You Can't Have Spelling Bees in Japanese

This morning in Japanese class, sensei was asking us about different school-related things in America. We had to write a sentence on the board using some kanji from the current lesson, and someone wrote:

"Tesuto to kuizu wa kubetsu ga nai." (I cannot distinguish [the difference between] tests and quizzes.)

Sensei looked a bit confused at the writer (who is quite a funny cookie if you ask me), and asked the class at large what the difference was between tests and quizzes. We came to the conclusion that the amount of content and point value were the distinguishing characteristics of tests and quizzes. Quizzes cover smaller amounts of material and are worth fewer points; tests cover a lot of material and are usually worth a good chunk of a student's grade. She also asked us what the word "quiz" came from, like if it was short for something, and I don't think we gave her a real answer to that.

Then we got to discussing the readings of the kanji in this lesson. It's all map-related words, like the different words for prefecture, town, city, etc. Most kanji have at least two ways of being read (yomikata), the Chinese reading and the Japanese reading, which makes kanji that much more frustrating to learn. You have to know 1) how to write it, 2) how to read it both ways, 3) the translation to English. But if you can recognize a word in kanji and know at least the meaning in English, you can make some fairly educated guesses as to what it is. At the same time, if you know a word but can't write the kanji, you can always spell it out in hiragana.

Not quite the same in English. There aren't always clues to a word's meaning in the word itself. If I were learning English as a second language, I can't imagine I would ever assume the word "lavatory" means the same thing as "toilet" or "bathroom" if you didn't tell me. I suppose you can study Latin for prefixes, suffixes, and things like that to get clues. Yet I didn't start really learning that stuff until middle school and I don't know if that would be helpful to someone learning basic English. And even if you know a word, there's always a chance you'll misspell it, so there's no hiragana-type safety net in English.

At that point we came to the concept of spelling bees. You can't have spelling bees in Japanese the same way you have them in English. In Japanese you can spell anything you can sound out, but English has all kinds of stupid rules and silent letters all over the place. You can tell a Japanese first-grader to spell some complicated Japanese word and they can do it in hiragana, but you can't tell an English-speaking child to spell "juxtaposition" at the same age and expect them to do it. In fact, I'm sure you can't ask some college students to spell "juxtaposition." Sad.

I can't think of a good segue... So, tomorrow -- dinner with John in Asakusa. I will be having a delicious dinner of fatty tuna sushi mmmmmmmm it will be great.

Nothing New

I figure it's been a week since my last post, so I better write *something.* Feeling lazy, however, and I've got 10 minutes before dinner, so we'll go like this:

1. Saw John on Friday, went to The Lockup (again) with Ashlie and Christina. We got to experience the monsters TWICE this time! Amazing. Ashlie and I had gone to the bathroom before the second wave of monsters, and almost didn't make it back to our cell before the lights went out. THAT was scary. I'd post the purikura we took but apparently I have to pay for it through email if I want the file.

2. DID. NOT. SEE. ARASHI. AT. TOKYO. DOME. Sad pandas. We flipped a 10yen coin, atama (head) or shippo (tail) and got shippo to not go find a pair of scalped tickets. I really don't know if that's what you say in Japanese. Instead, we sent in a postcard to Fuji Television Network to try to get tickets to a taping of VS Arashi, their game show. I hope someone at Fuji Television can appreciate (read enough English to understand) the stupid story I wrote on the front.

Go to YouTube and search "VS Arashi" or Arashi in general if you want to discover the wonders of these five Japanese idols. They're hilarious. (This clip is one of my favorites)

ALSO PRAY THAT WE CAN GET SOME TICKETS!!! BELIEVE!!! Postcards are selected "at random" according to the Fuji TV website. I think mine sticks out enough.

3. All-you-can-eat (tabehoodai) and all-you-can-drink (nomihoodai) are regular things here in Japan, like a karaoke places or special restaurants. On Friday, Tama and her friend showed us a dessert tabehoodai restaurant, Sweets Paradise. I paid $15 for 90 minutes of all-you-can-eat pasta, curry, cake, ice cream, fruit, etc. It was great. Photos:

Maybe I'll do something interesting soon, like visit Yasukuni Shrine.

Mini-Post: Blue Hawaii Pepsi

In my favorite class ever, there's one guy who always sits by us who plays golf. You know how I know this? His left hand has a glove tan so bad that the skin on his hand is about five shades whiter than the rest of his skin. And he wears a golf hat. Anyway, today I noticed he was sipping on some Blue Hawaii Pepsi.

So of course I went out and got one for myself. I thought I would be appalled by the combination of pineapple, lemon, and Pepsi, but it is quite refreshing. It tastes more like fruit punch than anything. Just another example of Japanese companies introducing silly new things to keep consumers interested. I must admit, this strategy keeps me buying soda and snacks that I wouldn't normally spend money on. "Oh new flavor! I'll get one and try it, just to say I did..."

Ashlie: So Carly, does it taste like the motherland?
Me: Indeed.

Eigo wa chotto muzukashii da yo...*

My final midterm is in the form of a take-home essay. It's for my favorite international politics course that I always talk about -- I don't think I've discussed any of my other courses to the extent that I have with Anno's class. Anyway, Anno posted the essay questions on Moodle (the Japanese version of Blackboard) along with a tip sheet for writing essays.

This tip sheet, though I have only skimmed through it, is like a window into Japanese academic culture and language problems.

The opening sentence is, "Many of your sempai who took this course in the past (natives as well as non-natives) have had difficulty writing good English."

The "writing good English" part is universal. I know people at Creighton who can't write a decent essay to save their lives, and I'm sure it's much harder to write an essay in a second language (Aside: I think "...have had difficulty writing English well" sounds better? It sounds awkward as it is. Whatever). It also implies my English skillz, as in I haven't gotten a paper back with less than a B+ in two years, will secure me a good grade. At least better than those three guys I drew a few posts back.

The sempai-kouhai relationship is unique in Japanese culture. The sempai is like a big brother or big sister -- they help their kouhai in whatever way they can to make sure they succeed. In exchange, the kouhai is like the sempai's slave. Anyway, this sentence leads me to believe that everyone and their mom has some sort of sempai-kouhai relationship. Everyone's got someone looking out for them or is taking care of someone in this university setting. The natives and non-natives part confuses me a little. Does that mean gaijin and nihonjin can mix together? I wasn't aware I was allowed to have a nihonjin sempai or take on a nihonjin kouhai, it seems kind of weird.

Anno goes on about different grammatical structures that he finds students have problems with, like the use of apostrophes in certain words. Native English speakers wouldn't have trouble on most of the things he mentions, but the apostrophe thing is one of the most irritating grammatical mistakes I see from native English speakers. "It's", "its'", and "its" are all SUCH SMALL STUPID MISTAKES that soooooo many people I know make all the time. I'm sure someone can find an example of it in my own writing, possibly on this blog, but I do know better.

If I find any other gems worth mentioning I'll edit this post. For now, I'm going to go do Japanese homework.

EDIT: All this talk of grammar has me wondering about Japanese grammar. The girl to the left of me is writing something in Word in Japanese, but in the traditional up-down style. Most natives in the computer lab write their Japanese essays and whatnot in the Western style of left-right, like the girl to my right. And I'm just a crazy gaijin in the middle typing a blog in English.

*The title is supposed to translate as, "English is kind of difficult..."

Disneyland ni ikimashita!!!

I wish I knew how to write the title in Japanese.

I WENT TO DISNEYLAND TODAY YAAAAAAAAY!!! THE HAPPIEST JAPANESE PLACE ON EARTH!!!

I left the dorm at 730 this morning to get to The Japanese Magic Kingdom at 945. Tokyo station is just... unnecessarily LARGE; it took me like 10 minutes to get between the lines I needed to take. I was kind of scared to take such a long journey by myself, but John had to do it so I couldn't complain. I haven't seen dearest John since December 2005 so it was good to see him.

I saw *maybe* 15 gaijin the entire day, it was kind of weird. There are more foreign tourists at Asakusa on a given Saturday than there were in all of Disneyland. I suppose foreigners don't come to Japan to go to Disneyland, especially Americans since we've got two of those in our great nation, but it's still *Disneyland*.

Japanese society never ceases to amaze me. In the 8+ hours I was in the Disneyland park -- eating, waiting in line for rides, walking around, etc. -- I heard two kids cry. TWO KIDS. No tantrums, no fussing; some complaining and fidgeting but I sympathized. I really thought I'd get to witness a melt down during the wait at the Haunted Mansion, however. Mom, Dad, 4 year old son, and maybe 2 year old daughter were in front of us; Dad had just returned with water and gave a bottle to the son. Mom told him he had to share with the sister, and the sister had the biggest grin on her face sipping cold water from the bottle, watching the brother, SHE WAS SO SASSY. I feared the worst from the son, but it never came! You could tell he was getting anxious, but he never complained and was perfectly happy when Dad gave him the water back.

WHATEVER I KNOW YOU WANT PICTURES.

Entrance to *Tokyo Disneyland*!!!

John bought me Minnie Mouse ears, I bought the churro.
Why they have churros at Tokyo Disneyland I'll never know.
Please note the American flag in the background.




HI MICKEY! YAY! LET'S ALL WAVE! Everyone, adults and kids, waved at the characters. It was almost rude not to.

Anyone who knows me well knows that THIS IS MY RIDE...




... even if I'm not allowed to do stupid things in the boat.


Lunch at the Queen of Hearts Banquet Hall.


Heart-shaped hamburger!!!


Possibly worth the $18.


BYE BYE!!!

We hit up most of the big attractions -- Big Thunder Mountain, The Haunted Mansion, Star Tours, Pirates of the Caribbean (featuring new life-like Jack Sparrow being weird everywhere), Buzz Lightyear, I forget what else. I think we waited the longest for the Haunted Mansion, more than an hour, but it's like that in America. We found out toward the end of the day that some of the other big rides, like Indiana Jones, were in DisneySea next door. Damnit. I enjoyed what we did see, though. Buzz Lightyear was interesting:

I was wondering about the whole language thing before I got to Disneyland. Do the speaking characters speak Japanese or English? Would the songs on the rides be different? Can you really translate something like, "Savvy?" I'm not sure what Disney is trying to aim for with what they chose to change and what they didn't change, but it was all mixed up. The Greeting Parade theme song was English, but Mickey always spoke Japanese; some recordings were in English and some were Japanese. I heard English and Chinese instructions for one ride, but most announcements were in Japanese. So long as no one dies it doesn't matter.

We finished Disneyland at around 7pm. Ate dinner in Shinjuku, and did PURIKURA!!! I unintentionally chose a super girly set of backgrounds, but these things are supposed to be hilarious in my opinion.

My feet are tired and I am broke. Disneyland cost me about $100 ($60 ticket, $25 in food, the rest in small souvenirs) BUT I HAD FUN. I wanna go again. Damn you, Mickey!