An enviable ability to multitask...

 

Paperwork.... head spinning..... imminent head explosion...

A couple of months back someone in the staffroom of the university I most enjoy teaching at  asked me if I was interested to teach some classes as a different university.   It  would mean a few more teaching hours a week at a humanities university with high level students and also pays comparatively well. (Usually the general rule with part time teaching, is the better the university the lower the salary (people want to work at good universities and will forgo salary for prestige and satisfaction).  It would also give me great satisfaction to flick off this establishment.

But............

Yesterday the paperwork arrived.  Full marks to them for doing it by email.

There are 6 pages of a spreadsheet that need to be filled out.

English and Japanese of my work history, education history, publication history, presentation history.  As if the resume I already sent them doesn't have all this information on it anyway......

Translating the name of the school in Thailand, or my high school in Aus, or the schools that I have worked at into mangled phonetic Japanese that turns my name from Cecilia to Se shi ri a.     Does Rhamkhamheng become ra mu ka mu he n gu  or   ra n ka n he n  .... or ramu ka n hengu.... the possibilities are driving me up the wall.....

If I translate the name of an article I wrote for the Guardian, no-one would ever be able to locate it.... 

And...

As if anyone will ever actually read it.....

sigh...

As if I don't have better things to do with my time... 

And the gods of Shinto wept - over zealous pruning.

A week or two back, on my way home from work I was confronted with a terrible, and yet perennial sight...  In the morning when I went out, these were trees; on my return... post apocalyptic.... ravaged trunks. Stark, naked... the Agent Orange effect... it happens all the time at this time of year...  According to Hiro, the most likely rationale is that it saves the surroundings from ..... autumn leaf litter.
Shinto is supposed to be a nature worship religion... Japan prides itself on being a nature country attuned to the seasons (though it doesn't take too long being here before that becomes bitterly ironic).... the gods of Shinto must have looked and wept. 

 

Rain and "physical" day.

Typhoon season mixed with taiku no hi - poorly translated as physical day, as in the public holiday to celebrate physical exercise - equals teru teru bozu (little "shine shine monks" that look like a cross between a C grade horror movie and C grade Christmas decorations).  They're quite cute actually, and made as charms to keep away the rain - often for school sports events.    I was out in Ochanomizu the other night and stumbled across some in the main street next to the station.  

I was holding my umbrella, everyone else was holding umbrellas....cute they may be, but I am not convinced of their efficacy.

A typhoon & a concert

It's typhoon season here. It's seems like today has been the first fine day for ... ages.  It's hard to remember that a couple of weeks ago I was thinking of finding out where the fire hydrant water supply could be accessed so I could water the azaleas in the neighbourhood which were giving up the ghost with the relentless  hot, dry summer.

Last weekend there was a typhoon forecast, Hiro received free tickets to a Kesennuma concert in Hamamatsucho and were umming and ahhing about whether to go.  I figured we should, typhoon are never very serious in Tokyo, the concert was starring Ikumi Kumagai, whom we had met through mutual friends in Akita, and I wanted to support  Kesennuma was hit badly by the tsunami, ( and is just south of Rikuzen Takada where I spent time last year).

So despite the typhoon, we went.  I assumed was a fund raising concert with Ikumi Kumagai,  as the main draw card,but in fact was a documentary screening / chat about the earthquake / Ikumui Kumagai concert. The chat session was a group  of classmates from Kessenuma,  One was the MC, one Ikumi Kumagai,  one was the silver medalist fencer from the London Olympics and one was a representative of the Japan national rugby team.  Amazing to have 4 such high achieving classmates in a small country town...

 I knew Ikumi was relatively well known, but was quite surprised at how good she is.....
(see below)  She mostly writes her own music. As far as I know this is one she wrote for some NHK drama.


The trains were all on reduced services.  The map below shows the whole system yellow - it's not meant to be....   Despite the disruption, it was easy to get home.  I guess most people stayed in or went home early.

I've been predicting this

I've been predicting this for years. With Japan's aging population, it's a matter of time before all the seets on public transport are "silver seats" (priority seasts).  On Sunday I took the Minato ku "chii-bus' which winds up and down the back streets of Azabu as it makes its way from Hiro-o to the Minato local govt. office.   Every seat on the bus was a priority seat.  The tricky thing is deciding which eligible person should be the one sitting down...
The "chii-buses" are actually a great way to see Tokyo, winding through residential areas and shopping strips, ferrying mostly local oldies around the local govt. area.  It might be time for a chii-bus challenge!