JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- FT English Teachers for Kids - Osaka
- Kohgakusha Co., Ltd. （株式会社興学社）, Osaka
- Salary: ¥255,000 ~ ¥275,000 / Month Travel Expenses, Encouragement of Japanese learning*
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- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
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- Full-time English Teacher - Osaka
- Epion English Language Schools, Osaka
- Salary: ¥200,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month Depending on your ability and experience
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saborichan
Leonard, evidently you made an account just to tell us all about a bad situation in America. But if you haven't got anything to contribute to the discussion in JAPAN, or you don't have any knowledge or experience of the Japanese system, please refrain from making any comments here. You clearly don't understand that Japan is a country where family trouble is swept under the rug and where ACCOUNTABILITY for abuse is completely absent. I watched many Japanese teachers roughing up students in various physical and mental ways and it always made me feel dirty to be associated with it. I stopped what I could.
Posted in: Dragging child abuse out into the open
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saborichan
I think that's 'Jonathan Franzen'. I'm just reading his new book 'Freedom' at this very moment.
Posted in: All the presidents' best-selling books
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saborichan
Is it legitimate for someone who can't read to 'write' a book?
Posted in: All the presidents' best-selling books
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saborichan
Yeah, those little 100ml drink packs usually have about 17-20g sugar.
Posted in: Berry fruit mix juice
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saborichan
Japan is chasing robotics because it's been a leader in that field for a long time. The idea that robots could replace people in this walking, moving sense is fairly new - it's not how Japan started with robotics, and the idea of using it as an alternative labour source rather than a tool to reduce labour needs is also new. Japan didn't start out chasing robotics to get rid of those pesky gaijin.
It's actually sort of ironic... Japan is investing in an untried and risky labour alternative to immiration, which, if it goes poorly, will see Japan fall far behind its neighbours. And when it turns belatedly to immigration, the ensuing rush to enter a relatively clean, safe, prosperous country may well result in precisely the sort of ethnic accumulations they're afraid of.
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saborichan
It's the fact that the picture is possibly taken from outside school grounds that makes it an issue. I've been in enough schools to know some of their layouts. I'm not impugning the rights of photographers here. I'm just echoing comments that the persective is creepy. Look at the picture again. See those trees and power lines? They imply a road going beneath that school. Which in turn suggests the picture was taken from well outside the grounds. Maybe that's not true, maybe it's a perfectly legitimate picture. But it has the appearance of a creepy surreptitious photo.
Posted in: On parade
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saborichan
proxy, a lot of people are sensitive on privacy issues and it could well be that the photographer didn't have permission! How creepy is that? I mean, the shot very much says 'telephoto lens', doesn't it?
As for people not picking up their mothers, that just sounds like bunk. And have you met any Japanese people? There are plenty who are coddled and immature, the other end of the scale and a possible result of being too close to one's parents.
Posted in: On parade
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saborichan
This idea that the 'yutori' education is somehow bad is misleading. The so-called relaxed education isn't any different to the previous broken model except for having less hours. Both systems are broken, and they are just veering back the other way to the older one.
Posted in: Japan fattens textbooks to reverse sliding rank
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saborichan
Speaking of IE, my old Japanese high school used something like IE6 or 7. Might have even been five. All I know was, lots of websites would scold me and ask me to upgrade, but it was all networked and backed up, and the Board of Edumacation didn't change those things quickly.
Posted in: Microsoft's new IE9 promises zippier performance
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saborichan
Judderman: as someone who worked in jnr and elementary schools for five years, I wouldn't send kids there when I have some. Maybe elementary, but only someplace progressive where kids get a chance to be themselves and not repeat inane crap and call it 'opinion'.
Posted in: Japan fattens textbooks to reverse sliding rank
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saborichan
flip, I've heard various explanations for Juku - that it's free childminding, that it is to exhaust teenagers so they won't go chasing sex, that it's to teach good team spirit more than make sports stars... I suppose they are all partly right.
I actually dislike juku because it crushes the individual ego. Students have no time to develop their own identity - they are just what they do. I asked countless kids what they like 'oh, baseball'. And what else? Uhhhh... now they have to think about it. They just become club members and it becomes a huge part of their self. Then their three years ends and they bawl at their last match because a huge part of them has been ripped out and they have to make a concious choice to continue with it or find something new.
Doing something with passion is great. But I worry that the kids don't develop rounded egos because they overdo it. And not even an ego as players, either. They play as team members, but they're sometimes awful at playing as individuals. As I told my students when I left them, I think you guys would beat an Australian team hands down - but one-on-one? I don't know. Because their style of drilling gives great fundamentals but no room for individual discovery of play styles, tricks, your own special skills, etc. Thus why I think they should cut it to three days a week, to leave kids to their own devices more - however scary that may be.
Posted in: Japan fattens textbooks to reverse sliding rank
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saborichan
smith: I agree, Juku has got to be looked at too. It's great that J-kids are so healthy - I just came back to Aus and all I see is fat people around; I believe we recently surpassed America as the most obese nation. I think there should be a three-day limit on Juku per week. And with less drills and more game practice - kids don't get excited by drills, they get excited by playing. I feel so sad for the ichinensei who have to stand at attention by the courtside and barrack for their teams - what the hell kind of training is that? Give them passion and the cheering at game time will come naturally.
I wonder why S. Korea, which is basically doing the same thing Japan was twenty years ago in terms of exam hell and intensive hours for schooling, is succeeding? I suspect it's because S.K. is on the rise like Japan was. The challenge will be if S.K. can keep things going in the second/third generations to be put through this wringer.
Posted in: Japan fattens textbooks to reverse sliding rank
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saborichan
Jkanda, we're probably manly enough not to ride scooters and wear pink jackets like the 'bad' boys in my town do.
Posted in: Kiddyland
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saborichan
I suppose the author is getting at how unbelievable some technology is, and how we lack that wonder, more than how transformative any given article has been. And that's true - we don't really ask questions as much these days about strange new technologies, we just say 'huh, it does that? That's great!' . And I would argue that the internet did have that wonder for a little while. As a kid, growing up with computers, I couldn't get my head around the idea of data travelling over phone lines as fast as it does. I couldn't understand how that volume would be possible. But now I don't really think about it. It was a wondrous moment for me, but only because I knew enough about computers.
As a wise person once joked, 'sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' ... I guess celphones slip into that category; these days a star-trek badge phone is totally believeable...
Posted in: Where has the wonder of innovation gone?
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saborichan
Their body language doesn't say boy, but their looks sure do.
Posted in: Kiddyland
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saborichan
Sigh. I just left after five years of teaching in jnr and elementary, and this just saddens me. I read about it happening some time ago, of course. It's just precisely the opposite of what's needed. They're rubbishing the child-centered approach to teaching when they didn't do it right even in the slightest! What a tragedy! They will have a few years of crippling failure coming up as they revert to the old system to find the kids are more resistant to that than ever - they know it's the path to monotony, to dead lives as salarymen for companies they don't give a damn about. And they aren't willing to put themselves in line for that, especially if they already enjoy some luxury on their parents' backs.
Japanese teachers have -no- training on student-centred methods of teaching, and anything even slightly outside the top-down teacher-knows-all approach doesn't get a look in. So how can they say they encouraged thinking and child-centred learning when they completely f-----d it up? It's so aggravating.
I kind of hope this fails dismally and Japan is forced to really examine its approach to education honestly. Because the system is a sinking ship at the moment.
Posted in: Japan fattens textbooks to reverse sliding rank
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saborichan
She acts just fine for the role. And I thought she was funny and just the right kind of quirky in The Fifth Element.
Posted in: Kicking zombie butt
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saborichan
If Microsoft thinks that they will penetrate the Japanese market with controlerless gaming, they've got another thought coming. It's not even a model that's ready to work for the western market yet, let alone Japanese, who can't rent games to try things out. You'd really, really need to create a series of games very catered to the Japanese market in order to sell them on Kinect. Stuff like Samurai fighting, family kumitaisou / radio calisthenics, fukuwarai for the family, etc. And that would just get the hobby game families who want novelty. It wouldn't attract the money gamers at all.
Posted in: Microsoft's Xbox ready for bigger battle in Japan
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saborichan
I went to Beppu recently and walked the streets of the dodgy areas late at night... Nobody gave me any trouble, but as a white guy I rarely get any in Japan. There were plenty of shifty types around. I'd hate to think who you might encounter off the beaten track around there.
Posted in: Body found on Beppu mountainside identified as missing Kobe nurse
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saborichan
I'm sure you can turn those email notifications off.
Posted in: MySpace users can now sync posts to Facebook