Beginnings and Endings · 4:50am March 15th

Lucky I'm sane after all I've been through
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do
Life's been good to me so far.

We've been on a roller coaster these days. Money troubles to unexpected relief to more surprises and some terribly sad goodbyes. I have to say the most painful thing about my week is that I have to leave behind the friends I've made and the kids. The ones you never expect to give you the biggest thanks. A heart felt gift a letter full of memories, the little things we receive. However, that was school 1. Going to school 2 reminded me exactly why I'm leaving, even if I was sad to leave that school as well. School 2 was just more proof that, yes, I need to go because staying here and going through another year like this is not something I can do, be it financially, or for my own sanity.

I'm definitely going to have to create an album of all the little things my students have given me over the year because I've got a fair amount now. It's all hand written paper craft stuff, but that just makes it more sentimental. Leaving my first school was hard, and I'm still a little torn up about it. However, I've also come to the conclusion that Japan is totally wrongheaded about how they're teaching English. The first thing any kid should ever learn is how to recognize, read and sound the letters of the alphabet. Japan doesn't even introduce this until the fifth grade, and they don't have a focus on it until sixth. The kids who struggle the most are the ones who don't understand how to read. Katakana is an evil that needs to be purged from english lessons in schools across the country. I've read that Japanese English proficiency is of the lowest among asian countries, but only now do I understand why.

You learn simple phrases first, i.e. hello, how are you, I like, I'm (simple emotion) and so on. Like, these are useful later on and they serve as the basis of grammar, but these kids have no idea what they're looking at if you handed them a sheet with the words on it, or if you say it with a non-japanese accent. They read english by translating to katakana which makes it even harder to pronounce and spell things as they advance in their schooling. Of course, the kids who do the worst are Teacher 2's classes because she rejected me outright about the phonics stuff when I suggested it. T1 on the other hand, had an entire set of 6th graders who knew how to read and more importantly, sound out words by the end of our time together. It's kind of amazing to me how utterly different my two teachers were, and the worst part is that I don't know which one is the unicorn. I pray to god that it's T2, but I have the sinking suspicion that it's T1.

I'm going to complain now, but for our last lesson with the 6th graders at school 3 with T2, she arranged a conference with their first/second ALT from a few years ago. I had a game planned in which we do hangman using a dictionary they have, and about 90% of the classes love it. They get competitive, they actively try to read and pronounce words, and they pay attention to how things are spelled and how many letters words have. Save one class which has been meh all year, every class gets super into this game and I can usually draw it out for the whole 45 minute period. Not only that, since I can draw, I can add a visual component to the game for even younger kids. for every guess they get wrong, be it a whole word or a letter, I draw more of the picture until they figure it out. It's not like 8-9 year olds can't learn this stuff, but I swear she acts like every kid is about half as smart as they are.

Still, for about 35 minutes, they had an awkward zoom call with this absolute normie ALT on the other side of the country who wasn't even in japan the year before. It was painful to listen to this conversation, and I was either translating or directing this guy on how to use zoom. I'm not even fluent in Japanese, but I can actually read, and know what the kids are into these days. It burns me more because about half of them participated in that, but everyone was into the game, and I even got the other 6th grade teachers to play along. It ended too fast. And that's gonna be the last time I see them. I coached one girl to winning an english competition, I got a handful of my punks to actually participate in class over the year, and I generally had a good time in these classes. My last day with the kids was devoted to some random dude. Come on.

/rant

On the other side of things, I am gearing up to leave and I've cleaned out a whole lot of my room. All my toys are put away, my shelves are about half deconstructed, and I spent this morning playing in paint thinner to clean up my desk. So, when I moved into this apartment, one of the rental furnitures I was given was a desk. I used this as my second desk since I bought a much better one shortly after moving in, and it became my painting desk. My dumbass never put any kind of sheet over it to keep from getting paint on it, and it was rather colorful last night. This morning, I managed to get most of it off, but my hands, were totally covered in paint thinner, and I'd been wearing my gas mask the whole morning. 20 solid minutes of rubbing paint off the desk, and there's still a big ugly black spot and some silver I need to clean off. I also got it on the window and the floor, so that too will need to be cleaned.

Today's goal, since I did clean most of the desk, will be to put away a bunch more stuff and move my PC to the rental desk so I can take my desk apart and put it in the car. It's of the two very big boxes I need to move, but I'm not concerned about stuffing it in my little kei car that I have for one more week. What I am concerned about is my mattress. Not only is it going to be a pain in the ass to roll up and put back in its box, I'm not super certain it will fit in the car. It's long, and I don't think it's legal to tie things to the top of a car here. I'm pretty good with organizing shit though, so I believe it can be done. I have the luxury of making two trips in that I can bring my suitcases later when my buddy and I go on our road trip that ends with him taking me back to my new place. Still, that means all my boxes really have to fit in the car.

I've acquired about a ton of paint over the year, all my painting utensils, the electronics, the shelves, the cooking utensils, food I haven't finished off yet, and I'm broke as shit right now, so I still have to eat that up until the day I head out. It's probably gonna be a tight fit, but I'm uncharacteristically optimistic about it. I did work hard at fedex for about a year and a half loading trailers as high as they could before this, so I'm hoping I can do it all in one go.

I'll have about three weeks of unpaid vacation, which sucks, but my may paycheck should be about ~20k higher than it was the first time thanks to my returning the car. I'm about to be very poor which isn't fun, but I'm hoping things will be normal by June. If nothing else, those three weeks will be a good time to start looking for a side job near by or online because I really really need it.

This week's art. Missed a couple days because busy.
https://x.com/zach_nieves/status/1765979077595550178?s=20

https://x.com/zach_nieves/status/1766477982305312889?s=20

https://x.com/zach_nieves/status/1766809421685096705?s=20

https://x.com/zach_nieves/status/1767091912102801543?s=20

https://x.com/zach_nieves/status/1768087837822550296?s=20