Rolling Along

Winter, work, and life in general seem to be rolling along at a decent clip here. I wanted to post some pictures, and maybe rant a bit about English education in Japan. First- the pics (you may recognize the coast here- most pics that I take of the coast are from a favorite lookout location I stumbled upon exploring earlier in the year)-

This is just looking out at the waves. It was pretty cold when this picture was taken- some sort of storm system was on its way in.



The wind was whipping the waves up impressively- it also courteously closed my car door behind me after I was done photographing. While I was photographing, I was periodically blasted with sea spray a good hundred feet away from the breakers.



That's that for ocean pictures. As for the education bit- I went to a mandatory conference about educational techniques at the prefectural education center. It proved to be an informative if not interesting experience, and I took a lot away from it.

The last speaker, however, managed to inadvertently answer some questions that I'd had for a while- mainly- why do they bother teaching English in Japan? He had a nifty set of Powerpoint slides to illustrate his ideas, which he explained in a voice that could have put a lightning bolt to sleep. The gist was that the reason English is taught should not be for university exams, but for ultimate cross-cultural understanding. This seemed like a nice, enlightened answer to me, except for the glaring problems that (a) all the textbooks here are geared towards the exams (he had helped to revise the curriculum before), and (b) there are no foreigners here with whom to interact. Part of this problem has been solved by "Importing Diversity" (also a book by the same title about the JET program) with ALTs like myself, but the fact of the matter is that there just aren't enough English speakers to go around here. I'm also finally coming around to the conclusion that it's not (as much as I dislike it sometimes) the Ministry of Education's fault (entirely anyhow...)- Japan simply a country that historically and presently has implemented policies ranging from conservative to xenophobic. It is a very difficult place to get a foothold as a foreigner, and a more difficult one stay and live meaningfully. I have personally had good experiences (mostly) with the Japanese, especially my wonderfully culture-clueless students, but I've also experienced the other side, and many ALTs have seen much worse of it than I. I'll go ahead and submit- until Japan lightens up on its official attitude of turning resident aliens into red-tape-mummies, Japan will not become an international country. No amount of imported JETs, teaching one lesson a week to each class (sometimes not even that), are going to cause the massive paradigmatic shift that more progressive Japanese who implemented programs like JET are looking for. Alas.

Anyhow, ranting and so on aside, I'm doing very nicely right now, and will probably be hitting the slopes this weekend. I think I'm going to try my hand at snowboarding, not because I don't love skiing- but I want to try something new out. Pics of the slopes and any good bruises I get will be forthcoming.