Tired

Work is really becoming a drag.

I love to teach but recently it is more about administrative work and internal politics and as a relatively low man on the totem pole, I find myself in situations that spin out of my control and simply defeat me.

I'm just tired of it and am seriously considering changing my surroundings.

New Years Greeting 2012

I rarely post anymore, mostly because I'm too busy to write anything. But I did write a New Years greeting for friends and family--this in itself is rather amazing as I am very bad at sending Christmas/holiday/New Year's greeting cards. Not to make excuses, of course, but grading finals usually take me up to Christmas--depending on volume (and mood), it can take me until after Christmas. In any event, I'd like to share my greeting here with my fellow Xangans as well.

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2012 is the year of the dragon and I’m sure many will associate this with an old Bruce Lee film. Personally, I prefer to relate it with something more representative of me, so I’ve added the Kirin Beer logo that I’ve conveniently—and undoubtedly illegally—copy-and-pasted from the Internet (how did I survive before Google?!?). It is based on the Chinese Qilin 麒麟, a Chinese chimera of sorts that is a combination of different animals—hooves of an ox, tail of a lion, scales of a fish (How did I survive before Wikipedia?!?). But its most obvious feature is the head, which is based on a dragon, and I have viewed it as such over the years. So fittingly, it is now my personal symbol for the New Year: The Kirin. It is, after all, the harbinger of good fortune, and I’m sure we could all use a pint or two of that, no?

Anyway, I just thought I’d jot down a few things to let you know what’s been going on lately, which is not much. But, of course, that might actually be a good thing
I’m still at the George Washington University, teaching classes on Japanese language and literature—both classical and modern. I’m still assistant professor and I’m working on an article to start the publishing record going. I’ve only written a chapter in a book in the past few years, so I need to get more research out. You know the old adage: Publish or perish.

Still, life is not so bad. I have a steady—if busy—job. I have a small home. I have my health… well sort of. At 56, I finally decided to get serious about my health, so I’ve been running pretty regularly for the past 6 months. Recently, I’ve been doing about 30 miles on the treadmill every week—I have hay fever so I don’t run outside so much. And while the treadmill is not as arduous as running outside, I still put in the miles. Like almost 900 miles since July! (No, that is not a typo.) Now, I don’t run fast, and I am not a marathoner. The treadmill is set at a low speed—between 5 to 6 mph—although with my short legs it feels pretty fast. As a result, this is the first year since I’ve been back from Japan where I’ve lost weight during the fall semester, almost 20 pounds! Okay, I confess that I’ve gained back about 4 pounds since Thanksgiving, but that’s still a net of 16 lbs. which is pretty good for me.

Unfortunately, being 56 also means having a less-than-cooperative body. In the last week of December—the 30th to be exact—I strained my left calf and I’ve taken a couple of weeks off, although I continue walking.

Musubichan—former aerobics instructor, now my “will-you-exercise-already?” motivator—is doing well, as usual, although we had a scare in September when she had an abnormal mammogram reading. After a couple of x-rays, a biopsy and a titanium clip implant, we learned that she is fine, thank God. Speaking of which, after about three weeks of waiting for this or that test result, and countless of Hail Marys and Our Fathers, I discovered that I may be more religious than I thought. I guess there’s nothing like a medical situation to test one’s religiosity. And as you might imagine, the semester started out rather hectic and kept me busy until the very end of the year.

Still, all in all we got through 2011 relatively unscathed and there is nothing wrong with that. As they say in Japanese: 体は資本. Your body is your capital.

So Happy New Years everyone. Here’s hoping that you and your loved ones have a healthy and prosperous 2012.

January 2012.

Memories in bits and pieces

There's a song I can't get out of my head. It was by the Classics IV called Traces:

Faded photographscovered now with lines and creasesTickets torn in half,
memories in bits and pieces...

My first "real" girlfriend friended me on facebook. I hadn't seen or talked to her in over 35 years. Naturally, I didn't know her married name and didn't recognize her immediately, but after a quick Google search--since she friended me first, I don't consider this stalking--I realized who she was and was quite surprised.

Not a bad kind of surprise, mind you...

I accepted her friending and we've messaged each other a couple times since. I was rather blown away by her memory. She was mentioning things that even I had forgotten, and I consider my memory to be... well, never mind. Maybe her memory should be better than mine as my mind has gone into some kind of other worldly mode in the past few years. I think they call it aging.

In any case, I have the urge to write a whole bunch about my high school days again, but as I pondered those year--I actually should have been grading but this has been the best excuse to procrastinate without really realizing that I was procrastinating--I've come to realize that most of it is a collage of memories, no recollections of a string of events that might constitute a narrative. A kiss on the dance floor, an Japanese X-rated movie, her playing The Fish by Yes on the piano, giving each other the flu back and forth, Andy's Pool Hall, Sears, rabbit jacket, arguments, throwing up in her car after drinking too much champagne at the wedding of the band's drummer's brother... Geez. With all this, you'd think I could come up with something.

Well, maybe I just need to ponder a bit longer. Maybe she'll message me something I had forgotten and it will jog my memories more completely. Until then I will be satisfied with letting the bits and pieces wash over me and amuse me during the downtime of teaching and grading.

Confessions of a TV-holic

I am a TV-holic. When I was a kid, my mother used to ask me what was on TV because I was the  TV Guy, her own personal  TV Guide, as it were. I knew the day and time of sitcoms and whiled away my youth on such fare as Hogan's Hero, Gilligan's Island and MASH. Around the 80s, I began to actually take academics seriously in college and coincidentally my viewing habits changed. No, I did not give up the boob tube for books, but I watched fewer sitcoms and took an interest in dramas.
But I didn't watch just any drama. I didn't watch too many police stories. Nor did I watch overly melodramatic programs. The dramas i watched had to have a "serious" theme, but it also had to have an element of the light-hearted, often witty, and occasionally funny, as represented in such favorites as Moonlighting, Hill Street Blues, LA Law and, of course, ST:TNG.

Then I moved to Japan to do my dissertation research. I ended up living there for almost seven years and during my time there, I watched my share of TV. The doramas in Japan were exactly to my liking. They touched on themes of everyday life with a touch of light-heartedness and seriousness. A dorama like "The 101st Marriage Proposal" was classic: a man who can't seem to get married because he is not the best looking guy, but eventually finds the right girl and wins her over with a sense sincerity and a touch of desperation. I also appreciated how dorama were aired. They are season long mini-series, each dorama runing about nine to twelve episodes over a three month period. Once the dorama's over, it's over. There are no cliff hangers that keep viewers in suspense for months, like the "Who Shot JR" fiasco of Dallas.

When I returned to the States in 1996, I was lost. Programming had changed so much that I felt like a foreigner. The Fox Network? Reality TV? There were, of course, some gems: The X Files and Law and Order. But by the 2000s, the X Files had run its course and Law and Order was getting old. The only show worth watching was CSI... How I longed for Japanese dorama.

Then my students led me to some sites that offered dorama online. Oh-My-God... I was in heaven. I watched everything from the silly--Gokusen--to the sublime--Nodame Cantible (okay, it was sublime to me). I found myself watching four, five, even seven titles a week. That's a lot of TV viewing. Then in the mid-2000s, I discovered that cable TV was also producing quality dramas: Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men, Burn Notice. These just add to the total number of hours I already spend on J-dorama.

So what does this all mean? I need to change. I have justified my J-dorama viewing habits by insisting that I learn Japanese. And I do. No, really. I keep a notebook next to the TV and jot down vocabulary I don't know, and there is now quite a list. Still, I'm not sure if that is enough to justify the hours in front of the tube. Indeed, I feel I was much more productive sitting in front of my computer, pounding out daily post on this blog, which I did from about 2003-06. I believe that all that writing--even the rather inane details of my life--allowed me to develop a style and an ability to structure a piece more effectively and efficiently. So maybe it's time to escape from the wasteland of TV and return to the blog... my blog.

Maybe...

Schools out for summer... almost

I still have Final exams to make and grade, but at least classes are over. Whew! I don't think I've ever worked harder than this academic year. The Genji class was brand new so I had to start from scratch--re-reading each chapter, re-/reading secondary sources, drafting lecture notes, creating PowerPoint slides.

Beginning Japanese was another time consumer. I co-taught with another teacher and we split the duties: she was in charge of homework and special assignments--oral interviews, one short essay and a final one-minute speech; I took care of lectures, all quizzes and exams, and maintaining grades. We had quizzes twice, sometimes three times a week, and in case you're wondering, grading 45 quizzes takes me at least about 3 hours: correcting, grading, tallying points and recording grades. Also, since they put us in such small rooms and students sit elbow to elbow, I make two different quizzes in an attempt to discourage wandering eyes--I believe that a teachers should also be responsible for academic integrity by creating an environment that discourages cheating. In other words I was grading two different, albeit similar, quizzes. Fortunately, preparing for class was much easier as a colleague generously allowed me the use of her PowerPoint slides. I tweaked them to fit my own style/approach to teaching, but in general I used them as is and I think I would have died without them. (Memo: Send thank you card to TT.)

J-Lit in Translation was another time consumer. I hadn't taught it in a couple of years so had to re-read some of the material: I alternate books occasionally to break the monotony of teaching the same course each year, so it had been a while since I read/taught Enchi Fumiko's Masks and Kawabata's Snow Country. I also used the new abridged edition of Shirane's Early Modern Japanese Literature.

Indeed, since it had been over a year since the last time I taught J-Lit in Translation, I felt a bit off balance. Also grading three essays for 35 students was not a simple task--especially when you squeeze them in between the 45 quizzes that I always seemed to be grading--even if I did limit them to 1000 words. Oh, and I made new PowerPoint slides for this course so it was almost like teaching from scratch.

Interestingly, the easiest course I had this academic year was Bungo, perhaps because it's my favorite class... although many students will easily and roundly express their displeasure: It's too hard, it's too fast. Blah, blah, blah. But it's not, I retort. It's a state of mind. At which I am usually met with blank stares. *sigh*

In any event, I have Finals to make and grade, senior theses to read, and three commencement (count 'em, 1-2-3) to attend, all leading up to... summer school, which starts the day after commencement. Will work never end?

Just direct me to a pillow. All I wanna do is sleep.