It got cold. Like, actually cold. Like, I don't want to ride my bike in 40 degree weather with a strong headwind. ::sigh:: Oh well. At least we haven't had a killing frost yet. Still, even though it's Wednesday and I have a four hour break, there's no way I'm biking back home for Skype today. My ears might fall off or something.
So, something that's been bothering me since the beginning of the year was these little boxes at the front of all our classrooms. They are about the size of a breadbox, light brown, and plug into the wall. I didn't know what they were for until yesterday. Turns out they clean the dust off erasers. You flip a switch and it starts a vaccuum thingy on the top, and you run the blackboard eraser over it and it cleans it for you. It was a lot of fun to play with.
Still, I'm concerned that no one gets the class job of having to go outside at the end of the day and clap the erasers together. I have so many memories of choking on dust in the third grade, or writing my name in chalk dust on the side of the school building.
It's interesting, I think, how we find little devices to do small tasks for us. Like this chalk dust vacuum; do we really need that? How much money and time do we spend producing these things, when we could just as easily whack two erasers together, get some exercise and fresh (though chalky) air, and save all that metal and plastic. Same thing with Oto-Hime. I love the things, but I wonder how bad our carbon emissions are because we're producing them. And I wonder what experiences like eraser-cleaning I'm missing because I let machines do it for me.
Just something to think about.
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3 comments:
What is Oto-Hime?
Also... You did say that you had fun playing with the chalk eraser thingy. I'm sure that kids all over Japan have played with it at some point!
Good point! I guess you can find fun in anything.
For example, I have two brand new sheets of bubble wrap that my mommy used to pack a box for me. They're sitting on my desk and just waiting for me to have a bad mood so I can go at them! I do love bubble wrap.
Oto-Hime is this device in all the public restrooms here. You wave your hand in front of this automatoc sensor placed near the toilet paper, and it makes the sound of flushing water. This covers up any unpleasant noises that may occur. Apparently some years ago Japanese women got in the habit of flushing the toilets constantly while they used them to make the white noise, and it was wasting so much water that they invented the Oto-Hime ("Sound Princess," get it?) to save water.
I don't even want to think about the sounds made by the Oto-Adolescent Boy!
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