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Broadcasting to an audience of three (and a goldfish)...
Comment, ramblings and musings... life through the eyes of a Japanologist...
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Thursday, July 4, 2002 |
 According to a letter on my desk, I'm a jikko-iin for this year's Festival Etajima. Sounds dreadfully important!
Actually, though, in practice all I have to do is go to meetings and approve things that two or three people will then do on my behalf. I did the same thing last year, when I was (in name) in charge of the stalls at the festival- without ever going near a stall! This is my kind of job!
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This week's run in with incompetent teachers was, as ever, over timing.
It scares me to think that a whole generation of Japanese children are
being taught by idiots like these. If filling in simple times on a
simple form stumps them, then really, there's no hope.
Anyway, the form in question concerned a lesson I'd been asked to give
tomorrow. The form said 'two lessons, from 1340 to 1515'. However, what
it meant was (of course) 'four lessons, from 1040 to 1515'. Well, call
me stupid, but I missed this meaning completely. What was especially
irritating was that the teacher denied any knowledge of the mistake,
insisting over and over again that she'd written the correct times and
number of lessons on the form she'd sent to me. The fact that I had the
very form in front of me, and that it quite plainly didn't say what she
was insisting it said, didn't seem to mean anything to her. I was
tempted to argue and refuse to go, but in the end, accommodating the
idiot teacher's mistake and teaching the lessons won out- narrowly!-
over the Navy article translation. But nobody will ever know just how
close I was to saying 'tough!' and putting the phone down. It's not a
question with me of not suffering fools gladly, it's more a case of not
suffering fools at all, and this is especially the case when the fool in
question tries to shift the blame onto somebody else.
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Sometimes I half-wonder whether my only function in the office is to be the person who gets cakes.
When I do a speech, or teach English in the Naval Base, or write articles- basically, whatever I do- the person who's been looking after things on the other end will visit the office with a box of cakes as a token of appreciation. The cakes, though, are for the office, not just for me- despite the fact that half of the office aren't even aware of the fact that I've done a speech or written an article. If they're prepared to eat 'my' cakes, though, then the least they could do is to show some more interest in what I've done to earn the cakes in the first place!
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Spent the morning translating 'that' article into Japanese, and writing a list of the problems involved in holding 'international' events (especially in the case of a small town). The list made sobering reading...
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© Copyright 2003 Nathan Duckworth.
Updated: 8/1/03; 8:16:07 pm.
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