Kochi city plans got derailed today because i didn't sleep well last night and woke up later than i'd planned. not to mention i'm not keen on driving an hour each way while feeling less than good. the backup is going to kochi city on wednesday (public holiday), but that's contingent on what time my delivery comes. i opted for the morning delivery option, which is frustratingly vague. if it gets here before 10:30am, i figure things will fall into place. worst case, i'll go next saturday.

interestingly, or perhaps aptly since it's halloween, i had my first scary dream since coming to japan. it was about a game character that had multiple personalities, and his evil/violent personality was hunting someone down. i don't think i was the main target, but i didn't want to be collateral damage. it was weird because i had to pretend to be asleep in my dream while i was actually asleep in real life. maybe that's why i don't feel rested.

multiple personality disorder is something that scares me more than it should. the idea of someone behaving completely differently under certain circumstances, to the point of becoming another person, unsettles me. but come to think of it, some people are like that without any disorder. think of all the backstabbers you've met. guess that's the basis for something i once read, which goes along the lines of "scooby doo taught me that the real monsters are people". that, and "why waste energy being afraid of monsters that may be imaginary when you should be afraid of people, who are very real?" something for me to think about.

since my original plan was a bust, i'm going to do some chores around the house. main things to do are prepare for rubbish day tomorrow, swap my wardrobe for winter stuff, and if i'm feeling extra hardworking, clean out my car. i have a ton of supermarket receipts lying around, as well as a bag of rice from my supervisor that i really should bring indoors.

out of curiosity, i bought some cacao nibs off rakuten. 1000-ish yen for a 200g pack. that's more than double the price of processed chocolate, because the latter has had lower-cost ingredients like sugar, vegetable oil, and milk added. cacao nibs are basically crushed cacao beans, and are usually processed further to make what we know as commercial chocolate. i've had a taste, and my first two impressions were "bitter" and "gritty". both make sense, because as mentioned earlier, cacao nibs are unsweetened, and are processed into chocolate by first being ground to a fine paste. i'm thinking that they'll be a good contrast to the sweetness of the base cookie recipe. i'll probably bake another batch next week, since one of the kids requested it for the band concert. i'm also going to try freezing the excess dough, so i can have cookies within an hour if the craving strikes. see? dangerous for my diet.

actually, let's do a quick cost breakdown of my cookie recipe. some prices are estimates based on what i remember paying. still, i'll round up to the nearest 5 or 10 yen for buffer.

butter: 450-ish yen

flour: 45 yen

eggs: 45 yen

sugars: 60 + 30 yen

baking soda: 5 yen

vanilla extract: 50 yen

salt: 20 yen

total: 705 yen for about 35-40 cookies, so about 20 yen per cookie. counting electricity, gas, whatever else, maybe 30 yen per cookie maximum? wow, there's really a huge markup on the stuff sold in supermarkets! then again, it's paying for convenience, i guess.

right - i've had lunch, and should really be getting a move on. as mentioned earlier, wednesday is a public holiday (culture day), so that's a nice break in the middle of the week. hopefully this week will pass quickly too!

-random thought of the day: Time to transition back to hotpot!-

Some time ago, the other english teacher was remarking how it was a pity that we see the primary 1 and 2 kids only once or twice a term. at that point, i naively agreed. after today, i realized that it's better for my health for me to see them so little. it's bad of me to say this, but there are a few of them who i simply don't like. worst part is, i can't really be angry at them either, because it's not their fault. they're kids, and still learning social interaction. i wish they had more exposure to people who aren't japanese, because they rattle off sentences in japanese and some get upset when i don't understand what they're talking about. doesn't help that i look like a local, either!

like i've said before, i don't have the patience for kids. i'm actually surprised that i can handle primary 3 to 6 just fine. or maybe it's japanese kids, i don't know. i don't think i'd be as popular with singaporean kids of the same age. thank goodness the other teacher was there today; she was really in her element with the younger kids.

i'm planning to go into kochi city this weekend. because it's so far away, i really need to strategize and be very focused with my agenda. of course i'll budget time for free-walking and whatnot, but it's important to get the required tasks out of the way first. the main goal this time is tech shopping (monitor and gopro), while the secondary goal is uniqlo heattech trade-in. anything else (kaldi, supermarket, godiva) can be thought of as side quests. my current thought is that i'll go on sunday, because that gives me enough time tomorrow to pick out the heattech that i want to return. i'm considering applying for the aeon card again, since i'm going to be in an aeon mall anyway, but i don't know if it's a little too soon. maybe i'll do it online after my one-year anniversary in november.

this week has been kind of tiring, mostly due to school, and partly due to a dinner hosted by the board of education. since COVID is a thing, they weren't able to hold a "proper" welcome party for me and the other new hires when we actually joined, so this is our belated welcome. there was alcohol involved, and i got drunk. not completely wasted, thankfully, but drunk enough to sleep a little too well and almost be late for work the next day. kochi's reputation for having people that love their alcohol is well-deserved. i can't keep up with them! but that's also because i'm a lousy drinker to start with.

while there are many other things that i want to blog about, i think i'll end this post here because (1) it's late, and (2) they're rather heavy topics. to remind future me, these topics include: time on JET; letting the kids down in terms of teaching them english; bicycle shop inconsistencies; winter is coming.

-random thought of the day: Feeling a little down, for some reason.-

Learning each new recipe is like adding a piece of dangerous information to my arsenal. and by "dangerous", i mean dangerous for my diet and weight loss goals. today, i made cookies! it's a lot easier than i imagined it to be, although i did run into a couple of stumbling blocks that were resolved easily enough.

first, some background on cookies. i like them ok. like, i don't get cravings for them very often, if at all. even if i see them somewhere, odds are that i won't buy them. as for the type of cookie, i like mine on the chewy side. there used to be a brand called mrs. fields, which made the best cookies. i remember occasionally buying a box on fridays after school in JC for my weekly retail therapy/reward. other things i bought include sushi, the odd DVD, and various cute but useless things from mini toons and popular in junction 8. these days, the closest thing to mrs. fields cookies are the ones from subway. not sure if they're related somehow. oh, and i hate famous amos cookies. every time i come into proximity of a famous amos shop, i get a negative physical reaction just from the sickly sweet smell that emanates from the place.

nice trip down memory lane, but back to the present. you might recall that i wanted to bake cookies for the kids' halloween party this coming tuesday. i went to do some poking about online, and saw a promising recipe from america's test kitchen on youtube. unfortunately, the written recipe is paywalled, so i went trawling the internet for an alternate source. it was incredibly annoying because most of the recipes were in imperial measurements (cups, teaspoons), which are horribly inconsistent. so i went with a recipe that had ounce measurements, and converted them to grams. for my reference, i'll briefly note down the materials and methods below. by the way, this is scaled down to half for testing purposes. i'll add notes for a full-sized batch where appropriate.

makes between 15 to 24 cookies, depending on cookie size

100g butter

80g brown sugar

40g white sugar

1 egg (use 1 egg and an extra yolk if making a full batch)

~5mL vanilla extract

a pinch of salt

125g flour

2.5g baking soda

preheat the oven at 190 °C.

melt and brown the butter, then let it cool to room temperature or slightly above.

add the sugars, egg, vanilla, salt, and whisk together.

let it rest for 3 minutes, and whisk again for 30 seconds. repeat once more.

add the flour and baking soda, mix until a uniform batter forms. shouldn't take too long.

(here is where you'd add any other toppings, like chocolate chips.)

portion out the batter into balls, and place onto a baking paper-lined sheet tray. i find that the size of a quail egg worked for the size i want to make for the kids, but adjust according to your preference.

bake at 190 °C for 12 to 15 minutes. exact baking time depends on cookie size, and how chewy/crisp you want them. they'll harden up a bit once they cool, so don't worry if they're looking too soft right out of the oven.

the other stumbling block i faced was looking for baking soda. baking powder was easy, because it was rendered in katakana. but baking soda is called たんさん in japan, as i found out after some googling. the reason i wasn't immediately able to place that as being baking soda is because たんさん actually means carbonic acid. granted that baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is a carbonic acid derivative, but it's confusing when you call something by another thing's name!

anyway, the cookie experiment was a success! i made 6 + 6 + 7 = 19 cookies, although some cookies from the first batch could have been split into 2. hey, i was experimenting with size, after all. best part is that of all the sizes i tried out today, all of them remained chewy in the middle, though the edges were at varying degrees of crispiness. i must say, using browned butter was really amazing. the video kept going on about the amazing toffee-like flavour, which i thought was hype and hyperbole, but it did come through in the melted butter! way to go, maillard reaction!

of the 19 cookies i made, i taste-tested 11. different sizes at different stages of cooking. and if i'm being completely honest, i didn't necessarily NEED to eat a few, but they tasted so good! the scale told me that i'd gained about 2 kilos since my last weigh-in, so i've decided that the remaining 8 are going to be a present for my neighbour, the one whose granddaughter is a student of mine. she's the only one of my neighbours to engage me in conversation...although that may also be because i bump into her the most often. the rest of the residents in this area seem to be really good at avoiding me. or maybe our schedules just don't align. probably the second thing.

-random thought of the day: My mouse is double-clicking unintentionally.-

Regular updates will come later, but for now, i wanted to blog about something that i finally figured out. sometime earlier this year, i was doing some number-crunching on whether paying for petrol by credit card or using the straight up cash discount was cheaper. the thing that bugged me was that there were 3 variables for 2 equations, meaning that i couldn't solve for everything. but i managed to work it out and convince myself after graphing it on excel.

so it's pretty standard - total amount spent = price of petrol per litre X litres of petrol pumped. previously, i'd been doing it from an "amount spent" perspective, when i realized that i should be doing it from an "amount saved" perspective. the cash discount is straightforward, i save 2 yen per litre, so amount saved = 2 X litres of petrol. the credit card case is more convoluted. i get 1% of my amount spent back in points, and 1 point is the equivalent of 1 yen. in this case, amount saved = 0.01 X price of petrol per litre X litres of petrol.

plotting graphs of amount saved against litres of petrol, we get straight lines diverging from the origin, with gradients 2 and (0.01 X price of petrol per litre) for the cash and credit card cases respectively. so what this means is that for a given price of petrol, one will always win out regardless of volume. and the crossover point is when the gradients are equal, ie. 0.01 X price = 2. by some observation, we can see that as long as petrol price stays under 200 yen, it is always better for me to pay using cash. at 200 yen, both methods are equally good. above 200 yen, the discount from paying by credit card wins out.

this is of no serious consequence at all, and in fact may be an example of a new japanese word i picked up - 考えすぎ (overthinking), but i feel oddly satisfied/proud for having figured it out. also while doing research on this, i realized it seems that i can ask the cashier at family mart to scan the barcode on my card before paying with it to earn double points. considering that i've probably spent less than 5000 yen there, losing out on 50 points at max doesn't hurt too much. but now i know!

-random thought of the day: City trip next week, I think.-

Thinking that perhaps i spoke too soon about feeling fine despite little sleep a few days back. my energy levels dipped last night/this morning, probably also partly due to the sudden decrease in temperature. even on sunday, it was decently warm. but night temperatures dropped 10 degrees overnight. day temperatures are falling too, but at a slower rate because of the sun. good thing i'm claiming my half-day off-in-lieu for sunday, so i can get a little more rest in! i'm thinking that it might be time to break out the fleece sleepwear soon...but not yet, because i don't want to get blood on them.

partly due to lack of concentration and partly because i was trying to multitask, i had a fall off my bike yesterday while cycling home. it was the stupidest thing, too. see, i occasionally forget to take my mask off before starting the trip, and it's only when i pick up speed and find it less easy to breathe that i'm reminded of it. yes, it's ok because i'm travelling alone and am never in close proximity to people throughout my commute. the sensible thing to do would have been to stop by the side of the road, do the necessary adjustments, then move off again. my common sense obviously deserted me at that time. so i ended up falling on my right side, thankfully at an almost standstill because i braked a little beforehand. the resulting injuries are: a sore shoulder probably from bumping it on the landing; a scraped knee; and a slightly scraped/sprained right index finger. i was thinking back to the last time i fell and scraped my knee, and if my memory isn't lying to me, it might be as far back as primary school - lower primary at that! shows how not-outdoorsy i was growing up. i actually didn't even feel it, and only realized it when i took my work pants off. somehow the pants are undamaged, but the injury is still there. not sure whether to be happy or annoyed about it, but i'll just count my blessings.

of all the injuries, i think the sprained finger is causing me the most inconvenience. sprains are annoying in general, because they reduce a joint's range of motion. lucky for me, this sprain is minor enough to not affect my daily tasks, like writing or typing, but it's annoying enough because i'm reminded of its presence by the discomfort when i inadvertently bend my finger too far in. good thing is that the injuries are all minor, and should heal up fairly soon. in fact, the scrapes have more or less scabbed over already.

there was something else i wanted to blog about - something related to JET life (obviously) but which has conveniently slipped my mind right now. well, i figure it'll occur to me eventually. oh! i saw it in the sink and that jogged my memory. my sourdough starter didn't survive that well. some youtube bakers have claimed that they managed to salvage a starter that they'd neglected for up to 5 months, and bake amazing bread with it. mine went in the fridge for 2 months, maybe 2.5 at max, and it developed a red mould thing. so rather than try to use it or salvage a portion, i figured that i'd trash the whole thing and start again whenever i wanted to bake sourdough again. i filled the container with water, in hopes that the starter would soften and make disposal easier, but it seems increasingly likely that i'll end up throwing everything away, including the container. good thing daiso sells containers in various sizes for cheap! 

-random thought of the day: Might be going to the city sooner than expected.-

Even though i only slept 6 hours last night and woke up at 5:30am this morning (on my birthday, no less), i'm not too displeased by it. reason i got up early was to make mooncakes for the teachers in the last primary school to have sports day this year. i'm getting better at the whole mooncake thing; my biggest problem is that i'm still not good at eyeballing the quantities during assembly, so there was a bit of a size distribution despite me using the same mould throughout. perhaps i should pre-portion the components out by weight. maybe in future. i think that's the last batch of mooncakes i'll make in a while, don't want to keep doing the same old thing. now, the issue is what to do with the excess ingredients i bought. luckily most are powdered, so they'll keep for a good while. incidentally, have i told you all what my next culinary challenge is going to be? i haven't decided which yet, but it'll be either ondeh-ondeh or carrot (daikon) cake.

had a video call with my cousin and his family earlier, and i'm having a text conversation with chemical engineer cousin as i'm writing this. that conversation has turned to life after JET. it's a little scary, because there are tradeoffs in my professional life for staying on JET, and they become more significant with time. but i got recommended a great resource which i'll go through during winter break. also to do during winter break: figure out priorities and do some number-crunching for what's a reasonable amount of money needed for survival.

related thought to all of the above: i'm so happy that i got to attend this sports day. these primary 6 kids are really growing on me, more so than their seniors last year. it's not that i don't like their seniors, by the way. they're now my sec 1 class and we get along great as well. the difference could be due to the time spent, because i spent only one term with the seniors before they moved on to secondary school and had to "grow up". whereas i get to see the current primary 6 kids be children for a little longer.

see, this is why i'd be a great and horrible teacher at the same time. i'd bond well with most kids, and care for them. also, i think i'm good at teaching - chemistry, at least. but then when it comes time for the kids to leave school, i think i'd have more difficulty coming to terms with saying goodbye to them than they would saying goodbye to me! i don't think i could withstand going through that whole process every year or two. some JETs who are ex-MOE teachers say that it's a matter of knowing how to let go, and i suppose it is. i still don't like it, though.

all in all, today was a birthday well spent. didn't get any physical gifts, but people have given me the gift of their time, which is in many ways, more valuable. but just saying, i wouldn't mind a gopro either! yes, i'm kidding...sort of. speaking of which though, i do have to plan a trip to kochi city sometime within the next month. in addition to checking out second-hand shops for action cameras and monitors, i also need to get more stuff from kaldi, including trying to locate pandan. leaves, seeds, extract, just something. also, uniqlo is holding a collection for old heattech items. we can get a 200 yen e-coupon per item returned. that's about 10-20% of the original cost, but hey, it beats 0%. i'm definitely returning the tights (only used them once, found them unnecessary), as well as some shirts, probably those that aren't the extreme-warmth variety.

forecast for next week - same old stuff. i get half of tuesday off (as compensation for "working" today), so that's nice. it's the week after that's more exciting, because there's a halloween party thing planned for some of the kids who go for the after-school program, and i'm thinking of baking halloween-themed cookies. or maybe shortbread! something easy probably, because it's on a workday and i don't want to stress myself out with rushing for time and whatnot.

last thought. you know the quote, "necessity is the mother of invention"? i find that the reverse is true as well - things going the way they are is the cause of stagnation. so for the past X years, i've been charging my phone the usual way - via USB cable. in the last month or two though, my phone had difficulty recognizing that a cable was plugged in, and that it could use fast charging. thankfully, the issue was with the cable and not the charging port, as some testing revealed. so i decided to lessen any more potential damage to my charging port, and bought a wireless charging pad. the link back to the stagnation thing was that although my phone was capable of wireless charging from the get-go, i never bothered with it because the tried-and-true USB method worked fine. makes me think i should reexamine more things to see how else i can better use things around me.

-random thought of the day: It's becoming cold!-

Plan "cycle to/from work" was a huge success! the first week of it so far, anyway. yesterday was a bit risky because there was the lightest bit of rain falling on my morning commute. i briefly considered turning back and getting the car, but powered through in the end. everything worked out fine because it was literally a few droplets, and the rest of the day was sunny. rain is forecasted for next week though, so we'll have to see how things go.

true to expectation, yesterday was stressful...but not in the way that i'd anticipated. most of my classes were fun, but there was an incident in the primary school where for some reason, the kids in a certain grade refused to engage with the other english teacher, and she took it quite to heart. she said in her 30 years of teaching english in japan, it's the first time that she'd encountered something like that. she obviously was affected, because she excused herself for the class. before doing so though, she kind of scolded the kids (more on that later).

now for this next part, read everything before judging me. i'm going to talk about several aspects of this whole ugly scene, and how my opinion/view changed with new information i learned as the situation unfolded. initially, i didn't notice anything odd. we were doing our usual pre-class speaking time routine. i started to notice that my queue was unnaturally long, and that the other teacher wasn't at her usual spot. the japanese teacher must have asked her about it, because i heard her say "they don't want to talk to me" and then to me, "they're all yours". at this point, i thought it was a joke, so i somewhat jokingly (yet half seriously) replied, "help me out, i'm dying here!" i was genuinely swamped with waiting kids, though. furthermore, on that very morning, i was gently told off for doing the activity in small groups instead of one-on-one, because a goal was to develop individual conversational skills. in the end, i ran out of time and most of the kids came in without doing the activity. no big deal for me up to this point.

before the class started proper, though, the teacher delivered her monologue about how it was hurtful that the kids didn't want to talk to her, how it was a form of bullying, so on. i agreed with most of the things she said, except that she started with "i'm a foreigner, but..." to me, it felt like an unnecessary shoehorning in of the foreigner card to gain sympathy. the japanese teacher then took over and reprimanded them as well, mostly because of this incident, and also because they were noisy enough while waiting that i had to raise my voice to get them to STFU (no, i didn't actually say that!). for the record, i think the kids deserved it.

class proceeded on, albeit in a little subdued fashion, and without the other teacher's presence. good thing we were doing a non-demanding activity! call me selfish, but i was worrying more about how just the two of us (me and the japanese teacher) were going to handle the class. i also thought that it was a little unprofessional for the other teacher to leave like that, because i personally wouldn't leave the classroom in the middle of a class. you know, suck it up and get the class over with first. again, i want to emphasize that these were my thoughts at that time based on knowledge i had at that point.

after class, we got the full story. apparently, the kids didn't just not go to her, they actively refused to talk to her even with encouragement. that makes a big difference. with that additional bit of context, i better understood why she felt hurt. she's also convinced that someone's been spreading negative stuff about her, so as to cause the kids to behave like this. while i can't discount that possibility, the first reason i thought of for the behaviour is that kids can be asses. these kids in particular...i don't know. they're the outlier, because both their seniors and juniors are wonderful. unlike the rest of my classes, i would happily give this one up and not feel any worse about it. of course, i'd miss the two or three brighter/friendlier kids, but i wouldn't count not seeing the majority of them as a huge loss. on the bright side, it's not that they're evil-bad...the class on a whole just doesn't read social cues well and are absorbed in their own little worlds.

having explained the whole thing, time for more thoughts. initially, i'd thought that she was playing it up, to teach the kids a lesson in consideration. but as events progressed, it was apparent that she was seriously badly affected by it. she said things like, "i've got no confidence now", which - call me heartless - i think is an overreaction. i mean, she has 30 years of english teaching experience in japan. if the confidence built up over 30 years can be undone by this one incident, then it must be quite fragile, right? i was saying that maybe because i'm still new in japan (or it's my personality and way of dealing with kids), i'd have insisted more strongly that the kid talk to me after the first refusal. and even if the kid didn't want to, i wouldn't take it that hard since it's the kid's loss anyway.

what i particularly didn't like about the whole scenario was that her choice of words kind of framed it as a competition between the two foreign english teachers (me and her). like, we have to vie for the kids' friendship/admiration or something. i'll admit that the kids all queueing for me didn't help to dispel that image, although i don't know why they did that. i believe it's not a zero-sum game; the kids can like (or dislike) us both equally. i don't know why she seems to have this competitive mindset. like i mentioned before, everything about my job is fixed. nothing i do (or don't do) will affect my salary or other benefits in any way. and no matter how much the kids love me, i still have to leave after a maximum of 5 years. i wonder if it's because COVID forced us to work together. from what i understand, she hasn't worked so closely with any of my predecessors before, so it feels like i'm intruding on her territory. if anything, i'm actually happy/grateful to have her in the primary school because kids still make me nervous. and if the board of education were ever to ask, i'd definitely say that she's a reassuring presence to have.

so...that's my rant for today. of course, just because i don't see something as a big problem doesn't mean it's not a big problem for someone else. i don't know her life story, and what experiences she might have gone through that shaped her mindset into its current state. in general, foreign residents don't have it easy in japan, especially those who choose to settle down here. i only imagine that she's fought countless battles since day 1. on my part, i'm not going to change the way i interact with the kids. what i will do is look out a bit more, maybe offer a kind word here and there.

on to today's agenda: going to the next town. thinking of getting a haircut, but that can wait till next week. the main goals are to visit K's denki (more compressed air, take a look at action cameras), and to get groceries in the bigger supermarket, along with a visit to daiso for some cycling stuff - a raincoat-type thing comes to mind. hopefully the weather hold up for more cycling next week, because petrol prices just jumped again.

-random thought of the day: What's for lunch?-

Have you heard of the saying "everything in its time"? it's not new to me, but i was reminded of it under a strange set of circumstances. first strange thing: i was helping out in a secondary school maths class. stranger than that: i was explaining maths to some of the kids in japanese. granted, the content wasn't too difficult; just y=ax² graphs. midway through the class, it occurred to me that my sec 3 self would have found the content terribly repulsive...or uninteresting, at least. so i should try to empathize more with the kids who may be having a tough time. it looks easy to me even when taught in a foreign language, because (1) the benefit of maths is that numbers and notations are fairly universal no matter where you go, and (2) it's easy to figure out something that you already know, even with a language barrier.

the idea of there being a time for everything extends to other subjects too. like, maybe some kids don't see the value of english now, or are not capable of grasping the content for whatever reason. it doesn't mean that they'll be hopeless at english forever (although some may be). and honestly, if they're not using english for work, a rudimentary vocabulary aided with gestures and google translate will be enough for most situations that may crop up in daily life. not everyone i meet in the classroom is going to become fluent in english by the time they graduate, and that's ok. english isn't the core of their existence, after all. if anything, it's hovering in the periphery for most kids.

on an even grander scale, there's a time for everything in life. me coming to japan is my go-to example, but now that i'm in japan, i need something else to quote. the thing that i thought of is me being assigned to schools and meeting all my kids. i would like to think that i'm brightening up their days by making english class interesting/funny, but i'd be grateful if 30% or more of the kids are positively affected. i'm also thankful that i'm here to catch some of the kids who are developing interest in english, which i can build upon and help to maintain. it's a bonus that most of the primary school kids (and a good portion of the secondary school kids) are still at the stage where they're friendly and willing to engage with me. it probably helps that i'm not a teacher-teacher. like, i have some authority over them, but no real responsibility - which i'm totally fine with, by the way!

perfect segue into things that i'm not fine with. i think i mentioned that in one of my schools, i'm working with a teacher who's a terrific person, but who's somewhat lacking in the proficiency department. so, last week, this teacher asked me to stay back late to help with eiken practice tomorrow. a teacher in another school asked the same of me, and what i did then was to mark the kids' written component (because that's not a straightforward "correct or wrong"-type thing). thinking that it would be the same in this case, i agreed. when i asked about the plans for tomorrow, this teacher told me that i'd only be invigilating the exam. bear in mind that while this is an english exam, the instructions are in japanese. meaning i'd be next to useless if the students had questions! so after some diplomatic tai chi, another teacher got roped in to help, and i got off the hook. this is incident number 1, and an example of how resources aren't used efficiently in japan.

example 2 was during english class today. this same english teacher had an observation by the principal. and maybe because of that, or perhaps just by coincidence, this teacher arranged for it to be a computer-aided class, where students had tablets to use. this teacher uploaded the students' work to google classroom, and asked the students to comment on each other's work on the computer. fine so far. the next instruction was "now write the comments down in your notebooks, and write additional sentences according to the comments in your notebooks". and my question (after my internal screaming died down) was "WHY!!??" i mean, the documents are online! i could look past the fact that the collaborative nature of google docs and classrooms weren't used to their full potential, but why go back to the notebooks instead of doing it on the tablet? i just think that the idea was admirable, but something was missing during the planning phase. knowledge of how google docs works, probably. if my best class ever was 100%, i'd rate the observation class 55%. and it sucks even more because the kids in that class have an above-average standard of english, and i fear it may be messed up.

well, since i'm talking about the right time for things, i suppose i can see it as one of my reasons for being here is to make sure these kids in particular stay afloat for english. the odds are a little stacked, but i think they'll make it.

-random thought of the day: Plan cycle to work has been going well!-

Continuing yesterday's thought about using my time more effectively, i started looking into giving tuition this morning. honestly, i'm not too enthusiastic about it (more on that later), but it's easy money. the market rate is about $40 per hour for secondary 3 and 4. that means if i teach for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, it's an extra $400 per week - or $1600 per month. of course, i probably won't teach that much...if i even do it at all.

i've mentioned it before, so i'll just be brief - i think i'm too old to be giving tuition. i've always seen it as a thing that people in NS or undergrad do for some extra cash. yes, i know that there are full-time tutors, a good portion of whom are around my age or older, and i don't mean them any disrespect. just that it's not for me. as a side gig, sure, but i don't see it being the main part of my professional life.

having said that, a sign that tuition might be the way to go for now is the surge in demand for online tuition because of COVID. and it conveniently works out for me, because i can only do online tuition now. i've started reaching out to some people, and i guess i'll plan my next move depending on the replies.

this got me thinking - for my professional life, i'm closer to where i don't want to be than where i want to be. JET is not part of this consideration, since i knew what i was getting into when i signed up for it. but to get closer to what i currently want (scientific IP), i signed up for some free courses on the WIPO website. hopefully that will help me understand the whole process better and serve as a refresher. not to mention employers might look favourably on this initiative!

after a bit more reading on action cameras last night, i think i might go for a gopro after all. the latest model is too expensive, so i'm thinking a couple of generations back. the gopro hero 7, to be precise. it seems that that's the first generation of gopro that had the new image stabilization technology. it sells for something like above 35000 yen new, so i'm looking for used ones. i was actually half tempted to go to the second-hand shop in kochi city today to have a poke around, but then i rationalized to myself that i don't have an urgent need for it, so i could afford to wait. impulse control is hard! but when things are physically and/or financially further out of reach, it's a good skill? virtue? to cultivate.

future food forays! i started watching this youtube channel about chinese cooking, and i saw that their recipe for radish cake is doable with ingredients that i can get easily. turns out that daikon is a suitable substitute for chinese turnip. and it's easier than i thought! the main ingredients are daikon (turnip), rice flour, dried shrimp, and chinese sausage. the latter 2 are hard to find in the supermarket, but can be ordered off rakuten with free delivery! also, the supermarket was selling a 12g pack of dried shrimp for like 370 yen. no, i didn't miss a zero in the weight. rakuten has a listing - 1000 yen for 200g. that's a sixfold price difference per gram! the second thing which i want to do before this year is over is choux pastry, and by extension, cream puffs and/or eclairs. it's a pity that decent cheese is so expensive; i wanted to try making gougeres, which are savoury cheesy choux pastries. maybe i'll get a small quantity and do a few along with the sweet ones. or one jumbo one, i don't know.

next week might be interesting. i was just plotting a stress-time graph in my head, and it seems that it starts low on monday, then rises throughout the week and peaks on friday. even then, i think it still wouldn't make the top 10 (or 50) most stressful days of my life, so it's nothing i should be worrying about. hopefully my supervisor will agree to give me some time off, but i'm not counting on it. the way i see it, it's a bonus if it happens, and something which i can accept if it doesn't.

-random thought of the day: Trying to cycle to work every day next week!-

Now that my one-year anniversary in japan is approaching, i'm thinking that i should be making better use of my time. i'm basically settled in and used to life here already, so it's time to find something to stretch my horizons a little. also according to my general JET roadmap, year 1 is for acclimatization, and subsequent years are for living the "full" JET experience. i should probably qualify the use of "full" here - fuller than each previous year, and as full as the pandemic conditions allow.

perhaps it was influenced by my starting a youtube channel for gaming, but i'm planning on setting up more youtube channels. my most immediate ideas are: a channel for english pronunciation, and a channel for my life in japan. for the first one, it's actually linked to my work, because i realize that some kids, even at secondary school level, still can't read english based of off phonics. for most native english speakers, our instinct kicks in when we see a word for the first time. take the word kakorrhaphiophobia which i have never seen, and just found from google. it means "fear of failure", by the way. my brain dissects it in steps, like this: (kakorrhaphio) (phobia); (ka) (korr) haphio (phobia); (ka) (korr) (ha) (phio) (phobia); (ka) (korr) (ha) (phi) (o) (phobia). that results in a pronunciation of kuh-korr-a-fee (or fye)-o-foe-bee-uh.

this is an extreme example, of course, but i mean the kids stumble at words like "throughout", so i think they need to develop/train this sense. my reservation here would probably be having to stare at/listen to my face and voice while i edit the videos. i did float this idea by my supervisor a few days ago, and she seems enthusiastic...but i don't think i'll be receiving much support from the board of education because of IT security and finance policies. i think if i could persuade them to buy video editing software, that would already be a big win.

idea 2 comes from watching a few vloggers on youtube. i think most people's default impression of japan is that of big cities like tokyo. not enough attention is paid to towns and rural areas. and also for me in particular, i wish i had a video tour of the town before leaving singapore. not to mention taking videos is a great reason for me to go cycling! i imagine the channel to not be very focused. like, some channels upload cooking videos only, or travel videos only. my image of the channel is that it'll be about my life. so maybe a cycling/commute video one week, a cooking video the next, and maybe a rambly vlog thing sometimes (if i can stand listening to my own voice). to that end, i looked up action cameras on rakuten. the cheapest i've seen is going for about 5000 yen, while the most expensive is close to 70000, i think? while i'm tempted to just go for the cheapest one, it's from a no-name brand and that doesn't inspire confidence. at the end of the day, i'll probably get something a little pricier, but definitely within the lower third of the price bracket. i'm contemplating going to K's denki or a second-hand shop in kochi city to see if there are other options available too. should remind myself to sleep on it for a bit, and not to rush into things.

-random thought of the day: Finally started earning points from my electricity bill!-