Withholding tax.  In the U.S., that means how much tax is kept by the government from your salary until you file a tax return and try to get some of it back.  In Japan, it’s another story.

In Japan, there is an additional meaning:

“Certain remuneration/fees paid to a resident or domestic corporation, such as payments for manuscripts, lecture fees, fees for education/guidance in the arts, sports, or knowledge, remuneration paid to tax accountants, salespersons’ fees, performance fees, and hostess remuneration, is subject to withholding income tax…”

See the Withholding Tax Guide (English translation, 2008) and pay particular attention to p.28, item 4 under Fees Paid to Residents. If you charge a company with a fee for the above, or even for proofreading/editing/copyediting, the client can withhold a certain percentage. That can be 10% for proofreading fees, and you have to wait until you file Japanese taxes to see if you can get it back.  Kind of tough for freelancers if they don’t put such money on their taxes in the first place.

Using superstitions can be a fun way to practice conditionals (using “if”). Most of us know many of our own countries’ superstitions (breaking mirrors, walking under ladders, knocking wood), but how many Japanese superstitions have you learned?

I think it’s important to use students’ current knowledge in this circumstance. We can throw our own superstitions at them, but they may be too culturally deep to get across the grammar point we seek. I wouldn’t exclude them, but it might be more effective to rely on superstitions from the learners’ own countries. (I write that in plural for those who work in international schools, or who have students from China or Korea.)

With that in mind, here is a link to some Japanese superstitions (in English). Be sure to read all 4 pages. I like the one about hiding your thumbs when a funeral car passes. (more…)

Got a bit of news in my emailbox this morning. Another announcement from the Teacher Planet site. If you have a home business for teaching, you might want to give it a look.

The site is called SchoolNotes.com, and it covers quite a bit of stuff. The main selling point is that it helps you to create your own Web page so that you can communicate with parents and students.

It also has lots of other information. A quick glance today revealed the following tidbits.

• a book on how to teach children with Asperger’s Syndrome (more…)
  Tags: parents, SchoolNotes, web page

Another holiday is coming up in the USA. If you want to take advantage of it and create a lesson plan, Teacher Planet has stuff for you.

Things have been very busy for me at the beginning of this semester, so I apologize for not having posted anything for a while.  In this post, I’d like to take you to a link that seems good for listening practice.

From the Teacher Planet web site, I found this link for an English Listening Lounge. Students can choose what they want to listen to from a variety of filters.

• Domain. You can choose materials from narratives, international English, American English, or Academic English
• Level. There are 3.
• Topics. There are over 40 to choose from.
• Passage title. Once you have gone through the above selections, you can select something that looks interesting.

A photo pops up to show you who is talking, and it is accompanied by a brief statement about who that is. Listeners can then use the simple toolbar to operate the sound. Beneath that is a task window that provides questions, questions with the answers, or a transcript.

I haven’t kicked the tires too much on this site, but it looks promising. Let us  know what you think.