So today I got to choose my new office. At first I was impressed that I was actually given a choice. There are three (only three?) offices available so I was shown each one. The first was great. About a third larger than my current office, sixth floor, overlooking a great view of Tokyo in general, lots of light. Great!
"You probably can't have this one, though," I'm told.
"Eh? Why not?"
"Well, we have a special rules for choosing offices. There are three criteria: the age of the professor, how long he's been at Rikkyo, and, er, something else I don't remember."
"And?"
"Well, we have three new professors coming this year. Another one is three months older than you, so he gets first pick."
"Oh, OK," I said, "No problem. Let's see the other two."
So the other two won't be quite so good, but they can't be that bad, right? The second office was in a 20 year old building that looks about 60 years old. It's damp, rather decrepit, and, in the honoured tradition of Japanese educational institutions every where, painted grey. (Although I'm not sure if it's battleship grey or dull-sea grey.) There's only one power point, and, speaking to the guy in the office next door, the ancient looking thing that, I'm told, is the air conditioner doesn't work. The view is still OK, but now looks over some rather nasty looking roofs.
On to the third. The third office is ground floor, but a way away from the main building. It's carpeted and clean, but that's about all than can be said. It's currently used as a psychotherapy room. In the end, I chose this one simply because it's clean and, as the room is being converted from a therapy room, it'll get a new air conditioner.
Once again, Rikkyo proves it is nothing if not traditional. "Here's the room you can't choose." As usual, you just live with it. Japanese are so keen on fairness it's actually very unfair!
15/02/2006
British coolness
This is so, so, so cool that I just had to post twice in one day – rather than twice in a year as usual. It's a presentation projector the size of a matchbox. This would a great alternative to not having a large screen and brings the possibilities of PDAs and mobile phones, which could already pack considerable processing power, becoming close to full fledged PCs because the small screen size is overcome. I really hope these things aren't the usual "we spent so much developing this that we have to charge the earth for it" type gadgets. Even better, they seem to be British. How long will it be before it's commercialized in the US and the original inventors are forgotten?
Tags: British; Invention; Gadgets; Presentation
12/02/2006
Last day of UMDS – almost
Girl's DayYesterday was almost my last day of duties at UMDS. Having been here 15 years, it has been a long time coming. It still feels as if I'm living out of a suitcase, as if I don't truly belong, so it's not really a big deal to be moving on.
The last day was spent in six hours of entrance exams. UMDS is struggling – badly. Fifteen years ago we got about 15,000 applicants for less than 1,000 places. With entrance exam fees going at ¥35,000 a time, that's a very nice little earner. Or at least it was. Yesterday, there were only just over 100 people taking the exam. Overall, UMDS is getting only about 1,000 applicants a year in four lots of exams, so entrance exams no longer bring in the money. The school refuses to believe this, though, and year in year out we must make ever greater efforts to attract more applicants to the exam. A futile, stupid, money and time wasting exercise when there's many other ways to generate income, especially for a school with such great potential in many areas.
Over the years, UMDS has made a lot of mistakes with entrance exams too. The worst was when it gave the same papers two weeks running. I was actually the professor who broke that particular scandal – and scandal it is in Japan, something that certainly hits the press! There we were, calmly watching the sweating examinees when a girl put her hand up and I went over.
"I did the same exam the other day," she said.
"Oh?" I said, "Hold on, I'll ask about it."
She turned out to be right. About 50% of the papers given out across several hundred examinees that day where copies of the earlier one. We had to stop the test entirely and re-start it with the correct papers. Problem was, half of the people got the correct paper first time. A total mess. Perhaps it's not surprising that UMDS is in such a deep mess when, as a business school, it can't organize such things despite thousands of man-hours of checking and re-checking by bored, under empowered admin and faculty, none of whom want or dare to take initiative.
Even yesterday brought something new, though. The second paper was English – or at least the strange, English-like language examined at these times. Before the exam, our team leader, himself an English teacher, was joking about some of the examinees wearing sweat shirts with English on them and how they could be used to cheat. At least I thought he was joking. Once we got to the room he made two people turn their sweat shirts inside-out before the paper started! Partly to see just how serious he was prepared to be, I pointed out that at least five others had some form of English on their clothing. One had "Freaky Massive" on his shirt, for example. Sure enough, all five had to either remove their sweaters of reverse them before the exam started.
Such is Japan. I'm sure it'll get even more weird once I get to Tokyo!
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