I spent another fun weekend back and forth from 石央文化ホール, the cultural center in town. Saturday night I was gifted a ticket to the musical Andersen, which is a biography of fairytale author Hans Christian Andersen featuring an abbreviated version of the Little Mermaid ballet. The traveling musical group that performed it was fantastic, bizarre as it was to see a story set in Europe performed in Japanese by an all-Japanese cast.
Today, after the monthly English conversation breakfast at Cafe Michéle, I headed back to see a screening of Ponyo, the latest film from Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. Ponyo came out in Japan last year, but I didn’t get a chance to see it, and I just missed its American debut over the summer. We don’t have a movie theater in Hamada, so I jumped at the chance to see a movie, especially one I’ve put off for so long. It’s definitely a film for children, but I found it really enjoyable for the gorgeous background art. The seaside town where the story takes place has a lot in common with Hamada. 
Before any movie in Japan, an anti-piracy ad is played. I’ve seen the following ad twice now and find it very well done and entertaining.
The campaign is called “NO MORE 映画泥棒” (NO MORE eiga dorobo) – “no more movie theft”. The voiceover and text behind the excellent dancing camera informs you that recording sound or video within a theater is a crime for which you can be fined up to 1000 man yen (more than $100,000), spend up to ten years in prison, or both. If you see any strange behavior in the theater (for example, a man with a video camera for a head breakdancing), report it to the theater staff so they can report it to the police.
The most ironic thing is that, in looking for a copy of this ad to share with you, the first one I found was obviously pirated from a theater. Bad Youtuber!
Last Tuesday was a national holiday, Culture Day. It was also the day of Hamada’s Onabe BB Festival, where a huge seafood stew is cooked and served to all for free. The above picture shows you just how big the stew is. The festival also featured a flea market, food stands, and performances by three dance groups.
This being Hamada, it also ended with a kagura performance.
You can see more pictures here.
On Sunday, ALTs around the prefecture traveled out to Kawamoto to visit Yakami High School’s agricultural festival. The Gotsu/Hamada ALTs stopped to check out the Kawamoto gorge on the way home.
More pictures here.
I wrote this post on Friday during some downtime. I’m in a bit of a funk at the moment, but I have a bunch of photos and posts to make that I’ll be working on tomorrow, so hopefully Monday night will bring some new content.
Today my class did a lesson on 外来語, and even I learned a lot!
Japan has a long history of importing words, dating back to when they brought kanji over from China. There are three main types of words: 和語 (“wago”), native Japanese words; 漢語 (“kango”), kanji compounds with pronunciation imported from China; and 外来語 (“gairaigo”), words that came from a foreign country. For example, there are three ways to say “car” in Japan. 車, “kuruma”, is the original Japanese word. カー, “kaa”, was imported from English and can also be used. Finally, 自動車, “jidousha”, is a kanji compound meaning “self-moving vehicle” that is the formal word for car.
外来語 comes from many languages: English, obviously, but also Portuguese (through Oda Nobunaga), Russian, Spanish, and even Dutch. Within the category of 外来語 there is also the fuzzy 和製英語 (“wasei-eigo”) – words that sound like English but were constructed from bits of real English by the Japanese.
Great questions I was asked today at school:
“How did you learn English so well?” (from a first grader)
“Why are your eyes brown? I thought Americans had blue or green eyes.” (from a fourth grader)
A year after my project in Kanazawa, most of the hits on my blog still come from Google searches for 色の名前. Obviously somebody out there is interested in color names across languages, and I am as 色好き (color-obsessed) as ever. でわ、「色の名前」を探す人に質問：またブログにアップしない色の名前情報がありますけど、 興味がありますか？ または、日本語と英語の色を比べること続くかどうかちょっと考えています。 そのテーマについてブログを書いたら読みたい人いますか？ And again for the English speakers searching 色の名前: I still have information I haven’t uploaded to the blog. Should I post it? Also, is there interest in continuing comparison of colors in Japanese and English? If I blog about it, are there people who want to read it?
In America, we use a lot of colors when studying. Highlighters help us focus on the most important parts of our notes when reading through before the big test. In Japan, though, many classes require rote memorization. As if it weren’t enough having to learn thousands of ideograms with 2 (or 3 or 4 or 5) readings a piece, English has some confusing linguistic features that Japanese lacks – like articles and a bewildering variety of prepositions – and many irregular verb conjugations and grammar points that just have to be drilled into a non-native student. Highlighters just aren’t strenuous enough to help Japanese students stuff their heads with all this information. Instead, many students use a “check set”, which allows them to blank out certain key words while studying and quiz themselves more intensely.
I’m trying to learn a lot of kanji, so I bought myself some flashcards and check set materials at the closest hyaku-en (dollar) store and photographed a demonstration for you all.
read more…
The other day, I was having lunch with a class of fourth graders I had never met before. During the usual question-and-answer period, one of them asked me what my least favorite food was, and I answered “nattou” (the fermented soybeans that Japanese people eat with rice for breakfast). One of the girls clowning around out of her seat said “All foreigners are the same after all. They all love sushi and hate nattou.”
Yesterday I was at a school where I’ve eaten with the second and first graders, who love me a lot more than my actual students do. When I went outside for recess, I was surrounded by them and bombarded with English questions. One of the first graders was particularly impressed and kept saying, “Foreigners are really amazing! They can speak English!” A second grade girl pointed out to her, “They speak English, like we speak Japanese.” But the first grader was convinced: based on the foreigners she’d met (myself and the previous ALT), all of them speak Japanese and English, so they’re amazing.
I’m glad that the older kids have a more realistic view of the world. Well, sort of – the sixth graders I had lunch with yesterday were convinced that the English word for something is its Japanese equivalent pronounced funny. (They haven’t quite got the concept that, in cases where it is, the Japanese word originated in English.) But that first grader definitely cheered me up from earlier this week. It may be true that most foreigners dislike nattou and do like sushi, but there are exceptions – and nattou is gross anyway!
Phew, all caught up on major event blog posts! Things are backdated, so just scroll down and look for new titles. Also, there’s a ton of new photos on Flickr – although one particular album is being a pain in the butt to sync, so if a post does that “Photo not Available” thing, that’s probably what’s going on.
As for this post, there’s no special theme here; just short tidbits I wanted to share.
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Friday: meeting in 三隅; dinner with Rachel; 飲み会 afterpartying with Rachel, Rebecca, Jonathan and his JTEs
Saturday: University festival, dinner with Kayo and Jonathan, karaoke with Jason et al.
Sunday: University festival, dinner with Jonathan and Rebecca, hanging out and cleaning/decorating my bathroom.
Monday (holiday due to 体育の日, Sports Day, not Columbus Day): Costume shopping in 大田市 with Rebecca, dinner party with Shane and friends.
Coming up this week…
Tuesday: calligraphy lesson; prepping candy corn dough for class on Wednesday
Wednesday: English conversation group
Thursday (payday!): weekly すし蔵会
After that I *think* I’m out of excuses. But as you can see, I’ve been up to a lot and will get up to more this week, so at least there will be plenty to read about!
In the meantime, sleep is even more precious now that the election next weekend has politicians out driving around in cars with loudspeakers yelling their own names and waking me up every morning. The Japanese campaign period is short to prevent this from getting annoying, but even a little bit is too much. I’m starting to appreciate the long American campaign season simply for its informative yet easy-to-tune-out television advertising.
EDIT: If you’re reading this on or after Oct. 17, I’ve updated a lot and backdated posts to spread them out a little bit and put them closer to when the actual events were. Thus this post on why there were no blog posts appears in the middle of a bunch of blog posts. I live to confuse.
Every school in Japan holds a school festival. Clubs hold demonstrations and performances or set up booths and sell food or host games. The local community turns out in force to support the kids and their activities.
The festival at the University of Shimane was a little bit bigger deal than that. Clubs sold all kinds of international food; entertainment groups from around Shimane came to perform; contests and flea markets were held; and the whole city came out for their weekend entertainment. Our local CIRs even helped run international activities. Despite being a small school with only one department, 県立大 has a lot of diverse activities and students.
read more…
What I’ve been up to since then, and where all the photos are.
As it says in the video, I’m expecting my new computer in the next few days, so expect a lot of new content then. I’ll try to pick out the best bits for the blog, but there will be tons of photos to browse through on the Flickr at your leisure. The ones of my commute through the mountains are particularly gorgeous and would make good desktop backgrounds. 
I’ll have to change my blog header as well, I think.
Re: the new icon, here’s a bit of Youtube comedy that’s fairly accurate when it comes to Japanese picture-taking…
A recent college graduate with a degree in chemistry teaching English in Middle of Nowhere, Japan. I'm just lucky that way. :)
