Never Find the Body

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22

Today is my half birthday, for any of you keeping track.

I bounded off to school at Koko, as usual. We're still doing the lesson on things we like with some Halloween vocabulary thrown in. Fuji-sensei looked at bit at my new bulletin boards, probably because he knew it was important to me.

I'm still collecting homework from all of my classes up a lot of my free time. Today, though, I got a new challenge. Next week, we'll be starting the students midterm oral examinations, which are given in the form of a memorized recital. Mustache-sensei pulled me aside to run over all the details with me. There are two parts: a memorized recital (they chose from three, all dealing with Japan), then I point to a picture (of MY choice) and they must give five sentences about what's happening in the picture. And I grade them.

How do I grade them, I asked?

That's for me to decide.

…

My god! So I spent several hours putting together a very complex and detailed rubric to help myself through the grading process. It may be only 10 points, but my rubric is two full pages of text with the margins stretched. Honestly, one of my biggest concerns about teaching as a profession has always been grading, and subjective grading and how to grade fairly, because I know when a teacher (see: Senior year of High School English teacher) is just making stuff up. So, now, the question is whether I can accurately and fairly apply the rubric.

I asked Mustache-sensei what he waned the average grade to be. Do most students get, maybe 7 or 8? And he said that I am a nice teacher and “I think maybe.... five or six?” Magda-sensei is going to be a hard-@$$ whether she wants to be or not.

I spent all the rest of my free time trying to figure out what to do for my Halloween lesson. It's hard! I don't want it to be all lecture, but you can only talk about trick-or-treating for so long. I looked up lesson ideas online and most were just vocabulary worksheets, crossword puzzles, word-searches, etc. Which are all fine and dandy, except that I can't just hand my students crosswords to do during class! All class activities involved coloring pumpkins or some such nonsense that requires no English and is meant for a younger class.

Mischievous-sensei followed through and gave me two magnants from Malasia. One is of a bear-god, that's quite brightly colored. The other is a city-scape. It was a bit beaten up in the trip over, but if I find some liquid glue, I'll patch it up just fine. They're currently on my fridge and making my apartment look ever so much more lived in.

I didn't stay late, because I needed to run to the bank and try to get sumo tickets. Elizabeth had messaged me again about it and I needed to reply to her.

On my way home, I met up with Josh, Ali, and baby Thomas outside. We happened to pass right next to a cat adoption tent with someone in a cat costume. I vowed to come back and take a picture, something I forgot to do. I asked Josh about banking and the best bank to go to, but he told me that the bank offices close at about 3pm, so it was much too late to try to get my banking done. I asked how I was supposed to EVER get to the bank and he said that I'd have to ask permission to go during school, but that teachers were generally pretty good about such things. He recommended that I go when I'm next at Koko, as the bank is quite close.

We parted and I went home, praying that my not paying my shipping bill today, now weeks after having been given it, wouldn't get me into trouble.

I went onto the ShigaJET website and decided it was time to look up exactly how to get my sumo tickets. I wrote down careful notes, including the event number, the name of the machine and the Japanese name (in Romaji – I took one look at the kanji and said enough with that!) and then looked up my nearest Lawson Konbini. The tickets were only sold at Lawson konbini and I wasn't quite sure where there was one. It turned out there was one not too far, and I headed off into the sunset.

It took me a while to get there as roads narrowed and bike paths disappeared. At one point, I found myself winding through a dark rice paddy in the middle of no where and could only think to myself, “Well, Magda, they'll never find your body!” as a dark shape reared in front of me.

I said “konbanwa” to the woman on the path.

Eventually I made it around, and even found the Lawson. Inside, I let the line go first, then started in on my request. It took a while, but they were very patient with me. Eventually one of the cashiers came over to the Loppi machine with me and helped me navigate the MESS of Kanji. “Sumo,” at least when said by me, does not register. They had NO IDEA what I was talking about. They asked me eventually if it was a sport.

It turns out tickets were sold out, which I had suspected, as it was the weekend (the second day being Monday.) I thanked her profusely, then I headed home. I put in a message to Elizabeth that I was game for the Mascot Festival on Sunday, and settled in for the night, kicking myself royally at my missed sumo opportunity. I know now that I am fully capable of navigating such things and I shouldn't procrastinate for fear of my lacking language skills. Lesson Learned.

I had thought to go to Uniqlo and buy warm clothes, but I had just 3,000 yen in my wallet, and knew I'd need that for transportation and expenses this weekend.