These Are a Few of my Angriest Things

Yes, I know the title doesn't make any sense but:

These are the things that make me angry.

So yesterday was Sunday.  Sunday in Japan means nothing being open for more than a couple of hours - kind of like the west back in 1800; when everyone had dysentery.

This wouldn't be a problem, except I wanted to buy some food.  I am a hungry fellow, that's for sure.

Anyway, I was late to the post office (it closed at 4) which meant I couldn't buy food.

Why do I need to go to the post office to buy food?  Well, simply put, everything is cash here.  I'm sure I've written about it before, but a country that relies on cash is a country begging to fall into obscurity.  It appears to me, that a cash carrying society is ridiculous in every sense in this era.  When we devolve into the spineless soup coloured blob monsters from that cartoon where everyone whistles, and they live on the moon (I can hear my dads impression of it now, but I don't know the name); we will all use cash.  It's such a backwards form of bartering - paper assuming value; that's like using spaghetti to build bridges!  (Or something)

We must start using the digital - credit cards for everything.

Of course there is a problem with that.  The Japanese really enjoy being gouged at every opportunity.  They love a good, solid, cactus based rectal examination - that's the only reason they put up with it costing them more than one pound fifty (current exchange rates may vary; bank of Sam) to withdraw money from an ATM that isn't affiliated with their bank.  In fact, I think they pay that much if they have any bank account other than the post office (I make that assumption because everyone I know complains about the price of accessing their own money, so they're either stupid or compliant).  It boggles my mind.  It really does.  You can feasibly take cash out once every two weeks (taking too much risks robbery, too little risks bankruptcy; this being a situation begging for satire)  which means paying three quid a month.  That's thirty odd quid a year, without factoring a trip to a shopping centre (luckily large purchases can be made on a card) or unexpected expenses.  I get bills through my door every other day, so he-who-shall-not-be-named only knows how many unexpected bills a family must get.

That's a chunk of change given to a company, for the pleasure of them having all your goddamn money anyway.

Anyway.

The other thing that's annoying me right now, in this specific sliver of time, is that one of the kids in my school speaks English.  He speaks English well, having grown up in the Philippines.  He is taking daily Japanese lessons (he's only been here a while, and it turns out his Japanese isn't so hot) during what would otherwise be English lessons.  This is a great idea - he gets nothing out of English lessons (he does an amazing job of looking attentive, even when we're basically teaching the class the equivalent of I like burgers (of course it's american, so it has to be burgers) for the fiftieth time) and he needs to practice Japanese.  Now the problem is that he only gets to speak to his mum in English.  Without actually knowing the facts, I'm going to assume he speaks mainly Japanese at home (his dad is Japanese, dads are always the household leaders, and he needs to practice) which means his exposure to English is going to be, at the very best, limited.

He has another four years of this limited exposure.  While English may be one of his native languages, he will lose it.

I understand that should he stop now, he will maintain a base level that far exceeds anything I might hope to achieve with any other language, regardless of how long I study.  He will be able to speak better English in fifty years with no further practice, than I will be able to speak Japanese in fifty years if I practiced every day.

But it won't be great.

It won't be the kind of English that will land him a job.  It won't be good enough for his doors to remain open - he will have to adopt a recruitment procurement technique (shifting paradigms, business rhetoric like) akin to mugging.  Recruitment by slightly-crooked window entry.  He will have to sneak in the back door, as it were.  This, frankly, isn't good enough.

He doesn't know it now, but he will never be accepted in Japan.  He may well try his damndest to get a 'respectable,' (insofar as that means anything anymore) job in Japan, and he may well get his foot into the door.  He may rise a few ranks, get a few promotions, but his job will stagnate and he will be cast aside - regardless of how well he speaks Japanese.

But if the Japanese education system has its way, he won't have enough English to go elsewhere.  He will be, quite literally, stuck.

I find it morally ambiguous (at best) to take a bi-lingual kid and force him to become mono-lingual.  Regardless of whether there are any specific aims for 'homogenisation,' (a term they love to use in the literature here) regarding this specific child, it's cruel to take an option away from someone.  It seems almost worse than not offering that option in the first place.

The Japanese kids I teach will never be able to speak English.  The education system is laughable, the attitude here is one of indifference (again, at best) which leads to English being a comedy subject (much like R.E in England) which means that no one thinks of the significance of language.  They teach their kids to be wary of going outside of Japan, so it's a self-fulfilling circle that they are happy with.

Bringing a kid who has the potential to 'see the world,' (for whatever that means to you) into such an environment; not cool man.

Then again maybe I'm reading too much into this.  Maybe he'll get to university after four years of no English language study, join a programme that allows him to learn and spread his proverbial wings.

Maybe he won't give a crap about English (an entirely valid point of view taken by the vast majority of people, don't forget) and settle into a life of being a person sized, society based skeleton in the closet.

Who knows?

Myth of the Day

I have to bust ridiculous myths every day.  The kids can't speak a lick of English, so these all come from the teachers, grown adults.  They're not quite 'is it true you bathe in the blood of animals you sacrifice to ramu,' they are however pretty stupid.  Today:  'Sam sensei, is it true English people eat five meals a day?'  I tend to eat whenever I have downtime, and I'm always hungry, so I assumed my own gluttony was assumed normal for the English.  'Oh, I read that English people eat tea and crumpets in the afternoon, and scones with jam after breakfast, before lunch.'

Yes.  Literally every person I have ever met does this.

I've never paid attention to the myths about asia, so I can't really contrast and compare.

What I learned today is, basically, the Japanese government has a massive funding crisis.  They haven't updated their textbooks since 1890, and they failed, at that time, to include how the 'average,' Englishman lives - instead preferring to focus on the queen.  I mean, come on; seriously?



Another myth that I feel like disintegrating - america is great.  Read this article from the BBC, and thank god that you don't live in america.  Sucks to live there and be average, I guess.

Of English Ability

So the Japanese view English in the same way the English view R.E.  It`s a governmental requirement that will never be useful in everyday life.  A learn and forget subject, if you will.

In most countries it would be difficult to escape English.  France had to legislate against the steady encroachment of the English language - Korea actively embraces the alphabet and words while reviling anyone non-Korea.  There is tons of English in Japan, just none that`s intelligible.  They`ve appropriated English and created the infamous Japlish, a kind of strange dialect that`s mostly Japanese with an English twang.

Again, most countries speak English with a native accent.  The French speak distinctively, as do Italians;  even Koreans are discernible among a crowd.  The Japanese have learned the other way round.  They speak Japanese with a slight English accent.  For example; apple becomes a-pu-ru (ru being pronounced loo), baseball becomes bay-su-ba-ru (bay pronounced as in baying), birthday becomes bir-su-da-i (bir pronounced as in bird).  I picked words that have Japanese equivalents to show that their pronunciation is about as far from English as you can manage, while still using a base English word.  Some words have been integrated into Japanese and, frankly speaking, I often don`t understand what they`re saying.

Unfortunately this passes as acceptable English here, so the English teachers work is difficult.

Another side-effect of this appropriation is class direction.  The English class is conducted entirely in Japanese, with the target word, phrase or grammar given in English.  Learning single sentences or ideas in isolation creates an environment where learning becomes more difficult, as everyone asks for the direction in Japanese, even when they understand enough to answer the question.  You don`t need to understand every word to understand the meaning of a sentence.  Maybe you do in Japanese, but this severely hinders progress in English.

This is exemplified when, having a class for a mere five minutes (the teacher was busy administering a health checkup (teeth, if you`re interested) for his homeroom class) I managed to get them to understand, with no prior knowledge, the units of measurement for weight and height.  I had them guessing my height and weight, and saying their own.  I didn`t ask the weight questions of any of the girls, in case you`re wondering.

The point being that, learned in isolation, this would have taken an entire class, were the lesson conducted in Japanese.  Sure, retention might well be lower, as the students were unable to take notes during class, but over a period of time, reinforcing this for a couple of minutes each lesson, the students would naturally remember information in this way.

I presume the school has a set syllabus for learning English, and they will stick to it rigidly; just as our French and German lessons were conducted in England.  There are myriad parallels to be drawn between our systems, as the Japanese government styled itself on English and american parliamentary systems, education systems and to a lesser extent health systems after the war.  Unfortunately, they inherited all the problems we have with foreign language teaching - a side-effect of not creating their own unique system, tailored to the specific weaknesses of Japanese students.