Your Entry into Touhou (Read 1,487 times)

[spongelevator]

inside joke game is worth it even though all hopes and dreams die within

I remember when I was like 10 some people had the blackberry phone with slide out keyboard and I thought it was the fanciest thing ever
I tried looking for a phone with a keyboard specifically to play tetris two times and then not do that anymore but I didn't ever find one that works with the wifi anywhere you go thing

definitely though I enjoy my time sitting in the kaiser waiting room for 20 minutes as I loop peanut butter jelly time in my mind instead of flipping through the crusty magazines

I never saw sonic movie but it's a rare case of them listening to the fans to change that nasty sewer rat design
still can't compete with the bean though
that movie's just killer

otherwise all I heard was kids yelling out the marvel thanos movie spoilers after school ended

best method for username is randomly generate words until you get an animal and then noun or verb
that way you can be "octopus shovel" or "rabbit writing" and then peak username status has been achieved

also yeah no anonymity results in google and also microsoft knowing what color your shirt is today and what color it will be tomorrow with the new google future sight application
some of both is probably the best though I'll always have 13 emails with none of them using real name so google doesn't take over my nintendo ds

[lazulum]

spongelevator

I appreciate the concern, was just very, very tired. Pushed things a little too hard last week. Didn't have to but I'm a professional, I do more than expected regardless of what I am hired to do. It's made me a lot of friends, connections, and a reputation over time; not that I do it for that reason. That's a tangent though, don't want to ramble about myself too much if not prompted.

That's a good way to describe DSP. I've turned many people onto him because most folk around my age usually have fond memories of one game or another, so I'll point them in the direction of DSP haha. Friend watched his GTA Vice City how you don't play where he steals a motorcycle, gets thrown off of it, eventually gets it back, then gets thrown off by a cop and arrested. The man has a bizarre gift, to say the least.

Yeah we've veered off-topic it seems, but it does reflect a natural conversation. Always takes unexpected turns.
I've been a mod and admin on forums in the past actually, usually the policing would be with the whole user-base in mind. If you have 100 users you want what they are posting to be more organized so the forum is navigable and thread posts don't sink into a mire of off-topic back-and-forth. Given that it is just us (for now, maybe someone else will join), as a mod or admin I really wouldn't mind. But moderation varies.

I think that it is good that you have been without a phone until now, you have kept yourself away from what has destroyed many people. Those phones can be very dangerous, albeit not in a conventional sense. 精神的に危ないぞ。 (seishin doesn't translate well, checked translation app, don't know how to express this in English).

That's interesting going incognito with your name like that haha
There'll be a time for you to step out onto that focused light, keep a watchful eye out for that time and steele yourself. In that moment there will be a heart with wild, beastly pulsations, but with a steadfast grip of a humble stake you can force about a tranquil equilibrium, the moment will be then subject to your command. From experience I can affirm that there is nothing to fear. It's passed 3 AM here (typed response to aeon first), so I'm just rambling on some unsolicited advice now. Going to do a bit more work then head to sleep.

Aeon

Yeah Latin is a beautiful language. Have some quotes and prayers memorized (although I am not Catholic). I'm curious as to what those esoteric names entail heh. Esoterics is a broad domain, some very interesting histories, colorful myths, but also a darker side which cannot be talked about much.

I feel I should state it, always quite direct. Not too usual around these parts these days, there are cases where I have been so direct that I have been suspected of communicating anything other than what I am saying haha
I had a few minutes so I responded, wouldn't have checked the forums if I didn't have a few minutes in any case.

It is refreshing to hear a defense of anonymity, and I agree with every point that you made. Anonymity is an ally of the everyman in my view.
The students were youngins-- well university students, really not much younger than me. I always refer to them as "good kids" and such though haha. I get called an old man at heart for a reason I guess. Anyways, young folk tend to be more emotional, their idealism can influence the rhythm of their pulsation, beating with youthful energies and such (although very politically apathetic). Very different from my more limited interactions with American youths in Japan, I'll refrain from sharing my observations from those interactions though so as to not offend. Many stories about that, but for another time perhaps.

To Japanese women, Disney Land is their Mecca; that place has become an institution in itself. I learned this the hard way, last girlfriend of mine got really on my case for not being too keen on that place. Fun story for another time.

[spongelevator]

lol DSP is impressively bad at so many things that it's like watching one of those tv comedies except he doesn't get a laugh track
I forgot what game it was but I remember when a game came out people in the comments of videos were saying "oh no, is he going to ruin this one too?"

oh yeah forums in general are going to be more free because most of them out there have like 20 people still there maximum
I can see why a good amount of people wouldn't want to use one from that though, because one of them discords has the same benefit and anyone who wants everything on-topic would be hesitant to stick around
I still think they will always be better though other than how half of them can easily die in the middle of a conversation because nobody paid the server bills for three years

yeah I heard many people saying they were on their phones until like 04:00 and then they wake up for school with two and a half hours of sleep
and some people have like 5 hours a day on the snap chat or whatever the yellow is called
with all the bad stuff I've seen happening due to phones and I guess social media and internet in general I could probably do a whole 10 pages essay but at least nowadays I can google what is cobordism and also download a 20 pages college pdf on them which I do not comprehend due to algebra 2 brain
(also if I remember correctly iphone 5 sometimes exploded so technically one time they were physically dangerous lol)

being real life incognito is quite good actually though at times it ends up like a punchline in some light novel
eventually I'll not be able to do that but for now I must enjoy it because it allows me to thumb war or draw some abomination with essentially strangers in the back of the class

it's probably pretty obvious but I didn't really think it until now
real life is anything but anonymous, while the internet is (or more was) almost entirely anonymous
and while real life is pretty hard to make anonymous (it would have to be something pretty extreme like everyone has the same appearance or title), it's pretty easy to remove anonymity from the internet, isn't it?
like how some sites will require you to use a real name or encourage you to use an image of your face and stuff
I couldn't really understand why people would want to ban anonymity because then the internet would just be real life except with different mechanics but I thought people who generally prefer to use their real names and such online might disregard the positives of anonymity because they don't want to use them? if I tried thinking like them then I would probably see something like 4chan or 8chan which is supposed to be very anonymous and think anonymity mostly resulted in bad things and want to get rid of it
though I dunno is just pretty interesting thing

[Aeon]

you guys keep talking about this dsp guy, a streamer yeah? i'll check him out because your descriptions of him make him sound funny

spongelevator
was spongelevator, too, randomly generated? or is there in reality an elevator for sponges
real life anonymity dude, can't imagine how much work it takes to keep up. i mean if you're born normally and go to school on record i imagine there's quite a bit of backpedaling you need to do, before even considering that you need to make all transactions without banks, can't get a phone number normally, etc.
i mean i'd do it if i could. there used to be way more anonymity probably even a couple decades ago but as the government and friends get new tech they sure put it to use
my policy is to not use real name for anything associated with companies or government if i can avoid it, irl or not. i've got a whole pseudonym with a birthday and all for things like mail and whenever people randomly ask my name for some kind of promotion in the street
and man are there really sites that require you to use a real name? only place i can think of where that would make sense is like a dating site
the level of anonymity of the chan sites is alright, but i think it's kinda dumb how you can't even make an account or anything. they aren't exactly known as high-brow places, so i don't plan on frequenting any anytime soon but i don't know how there are so many users when you can't even have something consistent like an account

lazulum
woah, didn't know disneyland was so revered. i've actually never been to one, though. any time family had the chance to go to a theme park like that, we always just decided that legoland was better (and a substantial amount cheaper). and from what i've heard? it wasn't the wrong choice

[lazulum]

spongelevator
DSP certainly has a gift for being bad at games in a way no one else quite is haha
That was probably MGS V, he's known for being particularly bad at those games. How You Don't Play MGS 3 remains one of those videos that is indescribable but also hilarious throughout. Rivaled only by, in my view, that time he sunk hours into stacking objects to climb on in Half Life because he couldn't figure out how to crouch jump haha.

People can get really addicted to phones that is true, you'll see signs in train stations here in Japan advising people not to look at their phones as they walk. Usually if it gets to that point there was an incident or two. What people do on those phones is another serious problem, and expectations phones generate is yet another.

Yeah it's next to impossible to get off the grid these days so-to-speak. Could type ten pages on that topic. Times are certainly not as simple as the once were, and probably not for the better really.

Some German guy did recently go of the grid, the government dispatched over 2000 marines, a 1000 police, helicopters and even Typhoon jets on a lone guy who wanted to be left alone in the woods. He managed to elude them all, however, and has been endearingly dubbed "German Rambo" by many haha.

Yeah it's really an ill-thought out reaction. Decision making these days often seems to be heavily influenced by emotional whims, foundation for many major issues at present. Such important and grave matters are best left to sober wits that can stay their emotional impulses. Fortunately that remains the case in Japan for now (emphasis on 'for now'), but I see in many lands abroad the exact opposite, where emotionally driven decision making is considered desirable. Doesn't make sense to me.

Aeon
DSP is something of an urban legend of the internet at this point haha
He's been around for well over ten years, there are mountains of lore about the guy. If you're looking to watch something, my recommendation is think of some of your favorite games and type in "This is how you don't play [game title]" there's a fair chance you'll find something.

Yeah particularly among Japanese women, some highschool girls by season passes and go there close to every day. Not my sort of thing.
Never been to a Legoland but I think I'd be more interested in Legoland than Disneyland.

Personally I just like going to museums, gardens, parks, etc. I'm a boring person to most.

[spongelevator]

DSP is darksydephil, infamous man
I think the thing I heard about him in the most places was when he jacked off on stream without realizing it
so if you heard about some guy who did that a few years ago it's him lol
also I remember his persona 3 playthrough was especially despised by many because the patrons chose it and then he got to the final boss in like 50 hours (game is usually 80-90 hours but he skipped a ton of text) and then aigis got charmed and fully healed the final boss and he ragequit the entire game lol

spongelevator is my favorite out of a few randomly generated names I created
this is one of the rare occasions where I made an account on a website and actually spoke to people with it so I made sure to choose a nice one lol
but if I'm just making an account to access stuff that requires signing up I just call it kjgfghjkuythfgnjygfh or something

I don't have a bank account or phone number or anything and my high school has like 2500 people there so I'm in a pretty ideal situation for anonymity right now though it's particularly rare for the average person making it far more difficult to achieve than it's worth it
I got lucky and many people who share my name are actually pretty well known and there's even a kid with the same last initial as me so whenever he's in any of my classes that works for me really well
one time the teacher gave papers to a kid for them to pass back to everyone and when I was the only person in the class they didn't know I knew I made it
probably it sounds weird and very sad but it's quite convenient really

lol I have a ton of names to choose from and birthdays to associate them with but I never thought of any cool ones
imagine telling the guy promoting sunscreen your name is iroquois pliskin lol

lol on chan sites I think the only reliable way for them to tell who is who is by their IP
otherwise anyone can pretend to be anyone and tripcodes are worthless for that reason

man he really spent hours doing that? it reminds me of when people say as a kid they didn't know you can switch pokemon out of the party so they just had 5 weedles and a charizard lol
at least he can always win in those "loser gets 1st place" competitions

people using their phones while walking is the worst of it because of the occasional person bumping into pillars or tripping over a rock as they do it lol
I mean using it while sitting or standing is generally fine but while walking? may as well wear a VR headset and stay home

wait did the guy even do anything? if they really did that just because he went off the grid, not good
Was?!?! Warum sind die Polizei hier? Ich wohne im Wald, nichts anderes! (( frowny face

it seems most countries are trying to be more secure nowadays and double checking everything so extra security but at a high cost

people on the internet are more extreme than in real life and when they get emotional it never goes well
something or someone always will be "cancelled" or whatever I prefer to stay out of it because otherwise my mental health goes down the drain

I never went to any didney worl but I also went to legoland and I just remember the aquarium was nice and the bag of rolos cost far too much
definitely I'd rather just go to a park or something
the mcdonalds we went to before legoland was just as entertaining to me at the time lol
parks are free and gardens have nice flowers but one thing both lack is the spending of a few paychecks
probably these days I would want to go to some weird lab and see a square tomato or ebola in a petri dish or whatever because that is a good mix of "location that is not home" and "what" while also probably being free or low cost

[lazulum]

Ahh I remember his P3 playthrough, even Atlus USA left a comment on the video "the charm salt is real" I believe it was haha
And how could I have forgotten to mention his most infamous moment, that fateful stream where he forgot to turn off the camera hahaha.

Yeah on a Chan you can use onion routing I think. Old places so there isn't much in the way of restrictions of that stuff I figure.

Yves was the guy's name, seems they finally caught him after some witnessed tipped off the authorities. He was living out in the woods and some passerby busybody reported him for having a bow (used it for hunting). Police sent a squad after him and he managed to disarm four police officers of their weapons and took off with them. Manhunt as described earlier ensued.
Cool that you know German. Pzrepraszam, nie mówię po niemiecku. Incidentally, one of the top yodelers in the world is a Japanese woman, travels to Bavaria to compete. Helped her assistant out with filming a performance once a few years back, rare kinda guy her assistant was, don't see many like him these days.

You think the same as I do when it come to parks and gardens. Had to learn the hard way that girls don't quite think that way though haha
You can find cubed watermellon on sale somewhat easily in Japan actually. White strawberries are around too.

[Aeon]

lazulum
damn, did the police not have anything better to do but to chase down that guy, or did they really want him back on the grid? it's messed up either way. i've gotta respect his skill for not just hunting for food with a bow, but taking down police with it. couldn't have been easy.

spongelevator
guess you've got some pretty good anon status compared to most, then. i think my name is unique and my schools have tended toward <500 people size so i don't have the same luck
i doubt i could make a cool birthday or name if i tried, i just make them by a series of slight changes. name is a mispronunciation of a danganronpa character made to sound english and birthday is just 13/37 but wraps around to the next year lol

it looks like i'm now the only monolingual chump here. trying my best when all the schools id been to before college only offer spanish, which i could never get interested in

[spongelevator]

lol DSP is quite a special man if even atlus comments on his video
I guess he successfully got himself an audience at least lol

well it sounds like he was quite the german rambo lol
I wonder if they'd have let him stay there if he didn't disarm them though
either way it's a pretty cool story
more entertaining news than "US coronavirus cases double in a week, again" for sure

nah I was in high school german for three years and all I got out of it was basic grammar, a handful of vocabulary words which mostly consist of food or animals (der Hummer is lobster lol) and a slight advantage over someone who did not take high school german
I successfully read a picture of a sign but I failed to read a children's picture book
still I remain monolingual american

parks and gardens are nice and don't have strange food items being sold for exorbitant prices or children crying because they dropped their mickey the mouse ice cream
definitely nice places yeah

I saw cubed and black watermelon on internet though they cost an arm and a leg
maybe I can make my own square tomato with the same method one day
who knows if anyone's tried it out yet

I got snipe
but not by a bow and arrow this time
lol now that I think of it that actually sounds like it could be a movie or game
mgs3 german rambo mod when

yeah there are way too many people at the school but lucky for me the entire next year is online so I have peak anonymity
impossible to know about me if nobody is even there anymore lol
having a unique name's probably better in the long run because if I get a nasty office job then my cubicle will have the same name as the other 6 people in the office with my name
and it's pretty bad when someone says my name and then it's the kid with the same name who sits right next to me
honestly that birthday is better than anything I could think because they won't even know it's based off of leet lol
probably best name would just come from some obscure movie or a random name generator
yeah my name is uuuh dick kickem

the spanish at my high school is absolutely terrible and all the quizzes and test are computer-graded and online
honestly I was lucky picking german because some kids drop out of spanish 1 because of how absolutely garbage the course is compared to the other languages

[lazulum]

Aeon
German police certainly have better things to be doing, but the reasons for such a response, at least my views, are controversial. I am not German either so I cannot sensibly comment on the deep inner workings of Germany.

I respect that he manage to elude 3,000 police and marines, not to mention the jets and helicopters for almost a week haha

spongelevator
I would play an MGS 3 mod as German Rambo haha

I can respect your modesty. It's cool that you know German I think. A lot of culture, and a lot of history. I have an appreciation particularly for Bavaria, good polka, good food, nice aesthetic, etc. Fun fact, the existence of modern day Greece is owed to Bavaria (first half of 19th century).
I just used the Polish because it's obligatory, given the histories haha

I could give you a list of many parks and gardens around Tokyo and its orbit, they are very beautiful, especially at the right times of the year. I don't know how they are in California, but the ones in Japan are worth seeing in my view.

Never good overpopulating a school. I have friends that teach in Japanese public schools (not international schools) and they have classes of some 30-50 highschool or middle school kids. No idea how they manage it, but it isn't great for either the teacher or the students.

I have a long and unique name, always stands out and I am known for always saying the full thing when I first meet people haha.

You're a smart guy, you should aim higher than some office cubicle. It may be a long, difficult, and arduous path but you will be happy to have embarked on it once you've traveled a ways up it.

Yeah I've seen poor teaching, there's a lot of that by non-Japanese who come to Japan from abroad. The infamous "English teacher" that gets a job for the sole reason that they are native English speakers. It's a big market in South East and East Asia, Anglosphere types coming to teach English. I have very, very many stories at just how terrible the bulk of them are (not all, but maybethe majority), and how many do worse than just teach poorly. Stories (or in this case a rant) for another time.

I can sympathize, bad teachers are truly something that can have severely negative impacts on peoples lives even. You can read an academic article by Moss published in 2003 about "consequential validity", the dangers are well known these days, in academia at least.

[Aeon]

i have heard that there are a lot of english teachers in asian countries who don't know the actual language of the country. sounds like the challenge in the class wouldn't be to understand the content but to be able to know what the teacher is saying at all. i've heard a couple of them recount their stories online and it seeming like it turned out fine, but that probably isn't the case for many
i do know what it's like to have a bad teacher. because of various things, i've had to change schools a lot, so i've seen some of the worst. some of the best, too, but that's the tradeoff

and man, high school classes with 50 people? i can't even imagine how anyone could learn all the content, let alone how much stuff the teacher has to grade and oversee

[spongelevator]

german rambo gets a big boss rank in real life
truly impressive that he managed to do that

until like halfway through the second year of german my teacher pretty much just read out of the textbook and assigned us that stuff
so basically all I know about the culture is that there's trains in some places and also you hold fork with left hand
sliced meat for dinner and bread and cheese
uuh euros is money and berlin is the capital probably I do not know
well I have a head start at least so maybe one day I can read unsettling german fairy tale

most of my classes have 35-50 students though most teachers don't say much and students seem to be fine with it
there's always been at least 20+ kids in all my classes since 1st grade or whenever so maybe it's just because I never experienced being in a smaller class that's taught differently from a larger one but the only issue I really ever had was with grading methods
like how pretty much all of my english teachers would just scribble something illegible in red next to a few sentences on my essays and then give me a B
in german our classes had 40-50 people and the teacher would always be complaining to us about having 180+ students and we would get tests back sometimes after the next test
and by year 3 she was pretty much just giving everyone an A other than with tests and quizzes so I can see how that many students can be very bad for teachers
apparently one of the high schools in the area with about 300 or so students is closing down and they are all gonna be put into this high school so uuh good luck teachers
too many people around here nowadays

parks here are just a bench and a tree and grass (wwwwwwww) though simple is nice
if parks over there are like that or have something to look at then I would like to know to see on google maps at least
if there are strange rock formations that is even better

ha people with long names may have to write the whole thing out on a legal document but they can choose any segment they want to be known as
one of my friends with a long name has four parts to it and so he is called like three different things

I remember a lot of people who want to stay in japan for a while or live there beginning by being an english teacher even though they only know that kaku is write and ohayou is good morning
and I would really hope those people are teaching advanced english because going into the first year of a language with a teacher who can only speak the subject language is automatic C- and not knowing how to say "I walked to the store"

yeah some teachers are really bad like one infamous english teacher who is despised by all who were in her class
it seems both the best and the worst teachers at my school are teaching AP classes and the calculus teacher is known by pretty much the entire school including people who are in geometry junior year and those who despise math
apparently he is even better that the community college's calculus teachers
a friend and I signed up for precalculus challenge exam to get into there next year but then it's gonna be entirely online and he doesn't know how to use a webcam still so rip
if you got any spicy calculus 1 and 2 resources other than the khan academy and textbooks pls help

[lazulum]

Aeon

I will stress that there are good English teachers (the obligatory "not all not all" disclaimer haha)
In the case of Japan, very few actually know Japanese, that is correct. Unless they're teaching at a Berlitz school that will become a serious problem almost certainly. I could give a lecture on why.

I wish it ended with that. Very few even know their own mother tongue. They rely on folk grammar, are often times unable to explain parts of English, and at worst give students incorrect information about the language. Many these days are reduced to being conversation partners, or assistants, but there are a number of private organizations that will still accept them into teaching positions (begrudgingly I imagine).

And I wish it ended with that. Many of these teachers do not take their jobs seriously, they come to Japan for many reasons, one common one just being women. They take no pride in their job nor do they take it seriously. They will cancel lessons last minute, they will call in sick when they actually just have a bad hangover, they show up late repeatedly, etc. I think we're all gen Z here so I hope I don't strike at any nerves, but these types are almost invariably of the "Millennial" generation, terrible work ethic.

And would you believe it still gets worse?

Cool that you got to experience a lot of schools though, hope you spent most of your time at good ones though.

Yeah I have a lot of respect for my friends/colleagues/contemporaries. They set a good example and there is a lot for me to learn from them. Try my best to be able to teach them anything.

spongelevator

Teaching straight from the textbook is a rookie mistake, either by the teacher or (quite often) the administration that hands the orders down. As a teacher you want to adapt the textbook if you have to use one. Ideally you would be able to prepare a curriculum without a textbook at all, but that runs into issues of practicality. I only teach one class with no textbook and materials preparation takes several times longer than with other classes.

I see, yeah public schools seem to like larger classes. There are a lot of issues with the arrangement, but it can be managed well or terribly still. Your best tool in that circumstance would be assigning group work. Assign different roles to group members, have one role present the group product/consensus/etc. Many other reasons but group work is quite ideal. A bad method is using the entirety of class time to lecture, I understand the trappings, but this is not good.

That story you shared about the 300 students is disconcerting. I am increasingly critical of US public education as the time passes. For every one good thing I hear, there is a mountain of bad.

I'll get back to you with a list of parks, and a reply to the rest before too long I hope. I have to get back to some work I'm doing

EDIT/ADDITION (so I don't keep abusing the double-post)

Here's a short list of places that I would recommend:
> Shinjuku-gyoen
> Kyū-Iwasaki-tei Garden
> Rikugien
> Happoen
> Arisugawanomiya
> Nezu

Tokyo Orbit:
> Hokokuji

If you're looking for nice and simple there are a lot of those too. Just about every city in Tokyo has their own park. Setagaya park is a nice and simple park. There's a lot of those in Chiba too but I do not remember them by name.

I empathize with your friend, I too am called a good many things haha.

You're right about those types coming to Japan (they do this with South Korea too). Fortunately it is very difficult to become a public school teacher in Japan, so they would need to be licensed, which includes knowing Japanese.
However, another type that also causes problems are US servicemen stationed in Japan long-term. Many sort of float around and have, unfortunately, committed a number of high profile crimes. There are of course good serviceman and I have known some. But there are also a lot of unsavory types as well, the likes of whom I have known many as well.

However for private organizations, schools, and such. Those types do manage to get in still. There are an increasing number of competent teachers though, or so I hope at least. In Tokyo perhaps, elsewhere there may not be enough supply and so organizations take what they can get. Some of the stories I shared with Aeon was actually a place in Chiba (although a very big name place)


Usually if a teacher is that disliked, there is a reason for it I have learned.
Back when I was in highschool I was as dumb as they came (terrible student), very different person back then, so I have no idea what an AP class would look like to a student.


I'll have to teach myself calculus one of these days, can't quite help you there sorry. Usually I just organize data and run it through descriptive statistics, reliability statistics, analyses of variation, and such. Not doing the math myself haha.

[Aeon]

spongelevator
damn, sounds like you've got it tough in school. the place i ended high school at was pretty chill (low as hell budget though). i kinda got the same treatment in spanish that you got with german. the teacher was the only one in the school running any language class, so he had to deal with a lot of people. i doubt i was good enough to have a 4.0 spanish gpa without the amount of stress the guy was under. better than defaulting to grading stuff as an f, though

i'm programmer man so it might make sense that i know math stuff like calculus but no way dude. i took some trig in high school and forgot it all. well, i could point you toward some nice calculators but that's about it. i should probably look back into doing some higher math but man
i write a 1000 word essay and spell one word wrong, lose a point
i solve a longass complex equation and write one number wrong, have to redo the entire problem from where i messed up, which could be anywhere. i dearly wish i could console.log in real life

lazulum
woah, i guess the english teaching situation is worse than i thought. i get what you mean about not being able to explain their own language, i probably couldn't detail how english works half the time even though i think i've got pretty consistent grammar myself. it should be expected that if you're teaching it, though, that you have at least an articulable knowledge of linguistics.

i may not be one of your students but you have my massive respect for making your own curriculum. fav teachers have always been the ones without a textbook in sight, but i also had a good one who just had so many textbooks that he pulled only the best stuff from each to make a super-condensed and easy to learn course

not gonna complain too much but yeah US education system is a big funny joke. sometimes i would get into a school that i thought was alright, only for the place to be shut down a year later, or completely refactored into something lame and expensive. i'm lucky i was a pretty good student because the people who are already having trouble get the worst end of it. i know some people who have had to take summer school this semester and they are not having very much fun

i've never been much for parks, but my experience is pretty limited. i'll save your list of cool places to check out if/when i get the chance

[spongelevator]

yeah I remember hearing somewhere that native speakers of a language are usually not good teachers of it
at the time I didn't really get it but when I was given grammar exercises in german I realized I knew basically all the stuff in english but I had no idea how to explain or apply it
basically since I'm a native english speaker it's natural to me so I would definitely need to read a grammar book in english and study up on linguistics some to actually be able to teach it
I feel bad for those people in japan who just get mr. bob smith who came to japan and taught english because it was an easy option and then they don't get taught how to form any moderately complex sentences ever

I'm really not sure why she teaches from the textbook because she tells us she's been teaching for over twenty years
though it may be because of the unreasonably large classes which tend to fall behind
we got through four chapters this year and the textbook has 12 so definitely something's going on for that to happen
teachers may just be struggling but they don't want to complain to us
I hope they will be okay because man that is not good

US education sure aint good at all because of all this stuff happening
in my chemistry class the teacher genuinely did not care and though it made for the most entertaining class I have ever had the test and quiz averages were D- almost every time
kids used their phones and ate food and talked during class as the teacher basically just kept going on with the lecture
I had like 105% in there but I couldn't explain to you the majority of the concepts in the class because it was hardly even a class to begin with
the midterm and final had questions on material I have never seen before
in fact I hardly know anything at all other than with the algebras and yet I still have a 4.0 without any AP classes to boost my GPA
I definitely don't know a lot about school but one thing I know is it aint right
apparently the school expects students to be studying stuff on their own and reviewing to make sure they know the material but nobody I know even considers doing that
also there's the vaping and drugs problem where they bring the police dogs onto campus but I feel bad for laughing when that happens so I will only mention it briefly as an issue with the school's environment
just like US portion sizes it's a big ol mess on a plate

my apologies for the whole personal high school mess but I'd think it would be something to hear so people know what not to do
on a better note I google maps'd those parks and they look very fancy
one of them had those beautiful red trees where it has a certain feel to it I just can't describe
definitely I'd hope to get to visit some of those someday
especially the ones with water because water in a park that isn't called a waterpark is nonexistent here

oh yeah that thing with making one mistake my friend in calculus and I would both make really dumb mistakes like 4+4=16 and 2x3=5 and stuff
I am still in babby algebra stuff so I just lose like two points but his tests are worth like 2000 points and have 10 questions so if he does it once he'll lose like 5% of his points
higher the level the more it hurts to say 2x2=8 lol
if someone did that in graduate school math class it'd be like a meteor struck their test, smashing their grade for the entire class into pieces and ending their GPA forever
so please do not be like us and remember your times tables

in a few weeks I'll be done patching up my truck-sized holes in precalculus knowledge so maybe we should make a completely not related to touhou calculus learning thread so we don't have to suffer alone lol
next year will be incredibly boring because I only need 1.5 classes to graduate and whatever else I do will have to be purely from personal discipline instead of waking up at 16:00 for a full year in a row and then losing the ability to add numbers

sorry for long downer post I am a product of the US education system