Random Memos to People Who Daily Threaten My Life

-Dear cars parked on the sidewalk:

This is a sidewalk; it's where PEOPLE walk or bike. I don't care if you are just going in to pick up flowers for your wife or if you have to drop off the mail. It's a sidewalk and you're in my way.


-Dear people in cars that come speeding out of parking lots in front of me:

GET OFF YOUR CELLPHONES (and look both ways).


-Dear business men on bicycles:

GET OFF YOUR CELLPHONES.

P.S. To one other business man on a bicycle: Wait until you get home to read Manga - reading a book and bicycling on a busy road is not a good idea.


-Dear five students (every 100 meters) getting out of school:

Don't ride five abreast down the sidewalk in the busiest part of town with your pals riding piggyback on the back of your bikes. And when someone is coming toward you - MOVE or get into a single file line. I know your lives suck because you spend six days a week in school and have to dress like the von Trapp family children every waking hour, but C'mon! (is that how that's spelt?)



-Dear old man (or sometimes woman walking bent forward as if she were carrying a boulder on her back) wandering aimlessly back and forth in front of me, countering my every attempt to pass:

Please turn up your hearing aid!!!! I know my little bell is quaint sounding and could be missed with all of the traffic noise swelling around you, but really - can't you hear the glass-shattering squeal of my brakes as I slam to a stop to keep from hitting you?
I know you are probably using your age to pretend that you cannot hear my approach, and you are getting some sort of perverse pleasure watching the bald foreign guy try and choose between hitting a post or knocking over 10 bicycles lined up outside a shop, but give me a break. Also, I would appreciate it if you would not stare at me as if I were some creature from another world.


Dear everyone who wanders aimlessly out of stores with their eyes up in the sky, never looking where they are going:

Don't decide to stop just in the center of the sidewalk to contemplate the weather, and don't scowl at me because you almost got hit. You're so overly polite at pedestrian crossings and you never J-walk, so why can't you use the same care when on the sidewalk?


Dear all of you in combination:

THIS IS NOT FROGGER!

***


A small note: Back in the States, I always biked on the road with the cars, but here, tho' I'm sure the law is the same, every biker rides on the sidewalks. At the crosswalks they even have a bike lane next to the pedestrian cross that leads from one sidewalk to another, so I'm not just being that jerk on the bike who rides on the sidewalk and gets in everyone's way - we all ride on the sidewalk (it's far too dangerous on the road with the cars).

Also, like in the States, I am endlessly annoyed that people on foot or bike don't follow traffic patterns. I have even tried biking on the left side of the sidewalk, but even this doesn't work.

To the man biking past me two days ago

Dear Japanese bicyclist:

I want to express my heartfelt thanks to you for sneezing on me as you biked past me the other night. I was the guy coming out of the Seven-Eleven* store with a suit on a hanger folded over my arm, a backpack, and a bag with milk and yogurt. Had I known you were going to spray your cold all over me, I would have also had throat lozenges and cough syrup in the bag.

Normally I wouldn't write, but this is the third cold I've gotten since coming to Japan. Why don't you at least wear one of those surgical masks everyone else is wearing - they seem to do no good, but at least it would block the spray. I woke up yesterday morning with one Jim Dandy of a sore throat.

I am holding you financially responsible. Please send me 120￥ for the lozenges I had to buy yesterday, and 1400￥ for the two screwdrivers I had after work to give me some vitamin C and a little incentive to sleep better. That makes 1520￥ that you owe me; we'll round it up to an even 2000￥ - this will cover any subsequent costs to treat my cold.

Yours respectfully,

Matto sensei

*Yes, Seven-Elevens are all over this country

I'm Here

1/14/06
I am typing this entry from the Omyia Seminar House – the training center for Aeon. I’m picking up a WiFi signal from somewhere, but it looks like it has to be reset, as I cannot open any sites. Well, yesterday’s travels went off without a hitch – I took an early flight out of Minneapolis (at 6:50 instead of 8:00 am) and had some time to kill in Chicago. Ate a Cinnabon with some horrible coffee, made a few last minute calls and then boarded the flight to Narita airport in Tokyo. Note to American Airlines: Please include more films in your in-flight movie selection, or change things out in mid flight so that I don’t have to watch “Bruce Almighty,” a single episode of “Joey,” or “In Her Shoes” [yes, Jess, I had to sit through that movie once again – but it was way more entertaining with you there the first time] over and over (granted, you did show “Beautiful Mind” and some silly horse flick with Kurt Russell, but let’s try and get some better titles – the sorts of movies you can watch and say, that was so awesome, I don’t mind watching that three more times on this trip!).

On the flight I fidgeted a lot – I do that on plane rides of over four hours. I had the mixed blessing of being seated closest to the lavs in the middle of the plane – good because, if you know me, you know I have a micro-bladder – bad because a) people standing around waiting to use the commode are sometimes gassy and b) every time someone came out of the john, I got a whiff of the smelly toilet. Mostly I sat reading, working an impossible book of Sudoku (Jean, I have yet to successfully finish a puzzle from the book you gave me – the easiest ones are impossible!), or watching the progress on the flight in both Japanese and English.

I got to the airport without any problem, got my luggage and made it past customs (even with their sniffing dog) and met Shannon – one of the trainers. I sat and got acquainted with five other future Aeon teachers – all super friendly and fun to talk to. We sent our luggage off to our schools, grabbed our carry-on and headed out on the trains to get to the training center. Some things I observed:

- Really cool landscape and trees – the afternoon was really foggy so this heightened the beauty of them.
- The vending machines all sell cans of tea with milk and sugar (lots!) – and they come out of the machine nice and piping hot.
- It is weird to be in a country where you do not speak the language, or recognize the written characters.
- The awesome train seat pairs flip around so you can sit facing or away from your traveling companions.

From the train station, we jumped into four cabs (we’d picked up another trainer and three other teachers whom we’d met at the train stop) and came to the Seminar House. We were greeted by two members of the staff who gave us slippers in exchange for our shoes, showed us round the place, and then showed us our rooms – I’m rooming with another fellow named Matt who is from Chicago. A bunch of us headed down to Lawson’s (kind of like SA or 7/11) and – Oh, my gosh! I just snuck downstairs to use the bathroom. The toilet down their had a heated seat! This training center is pretty cold, so toilet seat, my buns thank you. – bought some bento boxes (boxed lunch things) for tomorrow and I got one of these triangular snack things that is basically a hunk of rice with something in the middle – mine was a soy tasting thing – and wrapped in seaweed – it was an awesome snack – hit the spot. I then ironed my business clothes for the first day of training and got ready for bed. I was super exhausted and it was only 9pm. It is now 5am and I’ve been up since 3:45 unable to sleep. That’s why I came out here to type this. I’m the only one up at present – Oh, and the other big news is that during training everyone for some unknown reason, must be cleanly shaved – No facial hair whatsoever – so my trim beard no longer exists and I can’t help but do a double take every time I walk by a mirror. That’s all for now; I’ll let you know how the first day of training goes.

Reasons NOT to teach composition online.

1. The fact (and I mean fact) that your students' IQs drop noticably.
2. The student who asks the question after you've given the answer.
3. The five students who still ask the same question AFTER the student from #2 has already asked the answered question.
4. The students (one in four) who are given direction, sent off to their sub-chatrooms to work, and the first thing they type is "So what are we supposed to do?"
5. The student who (every week) exactly one hour and fifteen minutes into class asks "Can we go now?"
6. The student who knows the technology better than you.
7. The student who is too easily offended and takes EVERY message typed by the instructor as a personal slam on her (yes, it's always a her).
8. The no shows.
9. The late-comers.
10. The student who doesn't know how to send - much less open - an attachment.
11. The Chatty-Cathy's.
12. D2L
13. UCompass
14. The students who refuse to follow protocol.
15. The fact that you can always predict the one student who will have some issue (technological or other) that will hold up the class.
16. The fact that the chatroom doesn't always refresh properly.
17. The student who reiterates the answer to your question and gets it completely wrong.
18. The student whose only contribution to the classroom chat is "LOL."
19. Emoticons.
20. The students who answer questions for you.
21. The nay-sayers.
22. The students who get frustrated with YOU for their inablility to follow instructions.
23. The students who continue to use Microsoft Works when you've told them over and over not to, and who look utterly bewildered when no one can open their essay draft.
24. The fact that students don't consider an absence from the online session as an absence.
25. The fact that cyberspace is a dumb venue in which to teach students how to write.