Rika’s 1st Draft

First Draft, Participant #1: English Language Learning History
Why and How I studied English and How it Affected my Sexuality
“The most comfortable thing in speaking in English was that I call myself “I”. In Japanese, there are so many words refer to yourself and it differs by their sex and age. For instance, women usually call [...]

Read Full Post »

Excerpt from new chapter 3: Is Okama Okay?

Is Okama Okay?
“it is through language that a person negotiates a sense of self within and across different sites at different points in time”[1]&
I met Minori where else but at karaoke. Having always loved to sing, especially around others who enjoy the hobby just as much as I do, Japan was a great place for [...]

Read Full Post »

Other Voices, Other Selves

Correspondence with a professor in Japan:

I am not sure how I can help you. I am straight, and I do not have any Japanese friends whom have confided that they are homosexual, so I do not have any insights into language and how one’s sexual identity is affected or expressed or restricted through language, [...]

Read Full Post »

Tomonicity

“Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are causally un-related. In order to be ’synchronistic’, the events must be related to one another temporally, and the chance that they would occur together by random chance must be very small.” – Wikipedia
“Meaning is where you put [...]

Read Full Post »

Boku no Tenjin

Two weeks ago I went to Gunma prefecture to present my manuscript about critical composition pedagogy and the power of “no”, the first time to present this manuscript to an audience. I like the term “audience” because to my surprise, about half of the presentation turned out to be a performance (but really, aren’t they [...]

Read Full Post »

June Reflections

I started writing a post yesterday entitled “Headspin 2.0″ because since arriving at the Tokyo airport, I feel like I’ve been all second glances and confusion…but it’s a happy yayakoshi yo!
I guess I have to start with Kamakura…You see, about 10 or so years ago I took an art therapy class at George Washington University [...]

Read Full Post »

“Only my American friends…”

A few weeks a go a Japanese female friend of mine (T) emailed me asking if she could bring a Japanese male acquaintance (K) by my office to meet me. I happily agreed and so I met with T and her friend. At first I was a bit puzzled about why he wanted to meet [...]

Read Full Post »

The Closet in the Classroom: A personal narrative

The Closet in the Classroom: A personal narrative
Indiana University of Pennsylvania instructor, Marlen Harrison, reflects on queer sexualities in the Japanese TESOL classroom. Through personal narrative, Harrison examines both the ramifications of coming out to students and the presence of queer sexualities in ESL/EFL instruction.
On my first day as a university teacher in Western [...]

Read Full Post »