Losing time, losing data
4月12日 (月ー火) 1:12 am JST
At this point, even I’m surprised that I’m still not working. First, I thought things would kick off after the opening ceremony last Thursday, but that came and went without a resumption of labor. Then I thought we’d get back at it on Tuesday, tomorrow. But now I’ve found out that tomorrow is notable as the last day of non-work, not the first day of work resumed. So, on Wednesday, I should at last resume my toils at the Deaf School. Unless, I and the new teacher end up spending the whole time planning. That could happen too. I dunno. We’ll see.
I guess this makes the seemingly cavalier attitudes the teachers have towards planning more understandable, what with classes being off in the world beyond tomorrow and all, but it still doesn’t really clarify what I should be doing with all my time. I’ve got a solid month’s worth of eye damage from staring at the computer screen non-stop, if that counts towards anything.
After S-sensei told me that her successor would probably be a young, inexperienced woman (wrong on both accounts), there was a brief moment, in which I considered casting off my slack ways and embracing the mantle of super-ALT, but the fact of the matter is, I really don’t know what I’m doing. I guess no one else does either, but that’s hardly a consolation. This afternoon, T--- estimated that we have about 5 weeks of class before the summer exams and the repetition of the year school. We have to find a way to make the kids care about English in that time frame, or it will be too late. But how? (And why?)
4月14日 (水ー木) 12:41 am JST
With S-sensei eaten by space sharks, I am left almost to my own devices at the deaf school. All change is always evil.
M-sensei seems lost in the system, so virtually everything that happened today happened because of me. I don’t think I have the right background for teaching unmotivated kids. I was so into school and reading and learning (if not doing homework or projects), but they’re just sorta blah. I don’t think I infect them with either energy or enthusiasm. Thinking about, I realized that the high school students have studied English longer than I’ve studied Japanese, but they’re still struggling with words like ‘favorite’ and ‘lesson.’ Trés 哀しい.
I think what tends to get students interested in language is seeing that they can, of themselves, encode and decode some mysterious message. Once you have confidence, the rest of it seems to fall into place. For me, my confidence came from picking the katakana off of websites or reading the fictional accounts of Japanese usage in Megatokyo. Now, I’ve become too lazy to press on in Japanese.
Last night, I dreamed I was with ----. She asked why I kept telling her about falling in love with girls like her. I told her that the consistency showed that I had an essence, and that essence was what made me real. No obsession; no essence; no being.
Easy enough.
4月18日 (日ー月) 12:40 am JST
I have been struck by technological misfortune. First, Deadhobosociety was hacked, and I was forced to retreat to a 6-month out of date backup. I’m not really sure what all was made in that time frame, but anyhow it’s all gone save for the local copies I kept of things I typed out. However, adding to my misfortune, my Powerbook decided to exhibit a strange sleeping problem, namely the problem of not waking from sleep at all. Soon enough, it also started using a suspiciously high amount of processing power to get things done. I found out online that it was still just barely within the one year warranty, so I prepared an expedition to the Apple store in Ôsaka in order to make good on it. Now, I’m waiting for them to send me the repaired machine.
All of which is to say, I’m currently in a state of heroin-like withdraw from my computer addiction. I try to pretend that my DS and TV are computers, but it’s just not the same. At any rate, my website will have to persist in error from now until I can get back to work on it with my own machine.
Predictably perhaps, but in the anxiety of separation, I’ve become more self-pitying that usual. On the plus side, I did get to buy a tanooki statue with excellent testicles at Fushimi Inari. No closer to understanding life though…
4月20日 (火ー水) 1:34 am JST
Worst three days, EVAR!
4月21日 (水ー木) 1:05 am JST
Tomorrow, Nintendo releases the pink DS.
I’ve lost all track of time recently. I can never tell what day it is, and things keep sneaking up on me. (I’m not very well prepared for 1st period OC tomorrow.) This has been an increasing problem during my time in Japan, and I’ve become reliant on T--- to keep track of all time and date related information.
Part of my problem is that time zones have given me a dual consciousness. All IM activity involves the subtle mental motion of reversing day and night. When I picked through an old log file earlier, I was silently surprised when I realized that in my years old chat, my brother and I had been messaging each other at the same time of day. I’m just too accustomed to seeing the clock’s hands mirrored.
My old host mother called today. I had been meaning to call her, but Golden week crept quietly; now almost striking. A— of the Caterpillar Girls emailed. I really need to find the time to write her before its too late. My Japanese test o’ the month remains woefully incomplete. Or even in-commenced.
A hundred kinds of clock tick, but I can scarcely hear a one. Like the trains that rumble outside my apartment, their ubiquity has bred sure invisibility. Time feels too glacial to be so quicksilver. My apartment is uncleaned, and my books are unread, and my projects are unfinished. Everything meets delay.
4月25日 (日ー月) 1:05 am JST
On Friday, we had a welcome party for the new teachers. It was good to see everyone drunk and doing the Matsuken Samba in ridiculous costumes (which, as the man in the dress pointed out, they didn’t choose for themselves).
In spite of partaking in firefly squid and other regional delicacies, I was somewhat withdrawn during the festivities. I suppose that I know just enough Japanese to be embarrassed of myself. Or just enough Japanese to make it clear that I don’t really know what’s going on. It’s normal for the world to seem unfathomable during one’s existential funk. This makes it worse. I’m playing against my natural hermitude.
At one point, Sk-sensei, whose telephone voice I have always adored, in contrast to the terrible, raspy throated woman whose job is to answer the phone, deigned to drop a few English-esque-isms on me. I forget the exact content. Perhaps it was sankyû or something. At any rate, the contrast between that and her normal excellence broke my heart into pieces. It would be like finding out that the girl at the train station drives to work, or the woman at the public bath only bathes alone.
I felt much the same last week, when I went to karaoke with the ALTs. Negligible language barrier (damn Scots) or not, I can still feel walled off from other people. As I walked back home before everyone else, I wondered if isolation isn’t the sin qua non of philosophy, or at least the telltale emotional deficiency of a geeky child.
At the bar the other day, I learned that my high school pen pal’s schoolmate goes here.
Why am I here again?
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