Lesson Planning

Just a quick note as to why elementary school teachers in this country should never be required to teach English. Here is the model conversation from my lesson plan for tomorrow:

T: What’s this?
C: It’s a spoon.
T: I wish spoon
(I boil the water. I make cookies)

And that’s one of the better ones. Only one piece of complete nonsense. It’s nothing compared to one school who always finishes their lesson plans with
‘This is a plan. Except this is sufficient. Please simplify a low grade. You may not be this plan.’

The second school puts effort into their lesson plans, they’re just not always the best. The first one reuses the same lesson plans they have used since the dawn of time, forgets my name and generally seems to not do much in the way of helping me teach (when I’m meant to be the assistant). This makes me feel less bad about planning my own, completely unrelated, lessons.

They also refer to me as an ART, because (obviously) I Assist in the Teaching of Ranguage.

 

So busy

This is amazing in its truthfulness. Japan does go crazy about fads. This one just sucks when you want to make banana lassi for 100 people (we can go into that next week when I’m not so busy)

But here it is, the latest craze sweeping Japan.

 

More 漢字 study

Every now and then while studying I come across something that’s so insanely stupid I will always remember it- like people I’ve talked to who said the only Japanese they could ever remember is the counter for chickens （わ） or Tamara, who despite being vegetarian knows the international sign language symbol for abattoir. These things just seem so useless that you always remember them, mainly because of their uselessness.

I do this with characters in Japanese (by characters I mean letters). You see I tend to isolate seperate parts of characters to remember them individually. So I can remember older sister (姉) is the character for woman/female (女）and the character for city （市） Therefore an older sister lives in the city. Same with 妹　which means younger sister…although I remember that mainly because I remember older sister.

But then 女 pops up in some really weird characters. For instance 安 means cheap, 安全　means safe (there was a great moment in Tokyo when I saw a taxi from a company called 安全タクシー dart across three lanes of traffic and turn left through a red light without indicating. Really living up to its name) 

furthermore 好 means to like, or be fond of (the two characters smooshed together are woman and child) and the one that I just realised today (because I mustn’t have been looking before, or I just saw the characters together for the first time) is 始- which means begin. Its made of 女 and 台、which means very big, and is also the counter for cars and large pieces of machinery.

It makes no sense I know. This country is messing with my mind.

 

I have a dirty mind…

but it is interesting how secondary meanings become primary meanings through specific use…

 

Showa Day

Yesterday was Showa Day. Now, celebrating a dead emperor’s birthday makes as much sense to me as the fact that boys’ day is a holiday and girls’ day isn’t (well, this is Japan, so that kind of makes sense) But it did mean kicking back on a Tuesday, and making up for the fact that I was working on ANZAC day. It also gave me the chance to appreciate the newly fine weather, plant some more herbs, and read. And in the evening, for reasons I am powerless to explain, Sam and I drove an hour to a wedding celebration for people we’d never met.

Two weird things happened: I remember wondering when the shaken (compulsory insurance, without which I can’t drive) runs out on my car- it turns out it was yesterday. So we had to get home by midnight. I also forgot my International Driver’s Permit. Which is a bit of a problem, as I have no idea where it is.

Secondly, the father of the groom was incredibly drunk, he would hit me to get my attention, and once he touched me inappropriately. He also tried to set me up with every women who walked past. Most of whom were married, one was his wife, one was one of my students.

One of my elementary school students.

One of my male elementary school students.

So I can now say I’ve been to a hippy wedding party in Japan and heard Beach Boys covers in Japanese. So many things I never thought I would be able to say.

Leaving for Tokyo on Friday, I’m going to try to blog from my iPod, using free wireless at McDonalds. Wish me luck.

 

漢字

I’ve got to work out a systematic way of remembering all the 漢字　(Chinese characters) in Japanese- besides making a story for every single one of them. But sometimes visual representations lend themselves well to 漢字 learning.

For instance 血- blood

Half of it (皿- which means ‘plate’ or ‘bowl’ an offshoot of today’s boredom is that I’ll also remember that, along with 灰皿, which means ‘ashtray’) looks kind of like a hat, and the top part looks like a knife stuck through the hat- into the head. The result of a knife to the head is, of course, blood!

If only this worked for 機会- chance, oppurtunity (the first character is also in 機械- machine, mechanism, which has the same pronunciation, while the second half is in 会社 – company, so I always think 機会 means factory. But no, factory is 工場- a place where things are made.)

My spring vacation trip starts tomorrow. It’ll be a pretty lazy one, I think. I might go to Nagasaki, but I’ll be back next week because I’m saving annual leave for later in the year. I’m hoping to go to Yodabashi Camera and buy a shiny new digital camera, mine’s about due for retirement from active duty after four years.

 

Comedy

Yesterday, I was walking home from work, carrying my guitar (I’d left it at work the day before because it was raining) and when I came to my neighbour’s house she was just arriving home with her two boys, five and three years old. They were pretty excited to see me, because kids that age tend to get excited about everything, and you younger one ran up to me and asked me to play a song. Holding my bag in one hand and sans plectrum I strummed a few chords for him, which got a small clap and a cry of 上手上手！ from his mother, but the young boy just looked up at me and said, in a small voice “欧米化”

Now, in order for you to understand why this was funny/interesting I need to explain a few things about Japanese TV comedy. First of all, it’s unbelievably formulaeic. The basic formula is two men talking really fast, one or two completely meaningless catchphrases (such as 欧米化ーwesternisation, or オパピーOcean Pacific Peace. In context the first one makes a little sense, and I think the point of the second one is that it’s nonsense) and then some slapstick. Apparently the duo that says 欧米化　(I’ve only seen the ad, because I’m never at home watching TV on a Saturday night) is made up of one guy who hits the other guy whenever he behaves in what’s seen as a western manner, and says 欧米化, or some variant. Now, light-hearted racism aside, the fact that everyone from three year old boys to sixty year old women find this funny is either a testament to how outrageously funny it is, or, more likely, a testament to the Japanese taste in comedy. Hard Gay is an interesting variant on the theme, but I think most Japanese (or people, for that matter) would find it rather embaressing quoting Hard Gay in public.

But it’s good for a cheap laugh, everytime I say either catch phrase, or flail my hands in the air and yell フゥゥゥ！ or that other catch phrase I don’t remember which I think translates as ‘it’s none of your business’ (the one that comes with actions) the kids laugh and we get to talk about how weird Japanese TV is.

I will never have the guts to go to a halloween party as Hard Gay though…I’ve always planned to but never will…*sigh*

And QQ- is 欧米化 as weird in Chinese as I think it is? 米 is 米国 – Beikoku, aka America, or ‘rice country’ I’m not entirely sure why.

 

Still introducing myself…

I still have four and a third schools to introduce myself to. I should do my last self introduction lesson on the 22nd of November. Until the new first school year starts in April, and a new bunch of first graders start (I look forward to it soooo much)

So, I keep asking my ‘where do I come from?’ question and the answers seem to be consistently weird. My favourites are:

アフガニスタン – Afghanistan

イラク – Iraq

and my number one, all time favourite, from three different boys in three different classes at one of my schools yesterday

外国

That’s right, I’m from ‘foreign’ – literally ‘outside country’. I had to high five him, because it’s not really wrong, although he was speaking Japanese, and it’s kind of wrong to just lump all foreigners together as 外国人, but everyone does anyway. I’ve gotten used to it, just like the children staring at me in Sunny Mart. It’s great. Really. Honestly.

 

Hallowe’en

On Friday

Ms. Hara: Sorry I have not e-mailed lesson plan yet. I will do that now, but next week please teach second years about hallowe’en in your country.

Louis: but I’ve never celebrated Hallowe’en before…

Ms. Hara: But please teach the students about Hallowe’en in Australia…

Louis: There is no Hallowe’en in Australia

Ms. Hara (opens book): We will be doing lesson four, but please prepare a short speech on Hallowe’en in Australia.

 …so on Thursday I’m teaching a lesson on Hallowe’en, despite my repeated objection…gosh, even Wikipedia can’t get me out of this one.

 

please please me

There’s a quote I like, from ‘Everything is Illuminated’ by Jonothan Safran Foer, it goes ‘It is said the Eskimoes have up to forty different words for Snow; The Jews have eighty words for Schmuck’

That quote is from memory because I don’t have a copy of the book here, and also I decided against editting out the racism. It’s a good book though, I thoroughly recommend it. Ignore the half of the massively contrasting reviews that tend to focus on the author and his ‘flaws’. The quote refers to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis which states that an individuals mode of thought is determined by the grammatical structures of their language, and not the other way around.

So, onto the actually topic of this post. Last night at Santa Monica’s, I (cheekily) asked a 31 year old (because everyone seems to be 31…I don’t get it) from Nagano how to say please in Japanese:

The list she came up with is:

下さい-kudasai

どうぞ-douzo

お願いします-onegai shimasu

And one more I’d never heard. In reply I said ‘What about 頂戴?’ Also, すみません　and しつれいします　both have please-like nuances. And each word has different levels of honorifics, depending on the suffixes and prefixes added. I thought 頂戴 translated into English as ‘give it’ but frequently I hear shopkeepers say ｢何何円を頂戴いたします」 which is a formal way of saying please give me X amount of yen, and when one of my Shimizu elementary first graders wanted my magnets, she held out her hand and simply repeated 頂戴. I didn’t know what she was saying. I had to look it up when I got back to the office.

She didn’t get any of my magnets though.

I actually wanted to ask how many words there are for please in Japanese, but I forgot the counter for words, despite learning it yesterday.

So there you are, up to seven different words for please. I’ll let you read into that what you will, because it is now lunchtime.