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Today is the fourteenth day, and also the start of the third week of the spring semester 2024. I taught three classes; one in the morning and two in the afternoon. Foreign teachers are allotted many classes on Monday. Why? Well, I don’t think it is good to write the reason here.

First two classes are Listening for the second-year students. I taught expressions for speculation;”mitaida” and “rashii”. I don’t think 90 minutes are enough to learn these two expressions well. And as other years’ students, most students don’t understand the difference between the speculation ”souda” and the hearsay “souda”.

Although I wanted to take a nap during lunch hours, even if it’s just ten minutes, I didn’t have time to do so. I had to carry a bunch of answer sheets of final exam in last semester from my room to the administrative building. Also, I needed to ask how to register scores of retests. I was carrying three bags on my both hands and shoulder. When I was going to cross an intersection of the road, I saw many cars made their turns without direction lights on.

Finishing several tasks in teacher’s room, I had to go to classroom for afternoon class. Early afternoon class was listening for another second-year students. And late afternoon class was conversation for the first-year students. There are a lot of things that I want to write here, but I have to stop to write. Actually, now I am writing this in the following morning. I need to prepare for Tuesday class.

Today is the fourteenth day of the spring semester 2024, and on Sunday. My Saturday was bad because I had got a cold. Body temperature was not so high, but I had sluggishness on my body, my throat, muscle, and joints were aching. After my supper on Saturday night, I took two tablets of cold medicine “Pabron” which I brought from Japan. And then I went to bed. I felt hot and became sweaty on Saturday night as well as Friday.

In the morning today, I again took Pabron after breakfast. Apparently, my condition was getting better through morning hours. I felt like as if I were HULK with his muscling up

Thanks to the medicine, I could finish grading of retests of three subjects in the morning. I went outside for lunch at noon. Every weekend I go to the campus cafeteria at noon and eat boiled dumplings. It is usually on Saturday, but this week on Sunday because of my catching cold. Ordering dumplings must be done by choosing 10, 15, or 20 in number. I always order 10. Since my stomach is not so big, if I order 15, I would mess my weekend afternoon by heavy stuff in my stomach. But here is another issue. Although I want to say 10 pieces, I often say 4 pieces. Four dumplings are neither the unit of ordering nor enough for lunch. Today again, my ordering was like “4 pieces”, “You mean 10?”, “Uh, yes,10” kind of conversation. In addition, many students order dumplings for “to-go”, I have to “I will eat them here”.

On the way back to my room, I bought 12 litters of bottled water. 12KG is one-fifth of my body weight. It was heavy to carry by my hand but I did that. I felt my energy back.

I had been analyzing quiz about particles (postpositions). I gave the quiz to the first-year students in order to measure how much my students had learned particles so far. Each student makes errors in his/her way. I spent whole afternoon hours to prepare for feedback to each student. Some were still unable to use the subject indicator ”-ga”, some don’t understand “-ni” was the destination indicator of action of a verb. Typical error was using the destination indicator “-ni” instead of “-de” for where an action takes place.

I started sending messages to each student after supper. The messages were not just showing his/her errors, but also asking answers to questions to confirm if he/she learned the right choice of particles. Communication on SNS had continued in Sunday night. Then I realized that the time was 9:43 p.m. already. I sent a message on class bulletin board saying “I am going to bed tonight”. Some ten messages were left “unread”. Those will be answered by me tomorrow.

Today is the thirteenth day of the spring semester 2024. Since yesterday, I have had symptoms of cold. I felt very hot in the bed last night. I was sweaty.

If there was no schedule today, I could have taken a rest whole day. But I had to go to a classroom and to supervise a retest of final examination of last semester. The test was for listening course. I had to play the audio material for the exam. Four students came to the classroom. The audio lasted more than 70 minutes. I was looking at students, but felt very cold in Saturday classroom.

After the test, I went to the administrative building, and printed quiz for coming week. There are not many questions on the quiz sheet, so, I usually four quiz sheets on one A4 paper. There are 50 students in the second-year and 56 in the first-year. I printed 13 and 14 sheets for each grade. I have to cut A4 paper into four. Thinking about time and effort to cut them, it might be better to one quiz sheet on one A4 paper. Yes, probably. But I like use resources minimum. I don’t waste papers.

I went back my room with answer sheet of retest and quiz paper still in A4 and left them in the room, I went out again. Saturday is a day to buy food of coming week. Since I got a cold and had a feeling of sluggishness in my body, I couldn’t walk fast. It was really an agony to walk long way to the grocery store. I bought a bundle of green leaves and green beans, Chinese cabbage, Radish, Mushroom, Ginger, Garlic, four apples and three oranges, and two pieces of pork. Buying pork meant that I needed to cook it soon. I wanted to stay on the bed, but I cooked the pork so that I could keep them in freezer.

Returning from shopping, I spent most of afternoon hours on my bed. But I had to grade the retest. I got up from the bed in the evening and finished grading Business Writing for the third-year students. I couldn’t do any work quickly because of headache and sluggishness.

Now I ate my supper and took cold medicine ”Pabron” which I brought from Japan. I am going to bed soon,

Today is the twelfth day of the spring semester 2024. I actually got a cold. It started with minor throat ache. Today I feel chilly and headache. This is the first cold in this semester, but I had got twice in the last semester. How many times will I catch colds in this semester? One thing is certain; when I feel tired, my body tends to catch a cold. This time is also such kind. It is likely that my body has lost resistance to the disease.

Although I have to grade retests of 22 students, I am going to bed soon tonight.

Today is the eleventh day of the spring semester 2024. Before the class in the morning, I was grading quizzes that I assigned to the first-year students on the first day of this semester. If I analyze the result, I could extract many information about errors my students made.

For example, many students erroneously answered for the question about a particle (postposition) that indicates where action takes place. Of course, Japanese and English are not the same, but let me explain what my students’ error are like through English. Bad answer is as follows;

I read a book to the library.

I think the sentence would be “I read a book in the library”. Again, Japanese and English are not the same, but in this particular case, I want to say Japanese postposition”-ni” is like “to” in English, “-de” is like “in”. My students should use “-de” for where action takes place. But they use “-ni” whose basic concept is a destination that an action heads towards. There are so many errors of this type like;

   I eat my lunch to the cafeteria.

   I study to the classroom.

   I work to the office.

When I see these on an answer sheet, I want to scream. I am even suspicious there might have been a teacher who taught wrong postpositions to the students.

Another example is what I found in one class of the two. It is about Ko-So-A words. I am not sure if there is an order of “This, It, and That” by distance in English or not. But anyway, there is words for middle distance in Japanese. It is a kind of intermediate word between here and there. Students in one class know the word. But students in another class don’t know the word. Probably it is because different teachers taught each class. The latter class’s teacher didn’t teach well about words for intermediate distance. Now what I am supposed to do is clear. I need to teach the word so that my students can learn.

That is about the first-year students. Two classes of today’s three were for the second-year students. I assigned a small quiz at the beginning of these two classes. Now I have got about 50 answer sheets on my desk. I have to grade them. But I would like to go to bed early tonight, because I am tired from three classes I had done today. From tomorrow, I have to grade much more answer sheets. Those are retests of the students who failed the final examinations of last semester.

Today is the tenth day of the spring semester 2024. I don’t have a class on Wednesday, although I have to do a lot of work for teaching. I woke up 5a.m. today. These days I write a blog post before going to bed in previous night, and I upload the post right after I get up in the morning. Today too, I uploaded my yesterday’s draft in the early morning. I ate my breakfast which were leftover of the supper last night, washed my cloths by the washing machine, hung the wet clothes in my room to dry out them, and started working as usual.

Today, I had been making PPT slides for my conversation class. They were for teaching NA-adjectives. There are two types of adjectives in Japanese; one is I-adjectives and the other is NA-adjectives. It is quite difficult for Japanese learners to properly conjugate these two adjectives. My student, too, feel it very difficult. What they are doing is to avoid conjugation of I-adjectives as long as they can. But such an effort is just producing errors. When conjugation is unavoidable, they conjugate an I-adjectives as if it is a Na-adjectives.

At noon, I went outside. It seemed that spring had come already. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. Snow and ice on the pavement had almost gone. People’s winter clothes had become thinner and lighter than two weeks ago. I had my lunch in teacher’s cafeteria a little late because I didn’t like congestion by many teachers in lunch time. I got my one jacket and two trousers back from a laundry after lunch. Though I wanted to buy citrus fruits in a fruits shop, I just went into a supermarket and bought milk and Cola.

I don’t think I need to write about my afternoon today. It was just nap and PPT making.

Today is the eighth day of the spring semester. And also, today is Monday. I have three classes on Monday; Late morning, early afternoon, and late afternoon. Of the three, two are the listening course for second-year students and one the conversation course for first-year students.

   I wanted to keep sleeping until 6 a.m. but I woke up at 4 a.m. Sleeping hours were not enough to start a week. So, I took short sleeping minutes twice today; from 7:30 to 8:00 after my breakfast and from 12:30 to 13:00 after my lunch. These things indicate that it is easy for me to fall asleep after eating a meal.

   In the classroom for the second-year students, there are big tables. 6 to 7 students can have a seat around one table. Last time, five students committed cheating during a small quiz. They were students who seated around the same table. So, this time I made them have a seat on five different tables. I guess that they understood my warning.

   Another small happening today was about my accent. The first-year students learned Japanese words about time and date today. When I pronounced “Shigatsu (April in Japanese)” in front of my students, I just remembered what I listened from radio recently. That radio show talked about the accent of “Shigatsu”. They introduced an episode in which someone in a studio was required to correct his or her accent of Shigatsu by the director. The radio personality expressed his empathy with Kansai people saying that they wanted to say “Shigatsu” with their accent.

   Accent of Japanese is so-called “pitch accent” consisting low and high pitches. The standard accent of Shi-ga-tsu is Low-High-High. When I uttered “Shigatsu” as a model pronunciation in front of my students, I remembered the episode, and quickly I started worrying about my accent. I took my electronic dictionary out from my bag and checked the accent of “Shigatsu” by the accent dictionary of NHK. And I realized what I pronounced was different from the standard. I said it with High-Low-Low. I apologized to my students and uttered “Shigatsu” again with Low-High-High accent

I was born and raised in northern part of Japan. The region is not in western Japan. But through my life and career, I spent much time with Kansai people. Thanks to communication of many years with them, my Japanese pronunciation is heavily affected by Kansai accent. I try to pay attention to my accent, because I often speak Japanese words with Kansai accent.

Don’t get me wrong, I would never be denial to Kansai accent. Kansai people are a group in Japan with fabulous culture. I respect them. Historically they have been the center of Japan. It is NEITHER which is good or bad, NOR superior or inferior. Important thing is that I have to be careful about the difference between the standard and Kansai accents. The worst is being unconscious with such issue when I teach Japanese language to foreign people. I think I have to check my accent more often using the NHK accent dictionary.

This is the seventh day of the spring semester. The second week will start tomorrow. That means I have to prepare for classes in coming week. I have eight classes a week, but luckily enough, I just have to prepare for PPT presentations for four classes, because I teach the same subject to two class of the same grade. I had completed the first one in Friday night, the second at noon on Saturday, the third in the morning today, and I completed the fourth Power point presentation just before, Sunday night. One class lasts 90 minutes, or I could say it is 95 minutes with 45 minutes for first half, 5 minutes break, and 45 minutes for last half. My PPT usually becomes 45 slides for 90 minutes class. I use seven hours to make PPT for one class in average sense.

Today has been another peaceful weekend day. I got up at 5 a.m., upload a post on wordpress, took a breakfast of steamed rice, miso soup, and a cup of protein supplement shaken with cow milk. As for protein supplement, not with cow milk, but I wanted to mix it with goat milk, thinking about digestion. But I cannot find any goat milk these days on the shelves in a supermarket. Probably it’s because there is no grass on the ground in this time of season.

I turned on the power switch of the hot water tank. I wanted to take a shower in the morning. But I kept making PPT after the breakfast. I just missed the timing to take a shower. Maybe I am stinky. Once I completed PPT slides for listening course of the second-year students, I quickly started making PPT slides for conversation course of the first-year students.

At noon, I went outside for lunch. I went to the Campus restaurant and ate a bowl of “Beef Rah-men”. I got discount for teachers. But I couldn’t find any single piece of beef in the Rah-men. They may say beef is used for soup.

On the way back to the residence, I brought my jacket and two trousers to a laundry. And bought 12 litter water and two cartons of cow milk. Leaving my purchases in my room, I went outside again, this time to the administrative building. Since I don’t have a printer in my room, I wanted to use the printer in the teachers’ room. I was there for an hour, printing some documents about the final examinations in the last semester. Printing quality was bad. It must have been black and white printing, but made many parts gray. Probably the toner is not a genuine product.

I came back a little past three in the afternoon. I continued to work for PPT making. I cooked my supper with a lot of vegetable from 6 to 7 p.m. After the supper I completed the fourth PPT on this weekend at 8 p.m. And now I am writing this.

There will be a lot of scoring work in coming week. Those are retests of the final examinations of last semester. What I am worrying about now is that I will not be able to prepare well for the classes on next week of the coming week. Tough time continues. I don’t have time to rest.

   The first week of the semester is over. I got up at 5 a.m. I was making PPT slides for the conversation course in the morning hours. I finished making them and went outside my residence a little past noon. I went to the campus restaurant and ate ten boiled dumplings. It has been my habit to eat boiled dumplings on weekend since last semester. While waiting for the dumplings, I found there were two huge caldrons of free soup. I poured that soup into a bowl.

   10 dumplings are good amount for my stomach. Probably 15 are too much and would make my afternoon a nightmare. When I got 10 hot dumplings, I took oily hot pepper sauce and vinegar to a small dish. But I was disappointed by the fact that grated fresh garlic was gone on the counter. Then I ate dumplings and soup. I saw several red lines in the soup. They were antennae of shrimps. The soup was taste of shrimp.

   When I finished my lunch, I went outside campus for shopping. I wanted to buy foods for coming week. I always come to the same shop in the town. People there know my face. What I bought today were; green vegetable, green beans, two carrots, white mushroom, five pears, five citrus oranges, three blocks of pork, and 5kg of rice. On the ways of go-and-back, I saw many vendors were selling strawberries. I was just wondering why there were so many strawberries were being sold on roadside in this time, because the season was still very early spring. When I grew strawberries by myself in my garden several years ago, the season of strawberry was late spring. The strawberries I saw today must be grown up in greenhouses. I didn’t want to buy them because I had already bought pears and oranges.

   I took a nap for two hours in my room after coming back from shopping. Probably my fatigue had accumulated more than I thought. Anyway, once I got up from the bed, I started working again. I continued to make PPT slides for listening course by the time of cooking supper. I boiled green beans and ate them with mayonnaise. That was my Saturday.