It’s a meme that’s going around. No-one tagged me (yet, boo-hoo), but this blog post by Eric, complete with neat Gliffy diagram) sparked my imagination. Where I work, we’re not allowed to put things on the walls or leave non-standard (i.e. personalized) furniture in any classroom. The classrooms don’t belong to any teacher, or any class; they are supposed to be “neutral” so that anyone can use them. My partner-in-crime once put some posters up in a classroom, but someone complained and he had to take them down (he was miffed, to say the least; perhaps they both were).

I think it’s a cultural thing. The posters were nice: colourful and bright. But! They are the signs of someone else’s presence in the room, and that disturbs some teachers. Also, the posters were in English, and that classroom is used by a lot of different teachers teaching a lot of different subjects, of which English is only one.

I think Japanese would feel that posters on the wall were SOMEONE ELSE’S POSTERS and therefore an infringement on their personal space and autonomy, whereas I suspect many Westerners wouldn’t mind, and might actually welcome the introduction of colour to the bland, off-white blank walls.

Classes finished several weeks ago here in Japan (none now until April, but it’s not like we’re on vacation on anything, ya know, there’s tons to do like like like grades ‘n’ stuff really there is). I’ll try and put up some photos of my workspace. (I see WriteToMyBlog just added Flickr functionality but once again WriteToMyBlog refuses to publish my blog entries. Maybe it’s personal: “you seriously want me to publish this? Are you SURE??? I don’t think so. Forget it, pal. The world’s better off without it. Trust me.”

So it’s back to the ol’ reliable Performancing.