月: 2020年8月

Photographs on the week (Another blog of mine)

August 10, Monday

Of course I started working right after breakfast. Although it is summer break now, I assigned homework to 4^th grade students. That was to write their names in Japanese Kanji with pronunciation with Kana, and to explain the Kanji(s) so that Japanese people can tell what Kanji(s) is used for the name. I sent a feedback to one student in the morning for this homework.

And then I made a preliminary version of PPT slides for reading class. I wanted to do the same for business manner class, but I didn’t have much time when I finished making PPT for reading class.   

August 11, Tuesday

At around 10 a.m., I went to a small library that was one of city libraries. I reserved a book about advanced level Japanese grammar through the internet and got an email saying the book was ready. So I went there to pick up it. And then I went to a flower shop to buy a flower bundle to offer the tomb of my dad as a ritual of “O-bon” season. After I got back home, I had just continued to work. Now the second floor is unbearable to work because of scorching heat. I worked in the air-conditioned room on the first floor. I kept working for the business manner class for 4^th grade students, but I had already spent too many days for only one class of 90 minutes. I’ve got to do 18 times for the subject. If I use three days for preparation, it would mean that only one subject take 54days. I cannot do that.

August 12, Wednesday

It was not as hot as two- three days before. So I worked at the tatami room on the second floor in the morning hours. I moved to the living room on the first floor in the afternoon because there was air condition. I was just making PPT for the business manner class. At 4:30 p.m., I went to the supermarket. I bought the slices salmon for supper, and got two flower bundles to offer to the tombs for the Obon ritual. When I ordered two flower bundles in the day before, I thought they would be put left and right of my dad’s tomb. But through the talk with my uncle, it seemed like one would be offer to my dad’s tomb and the other would be put at the entire family grave which was in the different temple. The first idea changes in order to accommodate to the different situation that I didn’t thought at the first. I think this could happen day to day, and it’s okay. 

August 13, Thursday

It is the season of Obon in which people go to the family grave. My father’s family went to my father’s tomb first and then went to the family grave. I didn’t go with them because I had already visited my dad’s tomb last week on 7^th, Friday. And the big news? was that an electric fan came to my house from Amazon.co.jp. I assembled it and turned on the switgh…I was amazing. It was unbearable because of the heat of summer in my room, Japanese style with 8-tatami mat, these days. But once I turned the electric fan on, it did become bearable with cool air flow. I thought the electric fan was also a great invention of human being. I mean, if not as great as refrigerator or washing machine, but I felt it as great as rice cooker.        

August 14, Friday

This is the first Obon season since my dad died. The day, my aunt family and an uncle of my mother’s side came to the house. The aunt is elder sister of my mom. They said they would come in the morning, but it was almost noon when they actually came. I found that I was not ready for their lunch. I soon got out of the house and headed to the supermarket a half mile away by walk, or actually run. I remember that that supermarket was selling big dishes in Obon season probably because many families got many guests and relatives to the house. But I didn’t see any on the shelves this time. So I bought many packages of in small trays. I understood afterwards by the conversation with aunt family, it was because coronavirus. People did not visit each other in this Obon season because they didn’t want to spread the virus. So the supermarket had judged there was not much need for the big dishes of Hors d’oeuvre. Anyway I was tired for running by my foot and carrying many foods by my hand.

August 15, Saturday

It was the commemoration day when the WWII ended.

August 16, Sunday

It is rainy, it cannot be said that the rainy season is over in this year. Still the rain continues to fall.

I don’t like the block editor on wordpress. It makes writing a blog post really difficult. I hope that the better writing system will come someday or some year. Until the time, I think I just use one block. I mean, this is my solution for the block editor that is difficult to handle. I put everything on just one block without using multi blocks. So it will usually be text-only. Photograph images are shown on my another blog on goo “LQ Laoshi’s Photo Gallery”

Photographs on the week (Another blog of mine)

August 03, Monday

I went to a branch office of the city hall in the morning to get some verifications of my stamp. Still we Japanese have to use a stamp for signing an important document. A stamp is an out-of-date habit to verify a person who agreed on a document. I think it should be taken place by signature. But anything in Japan is slow to change, lagging behind to be better. And then I went to city library to make my card to borrow the books in the library. I took a log nap in the afternoon, went to a convenience store in order to pay some equivalent to 160 USD for Japanese National Pension (in fact, it was for April), and went to a supermarket to buy food for supper.

August 04, Tuesday

I worked all day. I checked how and where the important grammatical items appeared in each section of reading book that is part of Minnano Nihongo series. That reading material is so well organized. For example, one grammatical item appears in repeatedly in several sections so that a learner can understand, learn, and use themselves the item. So it is important for a teacher to know how, where, and what a grammatical item appears in the reading material.

August 05, Wednesday

I worked all day doing the same thing the day before. I assumed that I would teach 16 sections in the reading book in the coming semester. So I analyzed 16 sections in two days.

August 06, Thursday

I lost the memory of the day. Nothing is recorded on my business diary. I think I started preparing for another subject that I was going to teach in the coming semester. That was the class to teach business manner that can specifically be applied to Japanese working place.     

August 07. Friday

I went to a ceremony for the families that lost loved ones in this year. That was in the morning hours. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, there was no lunch at the noon;  the ceremony was ended within an hour. When I went to the venue in the morning, I got on a taxi from the railway station. That taxi costed 2,790JPY. So I wanted to save money, walked back to the station. Actually it took two hours! I felt tired but I was okay, because I had been just sitting on tatami for this half year. I just wanted to walk by my legs.

August 08. Saturday

It was just yesterday, but I have almost lost my memory about yesterday. It was rainy. So it was like the rainy season had come back again. I went to the nearby library to pick up a book that I asked the library to get from other library through the web site of Niigata city library. Other than that, I had just kept working all day for the business manner class for the coming semester.

August 09, Sunday

It was almost like yesterday. I got an email from the library saying that other five books had delivered to my nearby library. So I went there as yesterday to pick them up in the morning. Other than that, I had just worked all day for making PPT slides for business class.

Although it is now summer break, I assigned homework to the 1734 class students. That was to explain their name in Japanese Kanji so that a Japanese person could tell the Kanji(s) for his/her name. Today is the deadline for the assignment, but still 10 students have not sent their homework to me. Actually the class 1735 is even worse. Many of them have not yet registered to the group on Dingtalk. So I cannot give them the same homework assignment as 1734.

I am going to teach three subjects in the coming semester. All the three is new to me. One year ago, I was going to teach listening for 1^st grade students, composition for 2^nd grade, and intermediate Japanese for other departments’ students. The last one was contingent, actually. But anyway, if I will teach the listening or composition class, I mean, just one of them, I could have taken a little rest during this summer break. Now I have to prepare new three subjects, I cannot have even one holiday. I need to continue to work every day for preparation. No progress from the last year.

Currently my wordpress blog does not get viewers. Almost no one visits here. The reason is obvious; I just write one post a week only these days. So sometimes I feel I want to write a post. But now it is not the time for it. I should not waste my time for blogging; rather, I need to spend my time for preparation for the classes. And I feel, after all, I think it is difficult for me to write English. For these four years, I have just tried to learn how to teach Japanese. I am a native Japanese speaker, but being a native and teaching the language well are different. I devoted so much for Japanese for so long, now my English has almost disappeared from my brain.   

Photographs of This Week

July 27, Monday

I actually lost the memory about the day. I always write some record about a day on my notebook that is a kind of business diary. But I left nothing on the notebook. I just remember that I ordered a textbook from a book retailer in that country. It was 1857JPY. The textbook itself was 857yen and shipping costed 1000yen. The shop usually sends their books by EMS, however, this time the book cannot reach me in the speed of EMS because of the pandemic.

July 28, Tuesday

I stopped preparing for Japanese teaching from this day. Although I had been doing that since the spring semester ended, I have one thing that I have to do now. That is succession of property that my dad left. At first I spent a lot of hours to understand the way of inheritance tax by looking at the web-site of National Tax Agency. It seemed to me that the process was too complicated. But I realized that I didn’t have to pay the inheritance tax because what my dad left was less than the amount that needed to pay tax. However, even if it is small amount, I have to reach an agreement with other heiresses and need to write a document to show banks. I carefully made the document so that it would not contain any errors in it.

July 29, Wednesday

So the anything in Japan is complicated and difficult unnecessarily. People always waste their time to do anything with irrational procedures. I was still continuing to write a document that would be an agreement among heir (me!) and heiresses. I went to the office of Farmers Association (JA) in the morning to check my dad’s  bankbook. My family has nothing to do with agriculture, though, this area used to be nothing but a farmland in the old days. So the Farmers Association is still an important financial institution here. They gave me good information about succession of property. Since I have no one to consult with, I appreciated their help.

July 30, Thursday

My room, or my office, is a 8-tatami room. Since the beginning of May, I have been sitting on the Tatami for so many hours, working hard to make hundreds or even thousands Power Point slides for my online Japanese teaching, and teaching Japanese language beyond the national border. On Thursday, I cleaned just a little part of this tatami room on the second floor (by US way of counting floor, not by Britain way. This house is just two-story building) And then I took a rest on the bed in the afternoon.

July 31, Friday

I am not sure if I will be able to back to the University before the first semester starts. If not, I will have to continue online teaching. I will teach “new” classes in the coming semester. So I started preparing for the semester by organizing new groups on Dingtalk for class 1938, 1734, and 1735. Making these three groups has not been finished as of Sunday. Probably no teacher used Dingtalk in the last semester for the class 1735 because the 1735 students are slow to join in the group. It was not the thing to hasten; still we have one month by the start of the semester.

August 1^st, Saturday

I started making the teaching plans for the reading class. Its textbook is a reading material of part of Minnano Nihongo series. I made the plans from section 26 to 33. In the afternoon, I went to a supermarket to buy some foods for supper. I bought two slices of salmon for the day and chopped chicken for the following day. After the supper, I ordered 24 cans of non-alcohol beer and Chinese-Japanese dictionary to Amazon.co.jp in the night. They were about 15,000JPY (140USD).

August 2nd, Sunday

I got up at 5 in the morning and cut the weed in the garden. Then I took shower and had breakfast. I uploaded my blog post on the goo in the morning hours. Now I just want to upload my digital photos not to wordpress but to goo because it is a little difficult to upload a photo image to wordpress blog post. It is easy for me to do that onto “goo”. In the afternoon, I worked in the air-conditioned room to make my teaching plans for the reading class. I started with the section 34 of the textbook and got to the section 41 that would be the last in the coming semester. But my teaching plan is still simple. I want to make it more elaborate, but I need to move on to preparation for another class that is for business manners. I cannot spent much time for reading class that is for second grade students. Actually the business manner class would be a tough one even to me who had worked for 22 years as a company employee. Anyway there is one thing that I have recently decided. I should not waste my precious time to write a blog post. If many people come and read my posts, it would be good to use my time for writing. But my blog is not that kind. The fact is that only very few people come very occasionally here. So 99.5% of viewers is actually, ME. This blog is exclusively to record my daily life as a less-experienced Japanese teacher. And now it is a summer break between the semesters. I need to use my time wisely for the better teaching in the coming semester.