my firefly redemption

June 6th, 2010 by Joel | Posted in life, play | No Comments »

When I was a child, I did terrible things to fireflies. School would end for the summer sometime in early June, and my younger brother and I would revel in the knowledge that for the next nearly three months, we were utterly free to do as we pleased. That is, as long as we had mom’s permission (and occasional ignorance) on our side. We would head out to the backyard, which was more than half shaded by a grandad of a maple tree a couple feet in diameter, and play croquet, shoot baskets, or have battles with water guns. Sometimes we’d play army with our G.I. Joes in our sandbox that wasn’t a box but a half-buried tractor tire five feet wide. The summer was ours, and the backyard was the kingdom of our imagination.

Unfortunately, as a monarch, I could be a bit less than magnanimous at times. The fireflies–or lightning bugs, as we called them–were, more often than not, the brunt of my misdirected energies. I never did anything so horrendous as pulling their wings off or putting them in lidded jars without ventilation and watching them slowly wink their way off and on to suffocation. No, all my jars had holes in the lids; I merely deprived them of finding a mate and robbed them of their one, true prerogative in life. That’s not the terrible act of which I referred to, however. No, it’s worse, I’m sorry to say. I won’t go into the gory details, but did you know that when met with a sudden, mortal blow, a lightning bug (or firefly, if you prefer) will, for reasons beyond my ken, dump whatever chemical or energy that’s been stored in itself into its bioluminescent tush? And, if met with said mortal blow whilst in-flight, the poor guy (most flying lightning bugs are male) falls to his doom like a yellowish-green meteorite streaking through the night sky. Did you know that? Well, I’m not sure how I or my brother–who is not entirely innocent in this story either–discovered this fact. But discover it we did. When one can create miniature bioluminescent meteorites made to order in one’s own backyard, it’s hard to be satisfied with a jar that’s got holes poked in it. Badminton rackets usually sufficed, but–and this is the final confession, so brace yourself–we also possessed a large, red plastic bat five or six inches across that was ideal for my demented summer evening enjoyment. I cannot begin to guess how many eligible bachelor lightning bugs came to their doom in our backyard, but I have never, quite been able to overcome the guilty idea that one day there will be a firefly reckoning.

In my meager defense, while, at the time, I had some idea that what I was doing wasn’t exactly humane, I was still pretty young. Had someone caught me and told me to stop, I may have done so. But that never happened. Eventually, I grew out of that destructive phase of my life and moved on to more productive endeavors (like mastering all the fatalities in Mortal Kombat). These days, I enjoy being a passive observer of fireflies, and perfectly capable of appreciating their gentle, complex beauty.

In fact, last night, Chiharu and I drove up to Nagayo Dam and walked around the country roads in the darkening evening to do just that. We had a picnic dinner in the field near the Shiinoki River (????) and then strolled around until dusk. We started at the bus stop by the Shiinoki River and walked up to Medaka Pond.

While I was playing with my tripod and camera settings–I still don’t have much experience shooting in low light–Chiharu was on the lookout for any trace of glowing tushes she could find.

We were starting to get discouraged the closer it got to 8pm; Chiharu had been to see fireflies in a different part of Nagasaki the night before and, at 8:00, they’d been all over the place. The closer 8:00 loomed without a single glowing bug rump, the more hope we lost. Then, almost exactly at 8:00 on the nose, the fireflies appeared in unison and en masse.

Had I taken along a bat for the viewing, you ask? Of course not. Did we capture any of the soon-to-be-twitterpated fellows to bring home in a jar? Nope. As I stood on a rock in the middle of the Shiinoki River, I was surrounded by a lazy swarm of fireflies. They circled and rose, hovered and dove while shining their desire into the enveloping dark, silent against the sound of the river nearby and frogs in the distance. We stood, silent ourselves, and took in the display. When we walked down the bank of the river, the fireflies parted before us. After we had passed, they flew back into the space where we’d just been. As we enjoyed them, they gave us our distance, politely ignored us, and went about their business. There’s something magical about a benign interaction with nature, to be part of the life dancing around you for a time and then go your separate ways. I think I’ve known that for a while, but I’ve only really begun to appreciate it lately.

That’s not to say that a little harmless interaction isn’t OK, though.

The Wind of Tharn

May 22nd, 2010 by Joel | Posted in japan, teaching, work | No Comments »

I just read this piece in the Japan Times, labeled a “letter” to the Minister of Education, Tatsuo Kawabata. It’s going to get about as much attention as the guy wearing the sandwich board proclaiming the Apocalypse is upon us.

It begins talking about how Japanese universities are hiring more part-time instructors than they used to. Part-time instructors for whom they don’t have to pay benefits, holidays, and the rest. This is true, and it sucks. But it’s not like this is unique to Japan. We’re in the middle of a recession, and Japan’s been hit harder than a lot of countries (mostly due to a distinct resistance to change in the ol’ Diet, granted). When I was still in the US the situation wasn’t much better for people looking for work, especially English teachers. And on top of that, too many universities in Japan who made the error in judgment of hiring native English-speaking foreigners as language instructors in the past have been burned by those very instructors, either through incompetence, things unethical, or just lack of caring. If I was a university administrator, I’d certainly think twice about giving any kind of lasting power to the same demographic of people (mostly white male English speakers of European descent, in this case). If anything, it’s miserliness rather than displaced xenophobia driving the current wave of part-time hiring.

Speaking of white boys, Tharn’s letter also misleadingly states that if a ‘person “looks” the part’ they get the job. This is, of course, silly. Any institution that’s dealt with foreign hires in the past and is all-too-aware of their current fiscal situation in the present isn’t going to just hire the first Aryan that walks through the door. If there is one default hiring requirement, it’s being a native speaker of English, not looking like a Swede. That being said, though, there are a disproportionate number of white males working as language teachers in Japan, the reasons for which are many, including the Japanese culture, its reputation, and a traditional preference for employing men. Let’s be honest, Japan has always attracted a disproportionate number of white guys, yours truly included. I do agree, however, that there do exist institutions (read companies) who would select one foreigner over another based on appearance.

Continuing on, if I was a Japanese university administrator, why would anyone assume that I should speak English and conduct my hiring practices of foreigners therein, as Tharn seems to think? Um. Right. Why wouldn’t the Japanese head of a Japanese university be fluent in English to the point of making new hires? Why would the administration be doing the hiring, anyway? They just stamp the contract, it’s the departments who go through the hiring process.

Still, Tharn says it’s because of this exact inability to hire foreigners in their non-Japanese native language that the university hires instructors by means of personal contacts and recommendations. Allow me to mention, here, that Tharn claims to have lived in this country for some twelve years. With that being said, how does Tharn not know that in this culture, personal contacts are how a lot of deals get made and relationships established? This isn’t just for foreign hires of universities, this is for everything from piano lessons for your kids to marriage partners for your single spawn to full-time job positions. If you’ve lived in this country 12 years and haven’t gotten used to this fact yet, it’s probably time you investigated gainful employment elsewhere.

Next in the letter, though, Tharn makes a valid point. Many universities have, in the past and some even now, made it a practice to hire the occasional permanent English instructors who do not hold even a Master’s, let alone a PhD. This is changing in Japan. As most younger Japanese professors are completing PhDs before getting tenure here, so too are foreigners being held to higher standards. I know the institution I work for wouldn’t even consider an application that didn’t have a Master’s as a minimum. Private universities, of course, may not hold their candidates to such rigorous standards. To play the devil’s advocate, if a native English speaking foreigner is hired to teach oral communication classes, then a graduate degree may not be essential, given appropriate experience and/or training. I think I’d side with Tharn on this one, though, and say that an English- or teaching-focused graduate degree is preferable. More and more universities would agree too, I think, as many have been disappointed by less-than-qualified hires in the past.

I must contend, however, with Tharn’s evident assumption that being a native speaker with a Master’s is enough to land a cushy tenured office in a university here. Would Western universities give tenure to someone without a PhD? I suppose it’s not impossible, but I’ve certainly never heard of such a case. If you have a field-appropriate PhD in Japan (linguistics, TESOL/TEFL, etc.), then your chances of landing a tenured job are greatly increased.

That just leaves us with one little problem that The Tharn failed to mention. Having a field-related Master’s or PhD is a definite asset, but if you’re wanting to work full-time at a Japanese university in Japan where Japanese people work, conduct meetings in Japanese, and write each other Japanese emails, then perhaps maybe, just maybe, being a native English speaker isn’t quite enough, no matter what color or sex you are. I mean, no one’s expecting you to publish books and research in Japanese, but if you can’t even hold an intelligible conversation with the department secretary in the local language, why would anyone bothering considering you for a permanent position?

I think Tharn makes some valid points elsewhere related to race and gender and hiring practices here (although a lot of the same blustering from the Japan Times letter is included). But the letter under discussion, which many more people are likely to read, unfortunately, comes off as more of a pout than a strong argument.

Woes of research

February 27th, 2010 by Joel | Posted in life, work | 1 Comment »

Another week has come and gone, the Olympics rage on, unrelenting in their persistence, while I sat in my office and did my damndest to sublimate research. While a Master’s student, I found it easy to somewhat randomly select a topic for research—mostly based on what I had last read in my coursework at the time—but now that I’m swimming with the big dogs (running with the sharks), I’m finding it decidedly harder to land on a research topic I’d like to pursue long-term. There’s a lot out there to get into, of course, but as I read into one area, I find sources and references that lead me into some other avenue of thought. Other than reading everything, I’m starting to find it hard to believe that I’ll ever be able to land on just one focus. How does one go about selecting just one field to go into and specialize in for years on end? Granted, in the end, anyone worth their salt is going to read extensively and cross into other specialties in order to fully understand and further their own. Still, it seems a bit daunting to read and retain everything.

Whiny much? Yes. But it’s a valid concern. Just a few months ago, I thought sociocultural aspects of SLA might be the way to go, but today I’m knee-deep in cognitive linguistics. Of course it helps to read broadly and establish a wide background of knowledge, but I’m a bit puzzled as to how a researcher/teacher decides to go for just one field out of so may possibilities. Flipping a coin (or maybe an umpteen-sided die) sounds kind of nice at this point.