TAKE It For Granted

This month I've been helping Keiko study for her TOEIC* exam at the end of June.

TOEIC - the Test Of English for International Communication** - is a Universal guide for employers to know your English ability, although it is mainly used in Japan. A particular flaw is that it in no way measures your communicative ability - my experience as a teacher taught me that some students arrogantly believe they are great because their TOEIC score was high but they couldn't even reply to a simple "How are you?" question.

Still, a good score goes a long way - 990 being the top. The test takes nearly all day, is held every other month in hundreds of locations and 1000s of people pay about £30 to take it each time.

TOEIC is divided into seven parts:

Listening
- Answering questions about photographs
- Question response
- Answering questions about short conversations
- Answering questions about short talks

Reading
- Incomplete sentences
- Text completion
- Reading comprehension

It actually gets very difficult towards the end and native speakers aren't expected to get a perfect 990. Some of it is fascinating, for example, the 'incomplete sentence' section has a part in which you have to fill in the correct phrasal verbs, e.g.

The lawyer called me to ____ a meeting.
a) set on
b) set up
c) set to
d) set in

It may seem easy but there's no way a non-native can really guess, as the answer can only be known through experience. To defend this point, take a few phrasal verbs from the two words 'take' and 'look':

take over, take in, take up, take care of, take off, take on, take out, take back
look after, look for, look up to, look into, look on, look back on, look out for

Who knew there were so many!?

*pronounced Toe-ick, as in "foot-finger" and "gross"
**why does the O count but not the F?

Image Of The Week #43

(Taken in Yugawara - 14th March, 2007)

Tanuki - raccoon dog - are known in Japan for their over-sized testicles. It apparently became a running joke for artists in the 18oos* (see picture below). The statues can be seen all over Japan outside of Izakayas.

They are placed there as a testament of the verility of the men drinking inside AND to bring fortune to the establishment; the latter because their skins were used to process gold.

(woodblock by Yoshitoshi, 1881)

*oh, how they must have laughed.

In Practice And Theory

Big news here today is the first Government official to commit suicide since WWII.

Considering jumping in front of trains is one of the, if not the, biggest methods in Japan, a piece of fascinating research has been released. I've made simple visual displays to explain this.

Suppose there is one central platform, and the trains are on the outside. Pedestrians will be facing a wall, one way or another. In this sense, they do not have to 'face' anyone else.

However, imagine the next scenario. With platforms on the outside, the trains both run on the inside so that, whichever side you stand, you are 'facing' someone.

This second setting apparently reduces the suicide rate; the shame of having people facing you prevents people from acting. It makes a lot of sense, in theory.

In reality, I don't know.

Apparently Not Smug Enough

This smug so-and-so beat me to the champagne. However, reports coming from England suggest that there is some tomfoolery going on. A Mr O.J. Lurie suggests, "[Mr Lurie's] picture was better cause I could have taken one with a monkey at monkey world!" and a newly-30 year old man going by the name of Andrew asserts, "He [Mr Lurie] looks like too much of a nice guy... not enough of a c*nt to be smug".

All taken in my stride.

Still, this is a picture of the sunset outside my house. It's not all bad.

SIDHTTWU #3

The Hello Kitty fascination in Japan just keeps growing. Here she is in 大涌谷 (Owakudani - Hell Valley) disguised as a 黒卵 (Kuro Tamago - Black Egg):

This Should Win The Turner Prize

You may remember the huge clock that I've featured on this blog before. It stands in front of the Nippon TV Building in Shiodome (future world) and displays a show on the hour a few times a day. Finally, I managed to catch it. It's not as exciting as the one in Prague, which is really special, but it's quite fun trying to spot where the next thing will happen.

The copper clock, 10 meters high and 18 meters wide, was designed by Miyazaki - THE director of anime movies, including Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and Porco Rosso. His reasoning was that, "As time passes, the characters of the animation will be forgotten. Therefore I wanted to make something that will be loved by future generations as well."

A Work Workout

As mentioned, my working hours are long, and it has left little time to do solid exercise. Re-joining a gym in Gotanda just hasn't proved to be cost or time-effective. I've been for a few runs along the river on the weekends, and I guess if I really cared, I could go for early-early morning runs before work. My office is on the 7th floor so I can use the stairs instead of taking the lift. I can do butt-clenches in my chair, I suppose.

Does anyone have more suggestions for sneaky exercise at work?

Image Of The Week #42

(Gotanda - 20th May, 2007)

Mmm, fresh.

Got That Friday Feeling Back

The new job is great. It's hard work and long hours, but it's a proper job, interesting and challenging. It's definitely not for life, but for now I'm pretty happy. Most of my co-workers are a good ten years older than me, so there's plenty of time for other stuff; even if I do this for one year I'll still only be 23. But the best thing is that I have a regular job with a regular weekend in a place I love. At NOVA, granted I liked my Thurs-Fri weekend as it was quiet, but everyone's Saturday was my Monday morning and it felt gutting.

Now, nothing beats that Friday feeling I have.

There's even a little Irish Pub, the Grafton, around the corner from my apartment which we've been frequenting every once in a while to celebrate the weekend. It has a good atmosphere and, except for everyone else being Japanese, you could imagine you're sitting in an Old Man's Pub back home.
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As for NOVA, do I miss it? Not really. To be honest, the people I worked with were great and the 5% of students that cared made it worthwhile, but now that I don't work for the company I can be honest about my feelings:

The company is in a terrible state; they are losing court cases all over the place, regarding anti-socialisation rules and being sued by students who are dissatisfied with the service and refund terms and conditions. NOVA is only really concerned with having a Western person 'entertaining' some Japanese students; as long as you look presentable it doesn't actually matter about your teaching ability. In this sense, there's a very frustrating aspect of the job, namely that a good teacher that stays a year - the average time - is treated exactly the same as a bad teacher who stays a year. So why would you bother? And for those that do, there's no appreciation or reward; the whole place is based on threats: "If you don't do this or that, then...". On top of that, everything is so backwards - you can be praised by every student for doing a great job but that can all be negated by one thing the management think you did wrong. To put it simpler, the focus is on presentation and sales, not ability. Enough said.

Additionally, the Japanese staff are treated appallingly - forced to work ridiculous amounts of overtime for no extra money - but they are too timid and with little power to stand up against such a powerful Corporation. Out of the three managers that were at my branch during my time there, one was so over-worked that she had a nervous breakdown and was admitted to hospital. Unfortunately, this is common. Why would staff put themselves in that position? Because if you are a young female who wants to use English and work with Western staff, it's the best place for it.

And that is why NOVA, for all its problems and disgusting treatment of its workers, will always have people applying to work there. For the Japanese staff, the above is the reason why. For Westerners, there are two outweighing selling points:

1) It's a very easy way to come to Japan.
2) The company allows for a flexible work schedule, so that you can easily plan for a few days off if you want to go on a trip.

Honestly speaking, those two pros are so powerful that it's difficult to be bitter about NOVA; they helped me get to Japan, and around it, with few difficulties.

Would I recommend it? Yes, and no. If you want to come to Japan, then there are worse ways. But if, like me, you get frustrated when an organisation is a mess, then be prepared to put head to brick wall.

Finally, the above criticism might seem a bit severe, but I left NOVA on a really sour point. I asked for a letter of reference, and got a sub-standard three paragraph statement that everyone else receives. For all my hard work and attempts to offer something a bit different, interesting and (hopefully) inspiring to the students, this letter is all my year boiled down to in the eyes of my bosses.

Image Of The Week #41

Roughly translated as "Moving Eyes for the Prevention of Crime", the rather self-explanatory scheme has started recently around several areas of Tokyo, including where I live, Gotanda.

These stickers are placed on local vehicles - such as buses, taxis, and delivery vans - to deter crimes and loiterers around public places - especially schools and parks.

I'm not sure if they work, but they are very eerie-looking.

(taken in Gotanda - 20th May, 2007)

Smugshot

The TimesOnline runs a weekly competition to show off your holiday pics, and for one lucky person to win some Champagne. Just for this week, I'm on there! Click here to follow the link. On the left is the multimedia section and go to Picture 5 under Tuesday May 22.

Walkabout

In Shibuya today, this strange vending machine caught my eye. Why?

Because it was a person, walking around. Why?

Why not.

The Crows Have Eyes

To celebrate the finale of Lost this week, I wanted to write this blog flashback style, but then realised that the sun is shining outside and it doesn't seem right to spend all that time working it out when I could be enjoying the fresh air. So you'll have to imagine some snazzy past-present to-ing and fro-ing.

Remember the crow attack in the train station a few months back? I was going through there two weeks ago, and noticed that the spikes were still on the floor. At least it was one less weapon for the evil birds. Some evidence (sorry again for the camera phone quality):



The crows are becoming more clever. They've learnt to put garbage bags in the middle of the road so that cars will run over them and the goodies inside become obtainable. I was walking down my road and there were at least four crows surrounding a bag, watching and waiting. A few pedestrians carefully slipped by looking concerned but not brave enough to move the bag, and any car that went past would swerve around it.

I picked up the bag and moved it to the side, putting it under the blue netting covers that deter the crows, all the time facing the buggers. They stared back, plotting. As I walked away, they all flew to the telephone wire above and watched me walk away.

I think they're biding their time; waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.

Image Of The Week #40

In Izakayas, they always serve a small snack when you sit down, and include a couple of hundred yen as service charge. Usually, it's edible such as some beans, nuts, or root vegetables. However, last week I couldn't get over how different the offering was. Baby crabs, whole but deep fried. Gross! One of the few things that I've refused.

Sorry about the quality; I didn't expect to be taking any photos, so all I was armed with was a camera phone.

Mmm, crunchy!

(taken in ZaWatami - 12th May, 2007)

Pre-Kyoto

Mum and Keith were here over two months ago, so in timely fashion, here is a little summary about what we got up to in the Tokyo area. I'm not going to focus too heavily on this part, just skim over with pictures, as most of it is things that have appeared on this blog at least once before.

The first evening we met in Shinagawa, and went to an Izakaya for dinner; a selection of Japanese delicacies. Some went down better than others, but kudos to them for trying nearly everything the whole time in Japan*.

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The first full day was Sunday, which meant the best and only real opportunity to do the Shibuya route and see the Harajuku girls. We started at the Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku. Luckily, there was a kimono display and an area to try one on for free.

Unfortunately, it rained on and off but we still got to see a mix of sights, from Meiji Shrine to the Hachiko crossroads. And as a treat, we even saw Fuji at sunset back at the top of the Government Building.

That evening, we went to Kawasaki, the third biggest city situated on the edge of Tokyo and Yokohama (the cities never really end - they are only formally divided by rivers) with over a million citizens, for dinner. We also sat outside the cinema in the Latin Quarter to watch the water and light show. Free and fantastic.
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The second day, we went to:

a) Kamakura to see the temples,



b) Hase to see the revolving bookcase temple and Daibutsu (the Buddha) - even going inside!**,

c) and past Fuji to Enoshima to walk the whole way across the Island. And back. Stairs. Lots of stairs. So many stairs.

A very long day and we were all absolutely shattered by the end, but we managed to see some early blossom.

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The third day, we started at Hama-Rikyu park and saw the rape flowers.

Afterwards, we took a boat up Sumida River to Asakusa, stopping briefly at the "Penis Statue" Building for an Asahi beer. A brief stroll along the river to the Sumo area, Ryogoku, to attempt the impenetrable Edo Tokyo Museum. So much information and never enough time.

That night we ate at the conveyor belt sushi bar in Tsunashima and walked around the freezing but modern Minato Mirai area of Yokohama.
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The next two days were an overnight trip to Hakone, staying in a ryokan (traditional Japanese style hotel) in Yugawara. We met up with Keiko in Yokohama and took the train along the coast to the rural area South of Tokyo. After arriving, we all walked along a waterfall-lined river, had a relax at the foot spa - nearly burning ourselves in one of the freshly heated-up pools - and then checked into the hotel.

A pleasant onsen on the roof-top later, we were treated to kaiseki-ryouri, many different seasonal dishes, served by a lady who did the whole routine with the sliding doors etc.

A few plum wines and some sake later at the nearby "old men's pub" I took a quick onsen and then slept soundly.

Getting my money's worth, another bath in the morning before heading off to Hakone. Unfortunately, it was a little overcast so Fuji was hidden for the larger part of the day, although at some points at peaked over the clouds which created the incredible impression that it was floating in the sky. So dramatic. So impossible to capture on camera.

We drunk some sake in front of a mostly-covered Fuji, ate sulphur-style eggs in Owakudani (Hell Valley), rode the cable-car and sailed the boat across Lake Ashi.

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The last full day in Tokyo was, in hindsight, over-packed. But then again, we all survived and I would've been disappointed not to have shown my guests everything. We started by climbing Mount Takao which, not in the same scale as Fuji, was still a mean feat before lunch. I have some fantastic videos of Mum dancing to a strange Russian-Japanese song*** but I'm divided whether to post them.

My timing wasn't great so we didn't get to the yakiniku restaurant in Shibuya until late but it was worth it. Oishii! That afternoon, we had a look around some electronice stores and then took the Yurikamome (driverless monorail) to Odaiba; seeing the infamous red sun setting, walking along the beach-front, and exploring the Toyota Showroom.

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For regular readers, most of the above must sound like old news now, but I hope that for those who have actually been here that it brings back some good memories.

*I'll let Mum off for the baby squid in the ryokan.
**The statue itself inside was really hot in parts, and there was some clever explanation about the structuring of it. I've forgotten since. A case of in one ear, out the other.
***I've heard stranger: techno-accordion in rural France.