Rocking in Hakata

Consider this Friday’s post, just delayed by a day. I recently saw the new Weezer video for their song Pork and Beans from a “New Self-Titled ‘Red Album’ out June 3rd, 2008.” I was quite amused by the video. It includes some internet video stars – mostly memes. One such meme was the dramatic prairie dog and Japanese pop group MiniMoni. Of course, unlike most of the real cameos, MiniMoni does not make an appearance. Nor does the prairie dog. By the way, a fellow South Carolinian is in the video, as well, making the most (to date) of her highly televised goofup. Here’s the source material.

Another Japan related theme is in the video. It’s the classic “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” Zero Wing screwed up translation meme. But yeah. More coverage here and here and here and here and here.

Deas Customary Drivel, Humor, Media, Music, Unsolicited Commentary, Video

Here’s a video of me cooking with some students at Oshima High School. Oshima is my smallest school this year, consisting entirely of only 12 third year students. It will close in spring of 2009. It’s sad, really. (But Iwagi High School had only 6 students, and closed this spring. It used to be my smallest school.) Anyway, time is precious here. Everybody is crazy friendly at this school – and they’re all really relaxed. We try our best in English classes, but I find myself doing things unrelated to English more often than not here, be it volleyball, mask making, or cooking. This video shows us making fried rice, lettuce soup, and kashiwa mochi (glutinous rice cakes filled with sweet red bean paste, wrapped in oak leaves). You can hear the kids cheering and jeering one another, see them hamming it up for the camera, and of course, practicing English. Took us about 2 hours to make and eat all the food. Good times.

In fact, if you listen carefully between 00:43 and 0:52, you hear a fascinating exchange. One girl yells “I love you Deas!” and the other one begins saying “Poo. Poopu. Poop. What was it again?” to which the first girl replies “Poop in Mr. Kenya’s pants!” Ha ha ha ha. Awesome. Mr. Kenya is their English teacher and a godsend of a JTE. But I don’t think he poops his pants.

Deas Customary Drivel, Media, Video, 日本語

When I culled the election themed editorial cartoon, I also noticed this one. I thought I’d toss it up today, for giggles. It’s from the same issue of the newspaper. Awww. Cute kid. And now for the text and translation portion of the program.

地球防衛家のヒトビト
「原油がどんどん高くなっていくなー」
「そのうちなくなるかもしれないものね‥」
「石油ってどうやってできるの？」
「植物が地中で長い時間かけて石油になるんだよ」
「‥‥‥」
「ボクがオトナになるまでに間にあうかなー？」

Earth Defense Family – Hitobito*
“Crude oil is getting more and more expensive, huh?”
“What’s more, it might run out.”
“How is oil made?”
“Plants left in the ground for a long time become oil.”
(Sounds of physical effort.)
“I wonder if it’ll be ready by the time I’m an adult?”

*Hitobito is the name of the comic strip. It means “people.”

I feel like this kid. Ha ha. Only I want at the remaining oil to use while searching for the next big thing. Which isn’t ethanol. Sigh. Ethanol subsidies are a big problem. But I digress.

Deas Customary Drivel, Politics, Unsolicited Commentary, 日本語

Whenever I get out of town for a weekend, I do some minor shopping. Not at designer stores. Not for clothing, usually. Not for toys or even omiyage. Lately, it’s been for ingredients. And food prep stuff. When I went to Hiroshima to see Beauty & the Beast (the Broadway Musical) in Japanese, I had foodstuffs on my mind too.

I was originally hunting for tortillas, cilantro, and any kind of foreign candy that drew my eye. I came away with 24 flour tortillas, some taco seasoning, a big bag of shredded coconut, some tandoori chicken seasoning, lima beans, and 2 ice sphere trays. I bought the ice trays at the Tokyu Hands I passed by on the way to the Promart grocery store, where I picked up the other stuff. They’re cool – they imitate something I’ve seen in a restaurant or two. Instead of a bunch of cubes, you put one sphere in your glass, just smaller than the diameter of the glass. When there’s liquid poured in, the ice melts more or less evenly, keeping the spherical effect all nice until you’re done. It’s a gimmick, I know, but it’s cool!

Suffice it to say, I am still hunting for cilantro (which is called coriander here – just specify that you want the leaves / herbs, not the part that we call coriander / spice in the U.S.). I’ll be checking Imabari shortly. Now I’ve added a skillet or griddle to my list of things I want to grab. Why? I’m tired of running to Okayama or Hiroshima to buy my flipping tortillas! And now that my favorite Mexipan restaurant is closing, I am determined to learn how to make them from scratch myself. If I can get it down, I promise to share the knowledge. (If I get my friend at the Mexipan place to teach me the recipe for pumpkin tacos, on the other hand, I’ll be selling it to you…mwa ha ha ha. I kid. Maybe.)

Anyhoo, in celebration, I made myself a nice quick dinner of a lemon pepper coconut chicken sandwich, sweet corn, and cinnamon apples. Mmmm. I knew that ground chicken meat could be good for something. And more experimentation is called for!

Deas Culinary, Customary Drivel

Ha ha – man, I’ve been uncomfortable during cleaning time for the last week or so. The students who get to choose the music rotate once in a while, and usually the genre just shifts from bubblegum-sweet J-pop to overproduced poppy ska / punk imitation J-rock. I should be so lucky. This time, however, the lucky soul chose some mix track by DJ Kaori (note: she pronounces it KEori, despite romanizing it as KAori). According to Wikipedia Japan: “DJ KAORI（ディージェイ・ケオリ）はニューヨーク在住のDJである。1992年に渡米。洋邦アーティストの楽曲のリミックス作品を多く発表している。” In English, “DJ KAORI （Deejay Keori) is a DJ living in New York. She went to America in 1992. She prolifically releases remixes of songs by western artists.”

Cleaning time is about 15 minutes long on your average day, and is scheduled for 1:15 – 1:30 in the afternoon. That usually means 3 or 4 songs. But with a remix, you get more. This is bad news here. The track currently being broadcast over our speakers here at school would get me fired in a minute flat in America. They’re not radio edits, either. These kids are happily cleaning to some really raunchy stuff. I’m just lucky that it’s in slang or too fast for even the other English teachers to pick up on it. I’d rather them be ignorant about the filth in the songs, really. Makes me sad.

I talked to my supervisor about it today, just to sound her out. She agreed with me that the kids just like the beat and the overall sound of the music. They have no idea what the words are. I explained the concept of radio edits, “beeping out” and censoring songs, and the fact that it’s part of American culture that makes me feel ashamed. I can’t for the life of me figure out why people get rich rapping about street justice and glitchy moral compasses, the glories of drug abuse, and their myriad disgusting, misogynistic views on women and their reasons for being. I mean, sure, other genres have their dark and shady spots too. But gangsta rap is weird. I just don’t like the juxtaposition of my kids innocently pretending to clean while bopping their heads to this stuff. I’d gladly take the sugary squeaky-voiced pop music and boy bands back. Ugh.

Deas Customary Drivel, Unsolicited Commentary

Hey – sorry for the lack of activity yesterday. I meant to get a video of my students making fried rice, soup, and red bean sweets online – but I failed to do so. I had class preparations and then I fell asleep earlier than I had planned. Oh well – you’ll see it next week, I’m sure. In the meantime, I wanted to let you know about a few small updates to the site that won’t be super apparent to you.

First, the SABRE (Simple Anti Bot Registration Engine) plug-in put together by Didier Lorphelin is up and running on this site. So far, it kicks butt. You’ll only notice it if you try to register – because you’ll be asked to fill out an alphanumeric CAPTCHA field and answer a simple math question to prove you’re human. (And if you happen to be using an IP address that’s on a blacklist, you’ll be unable to register even if you can jump through the hoops.) It is highly recommended for those who need to kill registration spam. It has caught 5 spam registrations since I turned it on last night.

It might be worth noting that I am hoping to use the reCAPTCHA plug-in when it is updated to version 2.8. I put in a request for the ability to plop it onto the Wordpress User Registration page instead of in the comment fields of every post, and got a prompt response that it was not only added to the to do list for 2.8, but already done! Ha ha. Excellent.

Alright – the other cool thing is that my site has JUST been approved to participate in the closed Woopra beta. And man, it is looking cool. It is most definitely the “new hotness” so far as statistics go. I can’t wait to try out the live analytics client when I get home today. (Before I head to the bus stop, that is.) Ha ha. Just gotta count down now… Don’t worry, it does not violate your privacy or tell me anything about you that I can’t find out without using it. It’s just the slickest, most accessible way to access the useful information so that I can improve the site. Yay! If you run a site and you haven’t signed up yet, I recommend getting in line over there. I waited about 2.5 weeks for activation, and they plan on going through mass approvals within a few weeks as they update their infrastructure to handle it.

Anyhoo – I’ll see you when I’m back from Hiroshima and a Disney-filled weekend!

Deas Customary Drivel