カテゴリー: Uncategorized

My lower back is aching. Even when I am teaching in a classroom, I feel it aching. The cause is clear; long hours of sitting and lack of exercise. I am always sitting on a chair to prepare for my classes from getting up in the morning to going to bed in the night. And I don’t play any sports. These days I feel a lot of pain on my lower back and thigh. The lower back pain comes from long hours of the same posture, the pain of thigh is caused to support my weight on a chair.

In order to solve these problems, or in other words, in order to continue to work, I started to work with standing from today. Actually, this was what I did in the years of on-line teaching during the pandemic. I put two chairs on the desk. One chair doesn’t give me enough space to place the computer, the keyboard, the mouse, and two backup hard-disks. Working standing is not so bad. I recommend this way if a person has lower back pain.

Today is the forty-first day of the spring semester 2024. Since the day time today was filled with beautiful spring atmosphere, I went outside campus and bought 5KG of rice, 1KG of dried Udon, and big package of tea leaves.

Today is the thirty-sixth day of the spring semester 2024. I have one class before noon. That is for the first-year students. I made them “chorus repeat” before the pair activity of the day. Their voice in Japanese sounded good, but I thought that good students speak loudly, and no-so-good students speak in small voice. When they said an I-adjective predicate in past-negative, I could hear that some voices saying “Oishiikunakkata”. It must be “Oishikunakatta”. It may seem to be a small difference in written alphabet, but for the ears of native speaker, it is very different. “Oishiiku” has two possibilities; the one is that a student doesn’t understand conjugation of I-adjectives, the other is that a student has tendency to elongate vowels.

Usually, I cannot do anything in Tuesday afternoon because I keep working through the weekend. Today, too, I didn’t want to do anything, But, before taking nap, I handwashed two white shirts. There is a washing machine in my room. The university provides the machines to foreign teachers. The machine has the major German company’s name on top. And it amazingly uses less water comparing to washing machines of Japanese companies. Probably the design philosophy must be quite different between German and Japanese electric appliances manufactures. But one thing is common to both; washing machines cannot get rid of dirt on the collar of white shirts. I mean the inside of collar that neck touches. That is the part that can be most dirty on a white shirt, and the second is inside of cuff.

If I wash white shirts only by washing machine, collar and cuffs continue to be dirty. There is a good way; handwashing. I brought a soap from Japan, which is exclusively for handwashing. Its name is “Utamaro” having green color and nice fragrance. In this afternoon, I washed white shirts by my hands using “Utamaro”. I’d say it’s fun because I can do what a washing machine can’t. Of course I couldn’t make it perfectly white, but dirty collar and cuffs did amazingly become white.

Not only white shirts, I handwashed a cotton hat recently. “Utamaro” made a little old and dirty hat clean. The hat is light and has bright color suitable to the spring season. Walking outside with that hat on my head makes me feel good. So, if I had time to do so,,,,,,

Today is the thirty-fifth day of the spring semester 2024. I have three classes; the two for the second-year students and the one for the first -year students. I made my students do a pair-work in the latter that is conversation course. Actually, this activity is a kind of preparation for the final examination. I told this to the students so that they would do the activity seriously. Now it is the one-third point of the semester. I am planning the same activity at the two-third point.

The procedure of the activity is as follows;

1. Teacher’s explanation

2. Collecting students’ mobile phones

3. Showing a rough script that has many blanks

4. Drafting a script by students

5. Returning mobile phones

6. Recording conversation by the pairs

7. Sending the audio data to the teacher

The reason to do “2.” is to stop students’ use of translation software on mobile phone.

The activity was done at the end of the class. Time was only 30 minutes. I have got some knowledge for the testing procedure through this pair activities of conversation. Today, I don’t have time to write about the result, and I haven’t evaluated 14 audio data yet. I will listen to the audio data and use them as individualized instruction for each pair and each student.

Today is the thirty-fourth day of the spring semester 2024. Today is not weekend for me, but a working day. I taught one class in the morning. Actually. After the class, I went to the teacher’s room to print quiz answer sheets. I came back my room a little after 10 o’clock. I had been working in my room to make PPT slides for tomorrow class. Probably I took a nap from 2 to 3 in the afternoon. Then I made a test for the first-year students. Its purpose is to measure how students learned from my instruction in the first one third of this semester. I needed to print the test paper, but it was already 5 p.m. when I finished making it. I decided to print it tomorrow morning. I cooked my supper from 6 to 7 p.m. Tonight, too, I ate green beans for my supper but not with mayonnaise but with vinegar that I bought yesterday. Mayonnaise is the best, but vinegar is not so bad.

These days, I eat green beans in every supper. Green beans are called in Japan “Ingen” because green beans were said to have been brought by Zen-master Ingen. I think that the best way is to boil and eat them with mayonnaise. But the difficult part of cooking is boiling. If you boil green beans too long, they become too soft. If you boil them too short, they are still hard to chew. It is difficult to control boiling minutes when you are cooking other menus simultaneously. I had often boiled green beans many minutes and made them too soft in the past.

My solution is to heat them by microwave. I set the heating time to be 2 minutes and 40 seconds. So far, I think this heating time is the best. Tonight too, I cooked green beans with microwave and ate them with mayonnaise.

My new concern is that now the mayonnaise is almost running out. I brought a small amount of QP mayonnaise from Japan. I should have brought it more, but I can do nothing about it now. I would like to say loudly that it is a sheer precious happiness if you can eat your salad and/or boiled vegetables with mayonnaise.

Today is the thirty-second day of the spring semester 2024, and happens to be the second day of spring holidays. Still, I continue to work. I recorded my voice to make it part of the final examination for the listening course. There are two problems with recording; noise and reverberation. Of course, these must be minimized for the listening materials in the exam.

If I could record by the built-in microphone of my computer, it would make editing easier. But a certain level of noise is recorded in this way. The noise comes from the fan to cool down the computer. It is impossible to stop the fan during recording. I think I should have brought the noise cancelling microphone that I had used in my on-line classes during the pandemic. In order to record with less noise, I recorded by my mobile phone. The mobile phone doesn’t have a fan to cool. Probably sound quality is not so good. And I have to change the audio data format from m4a to mp3 when transferring from mobile phone to my computer.

The next problem is reverberation. My room has concrete walls. The walls make reverberation on my voice with echo. This problem also didn’t happen when I was in Japan, because there was no concrete wall in my room of traditional Japanese house. What I did in this morning was that I recorded my voice under the futon. On the bed, I put the futon on me, or I’d say I got into under the futon. Reading a book with a flashlight, I recorded my voice with a mobile phone. I felt less oxygen.

I always try to solve these technical issues that I get while working. No one knows it, no increase of salary because of it.

I finished recording and editing by 10 a.m., though it was just about 10 percent of recordings for the entire examination. Then I started making the PPT presentation for Sunday class. Of course, Sunday is usually weekend, but today (Friday)’s classes were rescheduled on Sunday. Thursday classes were not rescheduled, they were simply cancelled. I have three classes on Thursday and one class on Friday. So, no-rescheduling Thursday and rescheduling only Friday do help me.

I didn’t take a lunch, and I went outside in the afternoon. I wanted to go shopping in the grocery store where I go every Saturday. Today is Friday, one day earlier, but I wanted to go there because it is not good for my health if I just stay in my room all day. When I got to the campus gate, still I was inside, I remembered I didn’t bring my passport. If a foreigner doesn’t carry his/her passport, it will result in punishment. I have hardly seen any police officers on the way to that grocery store so far. I don’t think it is likely to be asked ID card by police officers. Having said that, I worried the worst case. So, I gave up going outside campus.

Instead of going back the same way, I turned to the campus cafeteria. It was afternoon and already late for lunch, but I ordered “Ramen”. I can usually get a discount for teachers in that noodle shop. But the guy there told me something that I could not understand. Probably he said that the card reader for teacher didn’t work, so I had to pay by students’ card reader. I put my card on students’ card reader and paid normal charge without discount. I just wanted “Ramen”, but he charged me “Beef ramen”. Of course, the latter’s price was higher. But what I got by the different price was just two or three of very small pieces of beef. It was already 2:30 in the afternoon and noodle was much in volume. I didn’t cook my supper tonight.

On the way to my room, I bought 12 litter of bottled water. I slept in late afternoon for two hours. The long hours of nap mean that I was tired. By 10 p.m. I completed PPT slides and other preparation for Sunday class. I started another PPT making for Monday class, but I gave up continuing work tonight.

I checked the pedometer on my mobile phone. Today I walked 3982 steps that are not enough for healthy daily life. Steps a day should be more than 8000. Actually, I feel I am losing my muscle on my body because I have been working all the time, sitting at desk for these five years. I want my body get my muscle back and healthy life style.

Today is the thirty-first day of the spring semester 2024, if I count days correctly. This Thursday and Friday are holidays here. This is a good chance for me to prepare for the final examination. Usually, I make questions and answer sheets during winter or summer breaks before the semesters. But there were a lot of documentation tasks in the winter break, I could not make materials for the final examination of this spring semester. The question-and-answer sheets are required to submit to the university in the 11^th week of the semester. So, now is the time to prepare for it in addition to daily preparation for ongoing classes.

I haven’t been outside today. I thought I’d better to walk outside for my physical and mental health, but I missed a chance in afternoon. When I looked at “Moments” of Wechat, I found many photo images in which many students were having fun. Some of them were in sightseeing spots, some were even in abroad.

I have been making questions and answers for the examination of the listening course all day today. I wanted to write “Your Laoshi is hard working even in holidays” on Dingtalk. But it has nothing to do with my students. So, I didn’t write a such complaint on where the students could see. Now I am writing my complaint here.

From the year 2020, I have been using Dingtalk. It is a kind of Social Networking Service. A user can communicate with members such as sending messages and talking on videophone. Dingtalk seems to be a suitable platform for company managing. Thanks to such trait that it works well for an organization like a company, it is also good for me as a teacher to carry out on-line teaching. Now I teach students in classroom. On-line teaching is no longer needed. But I still use Dingtalk. And I have made new groups of the second-year and first-year students’ groups to communicate with them. It is useful for me to give instructions, homework assignments, and feedback.

I make one group for one class. There are two classes in one grade, so, two Dingtalk groups for one grade. Counting the years, I’ve just found that the current first-year students are of the seventh year, or the seventh grade. Under the condition that I use Dingtalk, I can register up to 500 students in my group. So, if I keep the groups and continue to have all the students, someday, the number of members is going to reach the upper limit and not be able to register a new member. Besides, many students stop visiting my group after his/her graduation. Therefore, I delete the groups of fourth-year students at the beginning of April every year. Although the graduation ceremony is in June or July, I am a Japanese, April 1^st is the starting day of a new school year.

Today is April 3^rd, I don’t have any class, so I implemented the deletions of fourth-year students’ groups. There are still students who frequently visit the upper group of my Dingtalk organization. Some are important person who represent the class. I moved such students to another group for alumni. To be honest, selecting a student to move is depending on my preference to some extent. I glanced the name list and decided who to move and who to delete. But there are several students whom I could not make decision easily to keep or delete. One student was excellent and communicated more often than other students. I was at a loss about her. The last message was on December 2022, that meant there was no communication in 2023. I sent the last message to say good-bye and QR code to rejoin my group.

Finishing moving some students from the fourth-year students’ group to the alumni group, I deleted the groups of two classes. In most case, there will be no communication with students after their graduation. Even if I keep them in the alumni group, four fifth don’t come to see the messages. It is sad to say, but relationships between students and a teacher don’t last long. But there are also students, one fifth in the alumni group, who come to see my messages. I want to continue to communicate with them.

I finished these things in morning hours. And I found that that student has read my last message. Dingtalk has a function that displays if a message you sent has been read or unread. There had been no direct communication with her more than a year, but she opened my message at once. I regret what I have done. I should have added her into the alumni group. That was a thing that I could do with two or three clicks. On the contrary, if I delete her, I should have done it without saying anything. Perhaps leaving the last message simply hurt her feeling. I am really sorry for her.