Putting My Degree To Use

Today, one of the assistant teachers showed me a DVD he had made for the graduated 6th graders. The movie was just a slide show of photos, with music and special effects transitions.

I gave it a glance, said it was nice...and then he said he spent 6 hours on it. (At a Japanese pace, mind you. It would have taken a lesser man 12.)

"You did what?!"

The following is for media nerds only:

He had asked me before what I used for movie editing, and I said Final Cut. Editing video and audio files within Final Cut is cake, but when it comes to adding a picture, you have to stretch out the file to the amount of time you want it to be on the screen, and then add the transition effect and music afterwords by hand.

Yes you can make a slide show with Final Cut, but why would you want to? He did, and it took him 6 hours to add over a hundred photos.

I said, "Yuji, software is suppose to make things easier. If it's taking a long time, you're doing it wrong."

I then showed him how to make the same slide show movie using iPhoto.

Total time, including rendering: 5 minutes.

Poor guy.

The Bike

Haven't really updated in awhile because, nothing much has been going on. Actually, that's a lie.

There have been lots of school events such as graduations and teacher good-bye parties. Also, tomorrow is the Ogimi Quartet's (name pending) first gig. The group consists of me on piano, a guy on soprano sax, another on guitar, and an older man playing some Chinese-stringed-thing (no, that's not the instrument's name).

But that is not the purpose of this blog post.

This morning, I attended an orientation for...motorcycle lessons.

Any kind of driving school is ridiculously expensive here in Japan. To drive a car, I've been told, costs around $2000-$3000 for the school.

For bike school, it's $900. Since I know nothing at all on how to ride a bike, and given the dangers involved, I want to know everything I can. I think it'll be well worth it.

I have my first two lessons (hours) this Sunday afternoon. The total course is around 18 hours, I believe. Can't wait.

Morning Walking

There was a morning walk on Sunday that all the 6th grade students, teachers, and most of the parents participated in. I'm not to sure what the purpose was, but I think it was a "walk into Junior High"-kinda walk. I was asked last week if I wanted to come along.

"Cliff, want to go on a morning walk this Sunday?"
"Sure! When? How far?"
"Starts at 5 am. 20k."

The hardest part was waking up at 4:15 and driving to the start point. But once everyone started walking, I started to wake up and it really was a lot of fun. I enjoyed seeing how kids from different schools formed into new groups. For example, the one or two bad kids from each school seemed to attract each other to form a bigger bad boy group.

The best part was getting to talk to the shy kids. Usually in the classroom, you have the kids that run their mouths and the other kids that sit in the back and not say much. I use to think these kids were just boring. But on the walk, I had the chance to single them out to chat or quiz them on their English, and most of them turned out to be really cool and wouldn't shut up, while the loud kids seem to become shy in front of their parents.

The walk ended at one of the schools around 10am. We were then driven to another school for lunch. I think I got home around 11:30 and crashed for a good 4 hours.

So that was my first "half-marathon". My first timed one will be on April 11th on Ie Jima.

Abandoned Puppies

I would like to show you the dark side of Okinawa.

Abandoned puppies. This is what happens when people from the city think it's cruel to neuter or put down an animal. Their pet becomes pregnant and has a bunch of puppies, then they make the drive to the north to drop them off to become someone else's problem.

Aaron (the other Ogimi English teacher) and I found these two by the beach where we meet for karate. We saw the Junior High principal and called him over to ask what we should do. He said they're big enough to take care of themselves (really?) and just to leave them.

I know what Dave would have done and it would have involved a stick.