Bizarre Teaching Moment #4: Pieces of Eight!

~Living in Japan is not, unfortunately, all fun and games. This teaching gig is hard work! Without a doubt, my most difficult class consists of six five-year old "spider monkeys" for 45 minutes every Saturday. They mostly ignore me in favor of punching each other and find it amusing to run out of the room and rampage around the school as soon as my back is turned. For any of you who believe that Asian children are somehow better behaved than American kids (I'm looking at you, Grandpa!), allow me to dispel this myth for you. Take it from me, they lack discipline!

They've been a bit better lately because I've been super-strict, but one student remains a particularly difficult case outside of the class. This is because he's always hanging around the school; his sister (another one of my students) takes several classes a week, and he always tags along and wanders up and down the hallway. He's seemingly quite fond of me and always barges into my room, babbling in Japanese.

However, I discovered an amusing fact today: he will automatically mimic anything I say. Whenever I tell him to be quiet, he says "Be quiet!" to me, and when I say "Stop it!" he repeats it right back to me. Finally, exasperated with this behavior, I looked at him and said, "Pieces of Eight!"

Naturally, he squawked it right back to me (several times, in fact). I've dubbed him "Parrot", which will be his nickname from now on; by the way, the Japanese word for parrot is 'oumu' (katakana = オウム ). During the next class, I'll 'teach' him to say, "Polly Wanna Cracker?" and "Bond! Bond!"

Ah, the joy of corrupting, I mean teaching, young minds! ~Oyasumi!

Exploring Nagaoka

~Greetings fellow mortals! Today's dispatch from Japan is about my place of residence, the city of Nagaoka. As I've said before, Nagaoka is not a beautiful city, but it is in a beautiful location, with a wide river in the middle and large mountain ranges in the distance. Having nothing better to do on Monday, I rode my bicycle to the south of Nagaoka, where I'd never been before. I didn't find much (unless you count 20+ car dealerships as "much"), but I did take some pictures for you:

^ There are many canals in Nagaoka that go under roads and even entire buildings. This canal was out in the rural area of Nagaoka, beneath a bridge that gave me some relief from the hot, humid weather. I felt an urge to just jump into the canal and swim around, but that will have to wait for another day.

^ Rice fields in southern Nagaoka, with a single large mountain rising out of the horizon. From what my students tell me, people in Japan eat rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so rice fields like this are everywhere. Niigata is known for producing the finest rice in Japan; I'd review it myself, but I can't read the packaging at the supermarket, so I honestly don't know if the rice that I eat is real Niigata rice. I'll work on it and get back to you with a full report on Niigata rice.

Here are some pictures from all around Nagaoka:

^ "Mountains in the Mist". Japan has entered its rainy season and we've been getting poured on every day for the past week or so, hence the cloudy weather. As I'm fond of saying, "Mata ame desu!" (pr: 'ma-ta ah-may des' = It's raining again!). The large concrete structure in the lower part of the picture is part of the Joetsu Shinkanesen line.
^ The Chōsei Bridge, one of several bridges that crosses the Shinano River that divides Nagaoka. This bridge was constructed in 1938 but is still in good shape, thanks to frequent maintenance. The shape of the bridge is supposed to look like a dragon's spiky back. This bridge is famous because the massive annual fireworks display is held above it...and because it was one of the few structures to survive the air raid during World War II.

^ This palace is where the Baron of Nagaoka lives. Ok, it's actually just a wedding chapel, but picturesque nonetheless.

^ The Nagaoka Red Cross Hospital. One of the words I learned in my Japanese class last Sunday was "Byōin" (byo-in, 病 院 ), which is Japanese for hospital. A very useful word to know, in my opinion, especially if you can also ask, "Byōin wa doko desu ka?" (where is the hospital?). One interesting feature of the hospital is that the red cross at the top lights up at night and it visible from most of the city (much like the N-1 building, which is almost as large as the hospital).

^ A colorful sunset over the mountains west of Nagaoka. I'm intrigued by the tower on top of the mountain in the center of the picture, which I see on every clear morning from my apartment building. I've asked around a bit, and no one knows what the building is. Or maybe they do know, and they're just not saying...

Here's some Japanglish I found while shopping a few weeks ago:

^ This was on the side of a plastic bag sold for 105 yen. I'll leave you to form your own opinion/conclusion/confusion.

That's it for today. Please comment if you have something to say! ~Oyasumi!

Skill: Read Language, Japanese (Modern) +2

~In my ongoing quest to learn Japanese, I have learned katakana, the second of the three types of Japanese writing. The sounds expressed by each katakana symbol are exactly the same as those of the corresponding hiragana symbols that I had already learned:

--Just as with hiragana, by adding a ten-ten mark (") or a small circle in the upper-right of the symbol, it changes into a similar-but-different sound:














^ A bit daunting, isn't it? Even though katakana is much more useful for me, I'm glad that I learned hiragana before trying to tackle this, since the sounds and rules are the same.

While hiragana is used to express native Japanese words, katakana is used to express foreign words. A word spelled out in katakana will almost always translate into a more-or-less readable English word. Here are some examples:
^ "Nature Made" vitamins produced by Pharmavite LLC. This is an easy example, because the words "Multiple Vitamin" are written in both katakana and English romanji (Roman alphabet letters). This dual use of languages reminds me of the Rosetta Stone, which had the same message in three different writing systems: hieroglyphics, demotic, and Ancient Greek. Modern linguists couldn't read the first two, but could read the Greek, and thus Jean-Francois Champollion was able to decipher the other two.

The katakana symbols ムルチビタミン on the vitamin bottle phonetically translate to "mu-ru-chi-bi-ta-mi-n"; I've found that the key to translating katakana is to say it fast! Note that there is no break between the first word and the second word...which makes it difficult for a non-native reader like me to tell where one word starts and the next begins. Another thing you may have noticed is that there is no 'v' sound (actually there is, ヴ, but it is used very rarely), so the 'bi' sound is used instead.

Spelled in katakana, my name, David, is デイ ビツド, which is de-i-bi-DO. The small ツ, which is the sound 'tsu', is not pronounced; when it's small like that, it means to emphasize the next sound (hence my capitalization of 'DO'). If you go to this website, you can find out what your name looks like in katakana. Unless, y'know, you're Japanese and already know the kanji symbols for your name (curse you!).

^ The local cocoa crispies, courtesy of Kellogg's. The yellow katakana (and hiragana) reads 'koko-kun' (the name of the monkey mascot; '-kun' is a suffix used for boys the way '-san' is used for adults). The brown katakana reads (chi-yo = cho)-ko-ku-ri-su-pi-i ('choco crispies'). Interestingly, I found out that Coco the monkey was the mascot for Cocoa Crispies from 1980-2001, when he was replaced by Snap, Crackle, and Pop. However, Coco remains the mascot in the United Kingdom and in Japan. One day, he will have his revenge on Snap, Crackle, and Pop, and return to reign over Cocoa Crispies for ALL ETERNITY!!!

^ The timer to my microwave oven. As you might expect, the katakana タイマー spells out ta-i-ma-a, or 'timer'. The ー symbol means that you draw out the vowel sound of the previous symbol.

^ The control panel of my microwave, which contains a mix of all three Japanese writing systems. The yellow button with the bread next to it reads トースト ('to-o-su-to' = toast). But the pink panel under that reads おべんとう ('o-be-n-to-u' =o-bento), which is your Word of the Post. 'Bento' is the Japanese word for a boxed lunch, which you can buy at any convenience store or supermarket. The 'o' is a sign of courtesy/respect used in front of certain words (such as o-mizu, which is drinkable water). Below bento, we have ミルク ('mi-ru-ku' = milk).

^ This large sign is located along Nagaoka's main street. As you may recall, Asahi is Japan's largest beer company. The katakana ビアスペース reads 'bi-a-su-pe-e-su', which translates to 'beer space'. So the sign reads, in full, 'Asahi Beer Space 21'. Presumably a bar of some kind, or perhaps a beer market. I'll check it out some time and report back to you, my ever-inquisitive readers. ~Oyasumi!