Things You Can't See in Japan, Part 4

7. The North Pole in a Department Store

You can take a picture with Santa and even visit his house!

8. The Anaheim Angels

Especially not from this angle!

Things You Can't See in Japan, Part 3

5. Islamic Chinese Food

At first, it sounds as weird as "Hindu Japanese Food", but it's actually very good. And cheap.

6. Elephant Seals

Read here all about them!

Things You Can't See in Japan, Part 2

3. Lots and lots of oil wells

These are along the 101 freeway in California. You can see them in many different places, though.

4. A 900 ml "medium" soft drink

A large drink is about 1250 ml, and 540 calories.

Things You Can't See in Japan, Part 1

1. The LA skyline


2. A speed limit of 104 km/h

And most people actually go 75-80 miles per hour, not 65.

Rainy California

When you look at a sightseeing guide to California, you usually see a lot of palm trees and sunshine. You see people surfing, people shopping, and maybe a big picture of the Hollywood sign. You usually don't see buckets and buckets of rain.

That's what California has been like for the last few days. Lots of rain!


That's Costco, by the way, which is 90% the same in CA as it is in Tokyo. Membership cards from Costco Japan also work in the USA! How convenient!

My cousin Terry runs a restaurant in Huntington Beach. Visit it if you ever go to California, and have a taste of some good California-style Japanese food. The portions are huge!



That's me and my dad. Do we look alike?

Vacation!

Our Winter Vacation starts today!

The first day of class of the new year is January 4th.

Check this blog during vacation! I'll be updating it from California.

I was in the newspaper!

That's right, the speech I gave last week was in the Gakunan Asahi this week. Did you see it?

I was IN the newspaper. You use IN for newspapers and other print media.

I was not ON the Internet.

I wasn't ON TV, either.

Why is it IN for newspapers and magazines but ON for the Internet and TV? I'm not really sure. It's just something you have to get used to!

Have a scary weekend!

Happy Halloween!

What are your favorite scary movies?

I used to like Night of the Living Dead, Evil Dead, and The Thing. All of these are pretty scary! If you're in the mood for a frightening film, give them a try!

Reminder!

There's no class this week! Please stay home and enjoy the start of fall.

Remember?

One way in which verbs can vary between languages is if they are seen as having a point of completion. "Know", for example, doesn't ever "finish". It makes no sense to talk about being "done knowing" or "knowing it in 5 minutes" - "know" doesn't ever get done, so to speak. "Know" describes a state, rather than an action. "Learn", on the other hand, culminates in the point where something is committed to memory. You can be done learning, or learn something in 1 day. Once you know it, you're done learning it.

Both the verbs "to know" and "to remember" in Japanese have endpoints at the point where something is learned or memorized. Hence to say "I know that" in Japanese, you take the Japanese verb "shiru", and use it in something like the English perfect tense - "I have known it". This indicates that you have gained the knowledge, and hence "know" it now. As far as I am aware, there is no verb to describe having knowledge of something as a state.

Newborn

Some of our students have had younger brothers or sisters born during their time here. It's a lot of fun to see those kids go from bumps in their moms' tummies to walking, talking individual people. Some of them are as old now as their older siblings were when they were born. It's nice to see!

Miya-Odori

I had a great time last Sunday watching the kids dancing in the parade in Fujinomiya. I think I missed it last year, but I've seen it a few times before and I always had a good time.

There are parades sometimes in my hometown of Fullerton, CA, too, but I never really went to see them. Parades just sound boring to me - maybe I like Fujinomiya's parades because our students are in them!

Summer Vacation!

All the kids are on vacation now. You can still see a lot of kids walking around in their school uniforms, though - too bad for them! If they have to go to school, and they have homework, how exactly is it a "vacation"? Is there any time that they truly have no responsibilities at all?

Phobias

Are you afraid of spiders? Then you're in good company. Fear of spiders is very common. In fact, some people are so afraid of spiders that they can't even go near one. If they see one, they might actually faint! A strong fear like that is called a phobia. Arachnophobia is a fear a spiders and other arachnids. Some more phobias are:

Claustrophobia: Fear of enclosed spaces. Claustrophobics become nervous when they are in a small space or a space with no easy way to get out.

Acrophobia: Fear of heights. People with this phobia usually don't like being on roller coasters or in skyscrapers.

Agoraphobia: Fear of open spaces and public places. People with agoraphobia don't like new environments or situations where they don't feel like they have control. Many of them like to stay in their rooms, like hikikomori.

習い事

Many of our students are children. They come to our classes after school. Many of them also take other types of lessons - for example piano, ballet, or just "juku", which are for-profit cram schools that teach a variety of subjects. Some of the best-known "juku" are Sanaru, Kumon, and Bunri Gakuin. I believe more than half of the high schoolers in Japan attend juku, and a surprising number of elementary schoolers and even preschoolers do as well.

My students often ask me what kinds of after-school lessons are popular in the US. Many kids and teenagers take music or dance lessons, and until high school, many kids take sports as well. I personally took private trombone classes. I never went to anything like a juku, and I don't know any Americans from my generation who have. One or two of my friends took test-preparation classes for the SAT (like the Japanese Center Test), but only for a few months.

Frogs, part 2

A student's mom found this little guy outside the office next to the stairs on her way down. He (we know it's a he because he blows up his neck like this and croaks) was there all day Saturday. If you're lucky, maybe he'll show up this week too!

Frogs

In the rainy season, you can see and hear a lot of frogs. Do you mind the noise? I think it's relaxing. Plus, the frogs eat the bugs. I don't like bugs, so that makes me happy!

Do you know the difference between a frog and a toad?

A frog mainly lives in water, and a toad mainly lives on land. Toads have dry, bumpy skin. Frogs have smooth, wet skin.

So which one is a frog? Which one is a toad?

"Standard" English

English is named after England. Most of the history of English takes place in England. So why do so many people want to learn American English? Isn't British English (or "the Queen's English") the standard?

There really isn't any Standard World English. There are a few different standards. The reason we teach American English here is that American English is my first language. I'm not a native speaker of British or Australian English, and especially not of South African or Singaporean. If you, my student, learn to copy my accent perfectly, you'll sound American.

Luckily, although American English doesn't have the same long history as British English does, it does have many fans. If you're a fan of Hollywood movies or American TV shows, you probably hear a lot of American English. Almost all the characters on American TV speak more like me than like David Beckham. The stars of many American TV shows and movies are actually British or Australian - but have to use American accents when they act.

American English is not the world standard, but it is quite dominant.

The Simple Present

One of the challenges of teaching language is explaining things that seem incredibly obvious. It's not all that difficult to explain or teach TOEIC vocabulary or idioms, although they may be difficult for students to remember or tell apart. It's much harder to illustrate the difference between waiting "at a restaurant" and "in a restaurant", or especially "a restaurant" and "the restaurant". These are the kinds of things native speakers take for granted. A parent might explain to a young child, "a restaurant is a place where we eat", but would never have to explain, "we call it 'a' restaurant because it's not significant which particular restaurant it is".

Ironically, the simplest expressions are often the most difficult to explain or to make clear to non-native speakers, exactly because they rely so much on things that are "obvious" to native speakers of the language. The shortest possible sentences in English, consisting only of a noun and a verb, are examples of this. "We eat" or "I am" look simple, but actually have quite abstract meanings. Unlike "We ate" or "We are eating", "We eat" doesn't refer to any particular event. "We eat" doesn't necessarily correspond to any physical reality. "We are going to eat" or "We will eat" are still clearer than "We eat", because although we can't be sure the event actually will take place, we know what the event predicted by the sentence will look like. "We eat" isn't a statement of expectation; it's a statement of supposedly verifiable fact, just a fact will no clear physical basis.

You can see I'm forced to use pretty advanced grammar and vocabulary to try to explain this very short sentence, "We eat". That's one of the most challenging things about being a language teacher, understanding the complexity of the language without teaching it in a complex way.

Simple English Wikipedia

Have you ever used Wikipedia? Well, for those of you who don't know, Wikipedia is a very big encyclopedia on the Internet. It has articles on almost anything. For example, here's a very long article on my high school in California. Who cares about Troy High School? Apparently some people do.

There are Wikipedias in many different languages, including Japanese. There's even one in "Simple English", which says it's for children and people learning English. Try looking up some topics! Here's one to start you off: Mt. Fuji.

"Foreigner"

There are many words in Japanese that don't translate very well into English. People often ask me how to say "onegaishimasu" in English, and I always have to say, it depends on context. There isn't one easy translation for "onegaishimasu", much like there isn't one for "gobusatashiteorimasu" or even something simple like "kuyashii". The reverse is true too; it's not easy to translate some words of English, like "would", into a single word of Japanese.

Some words seem to have an easy translation, but end up sounding unnatural if you use them the same way that you can use them in the other language. Many, many sentences in English start with "I", or "There", but of course that doesn't mean you should start that many sentences in Japanese with "watashi" or "soko". The Japanese word "gaikokujin" is a notable example of this. Kids as young as 4 use it in Japan, but kids in the US almost never use the word "foreigner". In fact, it would be rather impolite in modern American society to call somebody a "foreigner". A word that is similar in terms of meaning might be very different in terms of usage.

Flowers

I still haven't had the experience of drinking under the cherry trees in spring - but I did sit under them and have a small meal this past weekend. Behold!




The owners of that cafe also have a photo studio, so you can bet they would have taken better pictures than I did... still, if you want some coffee and/or some pictures taken, check them out!

I Read!

My main hobby is reading. I play guitar too, but I spend more time reading than doing anything else, aside from working and sleeping. I was looking up one of my favorite authors on amazon.co.jp, and I noticed that many of his books have been translated into Japanese. If you're interested in language, have a look!

The Stuff of Thought

The Language Instinct

The Blank Slate

There's one more that I really enjoyed, called "Words and Rules". I guess it hasn't been translated into Japanese - but that's understandable, since it's mostly about past tense verbs in English.

Popular science is my favorite kind of book. If you have any recommendations, feel free to tell me!

Secular

Easter was last Sunday. Do you know the story behind Easter, and why we put up pictures of eggs and chicks every year around this time?

Actually, I'm not completely sure. The eggs and chicks are traditional symbols of spring because they have to do with growth and new life. I don't believe they're necessarily traditional Easter symbols, at least they probably weren't before Easter became less a "holiday" and more a "celebration" a la Christmas, in the last century.

These days, almost everyone celebrates Christmas - whether they're Christians or not. You can see this phenomenon quite clearly in Japan, where Christmas is a major event, but almost no one is Christian. Easter is somewhat the same in the US - perhaps not members of minority religions, but certainly non-practicing Christians and agnostics celebrate Easter just the same as Christians do. It's increasingly secular - separate from religion. Can you think of any holidays like this in Japan?

Read This Fast!

The good can decay many ways.

The good candy came anyways.


The stuffy nose can lead to problems.

The stuff he knows can lead to problems.


If you read these fast enough and with natural pronunciation, they'll sound the same! Wow!

A Wug Test

A wug test is a test of people's ability to apply a rule in a language. How would you complete the phrase at the bottom of this picture?



Most native speakers of English answer "wugs", pronounced "wugz".


How about this test?

Bob loves to spling. He splings whenever he has the chance. Last weekend, he ( ).


Of course, there is no verb "spling" in English. But it sounds like "spring" and "ring", so a lot of native speakers fill in the blank with either "splung" or "splang". Other people write "splinged", which applies the regular past tense rule.

Daniel Kahl

I saw Daniel Kahl speak this weekend. He's a very talented speaker, good at grabbing the audience's attention and holding it. Plus, he does it all in his 2nd language! It's quite a sight to see.

As for the content of the speech, well, it was another "I love Japan" speech, much like last year's by Diane Kichijitsu. You've probably heard a lot of it before. I wasn't as impressed with the content as I was with the delivery. But if you have the chance, by all means see him speak sometime.

What Do Finns Do?

I was looking up international test score rankings the other day just for fun, and I noticed something very interesting - Finland is the top-ranked country in all 3 categories tested - literacy, science, and math. Why is this? Again, according to Internet sources, they don't spend the most money or time on education. So what are they doing so differently from what people do here or in the US? I ought to take a trip to go see!

Fullerton is famous! ... kind of.

What is my home town famous for? Well, first of all, the electric guitar company Fender is from Fullerton. Have you heard of Fender guitars? There's a street called Fender Avenue here.

There used to be many horses in Fullerton. Fullerton was famous for horseback riding. There aren't that many horses there anymore, but you can still see people riding around sometimes. Here's a candid horse photo we shot on our last trip to California. Enjoy!

Back!

I took a trip to California over winter break. I'm back now, and gosh, it's really cold here!

I took some pictures. Here's one of me in front of a mission in Santa Barbara.



Yes, the man in the background is wearing short sleeves and shorts. It's warm in Southern California pretty much all year - except in summer, when it's extremely hot. Winter in California is a nice escape though!