Student Scribbles 5: From the Minds of Boys

My students have been extra creative lately, so here are interesting samplings from their writing that I felt I simply must share. This time I haven’t cleaned up the grammar or spelling, because they’re pretty easy to understand. Maybe that’s a sign that their English skills are improving?

The first passage comes from a test in which they had to write about whether or not they enjoy learning English, and why:

I can enjoy learning English. First, I like foreign culture. My favorite country is Canada. Canada is good for nature and snow. Maple sirop is delicious. Second, I like rock music. My favorite artist is SUM41. They are ponk band. Third, I like Horiwood movies. For example, IRONMAN. It is very cool! Thank you for you reading!!

I think my favorite part is the line “Canada is good for nature and snow”. I mean, who can argue with that? Canada IS good for nature and snow! Also, maple sirop is delicious.

The second is a short story from a different assignment, written by a boy who’s obviously pretty into The Ring:

There was a boy. He loved to see YouTube. One night, he found a movie whose title was “A Cursed Movie.” He played it just for fun.
At first, a park appeared on a screen. He thought, “I feel I know the park.” Then his school-commuting road was projected in it. He got afraid of the movie and tried to turn off his PC, but he couldn’t.
Little by little, the place closer to his house appeared, and at last his house was projected. Then there was a scream of his mother. Suddenly, there was a knock at his room.

That’s actually a pretty chilling story for a hundred words! I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do better than that.

The next passage was also obviously written by a boy. You’ll see why when you read it. The assignment was to write about where they would go if they had a magical door that could go anywhere they wanted:

I think I will go to my friend’s house if I can go anywhere with the door. When I open the door, I will see him having a bowel movement. He will say, “Are you and idiot? Go anywhere!” He will be irritated at me because I never go anywhere and I take his pictures. I will said “Clean my car in volunteer!!” I think he will shout himself hoarse.

Yeah, like I said, that obviously came from a high school boy’s mind. Who but a teenage boy would fantasize about blackmailing his friend with pictures of defecation? Ah, youth.

Thank you for you reading!!

Teaching in Japan: Part 2

As any teacher in Japan will tell you, there’s far more to teaching than actually being in the classroom (actually, this is true for teachers outside of Japan as well). In fact, some of the greatest moments of culture shock can happen during those in-between times, since it’s really difficult to know how to navigate through life outside of the classroom at school. I’ve got a few observations to share, which I’ve divided into four basic categories, so read on and take them for what they’re worth!

1. Life in the Staff Room

For foreign teachers (especially those in the JET Programme) the staff room can easily become something akin to a second home. There are lots of busy times in each semester, but there are definitely slow times as well, and ALTs are expected to be at school for the full workday regardless of whether or not there’s any actual work to do. I have spent countless hours staving off boredom by studying Japanese or reading books at my desk. That’s a little strange to me, because generally in Canada it’s highly frowned upon for employees not to be busy during paid work hours.

Even more surprising is the fact that Japanese teachers can often be seen sleeping at their desks. In fact, at my school there is a designated tatami room just off of the main staff room wherein teachers can grab a quick nap if they’re tired. In Canada, sleeping at work would likely get someone fired.

Of course, that isn’t to say Japanese teachers don’t have anything to do, or that they’re lazy—if anything, the fact that so many need to sleep at work probably suggests that they’re overworked. I think it just shows a major cultural difference. One time one of my coworkers was talking about how people in America don’t work much overtime, and she said, “Japanese teachers have so much work to do!” The implication seemed to be that Americans are lazy or just unwilling to work. It seems to me that Americans have a lot of work to do as well, but they’re expected to do it all in an eight-hour period without taking naps. I think in America people are more insistent about being paid for their overtime, so employers crack the whip a little more in regard to how they spend that eight-hour period in an attempt to avoid paying the overtime. In Japan teachers are generally expected to work overtime without extra pay, so how they spend their ten or twelve hours at work is policed a little less.

Because teachers spend so much time at work, the staff room can also become a little more intimate than teachers’ rooms in Canada would. For example, in Canada I never saw people cutting their nails or shaving right in the staff room at any job. But again, with so much time spent at work, when else are people going to get these things done?

There’s definitely one area of staff room life that I love, and that’s the communal food sharing. Here in Japan whenever somebody travels he or she will usually bring back “omiyage”, or snacks from their travel destination, for coworkers to enjoy. So every once in a while I’ll find a box of sweets from Hiroshima or Tokyo on the counter in the little staff kitchen.

It’s great. You can sample all the tastes of Japan from that one staff kitchen, depending on how often your coworkers travel! And, of course, it makes you want to bring something back for them when you find time to get away.

Often the snacks in the staff room have nothing to do with travel, though (at least at my school). A lot of times teachers will just bring sweets or crackers in to share them with everyone—sometimes there are nashi (a fruit that’s something like a mix between an apple and a pear) or mikan (Japanese oranges). A few weeks ago the school groundskeeper brought in a bunch of eggplant for everyone to take home, so I was able to try making baba ganouj for the first time. It’s a great way for everyone to show appreciation for each other and just to brighten up each other’s day a bit.

2. Ceremonies, Assemblies, and School Festivals

Ceremonies, assemblies, and school festivals can, depending on your level of shyness and/or Japanese language skills, be the most fun or the most awkward parts of school life in Japan. They’re fun because they’re a break from classes and often a good chance to get to know the students and teachers at your school(s). They’re awkward because they’re pretty much entirely in Japanese and without a translator you can sometimes feel left in the dust.

In my opinion ceremonies are by far the most awkward and painful part of teaching in Japanese schools. That’s primarily because they consist of multiple speeches, all of which are in Japanese, and usually last about an hour. They’re also somewhat frequent, particularly in the spring. March and April can feel like you’re dying of ceremony overload, because there are graduation ceremonies, leaving ceremonies for the leaving teachers (more on that later), welcoming ceremonies for the new teachers, entrance ceremonies…it’s brutal.

Ceremonies generally are pretty solemn events, especially graduations. That takes some getting used to as a Canadian, because graduations where I come from are usually celebrations. There are a lot of people cheering and laughing and smiling and hugging. In Japan, though, it’s completely the opposite. In fact, last year as we were heading to the gym for the graduation ceremony one of the teachers said to me, “graduations are very serious here. So no smiling.” I still have no idea whether he was kidding or not. There’s a great video about ceremonies in Japanese schools that you can check out on YouTube if you want to prepare yourself for the ceremony onslaught.

Assemblies can be painful too, because they last a long time (about an hour or two) and are usually in Japanese, but foreign teachers often get to miss them. At my school the Japanese teachers don’t even bother telling the foreign teachers that an assembly is going to happen, because an hour-long lecture on not drinking and driving all in Japanese isn’t going to do us much good. Actually, a lot of the time there are a few teachers that skip out as well, so I get the feeling that assemblies are a lot more laid-back than the ceremonies.

Festivals, on the other hand, are kind of double-edged swords. They’re awkward because the students put weeks, sometimes months, into planning them, and English is usually not a top priority for them. For a foreign teacher, this can mean a lot of standing around, trying not to get in the way. Maybe I should explain what the festivals are, though. Basically, once a year every high school and junior high school has a “sports day”, something I dreaded before actually experiencing it. I thought it would be a full day of baseball and soccer games in the sweltering mid-September heat, but it’s actually more like a day of sports-inspired games. At my school there are a lot of obstacle races, tug-of-wars, and team jump rope competitions. It’s kind of fun to watch, but it also makes me thank my lucky stars that I was never a Japanese high school student because it’s a full school day of physical exertion. The students spend a lot of time sitting under tarps in the hot dirt of the sports field. (I’ve never seen a school here with grass in the sports fields. I think the students play too hard for it to be possible to maintain.)

After the sports festival there are two days of culture festivals. These are largely run by the students, and are an opportunity for them to showcase their club activities and skills to other students. At my school the drama club always puts on a play, the brass band club plays some songs, the English club introduces the ALTs and foreign exchange students, and there’s always some kind of funny dramatic performance put on by the students with teachers cast in ridiculous roles. Last year it was kind of difficult to endure, because my Japanese language skills were so poor that I never had any idea what was going on. This year it was a lot easier, and I enjoyed myself much more. Last year I also had to give a self-introduction in front of the whole school and talk about Canada during the English club’s presentation, but this year the students already know me and we had a new ALT joining the staff, so I was off the hook.

The second day of the culture festival is a bit freer and is, in my opinion, the most fun. The school is open to public, so everyone can come and see what’s going on at the local high schools (and maybe the junior high schools too, but I’m not sure). The students set up food stands and sell snow cones, French fries, okonomiyaki, yakisoba, or anything else they think will appeal to people. Some of the clubs will display their work—the tea ceremony club, for example, will have an open ceremony that anyone can attend, and the flower arranging club puts their work out for everyone to see. Last year for a hundred yen (about a dollar) I even got to make my own little flower arrangement:

The students also set up games in their classrooms, like ring tosses and trivia, and they give out candy or little prizes for winners. It’s a lot of fun to see the students being so creative. The school festival is often a time for them to let their hair down, and it’s a great opportunity for ALTs to get to know them.

3. Club Activities

I’ve talked about club activities in the past, so I don’t think I need to go into excruciating detail. Foreign teachers have a little more freedom over how much extra time they spend at school than the local teachers do, and whether or not an ALT will take part in any club activities at all depends on the school. Unfortunately for the sports-minded among us, ALTs aren’t really allowed to coach sports teams, but they can get involved in sports clubs if they want to. I think most teachers here would be glad to see the school’s ALT getting involved in the baseball club or the tennis club.

The only club a foreign teacher really has the chance to be in charge of is the English club. Personally, I think that’s enough. The English club at my school is from about 4:00-5:00 every Wednesday and Friday and the other ALT at my school and I pretty much have free reign. The English club is sort of our chance to get creative and leave our mark on the school, as well as build great relationships with the students. Last week we made jack-o-lanterns out of kabocha, or green Japanese pumpkins. We had to paint them to make them orange, but it was a lot of fun.

Getting involved in club activities is also a way to give back to your school, if you feel so inclined. They can give you the chance to take some pressure off of your busy coworkers, which is always appreciated, I think.

4. Weekend Work

Let’s face it, nobody wants to work on the weekend, but sometimes there’s no avoiding it. One of my least favorite aspects of teaching in Japan is the exhibition day. Often schools will have a half-day on the weekend during which junior high school or (I assume) elementary school students can come to a given school and learn a bit about it. They’re basically days for the staff to give a sales pitch about the school and what it has to offer. What I dislike about these days is that the ALT is usually trotted out in front the parents and the students to be the school’s token foreigner. Yes, ALTs in the JET Programme spend a lot of time being token foreigners, but this is the most blatant example of it in my opinion. Usually I do very little besides stand there being a Canadian so everyone can see there’s a real foreigner at the school and therefore the English education is fantastic.

Fortunately, though, the weekend exhibitions only happen about twice a year, they’re only about three hours long, and I can bank those hours toward a half-day off some other time. So there isn’t much to complain about when you really get down to it.

The exhibitions aren’t the only weekend work demanded of foreign teachers, though. Often the school festivals land on the weekend, so while teachers may get a substitute weekend the following week, they’re still working seven straight days, and that can wear on a person. I supposed I’m a little hypersensitive to this kind of thing because my mom does union work, but it bothers me a little that employers here in Japan can so easily dictate that employees give up their weekends. On the other hand, as I’ve mentioned countless times, what we ALTs have to put up with in terms of overtime work is absolutely nothing compared to what the Japanese teachers have to do, so there’s really no point in getting upset over it. In my opinion the best thing to do is to think of it like this: we’re coming here to teach, but also to experience Japanese life. This is an opportunity to see a certain aspect of Japanese culture and to get a taste of what workers in Japan experience. In that regard, it’s actually a good thing.

Well, that’s about it for my thoughts on teaching in Japanese schools. I’ve got a few thoughts to share on teaching outside of schools, though, as well as some thoughts on school uniforms, so if that interests you check back soon!

Teaching in Japan: Part 1

I realized recently that in the nine or so months I’ve been working on this blog I haven’t written much about the largest part of my life in Japan: teaching. Teaching is the reason I came to Japan in the first place, and it’s hands-down the most time- and energy-consuming aspect of my experience in this country. It’s also (fortunately!) one of the most rewarding. So for anyone who is interested, here’s a brief description of my experiences teaching in a Japanese high school. Whether you’re planning on applying for the JET Programme, an eikaiwa, or are just interested in life in Japan, I hope you enjoy reading!

Classes at the school I work at start at 9:00, but my workday officially starts at 8:30. I tend to try to get to school at about 8:15, because punctuality is viewed a little differently in Japan than it is in Canada. This is a country where the trains are on time down to the exact minute, unlike the Canadian buses I’m used to that are usually ten or twenty minutes late. In fact, during my work orientation in Vancouver, one of the speakers told everyone that in Japan “to be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, and to be late is unacceptable”. I think my school is a little more lax than others about when everyone needs to be at work, but I think it’s good to show a little extra effort sometimes (and really, most of the teachers are already there when I arrive fifteen minutes early).

Every morning there’s a staff meeting (entirely in Japanese, of course) in which the teachers make announcements about anything the other teachers should know about. This can include things like upcoming sports games, school festivals, and tests. These meetings tend to highlight the fact that the staff at Japanese high schools work a lot more collectively than they tend to in Canada.

Here’s an example: there’s a huge bulletin board hanging outside of the staff room that’s full of anti-drug posters and that kind of thing. The other foreign teacher at my school and I thought it would be a good idea to have a small section of the bulletin board set apart for the ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers) so that we could make little posters and urge the students to interact with us a bit more outside of class. We asked the head of the English department about it, and he said that he’d look into it and get back to us. I assumed he would talk to the vice-principle about it and that would be that, but a few days later he stood up in the middle of the staff meeting and asked the entire teaching staff (principal and vice principle included) about our idea. No one objected, so we got the space for our poster.

I can’t help but think that in a Canadian high school the teacher would ask one person to get approval and nothing more would be required. But here in Japan things usually tend to be done by committee. The downside is that it can take a long time for decisions to be made, but the upside is that it seems a lot more democratic than the Canadian system.

Anyway, on to the actual teaching! Classrooms in Japan are set up a little differently than they are in Canada. The students tend to remain in their own classrooms for the most part, and the teachers move between the classrooms and the staff room as needed. This means that teachers have desks in the staff room, but not in any of the classrooms. At the front of each classroom there is a raised platform on which the teacher stands while he or she is teaching, a bit like a small stage. I think this is done to emphasize the teacher’s authority in the classroom.

Every day a different student is in charge of starting and ending each class. After the chime rings, the student in charge will yell “Kiotsuke, rei!”. This prompts all of the students to bow to the teacher, and the teacher bows to them in turn. Usually the teacher will say “onegai shimasu” (which roughly translates to “please”), and the students repeat the phrase back. At the end of the class, the same student will again yell “Kiotsuke, rei!” and again everyone bows to each other, this time saying “arigatou gozaimashita” (or “thank you”). I think the bowing is a nice way for the teachers and students to show respect for one another in the classroom.

Normally there is one teacher per class, but English education in Japan is changing quite a bit. Team teaching is a pretty important component of English classes, particularly those with ALTs like myself. I’ve heard that some other ALTs have lessons alone sometimes—sometimes they even do all of the lesson planning—but almost every English class at my school has at least two teachers. Often there will be two Japanese teachers and two ALTs, which make a total of four teachers per class. It can get a little confusing at times, but I think it’s a great resource for the students.

Generally speaking, I would say that the Japanese school system is a little old-fashioned. A lot of the English teaching in Japan is centered almost entirely on tests. In fact, there are five rounds of final exams per year in a Japanese high school! And I thought we had it bad with two rounds back in Canada! The school year starts in April here, and the first round of exams tends to be in May. The second round of exams is in July, just before the month-long summer break. The second semester starts in September, with the third round of exams in mid-October, and the fourth round of exams is in December, followed by the winter break. I believe the last round of exams is at the end of the school year, in late January or February. It’s constant testing, and that doesn’t include things like the GTEC, the TOEC, and the STEP tests, which are optional English tests. And then, of course, there are the dreaded university entrance exams.

What this means for a foreign teacher in a Japanese school is that much of his or her time is spent helping students prepare for tests, administering tests, and of course grading tests. I’ve given countless speaking tests to students, although from what I understand the speaking and listening portions of English language education in Japan are fairly new. Traditionally English education has been centered on grammar and many English classes in Japan are still taught entirely in Japanese. In fact, many elementary and junior high school English teachers can hardly speak a word of English. It’s a little bewildering, especially considering the fact that in order to become an English teacher, aspiring teachers are required to take an English language proficiency test.

I personally believe that the low level of English ability among many teachers stems from the fact that teachers in Japan are required to work such long hours and are given very few opportunities to maintain their language skills. But I won’t get into that today since I’ve already discussed this at length in a previous post.

ALTs typically aren’t worked as hard as Japanese teachers are, though. Situations differ according to schools and prefectures, but overtime rarely exceeds a couple of hours per week. Additionally, overtime work can usually be banked and used toward extra days off.

The school I work at is a fairly high-level academic school with a strict curriculum, so I don’t have much say in lesson planning, but it also pushes the envelope a little more than a lot of other schools in my area. For example, students at my school give a lot of speeches, do a lot of debating, and put on a lot of skits in class. So when I’m not administering and grading tests, I’m usually helping students write creative skits or checking grammar in speeches.

When classes are over, the school day always ends with some good, old-fashioned cleaning. At my school we only get ten minutes for cleaning time, which is really pushing it since the cleaning time technically begins as soon as the last chime sounds. That means by the time students get to their cleaning area there’s only about five minutes to go, which really isn’t enough time for a bathroom or classroom to be cleaned properly. And of course, the students are teenagers who don’t care much one way or another about the school’s cleanliness, so mostly I just watch them push the dirt around. A friend of mine who works in my town told me that at one of his schools (he has three) they get twenty-five minutes for cleaning. That sounds a lot more effective, but I’m sure it seriously cuts into class time.

After cleaning comes the last chime of the day, which sounds at 4:00. Normally that means my workday is over, unless I have English club or am helping a student with a speech contest or something. But that’s a post for another day!

I’m planning another post for the next couple of days that will cover some miscellaneous things like ceremonies, uniforms, and club activities, so if you’re interested in seeing more about school life make sure to check back!

Tokimeki Memorial: Girl’s Side

Lately I have been playing Tokimeki Memorial: Girl’s Side, a dating simulation game for the Nintendo DS. Normally I don’t play social or dating sims because I tend to find them either boring or creepy, respectively, but I’ve made an exception for the Tokimeki series. You see, we have a history, this game and I. When I was in the undergrad program in university I took a class called Japanese Gender and Popular Culture (or something along those lines) in which we examined books, films, comics, and even one video game that were written for and marketed toward female audiences in Japan. That game was a Tokimeki game.

The game that I played in class was actually Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side 2nd Season, and as the unwieldy title suggests it’s the second game in the series. None of these games have been translated into English, so we had to play it Japanese, a fact that more or less ensured my failure. At the time I was a fairly dedicated gamer and was neck-deep in my Final Fantasies and Xenosagas and Civilizations, so not being able to beat this stupid little dating sim severely wounded my ego as a gamer. Time passed and I got over it, but after moving to Japan and having studied Japanese for a bit, I remembered that game and realized that I might actually have a shot at it. I also thought it might be fun to share my experiences with it, so here they are.

The game begins with a young boy telling a story about a prince who lived long ago. Legend has it that the prince encountered a beautiful princess in the woods one day and the two fell in love, but her father was against their union.

The king gave the prince some tasks to complete to prove his love for the princess, and every day the princess prayed at a certain church for her true love’s return. Flash forward to today, as the player takes control of a teenage girl embarking on her first day of high school. She discovers the same church that exists in the legend—conveniently situated right behind her school—and literally runs into a young man there.

The young man’s name is Hazuki, and he proves to be the fellow that the game desperately wants the player to court. This is despite the fact that Hazuki is a selfish, moody whiner that no woman in her right mind would never even look twice at. More on that later.

The game takes place over the span of three years, following the faceless protagonist from her first day of high school to graduation. The singular focus of the game is to get a boyfriend, which is actually far more difficult than it may first appear. I’m sure it’s partly because of the language barrier, but the truth is that Tokimeki Memorial: Girl’s Side actually has quite a high level of difficulty. This can be attributed to the fact that beneath its girly frills it’s a fairly intense strategy game.

The game manual provides a roster of the eligible bachelors, and from there you can select which character you’re going to pursue. There is definitely a creepiness factor here, because two of your potential suitors are grown men (one is your homeroom teacher) and two of them look like they could be in junior high or elementary school. This is despite the fact that, as previously mentioned, the protagonist of the game is a first-year high school student, and the average age of first years in Japan is fifteen years old. Anyway, you need to start planning whom you’ll go for right from the beginning, because you need to start acting on your strategy right out the door.

There are a number of things you can do in order to woo your man. The first is choosing weekly activities: you have seven skill categories and each activity you choose will affect these categories. For example, if you choose to study all week, your abilities in school will improve, but your movement (or physical) skill might decrease.

There’s also a random element to how the skills are affected, which is part of the strategy. You need to continually be thinking ahead about the possible outcomes and risks of your actions. You also have a stress category, which fills up no matter what you choose to do. The only way to decrease your stress is sleep, which not only prevents you from improving skills that week, but also drains random skill points. It’s a delicate balancing act.

The best way to reduce stress is to sleep on the weekends, because that knocks a large chunk of points off your stress meter with almost no penalties. But that presents problems of its own, because the weekends are the only times when you can go shopping for clothes or set up dates.

Clothes shopping in Tokimeki Memorial: Girl’s Side is one of the most tooth-grinding experiences in the game. You have a very limited budget with which to shop, and the whole point of buying clothes is to please the man you’re attempting to date. The clothes are divided into certain categories like “sporty” or “pure” or “sexy”, and part of your strategy is creating outfits to wear on dates.

The problem is that there’s no way to know whether an item of clothing is “sporty” or “pure” just by looking at it—the game has its own ideas about what constitutes a certain style, and the player has to hope that his or her ideas line up with the game’s (and they often didn’t, in my case). You can end up wasting a lot of money and weekends on shopping.

There are also a few mini-games that give you the chance to attract the interest of your potential beau. The sports day is a good example; there are a few activities to choose from, such as a three-legged race (you know the kind I mean: two people try to run with one of each of their legs tied to the other person’s). In this mini-game the boy you’re trying to attract will be your partner and will shout out “migi” (right) or “hidari” (left), and the player has to hit the right or left side of the touch screen with the stylus. If you can successfully win the race by tapping the screen in the correct place with the correct timing, the boy will be impressed and compliment you on your athleticism.

Another mini-game, and the bane of my existence, is the chocolate-making game. As previously mentioned on this site, Valentine’s Day in Japan is the day on which a young girl can express her feelings for a crush by giving him chocolate. In Tokimeki Memorial: Girl’s Side, the protagonist can likewise bribe a character in the game into loving her by mixing chocolate properly.

It was hard for me to figure out the instructions to this game and I never succeeded in making satisfactory chocolate. In fact, I’m not kidding when I say I made poison on most occasions. Anyway, if you can successfully make chocolate on Valentine’s Day and if the recipient likes you enough, he’ll reciprocate by giving you chocolate on White Day.

The boys themselves have different personalities, and this is the crux of the game’s strategy elements. As in any healthy relationship, the boy will immediately lose interest in the protagonist if her personality is not constantly being molded to mirror his own. So, if the player chooses to woo the sporty Kazuma, the best strategy is to join a sports club at school, have the protagonist work out constantly in her free time, and wear nothing but “sporty” style clothing.

I made the mistake of following the game’s implicit urging and going after Hazuki, the “mysterious” young man the protagonist encounters at the church. Hazuki basically treats the protagonist like dirt for the first few months of their relationship, and it’s up to the player to buy “pure”-style clothes and get good grades in order to win his affection. This is despite the fact that Hazuki himself often sleeps through exams and wears clothes that suggest his mother does his shopping for him.

The guy is a bit of a hypocrite, is what I’m saying. His interests include cooking, studying, and walking around the local botanical garden, and his personality is on par with a sponge. Most of his time is spent brooding and whining about the things he doesn’t like. I get the feeling he’s meant to be a mysterious, tortured soul, but he comes across to me like just another spoiled high school brat. Then again, I’m about ten years older than this game’s target audience, so the real problem here could be me.

My final verdict?

Well, as a game Tokimeki Memorial: Girl’s Side might appeal to its target audience—junior high school and high school girls—but there isn’t much there for anyone outside that specific range. I suppose it was a decent way for me to practice reading and listening to the language, but the gameplay is fairly repetitive and the characters are largely bland and stereotypical. And worst of all, despite all of my efforts, I wasn’t able to get Hazuki to date me. I was unable to avenge my gamer’s ego.

But I guess there’s always the sequel…