of language. For example, despite the "atrocities" of Black English Vernacular, it is a fully functioning and fully grammatical form of English. The sentences "He working" and "He be working", though incorrect when compared to Standard American English and seemingly express the same idea, actually refer to two completely different concepts about work, and they are referred in this way consistently.
Moving back to deaf people, they too have a language with a fully functioning grammar and rich vocabulary, capable of expressing any ole idea that might come into the signer's head. If non-hearing people learn sign language from an early age it is easily acquired, though if they can't have access to it until they are older their acquisition of the language is very limited. In short, the mental processes that manage language (a kind of grammar or device, if you will) inside a deaf person's head treats sign language just like any other language. There are rules and categories of words like nouns, verbs, and objects, and all of these are used consistently.
Interesting?
Well, it is and it isn't. Reminds me of a Steve Martin bit about his trip to France: Boy those French! They have a different word for everything! Uh, yeah they do. And while that might be the most fascinating realization for a moment, really it's just normal. And that's what happened to me when I saw those deaf people signing by the meat section: I was in awe of their use of their hands to use language but they were just doing what nearly any normally functioning human being can do. They were using language.
In terms of language, deaf people signing about meat are no more interesting that hearing people talking about meat. No, deaf people are not interesting, and that interests me.
Just as this unquenchable curiosity was taking control of my better social skills, I paused to reflect on why exactly I was so interested in these people. Yes, they are signing to each other, expressing their hopes and desires with their hands instead of their mouths. But those hopes and desires are not about the true meaning of life or the secret to curing cancer - they're talking about MEAT! Still, we - "we" here meaning "me" - want to gawk and point because they are talking about meat in a way that hearing people don't. I am sure that the little Japanese kids eavesdrop on my wife and I when we are at the supermarket discussing the same supper-related matters.
I've been reading Pinker's book The Language Instinct and have had the chance to reform opinions regarding humanity's use of language. For example, despite the "atrocities" of Black English Vernacular, it is a fully functioning and fully grammatical form of English. The sentences "He working" and "He be working", though incorrect when compared to Standard American English and seemingly express the same idea, actually refer to two completely different concepts about work, and they are referred in this way consistently.
Moving back to deaf people, they too have a language with a fully functioning grammar and rich vocabulary, capable of expressing any ole idea that might come into the signer's head. If non-hearing people learn sign language from an early age it is easily acquired, though if they can't have access to it until they are older their acquisition of the language is very limited. In short, the mental processes that manage language (a kind of grammar or device, if you will) inside a deaf person's head treats sign language just like any other language. There are rules and categories of words like nouns, verbs, and objects, and all of these are used consistently.
Interesting?
Well, it is and it isn't. Reminds me of a Steve Martin bit about his trip to France: Boy those French! They have a different word for everything! Uh, yeah they do. And while that might be the most fascinating realization for a moment, really it's just normal. And that's what happened to me when I saw those deaf people signing by the meat section: I was in awe of their use of their hands to use language but they were just doing what nearly any normally functioning human being can do. They were using language.
In terms of language, deaf people signing about meat are no more interesting that hearing people talking about meat. No, deaf people are not interesting, and that interests me.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Ambulances
As I sit here drinking my glass of shochu and watching, for some reason, CSI NY, an ambulance screams by outside. A lot of them pass here since there's a hospital just down the road. I've heard them all my life, but they are most distressing to hear late a night. What kind of crap went down for someone to be taken by an ambulance at this time at night? Hate to think of it. Hate to think that one day one of my own family members could be taken away in one of those things.
One was, actually, my sister, many years ago. Quite frightening but maybe more frightening for my parents. Now that I have a son, I can sort of imagine their frame of mind as they crested the hill and saw that swarm of flashing lights and my sister stuck in her date's car. Hell, when my son even looks like he might fall over even though he's sitting on carpet I get a little tense. Having children is certainly a blessing but when I hear ambulances roaring by in the night, I get a little freaked out.
I need to calm down.
Maybe another drink?
Definitely no more CSI!
One was, actually, my sister, many years ago. Quite frightening but maybe more frightening for my parents. Now that I have a son, I can sort of imagine their frame of mind as they crested the hill and saw that swarm of flashing lights and my sister stuck in her date's car. Hell, when my son even looks like he might fall over even though he's sitting on carpet I get a little tense. Having children is certainly a blessing but when I hear ambulances roaring by in the night, I get a little freaked out.
I need to calm down.
Maybe another drink?
Definitely no more CSI!
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