Just before entering the building, I turned to my right and took this picture of the continuation of the open area. The rooms where I teach are on the top floor about the bridge in the center. You may have wondered why there were so few student around. I arrived right in the middle of a class period, so the students were all in class.
I entered the building and turned left. This hall has entrances to a number of student related offices: student affairs, job placement, and things like that. The first door on the left leads to the part time teachers' room.
The first thing you see on entering is a desk for the attendant, who was on her lunch break when I came in. On the right end of the desk you can see what looks like an open book. This is the book where we sign in to certify that we taught our classes.
This is a closeup of the book showing my page. There is a space for every day of the school year, first semester on the front of the page and second on the back. The grayed out boxes are weekends, holidays, or days with no school. The red marks are my stamp,
hanko in Japanese, which are used here in place of signatures.
Hanko can be very formal, even registered with the government. They are used for bank accounts and other official papers. There are also less formal ones that are basically rubber stamps, and these can not be registered and are not legally permissible. However, for this book I use a rubber stamp type that is built into the end of a ballpoint pen. Some of my students gave it to me as a thank you for some extra effort that I put in on their behalf during my last year of full time teaching. It is very convenient and one of the best gifts that I can remember getting.
An adjoining room contains copy machines where teachers can make handouts for their classes. Most schools in Japan require the teachers to make all their own copies. As far as I can see, it is a waste of money because highly paid professors making hundreds of copies is not very efficient. They could easily hirer students to do the work, but culturally the administrations can not even consider this as a possibility.
I entered the building and turned left. This hall has entrances to a number of student related offices: student affairs, job placement, and things like that. The first door on the left leads to the part time teachers' room.
The first thing you see on entering is a desk for the attendant, who was on her lunch break when I came in. On the right end of the desk you can see what looks like an open book. This is the book where we sign in to certify that we taught our classes.
This is a closeup of the book showing my page. There is a space for every day of the school year, first semester on the front of the page and second on the back. The grayed out boxes are weekends, holidays, or days with no school. The red marks are my stamp, hanko in Japanese, which are used here in place of signatures. Hanko can be very formal, even registered with the government. They are used for bank accounts and other official papers. There are also less formal ones that are basically rubber stamps, and these can not be registered and are not legally permissible. However, for this book I use a rubber stamp type that is built into the end of a ballpoint pen. Some of my students gave it to me as a thank you for some extra effort that I put in on their behalf during my last year of full time teaching. It is very convenient and one of the best gifts that I can remember getting.
An adjoining room contains copy machines where teachers can make handouts for their classes. Most schools in Japan require the teachers to make all their own copies. As far as I can see, it is a waste of money because highly paid professors making hundreds of copies is not very efficient. They could easily hirer students to do the work, but culturally the administrations can not even consider this as a possibility.
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