No matter how prepared you are, how trained or how keen, one thing you won’t be ready for when teaching in an Eikaiwa in Japan for the first time is how quickly your motivation can be sapped. And how many people you’ll deal with who have no seeming motivation to learn. I know I sound miserable and it’s likely not the case for everyone out there, though I’d really like to hear of someone teaching in an Eikaiwa who has never dealt with either problems, even just once.

Alex Case put it better than I could over on his blog, having solved the mystery of Japanese motivation. Which got me thinking… but right now my brain is totally shattered from exhaustion and so I’m gonna leave my own thoughts on this until a little later, when I can actually string an argument and some thoughts together. I swear though, one hour private lessons are the work of the devil.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, motivation, Teaching

What follows is an observation/rant/idle ramble about one of the most commonly observed oddities of Japan… packaging. Which may not be quite what you expected. And neither was it when I first arrived here either, though it’s something you notice soon enough, even if you’re just visiting. The Japanese have turned packaging into an obsessive, compulsive disorder, or if you want to be nicer, an art. Or if you want to be realistic, a pain in the backside.

For a country so obsessed with recycling and various other ‘green’ activities (to an extent anyways), their ability to undo any good the recycling may produce by over packaging goods never ceases to amaze. Whether you’re buying a single, small item or shopping for the week, you’ll find yourself with more plastic bags (of various sizes) than you could possibly ever need.

Wanna buy a can or milk from the conbini? Best grab it before the overeager staff put it in a bag. Even better - go to the conbini to buy some recycling bags (which are already pre-packaged in their own plastic cover), and they’ll be put into another plastic bag for you to carry home. Which surely must be causing some sort of space-time continuum tear somewhere, somehow.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: food, Japan, packaging, plastic