Before/After

Before. After. Draw your own conclusions about the impact of teaching in Japan on my teaching in the U.S.

Starting Over

It's the first day of school! Which means it's time to announce a new programming schedule here at CitizenSE, now that the blog is on American time (even if I'm not yet).

Teaching Tuesday: I still won't blog about current students, but I will offer some reflections on the way I approach and handle teaching now that I'm back in the U.S. again.

Service Wednesday: After a service-free year in Japan, I should have one or two interesting thoughts on what it's like to ease myself back into the kinds of institution-building activities I devoted a good deal of my pre-tenure time to.

Free-form Thursday: Combines and replaces the old Unexpected Hawthorne Wednesday, CitizenSE Hawthorniana Link-o-rama Friday, and What Would Hawthorne Say.

Family Friday: Onechan will be having a yochien-like experience every Saturday in Buffalo, so combined with her American hoikuen and imoto's beginning onechan's old day-care arrangement on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Fredonia, I'll have plenty of stories to tell.

Research Weekend: A less quirky but more inclusive name than the old CitizenSE's Latest Crazy Hawthorne Idea, but basically fulfills the same function and allows me to make my old Close Reading Tuesday and Intertextual Thursday posts a little more substantive.

Yes, I'm turning CitizenSE into a less research-centric blog than it has been in the past. The leave is most definitely over, but it's not just that. I figure I ought to try to better represent the full range of things I'm doing as a tenured professor. They're new enough and strange enough again to me after gaining some distance on them over the past year, literally and figuratively, that I should be able to do something interesting with them. And since my core audience seems to consist of fantastically-talented and incredibly-prolific graduate students, giving some perspective on (professional) life off the Research I track may be of interest to them.

Looking back over my summer output here, it's clear that the travel, talks, and teaching took a toll on my Hawthorne blogging. Putting myself back on a schedule may help CitizenSE get back on track--and help me regain my momentum on my primary research projects. We'll see!

Zutto Zutto Tomodachi; and, The Collected Adventures of Sparkychan and Gojochan (Thus Far)

Cross-posted at Mostly Harmless

Has a better ring to it than "best friends 4evah," right? Well, it has about the same meaning. It's a line from the song onechan and her friends sang at the graduation ceremony for the older kids in her yochien this past spring. Since we're leaving Fukuoka before she can get to take part in a similar ceremony herself--in fact, we've already spent a full day in Chiba--I'm taking a break tonight from LPGA blogging to convey a big "sayonara" to all the Fukuoka friends she's leaving.

Maybe their parents can read them the Collected Adventures of Sparkychan and Gojochan (Thus Far), courtesy of Uncle Bill Benzon, and leave a comment or three here for him and onechan....

July 9: For onechan [in response to this and that]
July 10: The discussion continues
July 11: Onechan's Adventure [in response to this]
July 12: Where's Onechan? and Calling Onechan! Calling Onechan!
July 14: Help is on the way and There They Are! Yippieeee! [in response to this]
July 17: Onechan's Choice
July 19: Calling all kidz! Calling all kidz! [in response to this]
July 23: Sigh
July 28: Catch you later alligator
August 1: Where's the bunny rabbit?

[Update (8/3/07): New one--Onechan Tells a Story]

[Update (8/11/07): Another new one--The Little Worm from Kansas]

[Update (8/14/07): And another--Twas brillig]

[Update (8/16/07): And yet another--Sparkychan & Gojochan Adventure Time Mystery Theatre]

[Update (8/21/07): Check the comments on the last installment (thus far) for onechan's and imoto's immediate reactions to Sparkychan and Gojochan showing up in Dunkirk!]

A Real Citizen of Somewhere Else Moment

So on the way to the local Matsuri festival, the tsuma voted in yesterday's historic parliamentary defeat for the LDP. Inside the junior high school gym, onechan and I had the following conversation.

Onechan: What is mama doing?
Me: She's voting.
O: I want to vote, too!
Me: You can't yet. You have to be older.
O: Go-sai? [Five?]
Me: No, bigger. Like 18 or 20.
O: You should vote, too.
Me: I can't vote in Japan. I can only vote in America.
O: Why?
Me: Well, you have to be a citizen to vote. Mama's a citizen of Japan. I'm a citizen of the U.S.
O: America?
Me: Yeah. So I can only vote in America. And mama can only vote in Japan. But you and imoto can vote in both countries when you get old enough.
O: [not that impressed]
Me: And then when you're even older you'll have to decide which one country you want to be a citizen of.
O: [not that impressed]
Me: OK, mama's done. Time to go to the festival!
O: Yeah!!

Berube Mayoral Campaign Kicks Off with Analogy Contest

Cross-posted at Mostly Harmless.

Because it's our last Friday in Fukuoka (for this year, that is) and we have it on good authority that "analogies are mostly the refuge of the simple-minded," I hereby announce that the Official Michael Berube Campaign for Mayor of Blogoramaville is leading off with an analogy contest. Just fill in the blanks on any or all of the following in comments!

1. Michael Berube:[x=Republican Presidential Candidate]::a:b
2. Michael Berube:[y=Possible Mayoral Competitor]::c:d
3. Michael Berube:[z=Possible Running Mate]::e:f
4. Michael Berube:g::h:i

And remember to keep it simple, stupid. No similes or metaphors allowed.

Lit Bloggers of the World Unite...

...you have nothing to lose but your self-respect and the esteem of your closest friends and colleagues. No, I'm not talking about the ongoing Mostly Harmless event--although Europhiles and Europeans among you may be interested in it. I'm talking about my campaign to get Michael Berube elected Mayor of Blogoramaville in 2008! Pass it on.

Programming Note

Sorry to report that blogging here will get sparser and lazier for the rest of the month and into August. Although my last class meets in a few minutes, I'll be busy grading and meeting with personal and family friends for farewells during our last two weeks here in Fukuoka. We're cramming a trip to Kagoshima into the second half of this week, as well (here's hoping the forecasts for another early typhoon in southern Kyushu turn out to be wrong this time). And let's not forget boxing, shipping, packing, and giving away our stuff. Fortunately we can leave some things with the tsuma's family in Chiba, where we'll be from July 31 through August 14th, but while there I'll be hanging with onechan and imoto's cousins for the first week and then grading the last set of papers during the second week. So I guess what I'm saying is that Citizen of Somewhere Else will be a bit of a lower priority than it's been even in the past two months. I'll try to make up for the lack of quantity here with quality when I do post. But my five regular readers know how rare that is even when the law of averages is working in my favor! But it's entirely possible the next time you "hear" from me here, this blog will be back on Eastern Standard Time. Or is that Daylight Savings?