fun and games

Well, it seems the time for fun and games is over as a new school year begins. Maybe. It's not a new school year for me, although in some ways I miss that feeling of slinging the backpack over my shoulder, full of blank notebooks and crisp, empty folders, a perfect assortment of writing utensils, and a bus schedule. Except for the bus schedule part. Really never liked the bus.

Today I went driving off with my supervisor to a city several hours away, which was holding its annual pumpkin festival. These are the real deal pumpkins, big and orange and just right for making into creepy (or cute) jack-o-lanterns. However, we'd not been on the highway much more than an hour when we started hearing a sound like a motorcycle riding on our bumper. There wasn't much time to wonder, because in the next couple minutes, there came a noise like a shot and the car slowed down, its left rear dragging.

Thank the Lord we weren't in a tunnel, and that there was a bit of a shoulder we could ease onto to survey the damage. The tire was completely shot, a big strip of it had blown off, and there was a mesh of rubber and wires exposed near the puncture.

The sun blazed down. We considered calling JAF (Japan Automobile Federation, I think), but then she fished the manual out of a compartment and we decided to try changing the tire with the spare ourselves. Fortuitously all the right tools were in the car and the spare tire was still useable. But we spent almost an hour wrenching things here and there, trying to get obstinate levers to rotate. We'd gotten the jack in place and had just given up trying to unscrew the bolts holding the ruined tire on. My supervisor walked down the road to try to find the name of the last tunnel we passed, to let JAF know where to find us. But then I picked up another metal tool of some sort and sort of attached it to the lever already in place, and wonder of wonders, the bolt loosened.

So in the end we were able to change the tire. Then we drove into the big city and found a repair shop, where they showed us a dangerous crack beginning in the rubber of the spare tire as well. We ended up getting both the ruined tire and the spare tire replaced. All's well that ends well!

Unfortunately, we were only able to pick up about 4 pumpkins from the pumpkin festival; all the other manageably-sized, relatively whole ones were already taken. Still, this means we'll have less pumpkin to chop up and throw away when the Halloween carving festivities are over. :) Since the weather is still quite hot and humid here in Japan, you can't just keep a carved pumpkin on your doorstep or wherever-- it'll just turn into putrid mush oozing smelly orange water. I know. We had to clean up a mess like that last year, after we thought it would be a good idea to put a jack-o-lantern at the entrance of the community center. Therefore, after our Halloween party, the kids couldn't take the things home; we had to sit there for a few hours chopping up the pumpkins and wrapping them in newspaper to put out on Monday morning.

I think it's safe to say we're a bit wiser this year! We'll use mostly regular kabocha-- Japanese pumpkins-- for the event, and that way they'll be small enough for the kids to take home or for us to easily dispose of.

A large cup of tea, a kabocha, and a mikan (mandarin orange).

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I would like to take this opportunity to say "Thanks" to my dad, who made us all demonstrate changing a tire before letting us drive the family vehicle. Thank you, Dad!

a mess of thoughts

Summer fireworks are wonderful.

A Restful Country Life

Not so much, today. I drove a little over two hours to the nearest "big city" to meet a potential Japanese teacher and go to Mass for the Feast of the Assumption, which meant I got up at 6am. Ugh. I have not been a morning person for several weeks now, although I had a brief and fun run of it in the spring and early summer, when the sun was rising early but the air was still tolerably cool and dry.

Japanese Language Proficiency

The meeting with U-sensei was pleasant, but something that's been nagging me became clearer: what will I do with Japanese after this? It may be a result of where I live and its distance from most everything, or the fact that they usually teach true beginners or intermediate level, but U-sensei and the other teachers were all saying, 'Ah, your Japanese is great already; what else do you need to study?' At work I often get the opposite vibe: 'This is unintelligible and you'll never acquire natural Japanese.' Anyway, though, I showed U-sensei some of the documents I work with and chatted about work and wanting to use Japanese in a non-English-teaching job in the future.

Then the nagging thought came back-- even if I had perfect Japanese, what kind of work can I expect to find in Japan without a degree in business or computer science or finance or engineering? Furthermore, as in the US, the papers say Japanese college grads are having a terrible time finding work.

I want to learn more languages, and see some more countries, but not at the expense of forgetting Japanese. I've already forgotten most of two years of college Mandarin. Yet if I'm ultimately unable to use Japanese in a profitable career, perhaps it's best to move ahead quickly with other things.

The Global Economy

Quite a number of college grads are in a similar, floundering situation, I believe. Part of the reason is the economy, sure. Another part is academic inflation. A college degree means (or meant) a higher salary, so more people go to college, more colleges spring up, academic fields diversify, school administration staff burgeons, and pretty soon you have an expensive degree factory instead of an institution of higher learning. Kids are encouraged to study whatever they like, because it doesn't matter what kind of degree they get in the long run. In the meantime, degree-holders have become a dime a dozen.

Especially now that the job market has become so competitive, many idealistic B.A.s find themselves at a loss to explain their skills to potential employers.

Why wasn't marketing on that list of general education requirements?

The Future

The next generation of students will eventually be forewarned to go after practical, marketable skills, and the variety of dreamy-creamy majors will decrease while fields like medicine, engineering, law, and business see growth and higher competition for admittance. These students will also have to learn to compete for jobs with overseas peers.

I'm hopeful that this will have a jolting effect on K-12 education, and that US kids will be challenged to go far beyond the current expectations of standardized tests.

As for my generation, though, I think a lot of us will have to either get smart or get lost. We aren't on the same cut-and-dried job-hunting field as our predecessors, and we need to learn how to deal with that.