England in August

Update: included 25th–26th at Travelodge.

We're going to England in ... um ... 3½ days. Our full itinerary is:

1st August — Narita to Cambridge

• 04:00 BST (12:00 JST) Take off from Narita Airport, Terminal 1 on Aeroflot flight SU582 
• 19:55 BST (03:55 JST) Land at Heathrow Airport, Terminal 2 
• 21:10 leave Heathrow Airport on National Express coach 797 
• 23:50 arrive Cambridge

1st–14th August — Cambridge

Stay with Tim & Vicky in Cambridge. Thanks guys!

14th August — Cambridge to Grimsby

Thanks for the lift, Phil!

14th–23rd August — Grimsby

Stay in Grimsby with Mum. Thanks for the car keys, Mum!

19th August — Mum's wedding

23rd August — Grimsby to Birmingham

• 07:15 leave Grimsby on National Express coach 339 
• 12:10 arrive Birmingham Coach Station 

23rd–26th August — Birmingham 

• 23rd–25th stay with Chisa's friend, Huaming
• 25th–26th stay at Birmingham Central Bull Ring Travelodge

26th–27th August — Birmingham to Narita

• 05:00 BST leave Birmingham on National Express coach 210 
• 07:40 BST arrive Heathrow Airport 
• 10:35 BST (18:35 JST) Take off from Heathrow Airport, Terminal 2 on Aeroflot flight SU581 
• 10:20 JST (02:20 BST) land the next day at Narita Airport, Terminal 1

And here's the map:

View August in England in a larger map

Speech 3

Here's the two-minute dialogue.  This time I've ripped off The Two Ronnies:

It still needs some work.  The Fuji-san joke (Fuji-san can either mean mount Fuji or Mr Fuji) is lame, and I think most people will miss the "makes us ... with a baseball bat" double meaning.

QUIZ SHOW

A: What is your name?

B: [silence]

A: And in this quiz, you must not answer the question I ask. You must answer the previous question. Oh ... er ... just a moment. I need to mark your answers here. Which pencil is mine?

B: My name’s [B’s name].

A: And your time starts … now. Please complete this line of Shakespeare: “To be, or not to be...”.

B: It’s 4B.

A: What is the purpose of AKB48?

B: That is the question.

A: What is the Japanese diet?

B: They exist to perform and entertain people in Tokyo. The least popular members are removed in elections.

A: What is a yokozuna?

B: A lot of fish, rice and soybeans.

A: I am a very fat man with long hair. I sometimes put on strange clothes and appear on TV. I make a lot of money from cellphones. Who am I?

B: A champion sumo wrestler.

A: What is the largest and most famous mountain in Japan?

B: Matsuko Delux.

A: And finally, please describe your sports teacher.

B: Fuji-san.

A: Time’s up! That’s the end of the quiz ... and the end of our skit. How do you think it went? Did our English teacher prepare us well?

B: He makes us practice with a baseball bat until we get it right.

Speech 2

Here's the more serious speech:

WHOSE ENGLISH IS IT ANYWAY?

Our previous High School ALT worked hard, teaching us how to pronounce words like ADD-ress and to-MAY-der correctly.  Now our new ALT tells us that everything we learnt is wrong.  “Don’t say ADD-ress.  Say uh-DRESS.” he tells us.  “Not tuh-MAY-der.  tuh-MAA-toe”.

So which one is correct?  It seems that they both are.  The first one taught us American English, and the second one British English.  This is very confusing for us poor Japanese.  We don’t have this problem in say, Maths or Geography.  We don’t learn that two plus two is four in the first year, and two plus two is five in the second year.

If it was just the pronunciation that was different, I wouldn’t mind, but the grammar changes too!  The old ALT said, “I lost my keys!”, but the new one says, “I’ve lost my keys.”  Actually, they’re both wrong.  They didn’t lose them.  We hid their keys in ... hmm ... maybe you don’t need to know about that.

But why stop at British or American English?  For instance, have you heard of Nigerian Pidgin?  It’s the lingua franca of Nigeria, and it’s a dialect of English.  There are about eighty million speakers of Nigerian Pidgin.  That’s twenty million more than the population of the UK.

So why can’t there be one official version of English?  One version that we can all agree on?  Actually, the French tried that.  There is an organization called The French Academy which decides what is French, and what is just slang and dialect.  The only problem is, nobody actually speaks Academy French.  The most recent edition of the Academy Dictionary was published in 1935.  

Altogether, there are maybe three-or-four hundred million native speakers of English, and more than a billion people who speak English as a second language.  So I wonder, if there are more non-native speakers than native speakers, and if even the native speakers can’t agree on how to speak English, why must I, as a Japanese person, copy native speakers?  [In a strong Japanese accent.]  Maybe I should be proud to speak English like a true Japanese.  Then “Nihonglish” can receive the recognition it deserves as a dialect of English.

New Look

smug

I call this look "recycled Japanese--Hawaiian".

Japanese men on holiday in Hawaii buy clothes that fit me much better than their original owners. I pick them up for a song from the 2nd hand shop.

Speech 1

I'm currently writing some speeches for Junior High School students to deliver in a speech contest. I need a sober 3-minute speech, an amusing 3-minute speech, and a 2-minute dialogue.

Speech-writing is hard. For the amusing 3-minute speech, I've resorted to ripping off Eddie Izzard.



So here's the draft speech. I WOULD REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR COMMENTS OR SUGGESTIONS!

Never Trust A Monkey

The first page of my English textbook has useful sentences like, “The mouse is under the table.” I tried using this when I went to England. “The train to Liverpool, right? Is this it? … Now? … In 5 minutes? Okay, thanks, and the mouse is under the table.”

It didn’t go well. People were shouting, “Mouse!? What mouse? Where is the mouse?” "Where is the mouse? Where is the mouse? Er … the mouse is under the table." "Table? What table? Where is the table?" "Er … the table is … above … the mouse?"

So that was my first lesson in English conversation: only say, "There's a mouse under the table." when there is a mouse under the table. The other sentences in my book were, "The cat is on the chair." which was okay, and "The monkey is on the branch." That sentence was VERY difficult to use. I solved the problem by walking through the woods with a cat, a mouse, a monkey and a chair. “Quick! Someone’s coming. Cat: sit on the chair. Mouse: hide under the table. Monkey: climb on the branch. Hurry, hurry! Okay. I’ve got my speech ready here. *ahem* Hello. I’m Japanese. I’m on vacation. It’s beautiful here! The scenery … the trees … the mouse is under the table, the cat is on the chair, and the monkey is … gone.” Because he was a monkey. He didn’t want to wait on the branch. He wanted to go and do monkey things.

I was in trouble. Without the monkey, I couldn’t finish my speech. Where was he? “Erm … er … did you see a monkey?” “Yes, I did! What a surprise it was. Last time I saw a monkey near here was in the 80s. I was a boy, then and….” … and he wouldn’t stop talking!

So here is what I learnt: if you want to have an English conversation, the most important skills are asking questions and listening. And never trust a monkey.

Google Trends - Spot the vigilantes?

Something interesting via Google Autosuggest.

My wife was googling for news articles about an ongoing high-profile murder trial in Japan. She entered the name of the alleged murderer "市橋" (Ichihashi) and the first thing that Google autosuggest came up with was "市橋　実家" (The Ichihashi family home). Coincidence? Are vigilantes at work? Let's see what Google Trends can tell us:

Google Trends for 市橋　実家

The second peak is around the time of the trial. The first peak is more interesting, because it comes just before a peak in news coverage. (The news peak was caused by the police revelation that the fugitive Ichihashi had changed his appearance with plastic surgery, and Ichihashi's subsequent capture.) I'm not sure what to make of it.

Spot the Ninja 1

I recently read this book:

and now I am a Ninja Expert. While I'm putting together my Ninja Consultancy business plan, here's the first in my Spot the Ninja quiz.

Look at the following two pictures and, using your skill and judgement, try to determine the precise location of the ninja.  Scroll down for the answer, but no peeking until you've decided where the ninja is!

Have you decided yet?  Okay. Here goes. The ninja is ... the lady feeding a dog. The chimpanzee is not a ninja. I put her there to distract you. Ninjas often use distractions to slip past unnoticed.

Why is she a ninja? A ninja will feed a target's guard dog in order to win the animal's trust and affection. Then the ninja can return at night without fear of the dog barking at them.

So remember: if you see somebody feeding a dog, they might just be a ninja.

More hotness

After all that studying weather vocabulary, I need some listening practice.



(She's actually Taiwanese. She has such a cute accent when she talks Japanese....)

It's hot ... isn't it!?

I've been studying Japanese on and off (more off than on) for some time now. I'm far from fluent, but I can hold the occasional halting conversation. Why, only yesterday, I asked in broken Japanese, "Has anyone seen my diary? It's about this big, black, has a hard cover, and I'm totally screwed without it." thereby demonstrating the importance of the desire to communicate in language learning. But every now and then I discover that I know nothing.

Konnichiwa. Atsui desu.

After basic greetings the first Japanese phrases I learnt were ii tenki desu ne (nice weather, isn't it), atsui desu (it's hot!) and samui desu (it's cold). Well, I thought I learnt them. It turns out that I'm still discovering what they really mean.

First, I learnt that the word atsui (hot) also functions as a cry of pain. If you set fire to a Japanese person, they don't say itai! (ouch!); they say atsui!

Then, I learnt that samui (cold) has a somewhat narrower meaning than the English word cold.  If a Japanese person walks into a cold room, he says samui, but if he picks up an ice cube he says sumetai (cold to the touch).

Then I learnt that samui and atsui are used for describing experiences rather than objective facts.  So a more pedantic translation of samui desu would be "I feel cold."

And yesterday I discovered that ii tenki desu ne doesn't mean what I thought.  I was reviewing a Japanese language textbook with my wife, and we'd reached the chapter on weather.  Here's the conversation we had (in Japanese):

 ― How's the weather?
 ― It's not very good.
 ― Really? Is it sunny? Is it cloudy? Is it raining?
 ― It's sunny.
 ― Is it good weather?
 ― No, it isn't. It's hot and humid.
 ― No.  Sunny weather is good weather. It's good weather.
 ― Eh?
 ― Hot and humid is how you feel. It's sunny, so it's good weather.
 ― So ... even if it was 50℃, it would be good weather?
 ― That's right. Sunny weather is good weather. Rainy weather is bad weather.

naruhodo! (well I never!)

When I think about it more, it makes sense. The Japanese hate the rain – they get their umbrellas out at the slightest provocation – and I suppose that, for a Japanese rice farmer or fisherman, rain and sunshine were the difference between feast and famine. So, by definition, rain is bad and sunshine is good. 'Nuff said.

Jobs for the boys

I'm a child of the NHS (The UK's National Health Service). The NHS is publicly funded, so we were always encouraged not to "over-consume". "Got flu? Stay at home, and let the doctor see someone who's really ill...." You get the idea.

Get out of here you contemptible waste of NHS resources

I have to do this every time

Here in Japan, it's all about jobs for the boys.  You can't get so much as a tube of haemorrhoid cream until you've been examined by a specialist, and no repeat prescriptions either!

Actually, that might not be such a bad thing, since the pharmacists here don't have a clue. My wife went to one when she had thrush, and came out with a tube of steroid cream!

Another day, another blog

I've blogged before, and I got bored of it. The trouble is, the times when I have something to say are the times when I'm too busy to write about them. (Some people are so passionate about writing that they make the time to write. I'm not.)

But this time it's different. In 2010 I moved from England to Japan to marry a Japanese lady and start a new life as an English teacher. A lot of stuff here still doesn't make sense, but I'm slowly getting used to it, and I (sometimes) have time to write about it.