Bad hand

This is the cardboard hand that was wearing a pair of gloves when I bought them, a little while ago.

The fingers were not bent when I bought them. That happened later ... somehow.

A reassuring theory

A couple of days ago I had a phone call from a friend who has suddenly found herself very, very busy. Not because of anything that has happened to her, but because of things she has made happen to herself. She has booked herself up for the next two weeks with music performances, a marathon, and goodness knows what else. She also has two small children and a very busy husband.

"I've started talking to myself when I'm alone," she said, worriedly. "Out loud. It's getting quite scary. 'Put the rice on, kiddo,' I tell myself. 'Good girl. Now you can do some practice, but don't forget the sheets are in the washing machine and need to be put in the drier after they finish. And while they're drying, you need to start on the veges. You can go for a run after the kids have eaten.'"

She sighed. "I hope I don't start doing it in public. I think I might be going crazy."

"You are not going crazy," I told her. "You are talking to yourself so that you DON'T go crazy. If you start talking about the weather, THEN you can worry."

"What do you mean?" she said.

"You're slowing yourself down," I said. "Inside your head everything is on fast forward. There is too much going on, and you're trying to think about it all at once. You think faster than you speak, so saying stuff out loud slows it all down."

"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed. "That's it! It keeps me focused!"

"That's right," I said. "You are not going crazy. You are carefully NOT going crazy, by slowing down the babble in your head."

By the time we hung up she was feeling quite reassured, so I decided not to tell her that this was a theory I had just made up.

Besides, I think it's quite a good theory.

Hey, wait a minute!

A few days ago I was sitting in the park enjoying some spring sunshine when a man with a clipboard approached me.

"I'm conducting a survey," he told me. "Do you have time to answer a few questions?"

"I'm very sorry," I replied. "But I don't understand Japanese."

"Oh, I see," he said. "Where are you from?"

"New Zealand," I said.

"I hear it's very beautiful," he said.

"Thank you," I said. "Yes, it is."

"Oh, well. Excuse me." He wandered off to accost someone else.

Today the phone rang, and it was some woman selling something. I responded in much the same way.

"Sorry," I said. "I don't understand Japanese."

"You're a gaijin?" she said, surprised.

"Yes," I said."

"Oh. Sorry. I can't speak English."

"That's too bad," I said.

She excused herself and hung up.

Both of these conversations were held entirely in Japanese. I have had similar conversations so many times that I have stopped expecting the penny to drop. Perhaps, when someone tells you politely that they can't understand while at the same time demonstrating that they understand perfectly adequately, it's just too much to handle. Perhaps it causes a brain freeze. I imagine a little spinning wheel in their heads, like the one on my computer when it gets hung up on something and everything stops working.

But I sometimes wonder if the little ball ever stops spinning. I wonder if any of them ever wake up in the night and say,

"Hey!"

A cheap day out

Yesterday I went to a flea market with a couple of friends. They told me they didn't want to buy anything, and I said that didn't matter, I was mostly just planning to take pictures anyway, although I might buy something if I saw something I couldn't resist. They thought that was a good idea, and both turned up with cameras round their necks.

At the end of the day they were both laden down with packages and excuses ("But it was cheap! But it's so beautiful!") and worries ("Where am I going to put these things?").

What I brought home with me takes up a lot less space. In fact it all fits on my hard drive.

I had a cheap day out.

Progress

Down at a little park near the supermarket the crows were making a lot of fuss, and I went to see what was going on. There I discovered that it is nest building time. I also discovered that the crows have progressed in their techniques. They are not only using plastic-coated wire hangers as building material, they are also using the ones make entirely of plastic. They have also included a peg.

I think they put a couple of the plastic hangers and the peg outside the nest so they would have somewhere to hang their washing.

A thousand words

What story do you get from this picture?

Nya!

Wagtail

The first sign of spring

Plum blossom

Odd shadows

Today I went for a short bicycle ride (it was too cold to go far) and took a few pictures. This one I took quickly, because the cat was looking purposeful and didn't look like it would stop and pose for me. I didn't expect it to be very good.

On the computer I was surprised to see how unexpectedly lovely the photo turned out, until I noticed what I thought was a smear on the camera lens right across the wall and tree. I looked at my other pictures, and there was nothing. I checked the camera lens, and it looks fine. (I cleaned it anyway.)

The Man and I have been discussing what it might be. We thought it might be a light reflection at first. Then The Man said he thought it was something spray painted along the wall and tree. Then we talked about the shadows going down (on the ground), like the shadows of a fence, and we now wonder whether that line is the shadow of the top of the fence.

I don't remember the fence at all. I was watching the cat. At some point I will have to go back and find out just what was behind me when I took this picture.

In the meantime, what do you think it is?

Tall, blue...

I was marking homework the other day, and one of my students had written about his previous English teacher:

He has tall, blue eyes, and very cool.

---

Today I spent the entire day at university trying to finish off grading and so on, but I also had one final exam still to do. I finished the grades for all my other classes, but for that one class I will have to go in again, because the exam was at the end of the day and I didn't have time to mark the papers and finalize the grades before the office closed. That was annoying. I wanted today to be my last visit until April. I tried REALLY HARD to finish, but just couldn't make it.

In fact I may have tried too hard. When I came home The Man told me that I looked like a wax dummy of myself.

That was a freaky thought, but not nearly as freaky as tall blue eyes.

Dog on wheels

A couple of times recently I have seen woman taking her dog for a walk in a local park. This is not unusual. A lot of people take their dogs for walks. What is unusual about this dog is that it has four legs and two wheels.


When the dog runs, its back legs run, too, only the back feet don't quite touch the ground. They brush the ground sometimes, but there is no weight on them.

The dog doesn't seem to notice this. The dog apparently thinks everything is working just fine.

And so it is.

Bribery and corruption (cont)

I meant to tell you what happened with my plan for the naughty Thursday class, but just after it happened I caught a nasty cold and things got tiring and busy for a while. I did write about it, but forgot to post it.

You will be happy to hear that my boss cooperated with my scheme to scare the students. He came into my class fifteen minutes before it was due to end, and bellowed at me.

"HAVE YOU BEEN LETTING THIS CLASS GO EARLY?"

"Er, no!" I said, and cowered, as per our plan. He turned to the class. The students were suddenly all sitting bolt upright.

"HAS SHE BEEN LETTING YOU GO EARLY?" he demanded.

There was a pause as the students mentally translated what he'd said.

"NO!" shouted a couple of the quicker ones. They were electrified.

My boss stared at them.

"WELL, SOMEONE HAS BEEN LETTING CLASSES GO EARLY," he shouted. Then he added, with a little less volume, "Maybe not your teacher?"

"NO!" answered some of the students. "YES!" answered others. (Negative questions always confuse them.)

"Maybe BadAunt is a good teacher," suggested my boss.

"YES, SHE IS!" replied my students, fervently. They looked terrifically serious.

The boss stared at the students, who stared back. You could see what they were thinking. He really is a scary boss! He really might fire her!

It was a stalemate.

Then the boss almost ruined it. His face started to twitch. Usually I hate the ridiculously high podium, because when I sit down I disappear from the students' sight, but for once I was glad. I sat down and disappeared from sight.

He tried to hold it back, but that sea of earnest, horrified faces made it hard. His shoulders shook. Trying to keep his face stern made his mouth look like the wrong end of a dog. I huddled down behind the podium, weeping silently into my hands. My boss glanced at me.

"ERM, GOOD!" he shouted, and I suddenly remembered the other thing I'd wanted to do. I stood up.

"It's them!" I said, pointing at the students. "They always want to leave early, and they try to bribe me!"

"Really?" said my boss. I hadn't told him about this bit.

"Yes," I said.

"Did you try to bribe her?" my boss asked the students. "How much?" He sounded interested.

"What?" asked the students.

My boss asked more slowly. The students still didn't get it. They hadn't remembered their new word. My boss asked again, in Japanese.

"No!" said my students, looking fantastically innocent. "We wouldn't do anything like that!" (The sneaky little liars!) The boss glanced at me uncertainly.

"HOW MUCH IS AN A?" I snapped at one of the guys.

"ONE THOUSAND YEN!" he snapped back. "Oh, wait..."

"Is that all?" asked my boss. "Only one thousand yen?"

"Er, One MILLION yen." corrected the student. "No, a hundred ... thousand yen. Maybe?"

The upshot was that the whole farce degenerated into yet another lesson about numbers, and my students were left not QUITE sure whether the boss had been serious or not.

On Thursday the following week the boss was sick and his class was cancelled. My students saw the notice outside the classroom, and when I walked into the classroom they were all excited.

"Sensei, sensei! The boss is absent today! Can we finish early?"

"Really?" I said. "HA! Yes, let's finish early!" I rubbed my hands together.

I made them promise to work really hard so we could get through the day's lesson quickly and finish early. Then, towards the end of class I put a word puzzle up on the board.

"When you get the answer to this, you can go home early!" I said, and they all cheered. Then they focused on the puzzle.

They were still staring at the board when the bell rang.

2010

Remember the Santa-like things I posted pictures of in December? They are variations (adaptation? parodies?) of Ah and Un, the guardians at shrine gates (except that they were both Un, because both of their mouths were closed). They were guarding a cafe rather than a shrine.

A curious blend of western and eastern happened at the shrine around the corner from our place, too. Shrines are always decorated and spruced up for New Year, and our neighbourhood had an unusually Christmassy New Year.


After going under the decorations we washed our hands in dragon water:


Ah and Un were at our shrine, too. These are shishi, lion dog guardians. (The warrier-type ones are Nioh.)

This is Ah:


And this is Un:


This woman has just bought an omikuji (fortune paper), and is reading it.


This woman and her panda are reading ema, people's wishes for the year.



Happy New Year, everyone!

Whose turn is it to do the dishes?

Merry Xmas!

Bribery and corruption

On Thursday I almost convinced my last, naughty class that if they wanted to pass they would have to bribe me. As class was starting, one of the students was giving another student 1000 yen for something, and I pretended it was for me. I held out my hand for it.

"For me?" I asked. Then I added, scornfully, "That won't get you an A!" and turned it down.

The student gaped at me uncomprehendingly, but one of the other students, who always listens carefully (his English is very low level but he is learning fast) was paying close attention, and after a few minutes of thinking about it all asked me interestedly how much would get him an A. ¥10,000?

"About that," I said. "And ¥5000 for a B."

"C is ¥1000?" he asked.

"No. ¥1000 is fail," I told him.

His friend wanted to know what we were talking about, so he translated. They puzzled over why anyone would pay me ¥1000 to fail, and then decided between them that a C should cost ¥3000. The rest of the class was, by now, listening interestedly. The first student calculated how much I would get if the whole class wanted As, and told me it could be my bonus.

Two students pulled out their wallets.

IT COULD HAVE WORKED!

In fact I'm still not sure if they were joking or not, but I made it clear that I was. At least I hope I did. Bribery is unethical and unprofessional, I told them, without actually using those words because they wouldn't have understood them.

On the other hand, I told one guy who is on the verge of failing (but I'm going to pass him because he's been trying, finally – I failed him first semester) that it was his job to erase the blackboard at the end of class every week from now on if he wanted to pass. I keep meaning to get students to do that anyway, but this is the first time I've actually managed to get someone to do it willingly. I'm hoping he will do it every week from now on. There are only four weeks left anyway, and I'd already decided to pass him so it's not really a bribe. He just thinks it is.

After class I bumped into my boss, who had been teaching in the room next to mine.

"Sometime I would like you to come into my class and yell at me," I told him.

"Why?" he asked.

"Well, I've been building you up all year as the Big Bad Bully Boss," I told him. "That class always wants to finish early, and I tell them I can't let them go yet because my scary boss is next door, and if he finds out he will fire me. If I let them go five minutes early I tell them to tiptoe out in the other direction, so they won't go past your classroom and you won't see. But last week I let them go ten minutes early, and now they don't believe me."

"TEN minutes early?" asked my boss, frowning.

"Yes," I said. "You can fire me if you like. I couldn't deal with them any longer without killing someone."

My boss thought for a moment.

"How about if I come in and start yelling at you and you yell back, only louder?" he suggested. "That would be funny, because I'm bigger than you."

"No," I told him sternly. "You have to yell at me, and I will cower."

What I didn't tell him is that I am also planning, when he yells at me, to yell back that I HAD to let my students go early because I was so upset that they were trying to bribe me. I know he will ask them about this in Japanese (he is a terrible teacher and uses mostly Japanese in his classes and his students don't need to know any English at all), and my students will have a wonderful time getting indignant and insisting that it was me and asking if he will REALLY fire me.

I have two reasons for wanting to do this. One reason is that if there is just one student in that class who didn't realize the bribery thing was a joke, at least I will have a reliable witness to the fact that it was, if that student complains to someone or even just tells someone (who tells someone else who tells someone else), and the next thing you know it has come up in a faculty meeting and I'm fired.

The other reason I want to do it is that I think it will be funny.

Silly old man

The other night I dreamed I was having a conversation with the Pope. He was doing all the talking. He told me all about his favourite woolly cardigan, in great detail.

I listened politely and thought,

What a silly old man.

It was one of my more boring dreams.

Floater

One of the teachers I work with had an eye operation recently, for a detached retina. Today he brought into work the information pamphlet his doctor gave him, which was entitled 'Floaters and Flashes,' which I first read as 'Floaters and Flashers.'

These floaters were not what I thought they were. The pamphlet was about those unwanted bits of stuff that float around in your eye, not in your toilet.

But seeing the title of this pamphlet reminded me of when I first left home. I lived for a short time in an apartment in Wellington, and downstairs from me was a single mother and her daughter. The daughter was five years old, and was my first visitor. We became friends very quickly. She used to come to see me and dress up in my clothes.

One day she ran up the stairs to tell me she had done something amazing.

"Come and see what I did!" she shouted. "Quickly!"

I ran down the stairs, and she took me into the bathroom, over her mother's protests.

"Look!" she said. "I did a big one, and it keeps coming back! Mummy says it's a floater!"

"It's horrible," called her mother, who was sitting at the kitchen table reading a magazine. "And it won't go away. I don't know what to do."

It certainly was a big one. It floated like a fat dumpling in the toilet bowl, and looked far too large to have been produced by a girl so small.

"Are you sure that's yours?" I asked.

"Yes!" mother and daughter chorused, and I'm not sure who was more indignant.

"Watch!" the little girl said, proudly, and flushed the toilet.

The floater turned a few lazy circles and dived languidly. We peered into the swirling water, but it had gone.

"Wait!" she said. "It'll come back! I promise!"

I waited.

Sure enough, after a few seconds the floater peeked slyly round the bend. It wiggled a bit, bobbed back to the surface, and bounced gently. It seemed to have become larger. The little girl laughed with delight.

I don't know how many times we flushed before it finally departed for good. That was a VERY PERSISTENT floater, and an amazing achievement for a five-year-old.

I would have been proud, too.

Idea

The other day as I was waiting for a delayed train a man limped past me along the platform, and I got the inspiration for a series of children's books. Well, a series of titles for children's books, actually. I didn't get as far as thinking of the actual stories.

A couple of nights ago I told The Man about them.

"I had an idea for a series of children's books about disabled animals," I said. "For example, a book called, The Short-Sighted Eagle. And another called, The Dog Who Couldn't Smell Anything."

"Eh?" said The Man, unimpressed.

"The Three-Legged Cheetah," I enthused. "The Fly Who Didn't Like Shit!"

"I think it's a stupid idea," said The Man, sensibly. "What would they be about? Who would want to read them?"

I had to agree, but new titles kept popping into my mind as I fell asleep.

The Noisy Mouse
The Cross-Dressing Lion, Queen of the Jungle
The Slender Pig
The Stupid Owl
The Clean Cockroach
The Weeping Hyena

The Man was right. It was not one of my brighter ideas.