The Whole Erk Catalogue Tales of a Geek Abroad

So, now that we've personally announced it to all our immediate family, I feel it's safe to post on my blog: Jen and I got engaged a week ago! With the ring and bended knee and all! I'm sorry to say for all those wanting a juicy story that it was a modest proposal: we both knew it was coming, and I knew Jen would not want to be embarrassed by too public an offering, so I just got on my knee and handed her a pretty bit of jewelry in one of our favourite restaurants, after a really nice day out on the town. It was good times!

I'm a very lucky dude.

The year is ending in Japan, and things are starting to fall apart. I am getting a lot more ready to come home now.

In Japan, there's a very long-standing tradition of enforced transfers, particularly in bureaucratic jobs. The modern-day explanation is that constant transfers ensure that employees have a wide variety of experiences, in a number of fields and with different coworkers and bosses. I suppose that since most Japanese people would never complain about their work environment, it also keeps anyone from getting trapped in an awful place for too long. In the samurai days of the Tokugawa shogunate, when the tradition originated, it was actually designed to keep the bureaucrats - who were all samurai - from formenting rebellion against the state. By shuffling around, no employees of an office gained enough trust and familiarity to plan against their superiors.

Boy, am I tired. Happy, but tired. Jen and I haven't had a real break since the end of February, when her Dad and Matthew came to visit. We had a great time with them, checking out all of our favourite sights in Natori and area and even a few new ones.

After a grace period of only occasional swinger reports, a more relentless spambot seems to have found my site. Anyone who posts here regularly would be well advised to create a user account to make comments with, as I'm going to have to make it a lot more difficult and awkward to post comments for nonregistered users if this keeps up.

Newspost soon, things are very busy right now with Jen's dad and brother visiting!

It's February, and school ends in a month: the Japanese tradition places the end of the old year and begining of the new in April, and that applies to schools as well. Around here, that means school is grinding to a complete halt. I'm at Nichu right now, and have hardly done any teaching for the last two weeks... I went to Fujigaoka during school exams. Before exams was about a week of studying for exams, and after exams was about a week of discussing the exams. This is for all grades, from 1st year jr. high (canada Grade 7) up. It's a little frustrating for me.

Class grades have to be in on the 6th, so right now teachers are panicking to get their big assignment projects done on time. Classes are canned material for the most part, or tests and projects that should have been done earlier but there wasn't time. In other words, the life of an ALT is a bit boring!

On the bright side, I get to mark a heap of letters from 1st year students, which ought to be a bit of fun.