Difference: made.

So I just wrapped up a 2nd year junior high class. It wasn't the most exciting class, but I got to throw in a few comments and dispute the idea that Americans overfeed their homestay guests.

Here was the reading comp for the day:
Nana: Everyone in my host family is nice to me. But my host mother always gives me too much food. Do I have to eat everything? It's too much for me.
Teacher's Answer: You must tell your host mother. Say, "I'm sorry. It's very good, but I can't eat that much." She'll understand.

After we'd gone through the reading and made sure the kids understood it, my co-teacher turns and asks me, 'Jessie-sensei, is this how it is in your family?' To which I got to turn around and say 'No, not really. We have all the food on the table and we can choose how much to eat on our own.'

Stereotype: busted.

In this particular class, there are two other teachers besides me. While the kids were working on writing practice, the other teacher came over and asked me if it was common in America, or if the way presented in the reading sketch was more common. I taught him the term 'family style'.

Later, the kids were working on a worksheet. I walk around and see how the kids are doing, and one of the smart kids appears to be done, so I ask him 'Are you finished? Can I see?' and look over his sheet. He is done, except for two vocab words and he made a little plural mistake in another part. The vocab is in English, he's supposed to translate it into Japanese. He goes for his dictionary/glossary. But no, I have other plans. I first pick the word 'anywhere'. Me: "Ok, 'anywhere'. You know 'anything'?" He sort of sits there, mulling it over, so I prompt, "How about 'where'?"

"Ah...'doko'" he says. Then I say, "So, what's anywhere. any." "Ah! dokodemo?" "Yeah!"

Then the next one was 'compare', so I threw out some comparisons. "Today is warm. Yesterday was cold. He is tall. He is short." I also did a scales motion with my hands, like I was weighing the options. Quickly I was rewarded with him finding the proper Japanese word, "'kuraberu'?" "Correct!"

It was really fun to teach like that. Instead of just giving him the answer, I made him come to understand the meaning through critical thinking. It's a better way to learn than rote memorization, I would say.

Earthquake Survivor

I JUST SURVIVED AN EARTHQUAKE.

In all actuality it was so mild I didn't know what it was until my coworkers clued me in.

But still...it's my first earthquake! (that I've noticed)

Tendencies of Mind and Body.

Back in high school, that one time I was in dance, I always had a bit of a problem in my stretching. From the beginning of the year, I had better flexibility in my right leg. But rather than redoubling my efforts and stretching my left leg more earnestly, I instead continued to devote more time to my right leg. I wasn't even trying to strive for balance, only putting in the bare minimum for my left leg.

Fast forward to my Japanese study. Early on, I got this knack for kanji (Japanese characters) study. I just enjoy the characters...I enjoy writing them, practicing them, learning new trivia about them...all very silly I know. But in the last two years, since the end of my grammar-based classes, I have focused on kanji to the detriment of my other skills.

What this all adds up to is a 167 on my JLPT 2 practice test. Maybe I should explain. The JLPT 2 is a test of Japanese vocabulary/kanji, listening, and grammar/reading comprehension. It is out of 400 points. You must get a score of 60% to pass the test. I got a 41%.

But do you know what I got on the kanji portion? Nearly 80%. Fabulous number, to be sure, but it's not going to pass the JLPT2 for me...kanji/vocab only accounts for 100 points of the score.

Oftentimes in my life I have let things fall by the wayside and focused on what I am really good at. In the context of out lives, specialization is required in order to find our careers and niches in the world, but in things like language study or stretching, balance is required. I can't get by just putting off doing those things I don't have as much skill in...it only makes the imbalances worse and harder to correct.

I could read all the kanji in the world but still have trouble understanding the meaning of a sentence if I cannot parse the grammar forms used.

Today I studied grammar for over 2 hours. Yesterday I did a pose in yoga multiple times that I have difficulty with. I am working to regain balance...but balance is difficult.

Irony

I bought this bag of about 15 mikan (little oranges, like clementines) yesterday and consumed the whole bag in one evening.

Today in school lunch we had a mikan.

Honestly though, it's ok. I really like mikan. I might go buy another bag full of mikan today.

Dollars and Yens

The US dollar is hovering at 100 yen in currency exchange these days. Although I am confident my home currency will recover eventually and once again beat out Japan by a wider margin, this is an economic bright spot at the moment for me, because I get more bang for my yen when sending money back. I have to pay some bills in the US so in the next few days I have to send some money back. I am of course happy to get almost $100 for every 10,000 yen I send back instead of $90.

So what makes the yen strong? Japan hasn't been growing very quickly in the last 20 years ever since the housing bubble burst. And one of the reasons is that people have stuck to very low-risk, low-reward economic policy. They also turned their economy inward, focusing on domestic development (ridiculous overpriced domestically grown fruit, for instance) over international trade.

Whatever that means, Japan doesn't have banks falling left and right at the moment. Instead, it's trucking along just as it has been, although cautiously lest the world drag it along with them into the dirt. And Mitsubishi just bought 21% of Morgan Stanley.

I should have kept up with studying economics more...I want to be able to have grand universal theories about this global economic crisis.