Why do I always have to be the bad guy?

On multiple family-based comedies produced in the U.S. (The Simpsons and Roseanne spring to mind), there is a theme of one parent wanting to be popular or well-liked while the other, usually the mother, has to mete out discipline and try to instill a sense of balance rather than cater to their children's raging ids. In such cases, the mother has to be the bad guy who talks about unpleasant realities and consequences while Dad gets to be seen more as one of the kids.

As of late, I've started to feel a lot like my role when talking about Japan is one of being the bad guy. I try (very hard) to be balanced about life in Japan and to present both the yin and the yang of life here. When I talk about something positive, it doesn't mean that I see Japan as a flawless paradise. When I talk about something negative, it doesn't mean I hate Japan and see it as all dark and terrible. Unfortunately, my experiences with my former blog (and as of late, as a commenter on Digg) leave me with the impression that no matter what I say, someone is going to see my comments as painting things in black or white. Every comment or post is viewed in isolation rather than as part of my overall dialog about life (which I just happen to live in Japan). You'd think that my former blog readers would have known better, but some people seem to only focus on points they can argue with rather than on what is actually being said in an entire piece (or an entire blog). These people used to bug the hell out of me and I'm glad to have left them behind when I abandoned my old blog.

In most instances (particularly on Digg), I run across people who have never been to Japan or have only been here as tourists and have a fantasy image of it. In fact, sometimes I think that they cling to the notion of it being a superior society because it fulfills some need to believe there's a Utopian existence somewhere in the real world that they could live in if they just could find a way. I think others just enjoy imbuing Japan with whatever personal narrative suits their favored image of it. Because the overwhelming view of Japan is an unfairly positive one, I more often than not play the bad guy. I'm the parent who says the tooth fairy and Santa Claus aren't real. I'm the one who says that Japanese people aren't all polite and refined and that its not a safe place where you can leave your wallet lying around and no one will steal it. I get to be the one to break the news that the socialized medical care program is frequently abused and on occasion women die or give birth in ambulances because they are refused at hospitals.

I've realized as of late that the overwhelmingly positive (and exceptionally naive) view that many Westerners have of Japan forces me to one side of the topic when I get involved in discussions. That is, by others being polarized in a highly positive fashion, I can only add balance by focusing on the negative. I don't add such comments to discussions to harsh anyone's Japanophilic buzz, mind you. I do it because I think holding an idealized notion of any real place on earth tends to make people dislike their current circumstances and demonize their own culture's weaknesses more. Ultimately, those fantasies which are fueled by tons of pro-Japan PR doled out by news agencies both in Japan and abroad, are adding to an imbalanced view of life in general. The truth is that things are both good and bad in nearly every developed country.

Americans in particular seem inclined to focus excessively on America's bad points and Japan's good points. I'm guessing this is both a counter-balance to the rhetoric of neoconservatives and their ilk and buying into the heavily prejudiced world-wide view of the U.S. a dangerous place full of fat, stupid, mono-lingual, unworldly, materialistic people. This is a view which is espoused by those with no or little first-hand experience of the U.S. for the most part, though disillusioned Americans say such things as well. The irony is, of course, that Americans bad-mouthing other Americans never see themselves in the portrait of the ugly American that they themselves assist in painting. If every American can't see himself or herself as a part of these stereotypes, exactly who is fitting into them? The answer is no one.

Talking about both the positive and the negative is important so that people accept that life is never perfect and that the grass is always greener thinking is ultimately defeating and fruitless. Also, any discussion which is polarized lowers the discourse on both sides and fails to educate or be meaningful. For instance, those who badmouth the U.S. are only polarizing the discussion in the same way I noted earlier. If you see the U.S. as all negative, you force its defenders to talk about the parts that are all positive and invite jingoism and nationalism into the discussion. And finally, in regards to the way I comment about Japan, from a practical viewpoint, I'm also hoping to mitigate some rude awakenings for the handful of dreamers who ever actually make it over here to live for an extended time.

I've decided, however, that I don't like playing the role of "balancer" when it's frequently forcing me to focus on the negative because it in turn makes me dwell on the negative. I've spent years actively (and sometimes painfully) cultivating a less pessimistic character and a balanced spirit and I believe I'm undermining my efforts by trying to educate people who are not only ignorant of reality, but unreceptive to talk of it. In other words, if they want to keep believing in the Easter Bunny, I'm not going to fight them about it anymore. In retrospect, I have to question why I ever even tried. I'm guessing it leads back to some issues I've had for a long time regarding feeling it's somehow my responsibility to toss the ice cold water of reality into people's faces. However, I do believe it also has a lot to do with a sense of disliking polarized and ignorant views, but that sense isn't serving me very well, so it's time to stop catering to it.

To this end, on the Internet at large, I'm going to stop commenting on the highly-skewed articles that are present in abundance and coaxing people out of their romantic notions of Japan. On this blog, I'm going to do what I've always done which is talk about both the good and the bad and try to view things in a balanced fashion as it suits the sort of person I want to be. Of course, not every positive has a serious negative and not every negative has a serious positive so some posts will skew one way or another, but, on the whole, I'll endeavor (as I always have) to neither glorify nor demonize life in Japan, or anywhere else.

And, I guess I really should stay away from Digg.

Exposed

Note: There is an important comment from someone at Worpress that explains the situation, so please read the comment from Tellyworth. Essentially, I'm able to read the blog's archives, but won't be able to read anything which is posted after the blog was made private.

If you use Google Reader, you may be familiar with the "recommendations" function. The software looks at your subscriptions and asks you if you'd like to subscribe to various other blogs or sites based on the interests your current RSS feeds indicate you have.

This is a pretty handy function and I've found some good content that way, though there are often far too many recommendations which are essentially "more of the same." Besides opening up the potential for finding interesting sites, the recommendations feature also shows you just how much cannibalism is going on out there. Many niche blogs are all essentially echo chambers and very few have truly unique content. It'd be shocking how many people create sites by just searching and compiling various other types of content if there weren't money in the equation. If there's profit to be had and someone had too little experience or imagination to create, they just assemble.

This evening, I was perusing the recommendations when I came across a personal blog (one post is shown above). Often, I will click on the blog's name to access it through the original site because Google Reader sometimes does not show entire posts, some pictures, or posts past a certain date.


When I clicked on this blog to access the original site, I got the message above. The site is password protected to keep the masses out, but Google Reader invites them right in. I don't use a WordPress blog, but I'm guessing you can choose to have your blog listed for RSS feeds or Google searches or not and this person made a mistake. If I could, I'd contact this person and let them know that their private thoughts are out there for others to see via an RSS feed and advise her to check her settings. However, I can't contact her because I can't get into the blog to leave a comment.

The object lesson here is to keep in mind that even when we think we're undercover when we're on-line and even if we take reasonable precautions to keep our personal thoughts hidden, we can be unintentionally exposed. If it is something that you think should not be read by the masses, it might be better not to put it on-line at all.

Update: I wonder if the blog I accessed is only protected in a weak way. That is, perhaps people with Wordpress accounts can get in without any special password if they just log in with their user accounts? Since I don't have Wordpress, I don't know if it carries such limited (and pointless) protection just to keep out random anonymous commenters. Does anyone on Wordpress know if that is possible?

No Reason to Refuse

One of my long time students, a young woman who I've been teaching since October 2006, had her last lesson last Wednesday. She's going to the U.S. to attend university for a college year and I hope that she'll have a good time of it. She's only 20 years old and has never lived on her own so I'm a little concerned about how she'll get on. She and I had a good last talk about her departure preparations which revealed a few cross-cultural differences which I found very interesting.

First, she told me that her parents reaction to her imminent departure was one of 'shoo, get out of here already!' I told her that I was surprised and jokingly asked her if she was a bad child that they wanted to get rid of. She told me a Japanese word for what her parents were doing that translated into the idea that they felt that clinging too tightly to her or acting overly sentimental about her leaving would "spoil her." I'm not sure that "spoil" was the best translation, but essentially it meant that they were worried she'd be too dependent if they clung to her so they want to push their baby bird out of the nest and force her to fly.

After this discussion, I told her that a Western parent would not hesitate to cry and profess his love for his child with such a separation at hand (at least if that parent was comfortable expressing emotions). In fact, unless the relationship between the child and parent was bad, there would certainly be some heartfelt feelings passed between them at the prospect of a long separation. She said that this explained why her host family during her brief homestay in the United States was so appalled that she didn't feel it was necessary to call her parents when she arrived in the U.S. They knew they'd want their child to call upon arrival in a foreign country.

When I asked her if she had done anything else in preparation, she looked thoughtful for a moment and then her eyes grew wide and she blurted out, "I got a boyfriend!" Since she has not had a boyfriend since I started teaching her and she is leaving for the U.S. tomorrow, this was truly surprising. I asked her how this came about and she said that he was someone she had a part-time job with for several months (which she quit about a month ago) and he called her last week and asked her on a date. During the course of the date, he asked her to be his girlfriend and she said "yes." When asked about how she felt about this young man, she said that she was decidedly so-so about him and that she wanted two boyfriends, one in the U.S. and one in Japan though she wouldn't tell either about the other.

Since I felt it was very odd indeed to get a boyfriend she had little passion for when she was leaving and who she had every intention of two-timing, I queried further and she said that she accepted her former coworker because he was gentle and treated her as having the same status as him. She told me she hated men who treated women as lower than themselves in status. Also, when he asked her, she "could think of no reason to refuse." She also mentioned that she would find his sympathetic ear via e-mail useful while she was lonely in the U.S. because she didn't want to tell her family her true feelings. At this point, I felt it wise to make sure that she knew that any boyfriend she may have in the U.S. will not enter into a relationship so passively with her and that she needs to be cautious.

This is one of those occasions when I have to really suppress the inclination to be ethnocentric. While I think it'd be wrong to conclude that my student was typical, I don't think it'd be incorrect to say that she's not entirely atypical either. It'd also be easy to conclude that she's "using" her Japanese boyfriend, but I don't think it's quite like that. I think it's more like the kind of boyfriend-girlfriend relationship that you sometimes see among kids who are in elementary or junior high school where they say they have a bond, but don't really feel it deeply or act on it in the ways adults do. That is, it's actually just a friendship with the potential for a bond to develop rather than what we'd call a romantic bond.

I've had students stop taking lessons before after very long associations with them and they always say they'll write or e-mail. In fact, most of them ask if they can e-mail me then they never do. This particular student has asked for my e-mail and Skype information and I wonder if she'll stay in touch or vanish like the others. I hope she stays in touch and that I can see her again after her two semesters in the U.S. are over. I'd love to see how she turns out after a year back home.

Dealing With Critics

One of the web comics which I frequently read has been engaged in a bit of the sort of drama which is so unique to the type of relationships the Internet allows us to develop. Some time ago, a fan created a blog which is devoted to commenting on the artist's strip. The title of the blog makes it clear that the analysis is of a decidedly negative bent, though I do believe the author is attempting to be fair in his assessments.

This critical blog probably would have toiled in anonymity for the most part except that the artist linked to it from his own site. He sent droves of his fans to a site he hated and feels personally attacks him and very likely legitimized it rather than kept it marginalized. I can't say for sure why anyone would send their supporters to read the contents of a detractor, but I'm guessing it had to do with a feeling of helplessness at being criticized. This artist has had issues in the past with any negative comments that have been voiced in his own site's forums such that he sometimes can't bear to read the forums and sometimes indulges in ad hominem attacks in response to certain comments. If I were to guess, I'd think that he hoped that he could use the power of his supporters to combat someone he views as an enemy. In other words, he feels less helpless if he directs his fanboy attack dogs after the blogger.

At the moment, this has not helped in the least. In fact, the attention to the situation has only increased the readership of the detractor's site. In response, the artist has offered a bounty (free original artwork) to anyone who can give him the real name of the blogger running the site. This is where the situation starts to sound as though it could get out of hand. Trying to track down a person's real name borders on stalker behavior, and, depending on the intent once such information is in hand, it could potentially turn to a situation where a crime is committed or the blogger's real life is interfered with in some fashion.

I can understand why the artist is so frustrated. No one likes to be criticized about their creative endeavors, though some people certainly can tolerate constructive criticism admirably and view it as a means of improving their work. It must feel doubly personal though to have someone devote an entire site to nitpicking one person's work. The worst thing you can do, however, is make your readers aware of your detractors' work. When I worked on my former blog, there were a few people who went out of their way to piggyback on my writing by posting retorts to my posts on their blogs rather than coming up with their own unique content. They attacked me and my views. These people linked back to my posts (because they had to show their readers what they were disagreeing with), but I never linked back to their posts as I knew that ignoring them was the best course of action. In fact, I only found out what they were doing through other resources or people as I didn't read their sites.

That's not to say that my situation was analogous to that of the artist I'm talking about. No one set up an entire site to refute me (at least not that I know of, thankfully), and I don't believe I can compare my body of writing to this person's career as a cartoonist. After all, he makes a living out of what he does and my work is merely an outlet. However, I think the same principle applies. You should simply ignore such people. The more attention you give them, the bigger they grow and the more power they have over you.

As to why someone would choose to publicize the enemy, I believe he's afraid that the criticism is valid on some level or to some extent. Perhaps after doing a strip for so long, he's afraid he's lost his touch or ran out of creative steam. It's a doubt that has been echoed to varying extents in various blog pieces and write-ups that he's done. Attempting to stop a critic who may be echoing unconscious (or conscious) fears may help him feel empowered to silence the ones that are brewing in his own mind.

I don't know for sure what goes on in someone else's mind. I do know that I enjoy this artist's work and would be sad to see him do something (like interfere with his critic's real life) which causes his career to be messed up. I also know that any actions we take out of fear (and that includes self-doubt) are bound to send us off in the wrong direction in life.

Coconut Island Ice Milk Tea

The hard part was removing the damn label.

(Before I get rolling on this, I'd like to say that I learned about this beverage from Dateline Osaka's review of it. I'm not trying to rip her off, but just trying to mark my impression of this product for my own future reference, because, well, I really liked it.)

After reading Dateline Osaka's write-up, I actively sought this drink because it's coconut-flavored and I enjoy a good coconut confection or beverage. Strangely, I found this drink rather elusive. You'd think that it'd be the sort of thing that'd be easy to track down in convenience store's or supermarket's with large refrigerated drink sections, but it was not to be had in my local 7-11, Inageya supermarket, or QQ convenience store. The fact that it was so hard to find just goes to show that various manufacturers probably have to fight pretty hard for shelf space in small stores.

I finally located a bottle in the unrefrigerated section of Peacock supermarket. It cost ¥153 which makes it pretty expensive for something which is only 350 ml. You'll note that the bottle has a curvy shape that allows the bottle to have the same height and footprint as a standard 500 ml (like 16 oz. in the U.S.), but with a lot less product. For reference, most beverages which are sold in 500 ml. sizes and retail for about ¥150 and a pint-size carton of Lipton milk tea (which is also 500 ml.) can be had for about ¥100-¥130. Of course, specialty beverages are a bit more expensive and this is clearly going to be a limited edition drink which will likely be around for the summer then vanish forever (or at least until next year).

The first thing I did upon unscrewing the cap was to give it a good sniff to see if it smelled of coconut. It didn't. It pretty much smelled like tea. To be fair, I had just consumed a Japanese herbal cough drop and it's possible that my sense of smell had been affected. A much later sniff seemed to reveal coconut scent layered with the tea. My first taste felt incredibly sweet, but this smoothed out as I drank more of it. It's pleasantly and noticeably, but not overwhelmingly, coconutty. There's a good balance of milk and tea flavor, but I think that the tea taste is subdued because of the high amount of milk and sugar.

The ingredients list betray just how much sugar is in it. The first ingredient is milk and the second is sugar (the third is "milk sugar", likely lactose, and the fourth is tea). So, by volume, the sugar is pretty prominant. I think that the pre-made iced tea and coffee beverages in Japan tend to get a somewhat rich and thick look from the sugar. They are far less watery and thin than the standard tea you get when you buy a bottle of "straight" tea (unsweetened) in Japan. The strange thing is that I didn't read "coconut" in the ingredients list, though there was a generic "flavoring" ingredient. It may have been referred to in some string of characters I couldn't read, but coconut is usually written in katakana (as the phonetic equivalnet of co-co-naa-tsu or, in Japanese, ココナッツ) and is easy to find and understand.

If you drink the entire bottle, it's 122 calories. That puts it almost as high as a 12 oz. can of Coke (which is equivalent in size to this bottle of tea) as it weighs in at 155 calories. The tea probably carries a better nutritional impact though since it at least brings a lot of milk along with it whereas the Coke is pretty much sugar, oils, flavoring and carbonation. Of course, I don't drink (regular) Coke since I really don't like to consume beverages with sugar in them.

Despite my aversion to sugary beverages, I'd definitely go for one of these Coconut Island Milk Teas again if they're around in another month or so. It's refreshing and very satisfying, but a little too easy to just knock back all at once, so I wouldn't want to indulge too often. It took a bit of self-control to stop at drinking only half the bottle. I wish they made these types of drinks in two varieties, one with sugar and one with Sucralose, but the Japanese don't go in for sugar-free foods or drinks much because of the chemicals.

Asagaya Tanabata Festival 2009

Lanterns by Asagaya JR (Japan Railway) station announcing the festival and the dates it will run (August 6 - 10).

Every summer during the Asagaya tanabata festival, my students ask me if I attend the festival. Every summer since I've started private teaching (about 2.5 years back now), the answer has been "no". If you've perused my Picasa album for last years festival and you look at my album for this year's festival, you'll be clued in to why that is the case. While the decorations change every year as merchants make new wire frame figures, the basic food, souvenir, entertainment, etc. options are pretty much the same.

Wishes written on colorful paper strips for the festival.

Also, honestly, I believe the Asagaya festival is mainly for kids. I asked one of my students if she had any interest in these sorts of festivals and she said that she did when she was a child, but hasn't attended one since becoming an adult. That is not to say that there is nothing of interest for adults nor that it's not an interesting thing to do simply to walk around and look at the overwhelming display of decorations, but there is a trade-off to be had between the novelty and the discomfort. The day these pictures were taken, it was 95 degrees F./35 degrees C. and humid. The street is also very crowded, sometimes to the point of having to literally push past people to squeeze by. I think that, after many years of festivals and at 44 years of age, I'll choose the cool, calm, and unfettered comfort of my apartment over the interesting aspects of the festival.

"You wanna get high?" This is the oddest figure from the festival. South Park isn't even all that popular in Japan and Towelie seems a strange character to choose.

Fortunately for me (and any interested readers), my husband is less troubled by the heat and crowds and he took pictures this year. I have set up a Picasa public album with a full gallery of all of the 127 shots he took. The album has been added to the sidebar, but you can also find it just by clicking here. If anyone has any questions about the pictures, please feel free to ask them in the comments section for this post.

Apparently, you can make anyone look like Jack Sparrow with enough make-up, the proper wig and the right clothes.

It struck me this year more than most that the festival is an interesting meeting of the old and the new. There is a lot of pop cultural referencing in the decorations, but also a lot of traditional Japanese food, dress, and customary behavior. I guess part of the reason for that was how many relatively newish, Western cultural figures seemed to be a part of the festival.

This little boy has such a sweet look on his face. I can't help but feel kind of sad thinking that there's a good chance he'll grow up to be some poor, over-worked salaryman.

The day these pictures were taken was the opening day for the Olympics, so you'll see some shots in the Picasa gallery of people standing around watching television. I believe that one of the panda wire frame figures was also related to the Olympics in China.

I hope you enjoy the pictures.

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There is also a small set of photos taken at the same time in a new album which my husband snapped around Shinjuku. These photos have no particular theme, but are just evening life in Tokyo as usual and some station shots. That album has also been added to the listing on the sidebar, but you can also access it here.

Spiritual Christmas Lights

Readers of my former blog may recall that I believe in reincarnation. The truth is that I don't believe in it the way it is commonly embraced. Many people believe that you are reborn in a linear fashion and either may choose your next form or will be born to a lower or higher station in life based on how much good or bad karma you've racked up.

Personally, I believe that the amount of good or bad you do has little to do with the next incarnation. I think you can be an absolute saint in one life and find yourself a horribly abused child prostitute in the next. The point isn't to acquire brownie points in one life so that you can be comfortable and happy in the next. The point is to have certain experiences that allow you to shape the energy currently inhabiting your form into a more useful one so it can head off and try something else. I'm not sure what that something else is, but I'm guessing it's incomprehensible for those inhabiting our current version of reality.

I also don't believe we can choose to be animals, though I do believe that they are inhabited by their own particular forms of energy that have other paths to follow. I believe they are no more or less than us. They're just different. I think we can interact in some fashion with animals, plants, etc. but we can't transform our essence into a form that is suitable to inhabit animals, plants, etc. in this reality. I think it's one of those square pegs in a round hole types of things. Also, the essence of how we interact is more of a "passing nod" type of communication than a "conversation." We're both here in this reality, and aware of each other, but our paths don't intertwine (or even intersect) to a great extent though what we do influences how the other form does its work.

I think we do interact constantly with everything around us on a level which cannot be detected. I liken it to pressing very hard on what appears to be a solid piece of wood with your finger tips. Visually, we cannot see that we are having any impact on the wood, but if we were able to measure the stress we exert at a low enough level, we could see that there is some "give" in the wood. Just because we cannot yet measure our impact on our environment on such a level does not mean it isn't happening. Of course, some people believe that nothing is happening unless you smash the wood with a hammer and see a big old indentation. They may be right. I have no "proof", but that's okay.

The way I conceive of reincarnation is best described as a string of Christmas lights. Each life we live is one of the bulbs. A different form of ourselves (which is just as much us as our current form) is linking them together and in contact with each bulb at all times. The "string" (or cable) is aware of every existence in every little bulb and altered by them in meaningful ways.

I've mentioned, on occasion, that I don't believe time exists. The Christmas lights metaphor explains this pretty well. If you consider each lifetime a bulb on a string, you can see that they all exist simultaneously. Time is an illusion which keeps each existence separated. It's a necessity to allow us to operate in our form of reality. If the disconnected selves living each life in each "bulb" were to be aware of all memories and all information in every other life, we would be overstimulated to the point of insanity. Even if we could handle the influx of information, we would be crippled by the emotional weight of the pain suffered in other lives.

The "string" that binds our multiple existences is free of the restrictions imposed on us by corporeal existence and therefore unencumbered by the limits of having a nervous system. That allows it to deal with multiple realities, but it also limits its ability to experience various types of existences. We have a symbiotic relationship with our "connected self" (the string) where we gather the experiences and it manages the ebb and flow of energy as well as takes our experiences and enriches the entire spectrum of our existence with them.

The part of us which is represented by the string in my metaphor is a part of ourselves which we can communicate with, but we are not entirely aware of this potential because we either don't know that it is there, don't yet know how to communicate with it of our own volition (as our disconnected self doesn't speak the connected self's "language" by default) or refuse to acknowledge it because it clashes with existing belief systems and our reliance on sensory information. I think that people who meditate and "psychics" have much better communication with the "string" than most people. Such people have an advantage that "average" people do not. Those who meditate can shut off the overload of sensory data which tends to block our ability to communicate with our connected self (represented by the cord connecting the lights).

(Credible) psychics have the equivalent of a really poor quality phone line to the connected self. They're aware that the line is there and either "make calls" or "receive calls" from that line, though I think messages are often (very) poorly interpreted through the bad connection (like guessing full sentences from snippets). I think a lot of people with so-called "psychic" ability are unintentionally projecting their own wishes or mindsets into information they receive, making it too negative, too positive, or just plain wrong. The rest of us aren't even trying because we aren't aware there's anything to communicate with, let alone the possibility of a connection we can communicate through.

That's not to say that we there aren't ways in which our connected selves try to send the disconnected selves messages. I believe dreams are one way. Life experiences can be another. The easiest way for most people though is to "listen to their gut". That is, ask yourself a question and have faith in the answer that pops into your mind without the distorting effects of fear, rationalization, and other neurotic concerns. It's taken me many years, but I've come to rely on listening to what my gut tells me to help guide me and it hasn't steered me wrong yet. In fact, not listening to it is what destroyed my health.

Even if you think everything I've said is a load of hogwash (and hey, it may be for all I know), at least consider that the answer you get when you ask yourself a question and heed the first answer you get, you're not filtering it through your fears and likely getting a really honest answer.

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Note: Despite all my efforts to convey my notion of how reincarnation works in my conceptualization of it, I can say that I believe my metaphor is quite a crude one. I'm certain the way things really are is beyond our ability to conceptualize using any sound, object, or experience in a sensory-based reality.

You Just Know

I never taught anyone back home, but I have to imagine the experience is very different from the one I've had in Japan. For one thing, I don't believe there are as many people who pay a decent amount of money to study as adults. Since language lessons are big business, a lot of places will try to entice students into taking lessons by offering a freebie of some sort. When I worked at Nova in what feels like another lifetime, these freebies were called "demo lessons" and were supposed to take about 10 minutes. My husband's school offers them as a means of checking a student's level and they take 20 minutes. The agency that sends me students gives away a full one-hour "trial lesson" on occasion, though I get paid for such lessons so the company absorbs a loss.

Most of the trial students will take the lesson and consider whether they feel comfortable with the teacher's character and teaching style as well as the atmosphere or environment. Once in awhile though, I'll get a student who I can tell never had any intention of continuing with a full course of lessons and I just know won't be back. I imagine these students are scoping out a variety of ads for free lessons and go around using them up one at a time to avoid the relatively high price of lessons.

Of course, I cannot know for sure that these students are doing the language equivalent of eating the free sample with no intention of buying the full-size product, but there are some signs which indicate someone may be such a student. The most objective indication is that, after the trial lesson, the student never communicates with the referral agency again. The agency repeatedly contacts such students and leaves messages, but they never get a "yes" or a "no" about continuing. While I know the Japanese are reluctant to refuse, I also know that it's easy enough to make up a reasonable excuse to say "no" (and to e-mail that answer to avoid an uncomfortable phone call). At the very least, a student can claim their beloved dog died and they're too sad to study now, or they think they'd do better in a group lesson instead of a one-to-one lesson.

Beyond the lack of contact, I can sense something during the lesson which is different. I've had three students who I suspect were freebie hunters and that's been enough to make a pattern clear to me. I should note that the lessons always went well with these students. They were engaged and appeared to enjoy themselves. They took notes, responded assertively to questions and paid attention. The atmosphere around such students is different, however.

There is a razor thin bit of nervousness which I presume comes as a result of feeling they're doing something "wrong" ("stealing" a freebie with no intention of following through). I would consider this nervousness part of speaking English except that the sense is different and I've asked these students (as I ask everyone in the first lesson) if it's their first time in a foreign person's home and if they are nervous. For the record, if a Japanese person is nervous and you ask, they don't lie and say they are not. They always admit it if they are nervous.

The other thing which I notice is a lack of desire to "connect" with me. Students who are in for the duration have an air of eagerness to create a certain relationship with me. The energy of someone reaching out to you is discernible, and when that energy is absent, particularly when you have plenty of experience with it being present, you can detect it.

It's actually rather reassuring being able to "read" the intent of a student who is taking a trial lesson. When you're in a position where you're being evaluated, it's nice to know that sometimes you're not going to keep a student no matter how well things go. It's does a good job of mitigating any feelings of failure at not scoring a new "regular".