Been a funny day today. In some ways a little frustrating, as I spent about 4 hours trying to do the simplest bit of coding in MS Office Access, but failing. I’m hoping I have an early morning breakthrough tomorrow as I have every time I’ve run into a difficult problem with it so far.

Despite the frustration, I didn’t really feel all that frustrated. Which I was happy about. Those books work wonders :-p

The view from the office balcony: looking between the neighbours

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Last night’s sloppy blog post did cause me a bit of disappointment, disappointment with myself. However, I’ve decided to take it as one of those precious lessons, and thus something to be grateful for, not regretful of.

Work at the office is starting to pick up now, with my telephone-conversation ‘classes’ (5 minute phone calls on topics such as personal info / directions / social issues in Japan) now taking up about four hours a day. [My job is firstly: taking 5 min conversation calls and marking written essays from my 300 students. Secondly: recruiting teachers for in-company classes throughout Japan]. The lower level calls are pretty easy, allowing me a little brain rest as I go through the routine. I find the higher level students really stimulating though, especially those who have lived abroad or are non-Japanese – being exposed to other cultures makes a huge difference in terms of attitude towards life.

As the departure of my British colleague approaches so I’m being slowly trained in what will be my new job. My core role will be recruiting new teachers, which necessitates a lot of good ole’ human interaction, not just with potential employees, but also with many of my Japanese colleagues. This is something I positively look forward to – I really want to improve my Japanese, and this will provide me many opportunities for doing so.

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It will also give me the opportunity to develop a new teacher-recruitment workflow. Whilst the existing system works, it is pretty laborious, requiring far too many tedious stages that could either be automated or scrapped. I’ve started thinking how I might work this. Ideally, I’d like to be able to use my Mac to get it all sorted as Japanese Windows XP is pretty pants when it comes to automation (and more importantly it lacks the sex appeal of Leopard), but there may be some issues with data security, i.e. carrying a laptop to and from work each day. One way around that could be to keep everything on the shared server, and just use my mac as a portal. Well, we’ll see.

Tonight I had my first tandem learning session with my new (qualified) Japanese teacher, who also taught my classmate Phil and whose brother taught another classmate of mine (all ‘coincidentally’). Bloomin’ marvellous.

As mentioned in previous posts, whilst I do use Japanese at home with *Twinkle* at times, on the whole we’re using English so that she doesn’t forget what she already knows …the idea being that I use Japanese everywhere else. Which I do, but not very well. I’m too inclined to fall back on familiar grammar patterns, or simply Japonize English words. At work I tend to give up when I hit unknowns, like today when trying to explain the problem I was having with my database. Everyone speaks at least a little English, so it’s only too easy to do.

My new teacher, Nami, gives me the opportunity to take the time I need to recall the vocab I’ve already learnt (but is buried at the back of my head). She corrects my persistent errors, and explains terms that I hear often but don’t quite understand. She teaches me new vocab. Reminds me of kanji meanings. Prompts me to use polite Japanese.

Polite Japanese is possibly my weakest point. Yes, I can use it if I think about it, but I have a bad habit of slipping into casual speech. With Nami, I deliberately stick to polite / formal japanese in order to help develop that habit within me, as I’ll need it if I’m going to do business in Japan.

She also took the time to explain to me the ‘all new’ Japanese Language Proficiency test, being introduced in 2010. I won’t go into details here – my ex-classmate from Bristol has done a good job of outlining the changes a here if you’d like to know more – but basically, after 2009 it’s going to get a lot harder as previous exam papers will no longer be published.

She’ll not only be helping me learn the actual language, but will also be teaching me specific exam techniques that help one to pass JLPT.

I’m inspired by Nami (she also happens to be the first Japanese person I’ve met whose been as happy as I am to see Obama elected), and thus will be taking JLPT level 1 next July (as of next year the top two levels, 1 and 2 will be biannual). This excites me. She reminded me how much I love the Japanese language, and how much I love getting better at it. It’s vital I have a goal to work towards – this is perfect. It would be only too easy to just get by with what Japanese I’ve got. There’s nothing wrong with that as such, but it’s not what I want for me.

How stiff are your whites?


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Living with *Twinkle* continues to be absolutely bloomin fantastic. We’re both getting home pretty late most weekday nights, me with teaching and *Twinkle* with our Amway business. But we get to cuddle up together under a tonne of the warmest wooly blankets at night, and that’s nice. The honeymoon period is far from over.

Green Tea and Strawberry Cake

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I’ve started taking a more active role with our Amway business lately, and am finding it very rewarding. More than anything, it gives me the opportunity to meet a lot of like-minded (mostly young) people, all looking for an alternative to the usual diet of graduate jobs (not that there’s anything wrong with them if that’s what you want to do). It also tends to involve eating a lot of good food, or, as was the case last night, cake. We had a professional cake chef (there must be a proper name for them) come up from Wakayama and teach us how to make various kinds of real simple and quick cakes. Reminded me of home – mum’s home-made cakes are one thing I miss.

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Anyway anyway, I’d best tidy up and put the hottlebots on. It’s getting chilly, and this house has an amazing ability to amplify the outside temperature, Need to be up early too for the second jog of the week 🙂

xxx

6 Responses

  1. Google and comp.databases.ms-access should be your best friend when it comes to Access questions! There’s also always several ways to do any given thing and unfortunately that will often only come with experience. The first databases I did in Japan I made the big big mistake of using Japanese field and table names – led to much heartache that did!

    🙂

  2. I’m really looking forward to your starting to take over teacher recruiting work. Why? Because I get to pick up the slack on the reports once you assume that role. I can use the extra cash. 😉

    I’m sure you’ll do fine with Access eventually. It’ll just take some time. Also, when the big D gets back from the outback, he might be able to give you some advice. He’s got a long history of programming behind him and sometimes can have insights that us sissies who grew up on GUIs don’t seem to have.

  3. Hey Joseph. Have you tried Anki? I’m currently using it to drill JLPT1 vocab. It’s free and really simple to use (and I think, Mac compatible). I recommend giving it a go if you really want to remember words and such. Just 20 minutes a day even!

  4. I’ve heard a lot about anki, but am waiting for the iPhone version. Everyone seems to be raving about it!

  5. Orchid64: I’m looking forward to the reports being sent to you too 🙂 mind you, there’s hardly any this week, but not long until the floodgates open!

    In a way I’m glad I forgot my mac today as it means I have an excuse to have a break from trying to figure out the code!

    I never knew mr D. Had a coding history. A man of many hidden talents!