Drama Update

Thankfully, there's nothing much to report on the death threat front
(see "Drama on a Monday", 13/06/05) - there's been no new developments
since Monday, and everything seems to be returning back to normal,
which is a relief. Hopefully that's the end of the matter.

In terms of teaching, it's been a mega-busy week (hence the lack of
posting), but with many ups and downs. One of the downs was realising
that Class 3-3 seems to be entirely devoid of imagination... They were
told to write a short story (one side of B5 paper), that began: "There
was a boy in a small town. His name was....". Apparently in the
previous class they'd been watching "Spider-man", so approximately
half the class's essays were an almost exact copy of the story of the
film (although one enterprising chap changed it around a little: "His
name was Spider-man. He was very strong. A green goburin loomed before
him. And Benom loomed before him. He effort, but he is die. Thank you
Green goburin and Benom."). Another student made an exact copy of the
plot of the NHK volleyball drama (yes, that's right, a volleyball
drama - you've gotta love Japanese TV) "Attack No. 1", but changed the
name of the main character to his own name. Yes, ladies and gentlemen,
TV really IS corrupting the fragile minds of our society's youth.

Thankfully though, a couple of students managed to shine through all
the plagiarising - one girl in particular wrote a really moving love
story about a couple who were due to be married, but before the
wedding could take place the woman was killed in a traffic accident.
It ends like this: "One day, he was sleeping in a room. She came into
his dreams and said, "Please don't grieve anymore." Then he woke up
and his eyes were full of tears."

Nice, eh? It's good to know that at least one young mind has retained
a spark of creativity.

Having said that, I really, REALLY hope that it isn't the plot of
another NHK drama...