Blog update in late july

I feel I’m doing a pretty good job updating my posts, but so much is going on here in Japan, that I always feel I need to say more. Here’s a quick run down of this past week.

Englishpod

While I’m working for Japanesepod, the company is branching out to reach more markets of language learning. We’re launching Koreanclass101.com in just a few days (like Aug 1^st, I believe) and the fall project is Englishpod. While Japanesepod is nearly all in English and it teaches Japanese, Englishpod is the opposite. It’s being run pretty much by Sachiko, a completely bilingual woman in our office.

In the middle of last week, Peter was out of the office and Marky hadn’t shown up yet, Sachiko asked ME if I wanted to help her record a few lessons of Englishpod. I jumped at the opportunity, and we went down to the studio to record. She was doing a series on “Japringlish”—Japanese words that Japanese people think are English words, but they really aren’t (think “Salaryman”). She handed me a script with about 5 household appliances that she wanted me to talk about in English. She told me not to worry, I didn’t have to speak any Japanese (she was going to do most of the talking, all in Japanese, and she’d turn to me for EXPERT American insight).

The first word on the list was “heater”. In Japan, what we call a heater, they call a “su-to-bu” or “stove”. Sachiko told me when she asks me how to say it, just “lean into the mic and say ‘stove’”. Simple enough. So I’m sitting there and Sachiko goes full blast in Japanese, introducing the topic, talking a little about me, and then finally my big moment. I hear her say “su-to-bu” and she looks at me. I reply “Heater”.

Judging by her face (she started chuckling out of surprise) I realized I didn’t understand what she said in Japanese. She had asked me, “In America, if you hear the word stove, does that make any sense?” to which I replied “heater”. The beauty of doing a podcast as opposed to a radio show, is she was just able to explain her question to me in English, I gave the appropriate answer, and in a few months when the lesson comes out, it’ll sound like I perfectly understood her! Yay, for post-production editing!

Festival

I visited my old dorm for a summer festival party. It was nice to see all of my old friend who still live there, and my old housing attendant Mr. Ikeda. When I arrived, they gave me 5 “party tickets” that I could use at any of the stations around the complex. For example, food, candy, drinks, ect. While all the food looked really good, I ended up using all my tickets on beer. About an hour into the party, several very old men and women dressed in traditional clothes took the stage and did a dance. It was pretty cool.

We then played a game that I remember playing back at Language school in Middlebury. Basically each team blindfolds a member and gives them a huge stick. The people take this stick and, following the instructions from their team, they try to smack a watermelon that’s on the floor, maybe 10 yards in front of them. HUGE mess, but it was lots of fun. My team refused to give me instructions in Japanese, but their English was incomprehensible, so when I made my huge ax chopping motion where I thought the watermelon was, I ended up just smashing and breaking the bamboo stick. Oops.

The best part of the festival was the traditional dancing that happened after the watermelon game. The same grandmas came back and led a dance in a huge circle. They were looking for people to join in the middle, so of course I jumped at this opportunity. I was there, giving it my all, surrounded by 12 grandmas doing a Japanese dance. By now my beer dinner had kicked in, and I was just going all out. It took about 7 repeat cycles for me to get the 4 step dance down, but I eventually did, and I think I did a pretty darn good job. I’ll try to get some pictures from friends.

Election Time

Finally, I was in Shibuya yesterday, and as soon as I got off the train, I heard this blaring cheesy rock and roll music. Apparently, one of the candidates running for mayor of Tokyo had set up a concert. With a huge stage, tons of supporters and the aforementioned crappy music, all of us waiting by Hachiko statue were forced to listen. Definition of a captive audience.

It got a little interesting, however, about 10 minutes later, when a van with 6 megaphones came rolling up across the street from the stage. A new crowd quickly gathered around the van, and it turns out, it was a rival candidate. The guy in the van was Doctor Nakamatsu, a famous Japanese inventor, who apparently has over 3000 patents and is world famous. As he stepped out onto the roof of the van with a microphone, I noticed two things. First, he was very old. Second, he was dressed exactly like Colonel Sanders—white suit, white bow tie, white top hat. I nearly died laughing.

So he began to give a in a speech when the guys across the street playing the music start singing louder and refused to take breaks. So the Doctor started turning up his mic and yelling his political views. It totally reminded me of the South Park episode where the anti-war protesters and the support-our-troops protester were on stage at the same time. Here in Japan, it was pretty funny to see two campaigns basically get into a shouting match. There real losers were me and my friends—one of our friends was half an hour later, thereby forcing us to put up with all the music and shouting for a full 30 minutes.