What’s new.
Posted on: February 24, 2010
Here’s the deal. I have a job now. I’m working for a major fast food company as a over qualified expert. I know it sounds great huh? It’s like when a garbageman calls himself a waste management technician. I’ll be honest. I work a pizza place a driver. I know. Sounds depressing. It is, but it pays the bills for now. There’s not much call for English majors. I’m still writing my manuscript to my first book, but when I say writing I really mean. I don’t do anything for a week or so and then I pound out a couple of pages and try to remember my characters’s names and attributes. I’m not the best writer, but I do enjoy it more than carting pizzas to the morbidly obese.
Unpoetic description
Posted on: July 16, 2009
The time is very late. I should be in bed dreaming about beautiful asian women, but I’m here writing to you. I finished handwriting chapter five of my book. I was going to start on Chapter 6 today. It didn’t happen. I had to do laundry, fix myself something to eat ( grilled cheese doesn’t make its self.) and fail to beat level 49 on Soul Calibur 4 about a million times. So I’ve been doing some thinking about what I should write for this chapter. When I last left of with my character an emergency alarm had sounded and she was escorted out of the mess hall by a friendly MP. Now I’m thinking that one of the aliens has escaped. From there I don’t have much. Maybe she will be taken to the security room. Perhaps she will come across the alien on the way there.
My next thought is about my book is this. I don’t think that I have enough poetic description in it. I feel like I don’t have anything that will grab people like I was when I read “The Road” or “Of Mice and Men.” I have some metaphors, similes, feelings, and sensory descriptions, but nothing surreal like mummified corpses in doorways glaring at you or golden sunlight shimmering on the water like the tails of a thousand phoenixes. You get my drift, right? Anyway, I’m finding it difficult to poeticize an underground military compound. Poeticize is a word. Look it up. Don’t make me speechify, also a word. Do you have any suggestions on how I can write some poetic prose about a military base?
Job hunting in America
Posted on: June 4, 2009
I’ve been searching for a job for about two months now. I haven’t been getting up at 7am and hitting the pavement until dusk, but I’ve been searching. I put in applications and resumes in the double digits. I’ve had some results, none too good.
First I tried kgb_. You might have seen their commercials on TV. You text them on your cell phone and for 99 cents they’ll answer your question. Who needs this kind of service? People with cell phones who don’t have phones with internet search capabilities or access to a computer with internets pre-installed. For each question an “agent” answers they get 10 cents. Sounds great huh? It’s not. I worked for kgb_ for an hour and earned maybe 45 cents. I didn’t work a second hour. I wouldn’t even recommend this job to starving orphans in China. They’d make more money sewing sneakers for Nike or clothes for Kathy Lee.
So I put my resume in online. Within a day I got all sorts of offers from different scams saying that they reviewed my resume and that I’m a perfect candidate for their job selling innovative products or marketing for a premier advertising agency. So I do a little research on these companies and BAM! I see a million listing on pages like ripoff report and other scam busting sites. It was a let-down because some of them had me curious, which is how they get people.
Next I went to a staffing agency and took their little computer tests and had a quick 2 minute interview where the consultant asked me the normal bullshit interview questions. “Give me three words to describe yourself?” Nobody is going to say something bad about themselves like, “Slow-learner, Incompetent, and Procrastinator” I think my gems were, “Creative, Organized, and Punctual” Are you supposed to spell out and acronym for them to give them a clue about what kind of work you should be doing? I told them I wanted clerical work. They haven’t found anything for me and I’ve called them every week since. I went there and even went down there again and asked how I could increase my chances of getting a job. They had no advice. They just gave me excuses about how they are focusing on industrial jobs now. They could have told me that before hand or the other times I called. I asked if they had any entry-level industrial jobs and of course the answer was “No.”
Yesterday I got a reply form a company that I applied to called Reynolds & Reynolds. They had an opening for an entry-level technical writer. I took their online personality/psychological profiling test. Then I went to their office for an aptitude test which more than half consisted of algebra word problems. I haven’t done algebra in over seven years. I tried preparing for the test, but I just couldn’t do the problems when it came time to the test. It’s sad, because I was an A student in all my math courses. You don’t use it, you lose it. After the test I was expecting an interview, but the receptionist at the recruiting office just sent me on my way saying, “A recruiter will contact you in 3-5 business days if they’re interested.” This is all code for, “Don’t make a scene. You didn’t get the job. Go home and have a nice day, loser.”
Today I got a call from a different recruiting company that saw my resume. It looks legit. I did a little searching and didn’t find any complaints, so I’m going to call and see what they want to offer me.
Getting the right Japanese Girl
Posted on: April 11, 2009
You’re in Japan and you’re looking to start dating Japanese women. Here is some unsolicited advice on getting the right one.
1. She has been to your country for a period of over 2 months and liked it.
2. She can understand English to a fairly high degree compared to most Japanese and she doesn’t say, “How do you do?” everytime she sees you.
3. She is liked by the people around her. If your waiter flinches when she orders because of her lack of manners, take note that she might not be a people person.
4. She is more interested in you than taking cell phone calls or answering txts, but not so interested that she gives you the crazy “I want to wear your skin” look.
5. She is at least somewhat interested in her own culture. Most of you came to Japan to learn about a new culture and experience new things, not just a rehashing of western culture.
6. She is not a workaholic. Most Japanese people live and breathe work. It’s a tough one, but I’m sure there are some out there.
7. Most important of all she likes you for you. Many girls in Japan are out to get a free English lesson from unsuspecting boys and girls. I came across a few in my time in Japan.
I’m not a dead dog.
Posted on: March 29, 2009
After a long hiatus, I’m back. Here’s the lowdown. OWLS didn’t put a hit out on me, so rest assured I’m hunky-dori. I returned to America around Christmas time like all good little English Teachers should. It’s been a little over three months and I’ve done a lot of relaxing. I’ve read a ton of books, watched all the new releases at the cinema, saw all my friends, and even found a little time to work on my book. I’ve got three of at least twenty chapters done, but enough shameless plugs. I’ll give you the information you really want to know. How does it feel to be back home. The first month I kept saying, “It’s great to be back.” The second month I said, “It’s good to be back.” And now three months later, “I want to go back.” Not to stay, but maybe for a long vacation. I miss Japanese food. I miss my friends in Japan, even Travis and his business ideas. I miss my ex. I miss the way the clerks at the convinience stores made huge efforts to give me excellent service. I’m lucky if I get a please or thank you here. Will I go back? Someday I will, but I want to be rich before I do. Or at least enough of a bigshot so I can get a visa without having to be an ALT or some other kind of monkey. It might take a year. It might take ten. I don’t know. Mostly it depends on how soon I can get a bestseller written. I don’t know if my first book will be one, but I can dream. I’ve been submitting stories to writing contests in hopes of pulling in some much needed cash. I’ll let you know if I win any.
I recently got a used car thats been nothing but problems since day one. And stupid me I bought it “As is”. The lemon law couldn’t save me from this one. I’ve had to put in over $1,250 in repairs. One of the so-called repairs is broke again after only a week. I want to take it back to the dealer and run him over with it and just the park car on top of him as a memorial. “Here lies a used car salesmen – may he carry on his back the weight of all the junkers he unloaded on good people for the rest of time, Amen.”
To drown my sorrows and frustrations, I bought a 360. For those of you who don’t know, I won’t explain. You’re on the Internet. Look it up. I also got SC4 to go with it. I’ve been playing the crap out of it ever since I got it. The only complaint I have about it is that there are too many whiney teenagers on there that love to moan when they lose to me. Eventually I found the mute button, but not before being called cheap a million times over. Death threats from cracky voiced tweenies don’t scare me. “I’ll kill you and your family! Ahhh!! You suck!” is what they say. So eloquent. It makes me want to smack them upside the head and sing, “Read a book. Read a book, read a mxtherfxck|ng book!” I love that song.
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Things that don’t suck about being in America: a nice comfy mattress, Chipotle, Taco Bell, BBQ, thick steaks, reading signs effortlessly, driving, not being discriminated against for being American, telling jokes in English without having to explain why it’s funny,shoes that fit, Dr.Pepper Icees, Papa John’s Pizza, Sitcoms, TV in general is a million billion trillion (MBT for future reference) times better.
Things that don’t suck about living in Japan: The girls aren’t fat in Japan (It’s a cow fest here), Yakitori, Chicken Nanban, Fresh Miso soup, Sukiyaki, Shabushabu, Gyudon, Okonomiyaki, Japanese documentaries, cute Japanese girls in volleyball uniforms waving at me, izekayas, reading manga in Japanese, being a local celebrity, maccha, bentos, good sushi, walking in downtown Fukuoka, riding my bicycle on a nice day, having a close-knit community of foreigners for friends, a Dandy – chocolate ice cream dipped in bitter chocolate and covered with a chocolate waffle, Meiji chocolate covered almonds (the ones here suck), and random Japanese weirdness.
Japanese Test
Posted on: December 18, 2008
On December 7th, 2008 I took level one of the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test). I tried to study a little bit the day before, but I wasn’t really into it. I figured no sense trying to cram a years worth of studying into 1 day. I read over a few things, just hoping it might help me the next day and then I played video games and watched movies until one or two in the morning. My neighbor was also up late practicing his hyena impersonation. He didn’t stop until sometime after 4:30. I wanted to go over there and kick his door down and make him shut up, but I didn’t. I managed to wake up at 8:30. I didn’t feel too tired so I got out of bed and got ready to go to KyuSanDai to take the test. I road my bike to the station, but the train I need to catch would get me there too late. So I took a take. The taxi cost me 1,050 yen. The train would have cost me 180 yen. It’s a five minute taxi ride at most.
This time I knew what to expect. The university was full of Chinese and Korean students. In my exam room there were only two other non-asian guys. A white guy of about thirty-five or forty and a young black guy with a nose ring that looked like it belonged to a bull. In front of me and behind me were Koreans. To my left and right were Chinese. My test proctors were Japanese of course. The head lady in the room spoke in very deliberate Japanese. Making clear pauses inbetween the words which kind of made me angry a little. I mean we are taking level one, the most difficult level of all. Why should she dumb down her Japanese so much. Don’t—open—-test—until—we—say—start. I can understand talking like that for the low levels, but not for level one.
I took the test. The kanji and vocabulary section was stupid hard for me. Next was listening. It wasn’t as hard as I would have expected. The reading and grammar was hard, but not near as hard as the kanji section. I answered every question and did my best. During the listening section the CD skipped several times and everyone thought they would go back and replay those parts. Nope. They told us, “If you have a problem with the way we do things, write a letter to headquarters. Those are the rules.” Nobody wrote a letter or at leastI didn’t write them a letter. I just sent them a change of address. I’m going back to America.
Because I said I would
Posted on: November 18, 2008
OK here is a link to a friend’s website. www.nihonstuff.com He’s always reworking the site to try and improve things. Give him suggestions on how he can make it better and more user friendly. Thanks.
A bike ride
Posted on: November 11, 2008
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- 735 yen for creamed corn soup
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- Delicious Japanese Kimchi
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- Japanese waiting for a chance to win a prize
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- Japanese waiting to win a drawing
Today I went on a long bike ride. I rode from Fukodaimae to Kashii. On my trip I took a few pictures. The weather was great today. A little cold, but the sun was shining. I stopped off at Aeon mall where I saw hundreds of people lining up for their turn to win a prize from the grocery store’s lottery. Basically you turn a handle and it makes the balls in an octagonal box go round and round until a ball pops out. The value of your pize depends on what color ball you draw. It looked like most people won vouchures or discounts on merchandise, because nobody walked away with a very big smile while I watched from the Starbucks across the way. I had a hot dark cherry mocha coffee. It was probably one of the best coffees I’ve ever had.
On my way home I saw a girl in a junior high school uniform get clipped by a car while she was riding her bike uphill. The girl wasn’t injured. She gave me the stink-eye when I looked at her as I rode past. The driver was a young thirty something lady in a white mini-car. The driver was more shook up than the girl, who just looked pissed off.
While I was waiting for a train to pass I overheard to college age girls behind me talking about their friend Midori. According to them, Midori likes chubby guys and she recently bought a t-shirt. Also one of the girls was very sleepy. She told her friend that she only got six hours of sleep. It wasn’t the most interesting conversation, but that’s just an example of what Japanese girls talk about.
- In: ALT | Japan | japanese | learning | linguistics | meh | Random | study | teaching | Thoughts | Uncategorized | unique | Writing
- 4 Comments
I’ve taught English in Japan for almost two years now. And there are some things that do not change. Japanese people will make mistakes when they speak English and English teachers will make fun of them -sometimes openly and sometimes just in the company of their fellow English teachers. It comes with the territory. Everyone bitches about their job in every field out there. Or at least in English speaking community we do. We try not to go too far. We know that they are trying to learn and we cut them some slack. But when they make the same mistakes week after week after week and no matter how many times you correct them they still keep on making the same grammar and usage mistake it will drive you crazy. Not only that, it rubs off on you. If you hear enough broken English, in time you will start to speak in broken English. It happend to me the first time I came to Japan. When I went home my family said, “What is wrong with you? Talk normal.” It’s not permanent though. I think the effects wore off within a week or so.
Here are some examples of real life English mistakes that some of my students have made in the past:
Where do from? -> Where are you from?
What is mean? -> What does this mean?
I get up my bed. I my hands. And wear clothes. My brush teeth. I eating banana. -> I get up. I wash my face and hands. I get dressed and then I eat a banana.
I wash face and teeth. I make up. I dressed. -> I was my face and brush my teeth. I put on my makeup and get dressed.
I prepare my textbook. I leaving my house. Because tonight cooking. -> I get my bag ready for school. I leave my house. Tonight I’m going to cook.
Where did you go Tokyo place? -> Where did you go in Tokyo?
I haven’t that movie, I want to see. -> I haven’t seen that movie, but I want to see it.
Do you have reccomend? -> Do you have any reccomendations?
I was shoot somebody. -> Somebody shot me.
Cut the foot. -> I cut my foot.
My brother is heart attack. -> My brother is having a heart attack.
My cousin is stabbing -> My cousin has been stabbed.
My house is fire. -> My house is on fire.
He is white hair. -> He has white hair.
He had a glasses. -> He had glasses.
I stole my purse. -> Somebody stole my purse.
He had not hair. -> He was bald.
Some of you who are reading this are probably laughing yourself silly as many of you who read this blog are English teachers. Some of you are shaking your heads and wishing it wasn’t true. Not that my grammar is perfect in any Japanese or English. I’ve been laughed at for speaking broken or funny Japanese before and rightfully so.
You know your students are improving when they’ll say something incorrect and then laugh at themselves and try to self-correct or give you the look. The look of “Please help me I don’t what to say here” then you clue them in. If you have any examples of common Japanese English mistakes, please share them.
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