Launching Over Japan

Here is an example of what I would call an obsessive person. I wouldn’t be so surprised about this if people like this weren’t so common in Japan. This man takes his lunch time quite seriously.

http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/kasumin_yorosiku

Something tells me that his mother never gets any sleep. I never knew that bento making could be so creative. Thank you Japan.

Living in Japan is not always the utopian fantasy that many would have you believe. There are certain aspects to living here that tend to grate on you after a while. Today I’d like to talk about one of them.

Learning Japanese is not an easy task by any means. And since my job centers on teaching English all day, the opportunities to practice Japanese at the office are almost nil. There is one occasion every week where I am in a Japanese language environment. And that is on Mondays at the education office. While I’m there, I can only communicate by using my own bastardization version Japanese. There is no one in my office that speaks English at a fluent level. This is fine for me, since it gives plenty of conversation practice. But there is one thing that has always annoyed me about this scenario.

You see, every week I write a report(in Japanese) that summarizes my previous week of teaching. I submit this report, and it is read by around four to five people. Now I spend anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour every week writing this report. I send it away and it always comes back to me correction free. At the start I stupidly assumed that my Japanese was just brilliant. Oh contraire. It appears that no one who reads it simply cares enough to correct my mistakes.

Now let me clarify that I never intended for anyone to correct anything of mine. I am usually supposed to write these reports in English, and if I were to proceed in that manner, I would never have to worry about making any mistakes. However, at the start of my time here on the JET programme, my supervisor suggested that I write them in Japanese for the sake of practicing. The idea sounded reasonable to me. The only problem was that no one has ever made any suggestions for how I can improve my Japanese. Not once in over two years has this report been corrected. They make comments about what I wrote, but never comment on my syntax. I’m not sure why this irks me so. I just assumed they were busy and had no time. But when I look at other people’s English reports, it takes me only a minute or two to give them suggestions. And you can bet they are always thankful for it. Let me also state that these reports are not long. They are usually a paragraph or two. I would be ever so thankful if my reports were also tended to in this manner.

Perhaps I should just chalk it up to culture shock. However, I am very intent on learning Japanese, and my goal is nothing short of fluency. Perhaps the Job I seek out next will need to have me working in more of a Japanese only environment. Who know? Maybe I’m just making a mountain out of a mole hill here. I’m sure you’d rather be reading about all the kanchos that I am getting, or all the Japanese girls that want to sleep with me. Sadly, this is about the most interesting story I can produce this week.

Note: When I ran this entry through the spell checker, it offered to replace the word “Kancho” with the word “Sanchez.” Now if that isn’t dirty, then I don’t know what is.