Archive for November, 2006

ESL Warm up/review activites - Blackboard Dash

Published
by
jasohill
on November 30, 2006
in ESL
. 0 Comments

Today I think I’ll talk a little about some of successful activities I’ve used in the Japanese classroom. I’ll state now that I didn’t come up with all of them, however I did add some of my own touches to them. If you are a teacher in Japan(or elsewhere) and want to use them, please feel free to. However, please leave me a comment and let me know how it went. I’m always curious to see how some of these activities work with other teachers. Here is today’s activity.

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I’m an Atheist

Published
by
jasohill
on November 29, 2006
in Personal
. 2 Comments

There, I’ve come out and said it.

I’m an Atheist.

I have some friends who proudly announced it when they found Christ. I suppose that when your heart is full of joy, you just have to tell the whole world. I suppose that is why I am placing this on my blog. An old friend told me that coming to Japan would change my life. I didn’t know how right she would be. Japan itself doesn’t have a lot to do with this decision, but it was the place I was in when I made it. So I’d to announce it once again for the entire world to read.

I’m an Atheist.

I have decided to completely turn my back on organized religion. In addition to this, I will also being making brochures that proclaim critical thinking and open-mindedness as the only salvation for humanity. Whenever I see Mormons or other preachers on the street, I will hand out my brochures after them and encourage people to consider reason over madness. I am not the first to do this, but I think it’s essential to progress. So what is my new philosophy?

-I find the existence of a God to be highly unlikely or impossible (as god is currently defined)

-I live for the here and now, knowing that an afterlife is not waiting for me.

-I live as a secular humanist to help the plight of the poor and the persecuted all over the world.

-I will encourage critical thinking and skepticism. I seek the truth, regardless of how harsh that truth may be. I seek comfort what is.

-I will explore the natural world. It is my home. It is all I know.

-I will look at everything with an open mind.

For the first time in my life I feel truly liberated. I’ve known about this for a long time now, but I wanted to make it official.

If you feel the same as I do, I encourage you to comment and talk about it as well. Here are some places you may with to check out:

Point of Inquiry

Center for Inquiry

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

I feel it is important to get involved now. The forces of intolerance are closing in and we need to prepare. We need to do everything we can to spread the word of free thought and reason.

Another day, Another Dvorak

Published
by
jasohill
on November 22, 2006
in Hachimantai, Music and Senmaya
. 0 Comments

If you have ever lived in a small Japanese town, you might be familiar with the chimes that go off at 7am, 12pm and 5pm. These go off everyday at the same time to remind farmers about what the current time is. When I lived in Senmaya, there was this catchy little tune that played over the town loud speaker everyday at 5pm. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I could never pin it down. That was the case until today.

After reading a random Internet post from another person in Japan, I discovered that the catchy little tune I heard day after day was actually movement two of Dvorak’s From the New World. You can listen to a free recording of it here. Aside from being a daily fixure in Japan, this tune also seems to have been an inspiration for science fiction sountracks everywhere.
Now all that remains is to hunt down where all those other catchy little jingles that play in Japan come from.

Another another day, another suicide

Published
by
jasohill
on November 18, 2006
in Culture and Education
. 1 Comment

I don’t plan on turning this into a daily Japanese suicide watch, but I did want to point out there was another one in the news. This story over at Japan Today tells all the grim details. It also happens to be related to bullying in school. I feel really bad for these kids.

If you didn’t already know, Japanese students spend crazy amounts of time at school. They are usually there from 7:45am to about 7pm on weekdays, and usually come in on the weekends for club activities as well. Imagine the toll this takes on students that are being bullied. It leaves them with no escape.

There is a lot of pressure in Japan on students to succeed. One sign of success is spending all of your time at school and never being absent. This actually plays a large role in determining which high school will take these students. Therefore, you can almost understand why some students feel suicide is the only way out from this situation.

One thing I think I will start doing is talking with my students more and seeing how they are feeling. I will keep it as subtle as possible, but if I can prevent just one suicide in Japan, it would be worth every second of me being. It breaks my heart every time this happens.

Suicide City

Published
by
jasohill
on November 13, 2006
in Culture and National
. 0 Comments

I wanted to open up the launch pad this week with some good news. However, it seems Japan doesn’t want me to have a good week. Let’s explore the front page of popular Japanese news site Japan Today to get an idea of just how unhappy people in Japan are at the moment.

If you take a good look at that page and it’s November 12th you’ll see what I mena. If you are reading this article at another time, then you’ll see articles about suicide here, here here and here. That is not to mention the principle who killed himself a couple of weeks ago. The saddest part of this is that most of the people killing themselves are younger people. This is simply a tragedy, and more needs to be done to get to these people before they go through with it.

If you take the two principals who have killed themselves in the last two weeks, it set a disturbing trend. You can start to see how some Japanese people in power positions handle responsibility. Instead of dealing with their problems, they escape them and leave them for others to clean up. At one point in Japan’s history, ritual suicide could almost have been considered an honorable way to end ones life. I can’t think it is like that anymore.

I have one request for the people of Japan. Please, for the love of god, start taking care of each other. You obviously have people in your society that cannot handle this artificial rat race you’ve created. Now either start making Japan a better place to live or face international condemnation.

I cannot believe that Japan has returned to the top ten best places to live. Obviously the U.N. isn’t counting suicide in their criteria. Perhpas they have also ignored hour worked, or vacation time taken. Good stats there, UN. I hope your week starts off on a better note than mine.

Rocking out those anime hit songs

Published
by
jasohill
on November 12, 2006
in Music
. 0 Comments

I wanted to give a shout over to Eryn at the Anime Utahime podcast. Every couple of weeks she releases a jam packed episode full of rocking anime tunes. You won’t hear a song on her show unless it comes from anime. I would consider her to be an expert in the field of anime music. In between the songs she usually has a special guest host to help describe and comment on the music.

Which brings me to my ego driven reason for this shout-out. I was a guest host on episode 15 of the show. If you love music that comes from anime you owe it to yourself to listen to this Internet radio show.

My Drinking Bills

Published
by
jasohill
on November 9, 2006
in Photography
. 0 Comments
  
My Drinking Bills
Originally uploaded by jasohill.

I joined a little project at Utata called, Iron Photography. Every week they give you three items to compose a photo with. For example, use a cup, some cheese and a light source. You have to take these three elements and make a picture with them. I thought this would be a blast, so I signed up for challenge no. 8. It involved something made of paper, a vessel of some sort and a low angle. And you can see, I made my work using a glass, some Japanese Yen notes and the floor. For effect, I also tunred on my camera phone light and used it to bring out the colors in the yen.

I used a 50mm lends with at F1.8 to make sure I was bringing out the detail in the bills only. As you can see from the photo, an F stop of 1.8 doesn’t leave a lot of field. Everything not in the field blurs out. That is the joy of using a lens with an F stop of 2 or under. You can really highlight fine details.

Wacky weather and the coming winter

Published
by
jasohill
on November 9, 2006
in Iwate
. 0 Comments

Northern Japan has been a mess these days, as far as the weather is concerned. I’m sure most of you have heard about the tornado that touched down on an Island off of Hokkaido, killing eight people. I want to clarify that I was near that area of Japan at the time, so if you were worried about me, there is no need to be. I just want to emphasize that Japan does not get many tornadoes. I think they get a major one every forty years, so for them this was pretty big news.

That very next day a massive storm pushed itself down Japan and caused all of the morning trains on the Hanwa line to be cancelled. This left me stranded in Ashiro all morning, unable to get to my Junior High School in Tayama. Lucky for me, classes were all cancelled. That very same storm also dumped a pile of snow on any mountain over 900 meters. Iwate mountain went from brown to snow white in a little over six hours. I am definately in a part of Japan that sees more crazy weather.

That leads me to the coming winter. In what had been long overdue, I have to decided to return to North America for a couple of weeks. I am looking forward to visiting with friends and family during this time. I also hope to get out and push tiltyhouse a little while I am away as well. If you are an avid lisenter of Dai-Cast and are interested sharnig any ideas about the show with me while I am away,　please feel free to get in contact with me at the tiltyhouse website. while I am in North America, I will be in Burlington Vermont from December 23rd to December 30th, and Edmonton Alberta from December 31st to January 7th. Also, if you are just someone that hasn’t seen me in a while and want to get in contact with me again, please do so.

Some Perspective

Published
by
jasohill
on November 8, 2006
in Hachimantai
. 0 Comments

I haven’t been in much of a good mood lately. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but I have been rather snappy at people. It might just be that kind of season in Japan. All the new Fresh-off-boat JETS are finding love and get all mushy about it. In doing so, they mention this to me, and it puts me in a foul mood. I have just recently ended a long and frustrating long distance relationship with someone I wasn’t getting along with, and it has left me with some opens wounds. Of course, this has also opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me, but there are two things that I cannot seem to escape.

1. Everyone I seem to have any sort of interest in is either in a relationship already or has absolutely no interest in me.

2. I live amongst old people and children. There is no one my age within thirty kilometers from me that isn’t already married or has kids. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the country life, but there are some things that could be better.

So on Tuesday, in a vain effort to cheer myself up, and headed out for a haircut after work. As I mentioned in previous posts, nothing is more relaxing than having your hair cut in Japan. Or so I would have thought. I wandered into a new barber shop and introduced myself to the barber. He seemed really friendly and we hit it off. His Japanese was very easy to listen to and he had a million questions for me. This made the time go by quickly. There was only one little problem, however. It seemed that as he chopped off more and more of my hair, I could see more and more of my scalp. It seems that my hair was thinning as it was two years ago. Old age was catching up to me. This caused me to fret a little and ruined the relaxing atmosphere I had just put myself in. I think the barber sensed it as well, because the room seemed to get more and more tense. He was doing a good job of cutting my hair, but I couldn’t stop looking at my diminishing hair line.

That was until a man walked into the shop. The barber glanced to the door and my eyes followed his. What I saw was a man with half of his face burned off. He was missing and ear and an eye, and his hair seemed to be grafted on in parts. But that was nothing compared to what I next noticed. He had the biggest smile I had ever seen. He sat down and started reading a magazine while the barber finished up with me. I was floored. I mean, I’ve seen people with major burns before, but I had never seen a smile like that. He was just there to get his hair trimmed. Just his regular routine. Obviously, he had learned to use the cards he had been dealt in life. And here I was, not even having read the rules of the game.

I suppose you could say that smile was infectious. I left the shop with a nice trim haircut and a big smile on my face.

Problems? What problems?