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So, I’ll be teaching a physics class to a bunch of high school kids soon. They’ve never taken any physics course before, and they’ll be doing this one during “English Day” - so it’ll be in their second language. I’m not worried, though. I am confident that I will be able to successfully impart an intuitive (though not mathematical) understanding of the rudimentary physics of sound and the Doppler Effect. In order to help the JTE who will be assisting me in class, I started looking up vocabulary I might use. I was shocked at how much simpler it is to think of things in Japanese than they are in English when it comes to physics. The words mean exactly what they say. Brilliant! (I was inspired to write this after Alex posted about the etymology of the word “sesquipedalian” and how kanji, in these cases is “the layman’s best friend.”) So, so true. Here’s a list of scientific terms, and their co-parts in Japanese.
sound - 音 (おと)
sound wave - 音波 (おんぱ)
medium - 媒体 (ばいたい)
speed of sound - 音速 (おんそく)
pressure wave - 圧力波 (あつりょくは)
to vibrate / to oscillate - 振動する (しんどうする)
vibration / oscillation - 振動 (しんどう)
frequency - 振動数 (しんどうすう) 周波数 (しゅうはすう) [Thanks Bryan!]
period - 周期 (しゅうき)
hertz - ヘルツ
wavelength - 波長 (はちょう)
amplitude - 振幅 (しんぷく)
sine wave (sinusoidal wave) - 正弦曲線 (せいげんきょくせん)
Doppler Effect - ドップラー効果 (どっぷらーこうか)
I love it. “Frequency” is translated, in scientific terms, as “number of vibrations.” “Period” is “circuit time.” “Amplitude” is “shake breadth.” And then there are the obvious verbatim terms like “sound wave” (sound + wave), “speed of sound” (sound + speed), “wavelength” (wave + length). I guess part of the reason I’m feeling sure I can get the idea across is because the Japanese vocabulary is much easier to wrap your head around than the English. (At least, that’s true for me.) As long as they’ve got that working for them, they’ll be ok when we do attempt it all in English.
This is just a quick note. I use Firefox, love it, and suggest that you use it too. In my opinion, it’s the best browser out there, so why not help them establish a record next month? All you have to do is download the new version on the day it’s released. Sounds like a good deal to me. Click on the appropriate button to read about it in your language. 
According to my teachers, the news last night announced that we’re officially in the rainy season here. That’s right, folks, it’s Plum Rain, take 2. This time I’ve invested in a new rain suit and some towels to keep on board the scooter, so I should be ok.
After cleaning out the spam folder on my email account today, I had a thought. What sorts of spam plagues Japanese email accounts? What’s it like? In English, at least, you get the requisite offers for products to enlarge various reproductive organs, or slim your build. Then there are the drugs and get rich quick schemes. What sorts of things dominate Japanese email spam?
I am hearing rumblings of the new people coming to join the ranks of ALTs here. In preparation, I’m starting a Google Map to help explain my area. Right now it only delineates the bigger islands in Kamijima-cho and the area in which I teach. But I plan to add to it as I go. If any other Imabari dwellers want to add to it and expand upon it, let me know.
I’m having vocabulary fun thanks to Alex. He wrote a little entry using the words he studied, so I thought I’d try my hand at it too. Here’s a passage using 23 words that I didn’t fully comprehend, have habitually misused my entire life, or completely had never encountered before from the first 2 pages of vocabulary. Yay! I’m going to use as many as I can in each sentence to make it short. It will not be pretty…here goes.
Chester was a rather perspicacious young lad. Gifted with foresight, he was often viewed as a bellwether among his student peers. His reputation was one of an angelic, nearly sacerdotal, abstemious bookworm. Privately, however, Chester was a deeply supercilious soul. His own recognition of his intellectual gifts allowed him to look down on the others as mere lolling imbeciles, playing about in the muck and dross running in the culverts of academia. In his nearly preternatural state of enlightenment, they were but a ceaseless background clangor. Though his thoughts were filled with vituperative derision for his classmates, they never seemed to catch on. Indeed, Chester was neurotically craven about maintaining his image. It was not that he was complaisant, though. He simply radiated a naturally mawkish image - that of a studious misfit awkwardly attempting the insuperable; to earn the respect of those surrounding him. In reality, he had a surfeit of confidence. He knew he was destined for bigger and better things. His ego had sufficient puissance to suborn Chester’s entire being into coldly regarding his present situation in the manner of an explorer who enters his bivouac smugly at dusk, having seen an augury outline of his goal on the horizon, knowing that the following morning will bring a prefatory taste of his eventual emolument. Chester was hit by a bus, but it’s ok, because he was a total jerk. The end. Ha ha.
Holy crap, we DO say it!?
Man, I remember arguing about whether or not people say this without tacking a “later” or “tomorrow” or some other word on the end. It struck me as so unnatural when my kids said it to me after class. So, one of two things is going on here. We either say it, or we are teaching Japanese kids to speak like aliens in American cartoons. Hmm.
SEE YOU!
Ok - here’s my last post about the Beauty & the Beast musical that I saw in Hiroshima. I wanted to follow up on the last post by reporting that the words to the musical versions of a few songs, if not all of them, are entirely different from those found in the animated film. For a refresher, you can first listen to the English and Japanese film versions of Beauty & the Beast.
If you’d like to see the lyrics and their translation, go back to this post and take a look. Now, check out the Japanese adaptation of the same number, but this time from the Broadway musical. It’s pretty much a completely different song from the get-go. The lyrics and translation are all here for your perusal “after the jump.”
I am now a criminal, officially. I was caught speeding on my scooter on my way to the hardware store. However, this post is a positive one. I know, you’re thinking “you just said you got caught speeding, how is this positive?” Well, let me tell you. This is a case where I was most certainly in the wrong - I was speeding. In my defense, it was down a hill that I’m overly comfortable with - the slope of which would cause you to “speed” (go over 30 km/hr) by merely coasting downhill without applying any throttle. But, I failed to apply brakes too, which makes me a qualified speeder. I got a ticket, 2 points on my record, and a furikomi slip to pay my fine. Sigh. My fault, though, really. Sure, I was only speeding for a few seconds - but if those are the seconds during which they clock you, you’re a speeder. Ha ha.
So, now to the positive side of the post. I was pulled over and approached by a motorcycle officer. He explained the situation to me and started going through the paperwork. I was really anxious about it, since I’ve read all of the common horror stories about police in Japan dealing with foreigners. And because up until now I was a moving violations virgin. This was my first ticket ever - in America or Japan, in approximately 10 years of driving. I am happy to report that I was treated justly, courteously, professionally, and rightly by the officer who gave me my ticket. He made sure I understood what was happening, asked me to clarify some details for his paperwork, answered all of my questions about how this would impact my license and all. He made sure not only that his paperwork was all in line (and who can blame officers for wanting their butts covered, anyway), but also that I was taken care of in every sense of the word before he pulled off again. And he did all of this without condescending to me, or complimenting me on my Japanese. I was just another guy to him, which is what I want to be in the end, really.
In short: I did not feel discriminated against in the least. Don’t believe all the horror stories you read. The jerks get the spotlight too much of the time. And there are people out there like Officer Shimizu of my local police department. I’m ashamed and sad that I got a ticket, as well as that I’ll have to fork over nearly a hundred bucks to cover it, but my faith in Japanese people got a reality check again. And it was mightily refreshing.
