Big Apple

Ed’s note: Some of you may find this post excessively boring since it has to do with the stock market, feel free to skip it; but others of you may be into it, and if you are in this group, I would really like to get some feedback from you.

So I heard that AAPL just hit 600 a share this week.  It kind of blows my mind, and I have a few reasons behind it (and certainly regrets), and wanted to see what was going on with the iMarket in iAmerca.

The regrets come from having unloaded most of my Apple stock a long time ago when it was hitting previous new highs… I still have some though, and I am considering selling it all off at this point.  But since I acted too early before, I want to talk it out with someone (YOU, dear reader) before I make an overly hasty decision.

I think AAPL is the next big bubble; and by next, I mean current.  Why?  Let’s review a couple things.  Yes, it is a quality company, and yes, everybody loves their products; but… the recent increases have sent the stock skyrocketing, and I haven’t heard any news about the company to really rationalize the huge uptick in value.  Granted they just released the new iPad, but is it really a gamechanger?  No.  It doesn’t bring anything new to the table, just a slightly better camera and processor.  Are tons of new customers going to come to Apple because of this?  I don’t think so.  All of the iPhone residuals they will be getting from customers have already been locked in for a while.  I just don’t get what new events are prompting this huge rise in stock price.

Next, all of the recent gains have been blowing up after the death of Steve Jobs.  Again, I admit that Apple is a great company with great management, but are they really twice as good without Jobs as they were with him?  I have to point out again that there hasn’t been anything very impressive news wise in terms of their product line.  It seems like the original innovation is petering out and a certain amount of laurel resting is setting in.

Leading to – At some point they are bound to start losing market share.  Yes the market will grow a bit as new customers enter into it with the economy improving(???), but there are also a lot of new competitors offering new products that are starting to catch up with Apple.  Not as good, of course, but for the cheaper prices they bring, might folks not begin to use Samsungs and Sonys and whatever other smartphones and pads hit the market?  I know that in Japan I see a LOT of competitor brands on the trains, I would even venture a guess that there are more of them than iPhones.  So question 1 for anyone reading this… do you see similar things happening in America?  Are other brands starting to make inroads, or does Apple really just have complete control of the industry right now?

Furthermore, it strikes me that Apple is currently held by virtually every fund available anywhere.  I know it made up over 20% of the Nasdaq a while back, and it has grown a lot since then (although other companies surely have, too; I’m not sure where the numbers lie now); but more to the point all of the mutual funds and ETFs that clone market activity are heavily invested in Apple, too.  So there must be a huge amount of stock bought by companies that aren’t really interested in holding Apple directly, just using it as a tool to mirror advances.  This means that Apple and the market are intrinsically linked, as long as one does well, the other also will; but…

When the market crashes again… and it WILL crash again – the fact that the Dow is over 13000 absolutely lows my mind considering there is huge unemployment, very little consumer spending or confidence compared to previous times at this level, and very few fundamental strengths to the US economy at all beyond whatever China has bankrolled in our government’s spending… anyway, I still believe that what goes up must come down, and that we will see yet another drop at SOME point in the future.  When that drop comes, Apple will get brutalized more than most companies just because it is held in greater proportions in so many funds.  Alternatively, when Apple gets exposed as being overpriced (just my opinion, which leads to question 2:  anyone who understands P/E ratios and volume and all the little things that go into evaluating stocks – What exactly is going on?  I’d love to hear what your opinions are.) it’s decline could very well bring about the next phase of economic troubles.

I guess it all at least partially depends on when the next big drop will occur.  The European troubles and America’s credit rating drop were easy to see coming, but the next one is not so obvious… Will Obama be able to keep things together through the next election cycle?  What about the seasonal Dow fluctuation trend?  Aren’t we due for a big drop soon?  When does that annual occurrence happen, typically?  I guess I can look that up… hang on…  supposedly you should sell in May because the summer is bad; but I remember it happening a little early last year.  Could this year’s sell off be worse than normal as the top 1% who tend to own the most stocks may want to see Obama make an early one term exit and a well timed double dip could easily make that happen?  Of course this is all complete and utter speculation, and absolutely impossible to predict…

But what about AAPL?  Is its recent meteoric rise primed for a fall soon?  Or is this the real thing?  I guess I could just put in a sell order at 500 or something in case the bottom drops out completely, but part of me just really believes that 600 is the peak and the bubble is bound to burst soon.  Let me know what you think, for some subjective input, and if you have any objective knowledge about Apple’s numbers or even just observations about how many people have iStuff vs other brands, I’d love to know.  I want to make a decision on this soon if I’m going to sell… especially while VIX is so low!

Island time

I’m a little bit slow in posting again, but nothing compared to my last blog hiatus.  As promised, this will cover our recent vacation to Guam in all its glorious detail.

We flew in on Sunday afternoon following a relatively easy travel day with Sara.  There was a little bit of whining and crying at times, but compared to the pain she put me through on the 11 hour flight to California last December, it was a peaceful 3 and a half hours (or 7 with travel times to and from the airport included).

As we took a taxi to the hotel, we passed by some of the other on-line options I had declined, like the Ramada, which ended up being much farther away from the beach than they appeared to be on the map.  I was grateful we had paid a little extra for the Hilton as I watched some Japanese tourists in beach garb hoofing it towards the coast.  And then we got to the crest of the hill overlooking the bay.  Wow.  As our taxi descended into the HIlton parking lot I knew that we were going to have an incredible stay.  The Tumon Bay area is a truly magnificent place for a lot of hotels to set up shop.  It is large in breadth and shallow in depth and surrounded by beautiful white sand beaches with high cliffs flanking its northern end.  The reef sets up a natural barrier from the deep ocean a good quarter mile off the coast line, leaving a gigantic area available to explore with a snorkel.  My top priority became locating one of these and getting out into the crystal clear azure waters.

I guess I’ll skip talking about the hotel check-in process and just let you know that our room overlooked this gorgeous view.  We decided that our top priority should be securing the essentials that we would need for the remainder of our week.  Important things like snorkels and cereal (not just for me – Sara has become quite the fan as well; she is particularly fond of Raisin Bran, but for some strange reason doesn’t like Cheerios… hmmm…).

Another reason to stay in one of the bay-side hotels can be found in the convenience of traveling around to other tourist attractions.  Guam has a cute little touristy system of red busses that circle endlessly in a variety of patterns that connect all the main hotels with the big shopping areas.  It costs 3 dollars to ride once, but you can get a 5 day pass for 20. What a deal!  We got the 5 day passes and proceeded to take about 20 rides over the duration of our stay.  The first stop was an outlet center.  I noticed on the ride there that the infrastructure in Guam is not too great beyond the central hotel/tourist strip.  I wasn’t too surprised after a previous warning from my friend and other experiences with islands (sorry Hawaii, even you get thrown under the bus as having a fair share of run-down project areas).  The outlet center had similarly dilapidated surroundings, but offered some good deals, including a nice little grocery store called California Mart and plenty of good old American fast/junk food eateries.  Ruby Tuesday’s marked our first dinner spot, followed in future days by American standbys like TGiF’s, California Pizza Kitchen, Chili’s, Cold Stone, Subway, even a Taco Bell Cheesy Beefy Crunchy Burrito and my first ever Sbarro’s got in on the American food action.  The biggest coup of the trip came on a visit to Payless supermarket towards the end of our stay where I finally found the one thing I was really hoping to come across while I was there, Mint Dark Chocolate M&Ms.  I bought 10 packs to bring back to Japan.  A lady at the store saw my purchase and decided to go grab a pack for herself to see what the excitement was all about.  To those of you who are reading this and wondering why I would eat all of this crap instead of sampling the local dishes, I should emphasize that there doesn’t really seem to be much in the way of ‘Guamanian cuisine’ so we certainly weren’t missing out on much by enjoying the US food that we don’t have access to here in Japan.

Our second stop on our first night in Guam was to a mecca of shopping… K-Mart.  I needed a snorkel badly, and this seemed to be the most likely place to find a practical set.  Sure enough, for only 9 dollars I found a mask/snorkel set that rivaled a much more professional version that I used to own from U.S. Divers.  It saw a lot of use over the next few days.  We also grabbed Sara some nice little beach toys, and started a little bit of our souvenir grabbing, not to mention some more essentials like sunscreen, toothpaste, and the like.

OK… I may be getting a little too detailed… I’ll up the pace a bit here or it’s going to take way too long to write everything.  It basically comes down to shopping, swimming, snorkeling, and a day trip around the rest of the island.

I’ll skip the shopping part because it isn’t that interesting… just some new clothes and food stuffs we can’t normally find.  The swimming and snorkeling would seem to go together, but I have separated them because they represent different family members.

Sara has never really been in a body of water larger than my bathtub in California.  So the hotel pool and Tumon Bay were completely overwhelming for her.  We got her a little fish swim ring and some Cars floaties and took her into the pool.  She utterly refused to wear the arm floaties, but after we forced her into the swim ring and started dragging/chasing her around the pool her tears turned into laughs and she began to adjust to the idea of swimming for fun, I think.  She eventually fell asleep in the swim ring, which seems to be a bit of a defense mechanism for her when she finds herself in an uncomfortable situation… just go to sleep and hope to wake up in better surroundings.  She did the same thing a lot in California when subjected to meeting new people.  So I can’t really be sure that she actually enjoyed the swim, but at least she had the opportunity to do it, and the experience was no doubt beneficial on some level.  After a couple times in the pool, Yumi and I decided to see if she could handle the ocean, too.  Unfortunately the day we went out was comparatively rough (there was even the occasional whitecap out on the bay, a typically flat and tranquil expanse of water after the line of breakers), so she got jostled up and down pretty significantly, occasionally even getting a little splash of salt water on her face, prompting funny moments of licking her lips in surprise at the saltiness of the water.

The reason that Yumi and I had attempted this was in an attempt to get to share a little bit of the snorkeling experience together.  Prior to that it had consisted of me snorkeling while she watched Sara, then coming in and pointing out some good areas to go see while I took my turn playing with Sara on the beach.  Sara enjoyed the sand and shells quite a bit, but was still not as taken by it as I expected based off the hours she can spend playing in a sandbox (or even just picking up rocks) in Japan.

The snorkeling in Guam may be the best I have experienced.  It is more easily accessible than Papua New Guinea was (literally walk downstairs from the hotel pool into a whole new world), clearer than Australia, and had a bigger variety of corals and fish than Hawaii (but no turtles -*sigh*-).  I was amazed at the sheer number of fish – the second you put your face under the water there were at least 5 different kinds of gorgeous tropical fish in sight.  I saw pretty much every type of tropical fish I can think of except for a clownfish, including some crazy long-armed bright blue starfish and a flounder that I had initially thought was a fish skeleton or fossil on the sea floor.  Of course there were a lot of crazy types of things that I had seen before that I didn’t get to see this time (turtles, rays, moray eels, lionfish, sea snakes), but the huge amount of things that WERE available to view made for a breathtaking experience.  And the fact that it was literally right there and all within a depth of 3 meters (and usually less) makes Tumon Bay a big old recommendation.

It is interesting how Guam is situated so that all the tourist activity is pretty much confined to the Tumon area,  It is a small island, so it wouldn’t be too surprising to me if things were to spread out a little more, but instead pretty much all of the main spots to hit are confined to an incredibly small strip.  Nonetheless, I was intent on getting out to explore the rest of the island.  In particular, the natural beauty of the southern part of the island was a big draw for me.  Of course there is a big military presence in the north (and elsewhere as well) which didn’t really interest us to check out, but we wanted to see some of the other sites that were a bit more off the beaten track, but still popular and accessible enough to take a 20-month old to.  The hope was to find chances to snorkel in other areas, but that never panned out as we were warned off by ‘Pirate Jeff’ when we stopped at his shack for a burger lunch due to the “Horrible weather” the island was having when we were there (it took me a second to realize he wasn’t being sarcastic… The wind was a lot stronger than normal, I guess), and the risk that a strong bit of current could literally rip you out to sea, never to be seen again.

So we settled for driving around and visiting pretty much everything else that the tourist guide has to offer.  The first stop was Two Lovers Point, an incredible viewpoint from the cliffs on the north part of Tumon Bay where a Romeo and Juliet type story had unfolded as two young star-crossed lovers from feuding tribes had tied their hair together before jumping into the water below so that their bodies would be forever connected even in death.  It was a great way to start the day, and despite a heavy rain as we approached, the sky opened up to let the sun through just as we pulled up.  We were the first tourists to show up, and the locals in the parking lot were super nice, and offered some island hospitality.

After snapping a couple pictures there, we embarked on the longest stretch of our drive, made longer by my inability to navigate us properly through the city to the lone country highway that circles the southern part of the island (I can blame a poor map, but it also came down to my mistaking West and East… whoops).  After a while and a lot of roads undergoing construction, we arrived at Hamamoto Tropical Fruit Farm, a huge plantation full of (as the name would suggest) pretty much every kind of tropical fruit you can think of.  It features a tram tour and a buffet, both of which we skipped out on.  No one was at the visitor center when we got there, so we just sort of meandered around for a while before deciding that it was a bit too vast for us to really get a grip on by ourselves.  When we returned to the front desk we were greeted by a kindly Japanese lady who spoke with Yumi and admired Sara for a few minutes.  We were invited to the buffet, but since it wasn’t ready at that point and we had a lot to see and an already planned lunch spot coming up soon at Pirate Jeff’s, we just hit the road again.

From here on the driving was direct and easy, just circling around the southern half of Guam.  After our lunch stop, we visited what must be the largest tourist attraction off the strip aside from maybe a resort island called Coco’s (we weren’t able to get there on this trip… it’s a full day adventure boat ride to a teeny nearby island… Have to save something for next time, after all!).  Anyway, this big stop was a sort of ‘National Park’ type thing.  It is called Talofolo Falls Natural Preserve (or something like that) and features a fun little sky carriage ride to some waterfalls that end up near Yokoi Cave.  I thought it would be fun to go caving, but this isn’t anything more than a hole carved into the ground by an overly determined Japanese soldier who evaded capture for 30 years or so after World War II had ended.  Most of his platoon had committed seppuku after their defeat, but he and 2 others stayed alive and in hiding for years, living off of the land.  His compatriots died off (or were captured, I don’t remember) after a shorter stint (maybe 18 year or so); but he just kept on keeping on until some locals found him in his old age.  The park is run by Japanese, I believe, because most of the signage is primarily in Japanese, and the bad English translations call the guy a “hero”.  Anyway, it was an interesting stop, and I was able to get a mask to add to my ever growing collection.  There was also an X-rated attraction called “Loveland” attached to it… I won’t throw pics up here, but let me know if you want to see what that craziness was all about and I can forward some strange statue pictures to you!

At this point, I realized that despite Guam being a small island without much to do, we still were unlikely to see everything on our list.  The only big thing that ended up getting cut besides Coco’s was a jungle boat ride.  No biggie, it was sort of expensive, and we were way too late for it.  The rest of the afternoon consisted of minor viewpoints.  A couple of them were certainly breathtaking, but others seemed to have been put on the guidebook list of things to do just because there is not really a whole lot going on anywhere aside from beautiful, green rolling hillsides running up to white sand beaches.  We finished the day at the capitol city’s cathedral and ruins of the old Spanish capitol building.  There was also a park with a few standing stone pillars that were examples of a native ‘hut’ that had been reconstructed from ancient ruins that were destroyed in the war at some point.

At this point the day was almost over, so we went out to dinner and got back to the hotel.  I got to enjoy some primary results on CNN and Fox “News” and check out sports highlights on ESPN, including detailed discussion of what the talking heads felt the Rams might be able to get for the second pick in this year’s draft. (UPDATE: Big time haul of picks from the Redskins… between that and Fisher’s activity in Free Agency, I expect the Rams to be an instant contender next year, even if Peyton ends up signing with the 49ers).  But I digress…

There isn’t a lot more to talk about of interest, just some more shopping, snorkeling, and relaxing.  I’m going to go ahead and stop here, find a few good pix and start into my next blog entry that I have been itching to talk to someone about over the past few days…  more to come soon.

I’ve got 2 (and a half) tickets to paradise…

It’s been a while…
I was recently reminded by a dear friend that I haven’t updated my blog entry in… well, I don’t remember how long (I guess it would be easy enough to just check the date of the last post, feel free if you want.  I think it was probably last summer some time, whenever we added our latest family member, Leontes).

Truthfully, I have been quite busy with my numerous jobs and fast growing daughter.  But despite a lot going on, very little of it has been “newsworthy” enough to bother writing home about.  Life has been relatively routine here.  I did get a new job that will be starting next month at one of the best ‘jukus’ (cram schools) in Japan.  But since I haven’t had a day of work yet, it hardly seems worth mentioning.  I took the GRE as a part of the application process to Tokyo University’s PhD program, and scored in the mid 90th percentiles on both the verbal and quantitative sections, but again, until I find out whether or not I can get into Todai (the undisputed best University in Japan), it hardly seems worth bringing up (Keep your fingers crossed for me though, please… I need all the luck I can get!).  My trip home to California at Christmas was definitely a spot of interest, but really didn’t bring much to report aside from the pains of traveling with an 18 month old who was separated from her mother for the first time.  Sara had a good time after she adjusted to a lack of Mama (helped by a healthy spoiling from a nervous, eager-to-please Dada).  She really likes the beach a lot, though.

Which is great, because in a few days she will be heading to her first non-Californian beach for a few days.  Yes, on Sunday we are taking a well deserved and long time coming family vacation (I don’t really count California last March/April as much of a vacation, earthquake and exploding nuclear reactor stress didn’t allow for much relaxation… and how is going home ever really a ‘get away’?).  We will be heading out for 6 days and 5 nights to the tropical island US protectorate of Guam.  I have heard nothing but great things about it and am really looking forward to spending some time in warm weather after dealing with another Japanese winter (albeit relatively mild… thanks Global Warming!  I’m sure I’ll be cursing you in a few months, though!).  Truthfully though, I have done almost no research on the destination, and don’t really have much of a plan beyond sitting on a beach and taking my girls shopping.  I would love to get some surfing, snorkeling, and maybe even scuba-ing accomplished while I’m there, but that will be dependent upon weather, and ease of equipment rental facilities.  I anticipate that I should be able to find at least one or two of the three pretty easily while I’m there.  The hotel concierge can probably point me in the right directions.  Speaking of hotel, we found a great deal on an ocean view room at the Hilton.  I don’t like the idea of helping to support a spoiled little tramp like Paris, but the pictures were a little too tempting to pass up compared to other similarly priced rooms at some inland hotels that are lacking a couple of stars.

So I guess if anyone has any good tourist tips to recommend, this would be a good time to bring them up.  I will certainly try to update this blog upon our return.  I’ll be sure to include some pictures as well.  Certainly they will feature Sara for those of you who didn’t get to see her at the New Year.  On that note… Sorry I never post pictures… Auntie Catharine took some GREAT ones while we were visiting, but of course I haven’t gotten them added on here, Facebook, or my Dropbox, largely because Yumiko and I haven’t even had the time to sort out our favorites yet.  Have I mentioned that she has been back at work for a number of months?  She is hating it, but I think it is at least a bit better than it was for her the first time around.  This will be her first vacation since starting up again, hence why she missed out on our last California adventure.  It is the reason for our leaving to go abroad at a relatively odd time (although convenient in terms of prices and weather).  My one company that I am missing a couple classes with in order to take this trip is not too understanding of her situation and how it impacts our family travel plans, as they chewed me out (just for missing 2 friggin’ classes!).  It was my first request off of work in over 2 years of being with them aside from 1 sick day a couple months ago!  I guess that could have been a little newsworthy – Daichi got Sara sick with a stomach virus, who got Yumi sick, who got me sick… and I spent 4 hours in the hospital on an IV… anyway, if that is the most exciting thing that has happened to me in the last half year or so, I guess you can understand why I haven’t written much…

More to come upon our return home in a couple weeks.

TYPHOOOOON!

Work has been cancelled today.

Inconveniently, I received the phone call notification AFTER I had already driven the scooter to the train station.

If you have never taken a scooter ride in hurricane force winds and sheets of rain, might I recommend not trying it for a first time.  It may sound like a fun adrenaline rush, but it really isn’t.  It’s wet.

Really hating my companies and how bad at communication they are.  It sucks reserving times in my schedule for them only to get cancellations.  This weather one is understandable (the train system wasn’t even running when I made it to the station), but they keep doing it to me for no apparent reason on other days, too.  Last week I had two classes cancelled for reasons I don’t know why (they will be added on to the end of my contract, forcing an extended servitude longer than initially planned for).  This week my University had wanted me to sub for another teacher who suddenly quit, only to let me know yesterday that they have just made a new hire there (After I did all my lesson planning… grrrrr…).  And of course I can’t expect to see any remuneration for the time that I suddenly have free.  It’s a good thing I have no life and love spending time at home watching my baby grow, cause I would be SUPER pissed otherwise.

Hello Kitty

We have a new family member.

Sara loves animals.  Pretty much all animals (except maybe mountain goats… we had an interesting zoo breakdown upon encountering one of these majestic, horned creatures).  She especially likes to pet soft animals, although her ‘pet’ is really more of a ‘pat’… usually right on the poor creature’s face.  So last weekend we took a trip to the Japanese equivalent of the humane society to look at an adoption drive they had set up to try to get rid of kittens.

Kittens are pretty popular in Japan.  At pet stores one frequently finds interesting (ugly) breeds with little flopped down ears and puggy noses selling for over 1000 bucks a pop.  There are some more common looking kittens that are a bit cheaper, but if you want a cat (or dog) in Japan it will typically be a very expensive youngster.

I come from a different philosophy when it comes to pet cats.  I think they should be given to you by someone who can’t keep theirs.  I’ve had a number of pet cats (5+ in various households), and don’t recall ever breaking the bank on them (except to cut off Pericles’ non-descended testicle; and even that wasn’t so bad… for my pocket book at least – it was a sucky day for his velvet pouch).

The ‘kitten-fair’ was cute.  I’m not sure where they all came from, but a lot of them had obvious problems, dirty ears, broken or malformed, stumpy tails, random wounds, etc.  The one common factor was that they were all teeny-tiny.  Kittens are cute, but a bit crazy in my book.  They still like to figure out how to use their razor sharp teeth and claws on whatever is moving in their proximate surroundings.  I wasn’t sure that having one of these krazy kitties running around the house would be best for it or Sara.

That was when we were introduced to ‘Leon’ (pronounced ‘Rayon’ in Japanese).  He is a beautiful one-year old Abyssinian.  He was just chilling in his cage, perky ears turned forward, eyes appropriately squinted half-closed in that “I’m too good for this dog-and-pony show” look that cats specialize in.  His ticked coat is lustrous and soft with a classic black-tipped tail.  As I lifted Sara up to his cage for a closer look, we were told that he could be held (unlike many of the more uncontrollable kittens who had to stay in their cages since the adoption drive was being held outdoors).  So i had Sara in one arm and Leon in the other.  They got along smashingly and my mind was instantly made up that this cat could come home with us if it was so decided.  I kept my opinion to myself to allow Yumi and Sara to pick their favorites, too; but it quickly became apparent that Leon was the hit of the show for all 3 of us.

He was originally one of those expensive pet store kittens that came to the shelter via a home that couldn’t keep him anymore because he didn’t get along with the cats that were there first (same way I acquired Pericles).  He’s a lover, though, and not a fighter; so he has an injured jaw that he got in a fight with the other cat.  It should heal up soon though.  We were assured that his calm demeanor would be perfect for a baby, and that he would tolerate any number of abuses without fighting back (so far, so true).  Between the instant compatible connection and the fact that he was already litter box trained, there was no real question that he was the cat for us.

He got delivered to the house yesterday (completely free of charge, as far as I can tell!) and spent the first few hours under the sofa; but he has fully adjusted now and walks around the kitchen/living room area trying to figure out where his favorite location is going to be.

Another sure fire sign that he is going to fit in well here is that he seems to really enjoy cereal.  Sara has taken a liking to my Bran and Rice flakes, and being the excellent share-er that she is, now offers the occasional flake to the cat, who seems glad to supplement his diet of Iams with the occasional Kelloggs.

The only issue I have is with his name.  I’m not a big fan of Leon (outside of the film, which is one of my all time faves).  I was thinking about keeping it intact though in renaming the kitty along the lines of my last one.  I could either keep the Greek King theme going with Leonidas; or I could turn to the King in Shakespearian romances theme by picking Leontes (yeah, I know, not as good of a dramatic character as Pericles, but one could also attribute it to Arthurian legend, I suppose).

What do you think?

The cat has already found the most annoying place possible to sit

cereal is yummy

and tonight he got chu toro for dinner… SPOILED.

Undermind

If you think this post will be about the Phish song or album, I’m afraid that it may be a disappointment.  I chose the title because it seems appropriate to what is occurring at one of my jobs.  Avid readers of my blog may recall that some of my previous employment situations in Japan have had less than pleasant employer/employee relations (see Yakuza! pt II and other postings).  Well I’m pleased to say that my recent issues don’t even approach these prior problems.  Compared to JALSS, working for Berkeley House is quite enjoyable (it has nothing on OTC, however).  The most that Berkeley House demands of me is typically requesting (in a pushy and impolite manner) some information that they need with IMMEDIACY when they could easily have used a little foresight on, and given me a bit of time to organize things instead.

At the end of this semester at Meisei University, I encountered a new conundrum… namely, an inability to grade my students according to the marks that they deserve.  I have students that could be considered ‘special’.  Economics majors who see no need for English in their future lives.  Furthermore, the University is about as unselective as you can find… if a student has a pulse and can pay tuition, they are accepted.  Their minds rank under pretty much every other college minded kid in the nation.

Now that you can see the double entendre behind the chosen title of this blog, I’ll fill in a few of the unimportant details.  Out of my 100+ students, I would guess that the number that could string a simple English sentence together (bear in mind all these kids have had a mandatory 6 years of English in Jr. and Sr. high schools), can be counted on my fingers… perhaps even on one hand.  As a result, my expectations are low…  And my grading criteria reflects it.  If a student shows up to class they are halfway to passing.  Beyond that, if they do their homework and participate in the classroom speaking activities (which are strongly guided and typically involve little more than reading) then the students need only procure 20% of the points on the tests in order to pass the class.  Something easily done by successfully stating one’s name, birthday, simple self description including personality, appearance, native country or language, likes or dislikes, abilities, etc…  I’m not exactly asking for complex opinions, reports, or reasoning.  Despite these low expectations, MANY of my students couldn’t keep pace.

They show up to class intermittently, never do their homework, rarely speak in class – even when called upon and prompted to the point of just needing to repeat, don’t do in-class bookwork (or even purchase the text in many instances).  I had one class where the entire class earned failing grades, another where over half the students couldn’t hang with the concept of “being a student”, and I rewarded these students with the mathematically determined failing grade that they earned.

Berkeley House did not respond well to my rate of failure and urged me to change my criteria.  I explained the situation to them to no avail at which point they provided me with a list of grades that they felt were more suitable (I have NO idea what criteria they felt like they could use to determine these scores, aside from perhaps some attendance figures).  I retorted that their revised grades were also unacceptable, but in order to avoid being a troublesome employee, swallowed my pride and adjusted my grades to fall in line with the criteria that Meisei and Berkeley House seem to hold… if a student pays tuition and appears in the classroom, then they should receive a passing grade.  I assigned the minimum passing grade of ’60′ to a LOT of students, then went through and bumped up the grades of the other students who had passed without the help so that they could maintain a bit of separation from their free-riding classmates.

Sadly, this isn’t too far off of the expectations of most of the Universities in Japan.  This country has pretty low criteria standards for students to pass classes.  It explains why outside of Tokyo University, you won’t find any Japanese Universities in any top 50 lists.. or top 100… or maybe even more.  These universities have even instituted the grade of ‘S’ above an ‘A’ so that a ‘B’-level student can report that they have done ‘A’ quality work.  It’s completely whack.
Sara will not be going to one of these Universities if I have any say in the matter.  Of course since I plan on retiring back to Cali around the same time as her college years start up, everything should work out well.

In other news, I may be entering a medical trial for some experimental painkillers over my summer break… that could be fun.  Certainly it will be easy money; maxin’ relaxin’ in an air conditioned hospital room for a couple weeks.  If anyone knows anything about BMS-954561 that should make me want to bail on this idea, speak up!

Kissy-monster

Yumiko and I have been working on getting Sara to give kisses for quite some time now.  I’m not really sure why beyond the fact that it just seems really cute.

For months now (ever since her time in California) Sara has been giving Yumi little pecks on the cheek when mommy asks for them; but when daddy presents his cheek (yes, I’m talking about myself in the third person), the most that I can hope for (if I get any response at all) is for Sara to toddle over and give me a head butt.

This sort of pleases me to no end, as I am hopeful that she continues this practice with all the boys she kisses until at least age 20.

But today I got a real kiss… sort of.  Lip to cheek touching at least.  The actual puckersmack didn’t happen, but it is a big step for me.

The only time I get a puckersmack out of her is when she blows kisses.  Not that she really has that down very well yet either.  It usually amounts to kissing her outstretched fingers with no ensuing blow… Her kisses are apparently too tasty to share with others.

Overall she is a VERY good share-er though, always offering her favorite foods, drinks and toys to other people.  It’s particularly amazing because cousin Daichi next door may be the worst share-er ever, throwing his body in between Sara and any of his toys while yelling No, and supposedly even shoving and kicking her when adults aren’t paying close enough attention.  Sara takes it all in stride though and is by far more mature than her 3 year old cousin, simply turning her good-natured attention elsewhere.

She has gotten remarkably strong for a 14 month old, carrying lots of heavy toys and objects around the house on her explorations.  She is also quite an adept climber at this point, able to go up and down the small 4 step slide in the yard, and scaling the 13 steps of “the steepest staircase in any house” in a matter of seconds (much to our chagrin, as it necessitates an even closer eye on her any time she steps out of the room).

Well, it’s 3 AM here, so I guess I should get some sleep.  Even though my University classes are over, I still have some grading obligations to go with my nighttime business classes and 3 remaining weeks of class-taking (which I still haven’t finished this week’s reading assignments for… Hopefully I can accomplish that tomorrow before class when Yumi and Sara go to the store); but for the most part my summer is beginning, and I’m going to have a lot more time to spend with my baby girl.  She loves bike rides with dad and I have recently introduced her to the wonderful world of Pixar.

Mo’ me memo

Those of you who have followed my rapidly diminishing blog posts have probably noticed that the topics in them have recently trended towards what is new in the life of Sara.  (The most recent occurrence is her ability to communicate more effectively through a rudimentary sign language, the cutest aspect of which involves her asking for things with the newly learned concept of ‘please’.)  This focus in my writing is largely because I have been living vicariously through her for the last year.  Aside from an earthquake and a trip back to California, I have had very few new things of interest in my life to report on as I have settled into a relatively routine existence that is centered completely around my daughter.

Recently, however, I have had a bit of change that I may as well document here.  It stems from the disasters in March which seriously affected my livelihood.  My daily work teaching business English at Nissan was indefinitely postponed as the economic impact on that company has forced them to make cutbacks in all aspects of their operations.  English lessons for their employees apparently doesn’t rank too high on the prioritization list of budget expenditures.  My outsourcing agency made an attempt to find me some alternative employment, but it has definitely not been enough to fill the void created by my lack of Nissan classes (especially aggravating is the additional fact that they had offered me a full time University position, only to rescind their offer due to nepotistic considerations from another teacher who was watching out for one of his friends).

Anyways, I have been looking for additional part-time work to fill some of the holes in my schedule to no avail.  While I could surely get some positions of inferior quality to my present jobs, there have been few opportunities of equal or better stature.  Last week I did locate a suitable alternative, however, and yesterday I finally went in for an interview for my fourth company.  I killed it, and will be working on short-term intensive courses with school kids during the holiday breaks; a very convenient situation considering the amount of time my University classes will be out for in August and September.

I also may have another employment opportunity open to me in late August that could prove quite lucrative and incredibly simple.   It is for the position of ‘human guinea pig’.  My job (if I am accepted… I have already passed the initial health screen for which I was paid about 60 dollars for an hour’s worth of prodding and measuring) will be to live at a medical facility and take pain medication (or maybe a placebo… I dunno) for about a week at a time on 2 separate occasions.  I should have all the benefits of home (sans wife and child), and a good opportunity to maybe finally get back to some of my writing (the number of projects of which I am interested in are increasing all the time, with little progress being made on any of them).

Other things of interest are that my farm, which some of you may remember from last year, has been re-incarnated this spring/summer.  The edimame crop is doing extraordinarily well, however my corn is not very genki, perhaps due to a small bug infestation at a very early stage when the new shoots were at their most tender point.  I have hopes that it will perk up, and maybe even top last year’s not-so-bumper harvest which still provided lots of high quality soup.

Lastly, I suppose I should report that I am looking into a Doctorate program at Temple University which has a Japan campus.  It strikes me as one of the best ways to separate myself from the hordes of other candidates who are qualified for the small number of direct hire, tenure track University positions here in Japan.  Not to mention that it would be great to get some practical education in the career I am pursuing (as opposed to riding a theatre Masters degree about as far as it can go… maybe even farther than it should… God knows I don’t feel qualified to do most of what I am employed to do; most obviously the advanced English class I teach at Temple).  Other than some internet degree program, or learning enough Japanese to study at a different University here, Temple represents the only real option I have to further my education in this field, but it appears to be an excellent program.

Anyhow, the application period is still a long ways off, but I am most likely going to take a course starting next week that will help kick start my education by covering types of research models that my dissertation will need to address, in particular the design of testing procedures.  I’m looking forward to it, as I have some definite ideas of the direction I want to do research in, and could start on some of my experimentation as soon as next semester at my Universities (a.k.a. my 8 classes of my own personal unpaid guinea pigs).

I took my first standardized test in over a decade a few weeks ago as a part of the entrance criteria.  It was a test called the Miller Analogies Test which takes the place of the GRE (my last foray into the world of standardized testing back in 2001).  It consists of 120 questions that you have 1 hour to complete.  I didn’t really study for it beyond reading some information about it online, which may have hindered my ability to excel to the best of my abilities.  I found that time ran out much faster than I had expected it to, and actually left the testing site feeling extremely poor about my performance, as the last few minutes of the test was spent filling in bubbles randomly in patterns that looked nice and correlated to my best guesses.  Fortunately, 20 of the questions are sample questions that don’t actually count towards your score, and I think that most of them corresponded to the questions I had the biggest problems with, because my scores came back far better than I expected.  I out performed 98% of my peers  (folks considering my major) and seem to have tested well enough to gain entry into MENSA if I understand the scoring system correctly (although I am a few points shy of being able to enter the more exclusive Prometheus Society… oh well, no biggie, I’ll ‘sour grapes’ that and admit that I honestly wouldn’t want to enter these groups any way).  The good news is that I won’t have to re-take the test (which I felt would surely be necessary after I initially left the test site; I almost elected to take the option to cancel my scores!); the bad news is that I am apparently wasting the hell out of a perfectly good brain.

Ed. Note:  I should probably clarify that I attribute my high grade more to fortune than skill (I’d rather be lucky than good, though!), as I did end up making a LOT of guesses, and a guess, no matter how educated, is still only a guess, representing something that one doesn’t know.  

Where’s the speech?

It took a little while, but Sarah might just be back on a regular sleeping schedule.  Prior to her California vacation, she was doing a pretty good job of sleeping through the night, only waking up a couple times each night, and getting back to sleep pretty quickly.  Of course, that sleep was aided by some of mom’s warm milk which has been weaned away over the past couple months, but the bottom line is that sleeping hadn’t been a major issue.

Upon hitting Cali, however, the jet-lag took its toll and Sara’s poor body clock never really adjusted.  Although I was only around for less than half of her stay in America, Yumi told me that every night was a constant challenge, amounting to wake up calls just about every hour with cries for milk or sheer confusion.  The return to Japan didn’t bring a quick resolution to her sleeping problems, either, leaving me with many sleep deprived nights before full days of work.  Not a lot of fun.

Fortunately, the last few nights have been relatively decent, so I am hopeful that she is finally adjusted to not only Japan’s late spring nights, but also the whole concept of sleeping for long stretches at a time.

An added benefit to Sara getting sleep is that her overall demeanor has gotten downright adorable.  The first few weeks back here were loaded with fussy whines and the need for naps.  But now she is cheerful and smiling for the majority of the day.  I was seriously concerned for her state of mind for a while, fearful of nightmares, or that perhaps she was too cerebral for her own good, with pensive moments that gave her an air of far too much seriousness for her age and upbringing by two generally jovial parents.  I even thought that she maybe had some sort of chemical imbalance that had been leading to her extremely moody behavior.  I had also considered the possibility that she had ear infections, but her crying was frequently stopped as soon as she went outside.  Sadly for Sara, the rainy Japanese springs made continual time outdoors an impossibility.

But as I mentioned, it’s all good now.  Sara has been smiling and laughing for most of the week, playing hide and seek around corners and waving happily to every new person to enter her little sphere of existence.  I really hope it doesn’t regress to the point she was at for the last couple of months.  Between her bright, inquisitive eyes and continual pointing where she wants to go (or indicating ‘one more time’ when she shakes her pointer finger, in response to some fun stimuli like getting swung around or thrown in the air… she is quite the adrenaline junkie), I sometimes feel like I really can tell what is going on in her HUGE little baby head.

Still, what I really am looking forward to is a little bit of speech to indicate that she is able to distinguish between the 2 languages that she is exposed to.  My friend JC mentioned that bi-lingual kids can be up to 6 months slow in their manifestation of language skills and that sign language is the best option for truly communicating with the baby, but I never really tried to establish this line of contact (although Auntie Catharine may have tried a fair amount).

Tonight however, I got a bit of good news on the language front.  Yumi mentioned that on today’s shopping trip, Sara pointed at an escalator they were approaching and chanted ‘up, up, up’, which is a sound that she doesn’t typically play around with (as ‘mamama’ is… Its frequency taking it out of the running for first words despite Sara’s ability to often put it together with a finger pointed at Yumi).  Considering how often we push ‘up’ on her though, I have a slight belief that this may qualify as her first word; but I’m going to want to witness a repeat performance before putting it in the books… experiments have to be repeatable to be scientifically valid, after all.

I’m really hopeful that her first words will be English though, it is a point of pride given how hard I’ve been trying; and I don’t think it is so unreasonable considering she can recognize printed English thanks to extreme exposure to Your Baby Can Read (another venue that has been teaching her ‘up’).

So that’s that… just a quick update for those who were wondering.  I’ve got stuff going on in my life, too, right now, but frankly it’s really boring compared to what is happening in Sara’s world, and I doubt very much that it is worth documenting at this time… certainly not as important as me getting a good night’s sleep.

And the winner is…

Thanks to everyone who responded to my last post.  I don’t really have much of a sounding board for talking through difficult things in my life, so getting opinions through these social networking sites is really helpful for me.

There was a wider variety of opinions than the poll would seem to reveal (about two out of three in favor of my return to California), as I got a lot of comments back prior to getting the poll inserted into the text, via WordPress, Facebook, and my personal e-mail.   Although a huge number of your responses recommended that I skedaddle on out of here, some of the people with the most expertise on these particular issues wrote to re-assure me that although the risks are not completely known, they are likely quite low and being monitored by independent groups.  I was also not taking Yumi’s visa situation into consideration in this decision which complicates matters significantly in terms of her staying in America.  A return to Japan for her in the next 6 weeks is absolutely necessary.

In fact, throwing this question out to everyone else did not truly clarify the issue, but only made it that much more obfuscated and difficult to decide for me.  It moved from being a personal decision for me between my heart and head, to the age-old question of weighing quantity vs. quality of responses (Not that I don’t value ALL of your responses as having quality, but it turns out that a very small percentage of my friends have actually worked in the science and power industry and with nuclear materials, so I gotta give some extra weight to those precious few voices).  Even after taking all the answers into consideration, I was having a very difficult time reaching a conclusion.  I was actually kicking myself for having opened the can of worms up, for fear that my decision will be viewed with that much more scrutiny and perhaps change your opinions of me on a more personal basis.

Eventually, I determined that I was torn enough about the choice, as to where I knew that I would never be truly content with whichever choice I ended up going with, so I decided that I would just let Yumiko make the call, and not put any pressure on her preferences.  After Skyping with her for some time on the subject, she has made the decision to come back as scheduled on the 11th of May, and I will support her completely on her choice.

So despite going against the grain (something I typically do anyway), a resolution has been attained.  I’m sorry for those of you who are disappointed, and I really appreciate the concern everyone has shown for my family’s health; but I suppose we are going to throw our fortunes in with the rest of Japan.

Things are not really so bad where we are, to some degree distance really is enough of a barrier (after all, it is the only advantage to my returning to California), and the distance that Tokyo is from the affected region should be more than ample enough to provide security from the vast majority of radiation that is leaked; at least minimizing it to a point comparable to the ‘normal’ background radiation that affects our lives in so many unknown ways every day.  I trust that if things do take a turn for the worse, that the independent monitors will draw our attention to it, and the embassy can get us back to the relative safety of California.

So there.  That’s enough of an explanation for me, and I hope it is enough to assuage any fears that any of you have that I may have unwittingly stoked over the past few days.

In other news, we are currently celebrating the ‘Golden Week’ holiday here, where the Japanese get a whopping 3 day national holiday, inconveniently spaced on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  Yesterday, the In-laws and I went to a nearby mountain and hiked up to a temple near the top.  It was a pretty short and easy hike, so I look forward to returning with Yumiko and Sara.  There is also a cable car there, that we took down, easing the day even more and getting us back in plenty of time for a late lunch before some spring showers started up.  Lunch was a treat, a restaurant which specializes in tofu, and offered a little sampler platter with about 7 different kinds of incredibly different and delicious types of soy curd.

Well, I need to get outside and finish up some cross bracing work on the swing set and do some farming on this year’s corn crop while there is still light.  I appreciate everyone’s responses and comments, and I’ll try to get back to you all personally over the next couple days.