Shepherd's Pie

...or more correctly, Cottage Pie. Directions as follows:

(Keep in mind that I find cooking a chore)

(Also keep in mind that cooking is an art, not a science, so I'm not listing any measurements. That and I'm lazy.)

Ground Beef (maybe a pound or so)
Frozen mixed vegetables (half a JP bag)
Water
1 cube of beef stock (or gravy mix)
Tomato paste
Mashed Potatoes
Parmesan Cheese

Cook beef. Add water (enough to cover the meat). Add frozen vegetables. Add gravy mix. Add tomato paste. Add spices. Stir, simmer until reduced. Make sure the meat doesn't dry out. Transfer to Pyrex dish, and cover in a layer of mashed potatoes. Sprinkle with parmesan. Dot with butter if so desired. Put in the oven at 120 degrees Celcius for an hour.

News

If bad things come in threes, I suppose my posting must come in threes too. Not that I have bad news, that is.

In fact, there are 2 news items, in a way inter-related. Lets start with the good news. First, my re-contracting confirmation came in. So my third year is locked and loaded. /emote sigh of relief.

On to the other news. A fellow Fukuoka JET I know was denied re-contracting. When I heard this news, I was thrown for a bit of a loop. In JET circles, re-contracting was a sort of unspoken guarantee, provided that you didn't do something stupid like steal, break laws, get a student pregnant etc. As far as I know, this ALT did none of these things, and was in fact a pretty straight-laced guy.

They say that not knowing can make your fears and imagination run wild. So lets follow my imagination and see where it leads.

On the simplest level, ALTs are subject to a performance review. With the expansion of the JET Programme allowing for a 4th and 5th year, I think there was a thought that re-contracting was similarly an unspoken guarantee. After all, why keep an ALT 3 years if you're just going to get rid of him or her in the 4th year? Presumably a 3rd year ALT has built up enough of a presence/goodwill/connections to weather any possible threat of recontract denial.

Balance that with the warnings we've gotten from our Prefectural Advisor (liaison to the Prefectural Board of Education), that recontracting is NOT guaranteed.

So on the simplest level, the High School was not satisfied enough with this ALT's performance, and is opting to get a new ALT. That sucks, but such things are a reality in other jobs, so why not this one.

The next level up is that the school no longer wants an ALT. Our brand of teaching, while spiritually, and perhaps culturally enlightening, is of dubious value to the realities of the Japanese education system, which prizes rote learning via grammar translation method as a method of learning English. This is turn is forced upon High Schools due to the rigorous university exam system. In the end, the Japanese system trains students to pass exams, and not communicate in a foreign language. Presumably, the JET Programme grew out of a need to address this deficiency. So in end, if a High School wants to focus more on preparing their students for an exam, then it makes sense to cut the position of an under-utilized ALT.

This links to the next level up, in which the JET Programme is instituting budget cuts across the board. A major sign of this was the cancellation of the Kobe Recontracting Conference. Now this is a cut I agree with, because in the end it was essentially a giant paid vacation for 6 or 700 JETs. But JET jobs might be on the cutting block as well. I can see a situation where CLAIR, the organization that oversees the JET Programme, sends requests to the various prefectures to cut X number of positions. The prefectures in turn ask their High Schools to see if any of them can do without an ALT. In this case, ALTs at high academic schools, whose focus is to train students to enter high education, are in the most danger, as their jobs become more and more superfluous and their class hours are gradually converted to classes that focus on grammar.

What we might be seeing is the beginning of the end of the JET Programme. Admittedly this is a worst-case scenario. However, it's not out of the realm of possibility that, in light of private companies that are offering the same service to high-schools for cheaper. Who knows where the JET Programme will be in ten-years time? Leaner and meaner? Or gone the way of the dodo?

Salmon Muiniere

I think that's spelled right. Three posts in a month. I may beat Nakagawa Shoko yet!

A landmark, because it will represent the first time since coming to Japan of me preparing a fish dinner. And in the aftermath, most definitely not the last.



Delicious. And nutritious. Especially considering my weekend fare...

Directions as follows:

1) Wash and pat dry salmon filets.
2) Salt and pepper to taste.
3) Add what herbs you like (mine was oregano and parsley, what I had in my cupboard).
4) Coat in a light layer of flour.
5) Melt butter in frying pan, medium heat.
6) Fish in. Flip when brown and yummy looking.
7) Reduce heat to low, let cook.

Also new to my repertoire in recent times: Shepherd's Pie (or Cottage Pie for those realists).

P.S.: The tea cup pictured is my Earth Federation tea cup I won at the Gundam Fair at my local Mini-Stop. Carry readers of kanji will be able to read Chikyuu Renpou.

Hmmm... I wonder...

...if I should indulge my inner geek more, and do something like show pictures of my growing Gundam collection?

OK, lets build some "street cred" first.





These are two pictures drawn with the aforementioned new pen. It's a Tachikawa School G manga illustration pen, suggested to me by fellow JET and artist Chen. I think you'll agree that I've taken a step forward in terms of my drawing.

First pic is a drawing of my character for my D&D game. Pretty happy with it. Second pic is one of an SF soldier in Afghanistan. That was done a lot earlier, thus the lack of any real shading etc.

OK, so now on to the Gundams. I'd for a long while avoided making Master Grades. I had 4 in my initial blitz of making them , but realized that they took up too much space. Sadly, like other Gundam collectors, there's too much geek-chic (ok, otaku-chic then) in some of these. Two I chose, almost purely on looks, are the following.



In the background, in the blue in white is the Gundam RX-93-V2 Hi-V, successor to the stardard RX-93 nu Gundam piloted by Amuro Ray in the OVA Char's Counterattack. Again, bought for looks.

In the foreground, my first Gundam SEED MG. Normally, I avoid all non-UC Gundam like the plague, but this one was just too sweet looking for me to pass up. It's the Strike Gundam with IWSP Pack. No link to a wiki article, cause I just don't care enough about SEED to bother with it. Nestled in between is my ZZ Gundam. Again looks, but less impressive because it is older, and thus less flexible in terms of posing (what you see is basically all it can do).







Anyhow, that's it for now.

EDIT: Blogger/Picasa is being retarded and not letting me show pictures or something, at least on my PC. Might be my internet security. Either way, just click on where the picture should be, and it'll open. Pics, in order more or less described in the post, run upwards.

EDIT2: Heh, figured it out. I was trying to embed a webpage instead of a picture. Also, for nostalgic lulz (at least for me and some of my friends...



My new keitai strap, courtesy of PlayAsia.

Long time no see...

It's been a long, long time since I've posted. Last entry was some 5 months ago!

Really, I'm not built for blogging. In a definite sense, I notice a definite, visible gap in the way I use the internet and computers in general versus those who literally grew up with them as part of their world. Consider that I remember Commodore 64s, and programming your own game, and when modems came in kilo-bauds. That said, I think I'm probably pretty fluent in computer use, compared to many people my age. But the simple fact is that for me, it's a tool, as opposed to a facet of every day life.

On a more fundamental level, going back to how I am not a blogger or any such thing, I have never been one of those diary keepers. Anyone reading my blog knows that I tend towards mammoth posts. Some people can make 70 entries a day. What they write about, I don't know. How they can make so many posts is a further mystery. I couldn't even keep my school agenda filled, let alone the electronic one I got for one of my birthdays. That daily tracking of my life is something which I just can't seem to do.

I suppose really it's because I only really post when something I think you'd want to hear about pops up in my life. Things like social or cultural commentary I leave to people more socially or politically aware, like my good friend Fukuma Rob (a necessary distinction because I now know 2 Robs).

Herein I suppose lies the problem. Nothing really new is happening in my life. From the far reaches of my blog history, you might recall reading about my particular thoughts on this. So rather than go on another diatribe, I'll just state recap the last few months.

Since September, I've presented (poorly, but just fine for a first go) at the Fukuoka JET Programme Mid-year Seminar. And of course, most of you know I went home for the holidays and spent too much money of clothes. On my return to Japan, I paid for in full a new computer.

This I think, requires some digression. First the specs. 3ghz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 500G HDD, 512MB Asus 8800GT GPU, SB Audigy sound card, 4 gigs of RAM running Windows XP Pro (ok ok, yes, I know XP doesn't recognize 4 gigs of RAM, so I've got a stick in there doing nothing. But I didn't know about that limitation until I got the PC and checked online. Plus, I can always upgrade to Vista when they release a Service Pack or 2). It's a helluva nice rig, but more incredible to me was the fact that I paid it off COD. In Japan, it is perfectly fine to give a delivery man $1700, and think nothing of it.

OK, back to my life here. I found a gaming group online, and it's been fun as hell. I'm recontracting for another year (my co-ALT is not). I'll probably be volunteering for Fukuoka Orientation. 3rd Semester at school is, as it was last year, very very chill. I've been drawing again, and this time with a new pen introduced to me by my real artist friend Chen. I think my drawing has gone up a notch.

Well, that's it for now. Another 5 months, may pass before I post again...