The Beast

“And the Thing emerged from its cave and blinked its terrible yellow eyes at the sunlight. It turned its warty head to the captive princess and spoke thusly to her...”

“Sorry I haven't updated my blog for a while.”

Life has been busy here in Kyoto. Most of the High School students at Rakuhoku (my school) wrote English speeches over the summer for the school's speech contest. The winners from there will go on to compete in either the city or prefectural level...I think. Either way, before a word of these speeches get spoken they arrive on the desks of myself and my two coworkers. Between Mike, Libby, and myself we had a set of 160 speeches with another sixty or so added in from a few other classes.

Thus we all settled in for a week of non-stop correcting and grading. Every moment not spent in class was devoted to quality time with students' speeches and the red pen. I finished the last one today which means that I have time to write for my blog and reflect upon the whole ordeal. I have two major impressions:

First, the students did a pretty fine job. Most speech-essays were easy enough to follow with a few articles and verbs in the wrong places. Of the 40 papers that I corrected there were only five or so that were difficult to understand. Admittedly those few papers were reminiscent of Latin poetry- clauses and feral verbs fighting for supremacy while timid nouns trembled in the margins- but hey, my students were still managing to communicate and I think that's the point of language at the core of things.

Second, grading wasn't that bad. My dad (a math professor) sent me the following link which describes the five stages of grieving, as they apply to grading papers. I can definitely relate to what this particular fellow is talking about, but I would do it all over again. ...although it's possible I'm just a masochist.

The five stages of grading: http://notthatkindofdoctor.com/2010/10/the-five-stages-of-grading/

Anyway, what else have I been up to?

At school I play Simon Says with my first year students to get them warmed up at the start of the lesson. This means that when I say “(Simon Says) jump!” 27 twelve-year-olds start hopping in unison. It's gratifying in a strange way, to bend a small class of junior high students to my will so easily. Now I just need to teach them enough English so that “Simon says invade the classroom next door and add their ranks to my followers” is a feasible command. So long as I have stickers, world domination may be in my grasp. Updates to follow.

Now for some more “Aw” factor: My second year students start every class by singing Michael Jackson's “Heal the World.” Yes, a room full of earnest-faced Japanese children singing about love and world peace. ...I hope you recognize this song title, because I, being a fail-American, heard this hall-mark piece of music for the first time in a Japanese classroom. I share this particular grade level with Libby, from the UK. I guess the instructor assumed that Libby would need some help with this iconic piece of American music, but that I, an American, wouldn't need any advance warning. The end result was an awkward five minutes in class with 30 Japanese children belting out Michael Jackson while their American teacher stared at the lyrics sheet in bafflement.

On the weekend, in between grading papers, I found time to go out shopping. I found that my school slippers weren't enough support for my feet during lessons. So I went out and did the only thing any self respecting man would do- I got silver Crocs.

(My alligator and my Crocs)

That same day I also sat down and made rice-balls or onigiri. I put salted salmon in them, and they were incredibly tasty. I got the shape right and everything. The next day I showed them off at work, I was pretty proud ^^ (It also offers the opportunity for a lesser man to make a joke about showing off balls at work, but I'm too mature to say such a thing.)

If you're interested in trying your hand at making Onigiri I recommend it. Here's what you need to make about six large rice balls:

~2 cups of sticky rice (uncooked)

Black sesame seeds (I got mine with salt already mixed in, for seasoning rice)

Nori, or sheets of dried seaweed paper

~1 cup of shredded salmon, grilled and salted

Mayonnaise

Salt

Water

First you cook the rice. (No, really.) Before the rice gets too sticky, mix in a few pinches of salt. Add the sesame seeds until you've got a seed-to-rice ratio that looks good to you.

While the rice is cooling, mix the salmon with some mayonnaise. Enough to make it stick together and give it some moisture.

Get the nori ready, and a small bowl of water that you can repeatedly dip your hands in. Have a salt shaker on hand too.

Once the rice is cool enough that you can touch it without burning yourself, it's time to make the onigiri! Dip your hands in the water so the rice won't stick to you, and shake a little salt on them as well. Then get a handful of cooked rice in one hand and a small ball of salmon and mayo filling in the other. Press the filling into the center of your rice. Then, re-wetting your hands as necessary, shape the rice into a rounded triangle around your salmon filling.

When you are happy with the shape you have, put a nori wrapper around the bottom of your shiny new rice-ball. I recommend eating them right away as they're really good warm, but they also keep pretty well for later consumption.

That's all from me for now. Though I would like to acknowledge that, yes, there is a typhoon hitting the south-east of Japan this Saturday. Don't worry on my behalf though. Kyoto city is surrounded by mountains, which will cut the already weakened typhoon down to a heavy rainstorm. As for this happy Oregonian, I'll be watching the rain or else cuddling with Alistair while I write more blog entries!

-Andrew

P.S. I apologize to my parents for (almost) making an off color joke in this post.