Viva the Wiener!

So I have been back in Kumamoto for 10 or so days now and this is the first time I have felt quite bored! Still life is treating me pretty well here and teaching is a bit more interesting for me as I am working in a bigger school this month that has more variety of student levels and abilities.

There are various types of students in Japan. Most are well able but are shy and are too scared to make mistakes , they tend to freeze if they are not 100 percent sure they are right. Others seem to be more naturally confident and chatty and progress quicker. Others just dont really hava a clue poor things! In a lot of schools there is a general policy of only english in the lessons but how can a beginner have any concrete certainty of any words??? For example to explain words such as interesting in english is very difficult, especially when the learner has a limited foundation vocab bank in the first place. It can often be highly time consuming and inefficient to explain words in such a way. There are wonderful moments in classes sometimes when I know my students dont understand something (they might say maybe they understand which means no in Japanese) and we both end up staring vacantly into each others eyes for what seems an eternity and then the student will finally respond with something like "ehhhhhh....I like penguins."

Then there are the rare students who think they can speak english better than they actually can and are overly confident. They often try and assail you in the street and then try and spend half an hour telling you about a documentary they saw on wigwams. When I was in Kyoto I met this guy at the train station who had studied for a Phd in London and started lecturing me about the place in english at 100 decibels " THERE IS A BIG CLOCK IN LONDON CALLED BIG BEN. YES AND CATHEDRAL.. ST PAULS. I KNOW MANY MANY PLACES, MANY MANY MANY THINGS." then he started lecturing my french friend on how to speak his own language "TO SAY HELLO YOU MUST SAY BONJULE. BONJULE!! SAVAC! MERCY! I KNOW MANY MANY MANY THINGS! I almost thought he was going to say next "I know everything, embrace me as your new messiah!" He then made us proof read his new english dictionary in the middle of the station whereupon i had to kindly note to him that to cuddle was not quite a synonym for to thrash.

And now for something funny...

NHK bilingual news is usualy the most dire news service of disinformation I have ever come across. 90 percent of headline stories concern with the weather and can be broadly categorised as earthquake/typhoon stories, "Ooh its hot today isnt it, keep cool!" stories or "Ooh its bloody cold today, wrap up warm" stories.
They are obsessed with the most mundane details: "Prime Minister Koizumi scrached his arse today three times at a ninety degree angle and also blew his nose a further two times (no bogey was reported)."
They are masters of understatement "This man says he is displeased that he has lost his family from the typhoon." Or just plain confusing: "The government advises all people in the earthquake affected regions that they should not leave their houses and evacuate as soon as possible."
The other day though, they were unintentionally funny. Apparently good luck trinkets are becoming big business as school kids round the country face the preliminary university entrance exams. They are buying Kit Kats because apperently there is a Japanese word that sounds like the chocolate bars that means good luck. Similarly people are buying train tickets to places like the "hill of hope."

Children all over the country are also enthusiatically scoffing down frankfurters because they want to be wieners [winners.]

So lets take this message of hope and all tuck in and become wieners!

Some parents however I have spoken to are disallowing their children to eat food because if you rearrange the word you get doof and they surely dont want their kids to doof up their exams. However they are letting their children take speed (supiido) to give them an extra head start. However many parents disagree and instead want their children to take heroin so that they can be a "hero in" their exams.