This week is one of only two weeks in which I have all of my scheduled classes. In all of the other weeks remaining in this school year (April to March), I have at least one day when the classes have been canceled or changed. In light of this I thought that I would show you the differences between the schools and the classrooms I use.

On Mondays I teach at Tohoku University, which is the national university and the most prestigious in the area. The students are academically the best. However, the school spends less on upkeep than any of the others. This is because of the way that the Ministry of Education budgets money, but that is another story.

This first picture shows the classroom to which I am assigned. I have two 90-minute classes during the first and second periods with a 10-minute break (8:50 to noon). For language teaching, or anything other than a straight lecture, the rooms are essentially useless. Because the desks are so close together, it is impossible to walk around the classroom observing the students and interacting with them. The teacher is forced to stay at the front of the room.

This picture shows the floor at the front of the room. The plastic tiles are falling apart and, although you can not see them, there are broken-off pieces scattered around. Also the wall needs painting. The really interesting thing is that they have just finished fixing up the buildings. I also should point out that there are almost no janitorial services. Oh, yes, the rooms are used for meetings by the student organizations in the evenings and the desks are covered with handouts every morning. If you look back at the first picture, you can see some of them, still on the desks after two classes.

This is the way the building looks from the outside. I teach in the right hand wing on the top floor. Most of the recent repairs went into the outsides of the buildings and on increasing the anti-earthquake protections, so the outside does not looks so bad. There are two other similar building and one new computer and LL building. The students have all of their first year classes in these buildings for the first two years, and then they move on to other campuses where they take up their majors.

This is a very bad system that pervades Japanese higher education - two years of basic studies and then two years of study of the major. For language teaching, it means that the students have English for two years and they they have two years in which to forget everything. Most studies show that the typical students leaves university at just about the same language level as they had when they entered. I must add there that Tohoku U. is changing, at least the language part, and beginning next year the students will have language in each year. Hopefully, it will improve things, but we will have to wait and see.