I grew up in Vancouver and obtained my BEd at UBC. I am currently teaching in Tokyo, Japan. I decided to take a look at the work bag I bring to school every day. 

 

One interesting aspect that immediately stood out to me was that the texts are in multiple languages. Starting from the top left hand side of the table, I have hand lotion that I bought in Japan but was made in Korea so there are Korean, Japanese, and English characters printed on it. Another detail I noticed was that the English words “GRAPE HAND CREAM” are in big bold letters so that it is more eye-catching than the Korean and Japanese characters. This speaks to the lingua franca status of English and how it is the easiest language to use to communicate to international consumers.

 

To the right of my hand lotion is the ID card that I use in order to tap in and out of work each day. The information on my ID card is written in both English and Japanese, since my school is a Japanese school that teaches the IB curriculum. The lanyard has the Latin words “VERITAS, BONUM, PULCHRITUDO, SANCTITAS, SANITAS, COPIA” on it, which is our school moto meaning “Truth, Kindness, Beauty, Sacredness, Health, Wealth”. I was able to look this up not with a physical dictionary, but with a translation app on my phone.

 

Below the ID card, you can see my lip balm and Vaseline, both bought in Japan but both are labeled in English. Next, you will see my first aid materials: a UBC whistle, some bandaids and alcohol wipes, and a portable mouthpiece I can use for CPR. I used to be a lifeguard so I always carry these things just in case. Thankfully, I’ve only had to use a few bandaids to help my students and those around me. The right side of the table also has my wet wipes and hand sanitizer, essential items that I carry with me now wherever I go due to lessons learned during the pandemic.

 

When I discovered the long-forgotten USB stick in my bag, I couldn’t help but chuckle. While I still sometimes use the pen I have in the bag, the USB stick has been left in the deepest corner of the bag for years. With the emergence of cloud drives, being able to access files on the go is no longer an issue and the USB stick has been pretty much rendered useless. Gone are the days when I had at least two USB sticks in my bag in case one of them didn’t work and I couldn’t access my files for a presentation or for sharing. This points to the rapid change in text technologies and how we are not just innovative with the way we create texts, we are also advancing and making it easier to share and access texts. 

 

Writing tools such as pens are also becoming less commonly used. Whenever I go somewhere that requires me to write down my information, they will either provide me with the pen or they will ask me to fill out the information on an iPad. There are also apps and websites now where you can fill out the information beforehand in order to save time at the store. I remember that I used to carry around a pencil case in my work bag over 5 years ago, with multiple pens and pencils, erasers and whiteouts, and even a glue stick and a pair of scissors. I have since stopped carrying all of this around because of the lack of need to write down anything these days. As a teacher, of course I use pens for grading. But outside of grading, I rarely need to write anything down on paper. Writing has evolved to typing online.

 

Of course, the biggest absence in this picture is my phone, which I had to use to take this picture. However, I would say my phone would be the most important item in my bag. Oftentimes, I leave the house with just my phone and it is enough to cope with most of my basic tasks. Japan has gotten rid of physical transportation cards so that we just need to tap our phones at the ticket gates in order to ride the trains/buses. You can also recharge the money on your transportation app easily through your bank online. The balance on your transportation app can also be used to buy things at most stores and vending machines. We also have several payment apps such as Apple Pay, LINE Pay, and PayPay that are accepted in most places in Japan so that you can shop and buy things without carrying any cash. Rather than physical bills and coins, money has become a text technology where the value is displayed on a screen.

 

I imagine in a few years, I might not even have a wallet in my bag anymore as more and more conveniences are created. I also think it’s interesting that years ago I carried around a lot of writing tools, but now everything is done on the phone. It’s scary to think how much we depend on our phones. While it provides a lot of opportunities to create text and communicate with others through technology, being glued to our screens limits other ways of communicating and interacting. I would like to do this activity again in 5 years or so to see what I have taken out and added to my bag and how that has changed my interactions with others.