Playing by Japanese rules
Combining my infatuation with the International Herald Tribune with my love of Japan, the lovely Kumiko Makihara (lovely use of language that is) brightened up my day with a great article in today’s IHT, including ‘how a lady eats a rice cracker’
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/10/opinion/edkumiko.php
The relevance to the classroom is that the average adult Japanese English learner expects to know what to do, so anything that messes that certainty up (too many choices in which language to use, messing with your classroom routines, missing out or mixing up exercises in the book, changing the instructions of the activity from those that are written down, not explaining grammar or instructions properly) is likely to lead to the closest you will see to a classroom revolution in Japan- distressed faces.
So, after a year or two in Japan you get good at setting up and maintaining a regular classroom routine (clear signals for when the chat stops and the lesson really starts, homework always checked in the same part of the lesson etc.), great at unambiguous instructions and explanations and I would say you also benefit from forcing yourself to use bits of the book that you might have been tempted to leave out.
And when you’ve got that good at all those things that you can hardly stop doing them it is time to leave- after all, you are invited into the country and treated as a priveliged outsider to shake things up and introduce a bit of your country into Japan, not to learn to be Japanese!