December 16, 2017

We were sitting at a table in the middle of the street on a winter day. It was cold and we were bored. We just about had tabs on every person alive - except for teenagers. “No wonder people are interested in teenagers”, someone mused. “No one knows what they’re up to.”

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The Japanese textbook was structured as a self-contained course with vocabulary works repeating every so often as review. I was frustrated with how it assumed that students wouldn’t be able to devise their own ways to review and used up a ton of extra space with redundant material. I was later told that it was written by a non-linguist who had attempted to write a book about language.

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He expressed a strong desire to bury someone while digging a hole in the cliff wall. We begged for him to reconsider but he wouldn’t stop. He continued to dig until the hole was able to fit a small person. She screamed as he pushed her into the hole and slowly began to fill it up. He said that he was doing this for the adrenaline rush. “I know this is thrilling but it’s wrong”, I pleaded.