I've been teaching in Japan for three years now, and by and large my classes are a pleasure. In addition to my classes, students have other lessons with Japanese teachers who teach them the grammar and mechanics of the English language. Those teachers are the unlucky ones, teaching the kids all the necessary boring stuff. I'm the lucky one — my classes are the ones where the kids actually get ..

I remember when Joe and I were finally notified of the names of our schools before we moved to Japan. I excitedly typed my school's name into Google and found its website. Of course the site was all in Japanese, so I hit the Google translation button to get an idea of what it said. The translation function does a supremely lousy job of translating things, but you can still get a sense of what is..

Residents of Hong Kong's goldfish marketOut of all the sightseeing we did in Hong Kong, my favorite places were decidedly low key, and free: the street markets scattered throughout the city. In our time there we made it to a goldfish market, flower market, songbird market, jade market and some random fish, fruit or clothing markets we passed along the way.The goldfish market consisted of a long ..