Interesting, But Does It Run On Mr. Coffee?

~A few hours ago, I stopped at a convenience store on the way home from work to pick up a few things. One of the things I purchased was a can of coffee to get me through the crazy workload I have tomorrow. Lo and behold, one of the brands came with a toy car!

Products in Japan often come with small toys to entice buyers. Bottles of wine and saké are good examples, often coming with charms to mark your glass. Packages of cookies also sometimes come with toys, typically small action figures from whatever animated television series is currently in vogue. However, I never expected to get a freebie from an item so inexpensive as a single can of coffee, which cost me about one dollar.

^ The toy is, as you can see, a small white car, akin to the Micro Machines that I used to collect years ago. Amusingly, it comes with a background image in the packaging that, oddly enough, depicts a coffee shop.

^ Ready to roll! Unfortunately, the windshield is a bit cracked. Oh well...as my dad would say, "The price was right." I'll use this car as a prize for winning the most points in one of my lessons.

If I come across any other free toys in unusual places, you, my loyal readers, will be the first to know. After myself, of course. ~Oyasumi!

'Tis the Season of Japanglish

~Today, I was delighted when one of my students presented me with a gift. It was a four-color pen of high quality, which I think was very thoughtful of him. However, as far as I was concerned, the gift wasn't just the pen--it was also the paper that it had been wrapped in! The Christmas-themed wrapping paper was covered with inspirational holiday messages from your friendly neighborhood Japanese Santa. Here are some examples:

Under the Christmas tree, there

are a lot of presents. It is a
present from Santa Claus pre-
sented only by a good child.

This is the most tame example from the wrapping paper, because the first sentence actually makes sense. Apparently, however, the one present under the tree that's for you can only be presented by a good child. In my experience, "a good child" is harder to find than you might think.

Santa Claus brings you the
present this year when
making it to a good child.

The one present that Saint Nick is bringing you this year is being constructed en-route from the body of a child? Disturbing.

Merry Christmas
I will hang big socks on the
bedside. A wonderful present
has surely reached your origin
in the morning.

From this message, we can deduce that the Japanese custom is to hang socks by the bedside rather than the fireplace on Christmas Eve. In the case of most Japanese people, they would be more likely to hang socks near their electric heater (a big no-no, as any fireman can tell you). The final sentence sounds suspiciously like something Google Translate would spit out. Or UPS.

Merry Christmas
What are yours wanting it?
Santa Claus is sure to prepare
a fit present for you.

This message rather ominous. "What are yours wanting it?", asks the paper, as if demanding an accounting for your unrelenting greed over the past year. How much have you consumed, you glutton? How many peoples' worth of resources ("yours") have you mindlessly devoured in a mad quest to quench your ever-increasing desires? Surely, Santa Claus will prepare a "fit" present for you. Although you may not like it very much...

There is a smile of a lot
of presents and a delicious
meal and families at happy
Christmas.

This message clearly refers to the infamous Christmas Cannibals and their leader, Chief Hannibal. They were best known for capturing wayward jungle explorers and roasting them like chestnuts over an open fire, after which the charred remains would be piled up around the Christmas tree and devoured. Indeed, many of the captured families were quite delicious, making for a happy cannibal holiday, with smiles all around.

Well, enough sarcasm. For those of you who are curious, here's an image of the wrapping paper in its entirety:

^ Gift-giving is highly ritualized in Japan, and wrapping is one of the most important aspects of the exchange. Traditionally, you're not supposed to open a gift immediately after receiving it unless asked to do so; this is to avoid embarrassment if the value of the gift you got differs greatly from the gift you gave. That's also the reason why gifts should always be wrapped (or at least bagged); simply exchanging unwrapped gifts is almost unthinkable.

Christmas has become popular in Japan as a gift-giving holiday, in part, I suspect, because the Japanese don't actually give each other many gifts outside of business meetings, and when they do, it's so formalized. Most of my students do not receive, give, or expect presents for their birthdays, nor do they buy them for their friends or family members. Children usually get gifts of money for New Year's and a few other holidays, but it's just not the same, is it? Christmas is catching on among many younger Japanese, because deep down, we all enjoy getting presents. ~Oyasumi!

The Symbolology of Sevens

~I learned something interesting today about written misunderstandings between English and Japanese. I'm not talking about the omnipresent Japanglish this time, but rather the similarities between some symbols used in written English and written Japanese. For example, the Japanese hiragana symbol for the sound "mi" looks somewhat like a cursive capital H.

In one of my classes, I was keeping a running total of points that students had accumulated over the class, to be rewarded with stickers at the end. After one activity ended, I adjusted the point totals under each student's name on the board, but one girl, upon seeing her number, was confused. It wasn't a scoring problem; instead, she pointed to what I had written and asked me, "New points?"

I was puzzled for a moment; as I had written, she had seven points. Then I realized what the misunderstanding was. The number I had written looked like this:

For comparison, here is the Japanese katakana symbol for the sound "nu":

Similar, aren't they? My student wasn't asking about "new" points, she was asking why I had written the sound nu instead of a number. I explained to the students that the horizontal slash mark in my number seven was to distinguish it from the number one, with which it can be confused:


^ To demonstrate, I drew the number one several different times on the board, changing it a bit each time to make it look more like a seven, and asking them each time whether what I had drawn was a one or a seven. When they couldn't tell, I added the slash. "Oooooh!" they said, finally getting it. Ah, knowledge. The joy of corrupting...I mean, the joy of educating young minds! ~Oyasumi.

It's Party Time, part 2

~ To kick off the second post about yesterday's Christmas party, here's me trying to imitate a giant Santa:

^ Right after I had this picture taken, one of the staff members "pulled the plug" on Santa. As the air deflated, Santa's form slowly collapsed and he sank to the floor. Listening very hard, I could *almost* hear him say, "I'm mellllllting..."

^ Getting back to the party, after the Brazilian breakdancers, we were entertained by several singers and musicians, including this saxophone player. She played a number of songs from television shows, some of which I recognized, some of which I didn't.

After a brief break, the schoolchildren returned to sing for us some more. The first new song was a rendition of the "Mickey Mouse" song, with some significant differences:


^ Aside from the obvious fact that they're singing mostly in Japanese, the differences in the refrain and the ending are interesting, aren't they? I speculate that the reason they don't spell out Mickey's name is because correctly saying the letters is difficult for Japanese children. At the end, they all say, "Mi-ki-mo-u-suuuuu!"; it's cute, but it's said in a way that a native English speaker wouldn't.

Speaking of Mickey Mouse...

^ She claimed to be dressed up as Mickey, but I disagreed, saying she was more like Minnie.

Next it was time for some bona-fide Christmas songs, starting with this one:


^ Yeah, I couldn't resist adding some sound effects at the appopriate intervals. Next week in class, I'll be teaching Christmas-themed lessons to my younger students, and you can bet I'll be teaching this song. Several times. To the point of insanity.

To round out the Christmas party, here's a poster I saw that conveys the real meaning of Christmas:

^ Christmas is, as we all know, the season of giving. Please consider making a charitable donation to a reliable aid organization. Because of the many conflicts going on in the world today, I recommend Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross (which needs all the help it can get). Barring that, drop a dollar or two in the jar where that Santa guy has been ringing his bell outside of Wal-Mart or Target or wherever. Remember, giving is its own reward. ~Oyasumi!

It's Party Time

~It's that time of the year when everything gets very difficult. If you're a student, you're facing a week or two of examinations. If you're at work, you're likely facing end-of-the-quarter projects. If you're lucky, you're holding out for a Christmas vacation. I fall into the latter category, as I am lucky to get some time off for New Year's...although not for Christmas!

Christmas is very popular in Japan. All religious connotations have been thoroughly expunged, resulting in a celebration of all the things we Americans know and love: consumerism, tacky decorations, endless Christmas music, the works. Don't get me wrong; those things all bring a warm glow to my heart, a little bit of home on the other side of the world. Actually, I'm quite pleased with how the Japanese celebrate, because they actually wait until December before breaking out all the Christmas stuff, rather than the post-Halloween blitz that has become standard in America.

Anyway, today I went to a Christmas party held at the Nagaoka Civics Center. It was a great time to hang out with some friends and meet new people. The staff set up an impressive lineup of events and activities, all for only 100 yen (less than a dollar).

^ The first event was making mochi, a kind of rice cake. To make the mochi, a hot mass of melted rice was dumped into this wooden barrel, and people took turns bashing it with these big wooden hammers. It's a great form of stress relief! Once the rice was thoroughly smashed to a soft mass by the hammers, it was broken up into several large pieces to make the cakes.

^A Japanese woman who could some speak English told me a little about this activity. The rice cakes are made in this traditional manner by rice farmers to give thanks to the gods. They are made in late December and eaten in early January, after the New Year's celebration.

^ Once the rice cakes were finished, it was time for the party to begin in earnest. The decorations were great and obviously someone had put a lot of time into them. There was also a paper tree on the wall where you could write your Christmas wish; my favorite was, "I want to speak Nihongo [Japanese] like Nihonjin [a Japanese person]." I wrote,

"For Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward Men
...and Women
...and Animals
...and, well, you get the idea."

^ There were traditional foods from all over the world at the party. There were Mexican tortillas, German pretzels, Japanese cakes, Brazilian sweets, Australian cookies, and of course...

^ American "Pringrles". Strangely, they tasted just like Pringles.

^ Some people were wearing Christmas costumes. No holiday party would be complete without Santa, of course. The guy on the right seems to have recycled his bat costume from Halloween.

^ In the sack, Santa had bags of candy to give to winners of various activities scheduled later. I didn't see anything holding his beard on, and later saw that he was using a glue stick to glue the beard to his face! He told me, "I was going to use staples, but they were all out." That's so Harrison Ford.

After the party-goers had eaten and socialized a bit, it was time for the next part of the program: a "mini-concert". To start us off, a pair of Nagaoka's Brazilian residents entertained us with some incredible breakdancing:

^ The guy in the helmet was amazing, wasn't he? Those Braziljin (Brazilians) sure can dance.

Next was a chorus of Japanese schoolchildren singing songs. The first song they sang for us was, for lack of a better title on my part, called "Let's Go!":

^ I have no clue what the song was about or what they were saying, except of course the refrain of "Let's Go!". Does anyone care to hazard a guess as to what the song was about?

Tomorrow, I'll post more pictures and videos from the Christmas party, so stay tuned to David Does Japan. ~Oyasumi!