Memo to Self: Don't Miss the Train or the Plane

~I hope everyone enjoyed Halloween in their own way. Today concludes the Japanglish contest (from this notebook), so I'd like to post all the entries received:

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Starlady said...
This notebook is perfect for writing your thoughts and ideas, how ever senseless they may be.

That's my interpretation. That is wild Japanglish!

Adrian D. said...

Crotchet: [from the English "“crotch"” meaning '‘of the region between the legs'’ and the Latin "“et"”, meaning '‘to be'’ (or some version of the verb, my Latin is a bit rusty)] meaning "‘to be a crotch"’; the japanglish version of '‘asshole'.

"It is our hope that this iteme will become your good friend and help to make your life enjoy-able all the time."

The notebook maker is being sarcastic. The notebook'’s name implies it's evil motives which means this phrase is meant to trick the unsuspecting user to believe that the notebook will not open up a black hole or eat the hand of the user (unless you speak the correct Latin phrase, something like '“Clatu, Verata, Nict*cough*cough*')

"The benefit of this notebook is up to the sense that comes from your passion"

An allusion to the name of the notebook. I'’m assuming that the notebook is based on the AWSEMO robot'’s "‘pleasure" circuitry. But just don'’t expect the notebook to call you in the morning...

AJ!!!!!!!! said...

Geez, that last one, I can not beat, but I will be the most bitter:

Crotchet-R:
Perhaps a reference to crocheting (CROW SHAY ING)- that down-homey mother, sitting in her rocking chair and crocheting you a sweater or scarf or battlemech-warmer or whatever. (Post-war culture sometimes uses an awful lot of borrowed imagery from "western" culture, however, we make tacky movies about all sorts of crap (the hollywood rendition of "Memoirs of a Geisha"? What?) and even making this distinctive break between "East" and "West" is dangerous, it leads to all sorts of bad crap, wiki it up: "orientalism". Even the validity of culture and race as a unified construct is vain and tenuous, so I conclusively say- Let them have their mechwarmer-making matronly figures!

"It is our hope that this iteme will become your good friend
and help to make your life enjoy-able all the time."-
One thing deeply enjoyable about the cultural equivalents of US and other developed countries (particularly non-western ones) is the variances of subtlety by which products try to sneak into the constructed notions of comfort such that they become a necessary piece of your life (because, without them, you are sad and lonely and doomed to a cold, unforgiving bosom of modernization). Is there a way that an inanimate object can completely by "your friend"? I've named my cell-phone because it is necessary, but I'd only cry for all the phone numbers I lost, and not the phone itself. However, is not another circumstantial mourning a valid emotional connection to an inanimate object? Another thing, I want to buy this thing because my life will BE ENJOY-ABLE ALL THE TIME. HOLY-CRAP.

"The benefit of this notebook is up to
the sense that comes from your passion"
Oh, they've covered this clever sham well! My own emotional investment in their firm's product is up the that *innate* "sense" springing forth from my own passion. This notebook is everything I will want it to be, but nothing more or less, unless my sense if comfortable with directing my passion all over the notebook. That... sounds really disgusting- replace "notebook" with whatever you want and then quote me in a newspaper and watch my career dissolve like the sincerity of this hollow mockery of socio-emotional constructs!

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All I can say is, WOW. Thanks for the *interesting* interpretations of the notebook. At this point it's really a toss-up between the entries submitted by Adrian and A.J. You are both T3h \/\/1|\|!!!

In other news, today was the first day of a vacation for me. Tomorrow I'm off to an exotic tropical island!

^ Yes, that's right, it's off to Okinawa for me! You may have heard of it before...the American military forces in Japan are heavily concentrated on the main island of the Okinawa chain. Here's a larger map of the area:

^ My primary interest in going here is for scuba diving. It's not exactly prime tourist season, but the latest weather report indicates a tempeFahrenheit78 degrees fahrenheit in the main city of Naha. Assuming no typhoons strike the area (a big IF), I should have a good time. Actually, I wouldn't mind being caught in a typhoon. As long as it's not green. And not on fire.

The travel agent I worked with was kind enough to send me a guidebook for Okinawa, which has an entire section on dangerous/poisonous sea life to avoid. Well gee, that makes me feel a whole lot better about diving. I'll try to get ahold of an explosive-tipped harpoon gun and a Valyrian steel dive knife, but my budget is limited.

Reminder: I won't be updating this blog for a few days but with a little luck I'll have some great pictures and stories to share with you when I get back. Sorry if this vacation talk has made any of you shoe-selling, pizza-serving, cubicle-dwelling drones jealous. Remember, the best time to take a vacation is always NOW! ~Oyasumi.

[--By the way: I noticed that this blog was taking half of forever to load, so I reduced the number of visible entries that you see on the screen each time you visit. This makes the page load up *much* faster, but if you don't visit for more than a week or two, check the archive list on the right.]

Happy Halloween

~Over here in Japan, they don't celebrate Halloween. Sad, isn't it? In my everlasting quest to bring American culture and language to the masses, I ran a number of Halloween-themed lessons over the past week. For younger students, I did a "Trick or Treat" conversation, and for older ones I did questions such as "What are you?"/"I'm a ghost!". For my more advanced students, I did Halloween Mad-Libs, with limited success.

My favorite Halloween lesson was done for one class of younger students: I burned a CD with the "Ghostbusters" theme song, and brought a small flashlight into class. After teaching the students to say "Ghost-BUSTERS!" while the song was playing, I had one student be the "ghost" and gave the other the flashlight. Whenever the word "ghostbusters!" played on the music, the ghostbuster had to target the other student's paper ghost while the lights were turned out. It was fun. I swear.

None of my students get to wear costumes or go trick-or-treating. Even the older ones are uninterested in going to Halloween parties or anything like that...they're too busy studying for exams! It's crazy, I tell you. Anyway, here's a little Halloween humor to brighten your day...and give you some valuable advice:


^ Really puts the "Trick" in "Trick or Treat", doesn't it? Give that guy candy, or else!

Reminder: today is the deadline for the Japanglish contest! Submit your entry before it's too late! ~Oyasumi.

Bizarre Teaching Moment #6: Duck and Cover

~For my younger students, a large number of lessons are devoted to phonics. Many sounds in the English language simply don't appear in Japanese, or are blended together into one sound. To make the lessons fun, many of the books contain strange and/or amusing phonics words and pictures:

However, this can sometimes backfire, as I discovered a few days ago. In a class of five grade-schoolers, I attempted to teach the difference between the short and long sounds for the letter U ("cut" vs. "cute", for example). One of the words for the short U sound was "duck". However, when I showed the picture to the students, they all immediately burst out with, "AFLAC!", before I could say anything.

^Try as I did, I couldn't get them to say the word "duck" (fortunately, they did understand the difference between the short and long sounds.). Why, you might ask, did they say the name of an American insurance company? Perhaps it has something to do with this:

^ Yes, the Aflac empire has made it all the way across the Pacific! Their building in Nagaoka is only a few minutes away from the school where I work. There are also occasional Aflac commercials on TV, which is undoubtedly where the children picked up the slogan. Here's an example:

^ AF-LAC!

~Oyasumi!