When I headed off to teach in Japan, I hadn’t had much training. As we were teaching assistants, it never really fell to use to manage a classroom for long periods of time. As long as we were effective and tried hard, we tended to get pretty good results and the classrooms in general were pretty well behaved.

Now obviously, I don’t know the stresses of running a homeroom class. Not only teaching those kids, but dealing with things like bullying, applying to university, their parents and so on. That must be quite a tiring job if you’re looking after 40 of the little monsters. But even if they got really out of hand, you probably wouldn’t end up doing something like this;

A schoolboy and his parents have filed a lawsuit seeking 10 million yen in damages for emotional distress after a teacher announced him as the most disliked person in his class, based on a survey, it was learned Saturday.

The boy attends a junior high school in Chiba. In April 2005, when he was in his fourth year of elementary school, the teacher in charge of his class at the time made the students list up the names of classmates they liked and disliked.

Now stop me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that’s very effective teaching. Generally most teachers run surveys like “What do you like about the cafeteria?” or something, but “Which kid should we all dislike?” probably won’t promote classroom harmony. According to the article the kid went on to get bullied and ended up changing school. I hope he gets the money, and I hope the teacher loses their job. Maybe I’ll start my own questionnaire and send it to that homeroom class. “Who thought that was a dumb idea?” Perhaps.

I looked all over the net but sadly I couldn’t seem to come across a copy of the questionnaire itself, which is a shame. So instead here’s my interpretation of how it may have read.

Dear Students;

Hello there! It’s your teacher Dr. Bizarro here. As I’m sure you’re aware, surveys are very important here in school. I’d like to thank you all for your responses to ‘Should we put laxatives in 1 in every 20 school meals?’ and ‘Who likes low hanging unprotected electric wires?’.

So many great changes have happened because of our surveys; as you know the second floor cafeteria now has hundreds of bees’ nests in it, and everyone over on the 5th floor tell me they really like how we covered the walls in extra strong adhesive glue! So to further improve your school life, we’re running a new survey. Please fill it in and hand it to me by 3pm!

Your Name:
Your Class:

1. Who, in your homeroom class, do you dislike the most? _______________

2. If the student voted least popular in question number one left the school and tried to sue us, do you think they would win the lawsuit? [YES / NO]

3. We’re thinking of welcoming new students into the school by savagely beating them on their first day. Do you think this would help them fit into their new school? [YES / NO]

4. Who likes searing heat on a daily basis? I know I do! Please select if you would like us to channel hot lava around the basement floor of the school. [YES / NO]

5. Our school uniform is very well liked by students and we seek to make it better. You know what would be better? Clogs. Do you want clogs? [YES / NO]

6. The school anthem is a little dull, isn’t it? So instead of singing songs, how would you like to have to rip out chunks of your hair whilst screaming at your parents? [YES / NO]

7. The cafeteria food is being changed from next month. Please select the type of food you would most like eating. [SEWAGE / SPIDERS / THE OLD SCHOOL UNIFORMS, BOILED]

Thanks for filling in the questionnaire! I’ll be sure to tally up the results as soon as possible, and let you know by writing the results on a student’s forehead! Don’t forget to bully them!

Thanks,

Dr. Bizarro

Those poor kids.

Last night was the Sheffield University Japan Society Halloween party. I was going to write a full update about it, but the pictures are far too embarrasing. Well, I might put one at the end if you’re really lucky…

In the meantime, I wanted to talk about the new volunteers in Japan. Last year there were four of us - myself and Matt in Tokyo and Nate and Rolf in Hokkaido. I’m not sure if that’s the same arrangement this year, but I’ve been in contact with the two guys in Tokyo and the two in Hokkaido, so I am assuming it’s the same sort of thing.

As you may or may not know, Japan Is Doomed was the first year long volunteer blog from Japan of it’s kind. Nate had one too, but I got started first. I’m like Britney to his Christina. Except I’ve not shaved all my hair off or gone berserk (yet). I’d like to think I’ve started something of a trend - and considering all four of the current volunteers have blogs, I’d say it’s working. Little do they know they owe me £10,000 each in royalties…

I’m going to talk about each of the blogs. In the interest of me being lazy fairness, I’ll do them in alphabetical order. So, without further ado;

Craig’s Craig-San Japan! (Hokkaido)
Great read, although this blog needs way more hilariously embarrassing photos, just incase I ever meet Craig. I need to have enough ammunition for when he reminds me of those horrific Santa photos…

I loved his first blog post, about the “rushed injection of insane” that everyone feels when arriving. It sums up exactly how we felt a year ago, more or less.

Tom’s Japan Exile (Hokkaido)
Tom writes an insane amount of content on a great basis, which is excellent because it means I can read it instead of studying. Wait, that’s a terrible thing! Tom you are stopping me from passing my course! You fiend!

Since Toya, the village in Hokkaido where Tom and Craig live, is going to be hosting the G8 summit in 2008 (no, really), Tom and Craig have to do media training. They’re going to get into the papers more than Matt and I did though. Curses!

Mike’s Touring Tokyo (Tokyo)
This man has the best name of the four volunteers. He has also cornered the market in pretty photos of Tokyo, which can be quite challenging as it’s all huge skyscrapers and concrete.

His post about his trip to Yokohama, which reminded me a lot of my post on the same topic, was a great read and really puts mine in perspective.

Ben’s Transform To Tokyo (Tokyo)
Again, reading this blog is kind of difficult for me, because it just brings back all the great times I had last year, and frankly someone else having them now is just not fair. My plan to sneak to Japan in some sort of complex and hilarious manner involving a briefcase, a giant snake and a Chinchilla will be put into action soon because this is torture.

Ben wrote about the introduction to Tokyo way better than I did, so go read that.

So there you are. A new generation of bloggers. I feel like an old man already. If only they made some sort of online zimmerframe, so I could carefully plod my way from “buying-old-shoes.com” to “going-for-a-nice-afternoon-nap.org” at my own leisurely pace. All this wireless broadband Internet nonsense is madness, I say. Madness!

Oh, and here’s your embarrasing Halloween picture. Thanks to Ben for taking it and Kanako for sending me it.

Darren may have the hair, and Kanako may be well dressed, but I’m the one going to jail for murder! Haha!