Life In Japan: My Bike Ride to Teach English

I've recorded what is possibly the most boring video ever made but some snoopy folks wonder if I really do live out in the country, in the middle of rice and soybean fields.  Well skeptics, here's proof.  Sorry the camera shakes so much but maybe viewers can get some idea how incredibly beautiful it is here in rural Japan.

If you actually make it to the end of the video, you'll see that I teach my classes in a yurt (photo above), a structure which is Mongolian in origin.  What can I say?  The Japanese love to mix and match.  Unfortunately, this one leaks in the rain, is a cauldron in hot weather, and a freezer in cold.  What I endure to spread the mother tongue!

Now I only have adult students.  But a while back I had two young sisters, ages 6 and 7, who were about to move to Guam.  Because it's a U.S. territory, English is the predominant language and for them to attend school there required them getting up to speed.  Here are Mio and Joyce.



I also had some "guest teachers" for one class, a recently-married couple from Sweden -- actually they're German but live in Stockholm -- my wife Masumi and I met couchsurfing a few years back.  They came to Japan and since their English is so good, I paired them up with my adult students for practice.



That's the story.  I ride my bike to and from class whenever it's not raining.  Many of the photos appearing in other essays at this site were taken on that bike ride.  I frankly never get tired of riding anywhere here in our traditional, rural town.  There's still a lot to see and discover.  People I hardly know often wave.  Smiles are our common language.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]



Life In Japan: My Bike Ride to Teach English

Broccoli Is Free Speech and Tractors Are Persons

 

Broccoli farmers celebrated today as the Supreme Court ruled in their favor,
declaring broccoli free speech and the tractors used on their farms to
be persons.

The implications of this controversial ruling are not entirely clear but are expected 
to be far-reaching.

The President has by executive order mandated that all public parking lots
now have a specially designated area next to the already required
handicapped parking zones, giving tractors priority parking.

Voter registration of tractors is expected to begin early next week. This will
heavily weight congressional representation in agricultural states.
With reapportionment, Nebraska and Kansas are expected to send as many
congressman to Washington DC as California and Texas. Pundits and
political analysts are saying this will tilt the House of Representatives even 
more to the right, as tractors tend to lean very conservative. It will also be 
a gigantic boost for proponents of prayer in schools, as most tractors are 
evangelical Christians.

Major banks will be sending out Visa applications to all farm vehicles. They
are leaving it to the vehicles themselves to sort out which fit the strict definition 
of tractor personhood referenced in the Supreme Court decision.

The free speech aspect of the decision is a little more complicated. Now that
broccoli has the same right to expression under the Bill of Rights as
human protoplasmic life forms and corporations, will this affect
placement in grocery store vegetable sections? How exactly will the
voice of broccoli be heard? It's not as if broccoli is all that popular
of a food that it might be used as payment for political favors. A
recent NBC/Times poll among prominent politicians at the national and
state level showed only a 17% approval rating for broccoli. These guys
are not going to be lining up and fighting their way to the front of a
feeding trough full of the green stuff unless it's the more traditional
green stuff of money.

On a more forthright note, a bill has been introduced in Congress, co-sponsored by
several legislators from Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Georgia, and
Mississippi, declaring broccoli to be the official National Vegetable, joining the 
Bald Eagle as the National Bird and the Oak as the National Tree.

One hotbedof contention which literally taken over the airwaves of talk radio
since the Supreme Court decision, is the question of evolution. There is
a core of fundamentalists in the Deep South who are objecting to the
notion that tractors are a product of the industrial revolution, the
final result of a long progression of increasingly sophisticated
man-made devices. One preacher in Alabama declared, "There's no way
you're gonna tell me that my tractor started as a wheelbarrow, then
magically turned into the fine machine it is today. By golly, I love my
tractor like I love my own children."

As might be expected, now that tractors have been declared persons, there have
already been massive book burnings across America of text books which
portray them as mere agricultural implements.

Moreover, piles of broccoli are now showing up in churches, often right on the
altars in front of the crucifixes. People have reported hearing voices
emanating from the broccoli, offering a message of hope and a promise of
a glorious world in the afterlife.

We should all be grateful that the nine judges sitting on the hallowed highest
court in the land have been instrumental in providing a new positive
direction for a nation that has recently been troubled by so much bad news 
and plagued by divisiveness.

This is surely something we can all get behind.



[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]