Rocking in Hakata

This post could also be called “Michael Scott’s Cultural Misunderstandings.” Yes, I’ve got 2 more clips from the US version of the The Office that relate to Japan. Wrong, but funny. And the suicide bit does play on a common misconception, anyway. The concierge-cum-geisha, though? I dunno about that. Ha ha. Oh, Michael Scott, how you sadden and delight me simultaneously with your incredible awkwardness. These clips were taken from Episode 7 of Season 5, “Business Trip.”More please!

To conclude, here is the wisdom gained about things Japanese from these clips:

“In Japan, you must always commit suicide to avoid embarrassment.”

“A concierge is the Winnipeg equivalent of a geisha. This is a woman who has been trained in the fine art of fanciness and pleasure. And when you meet one, it is intoxicating. Just what the doctor ordered.”

If you missed the last clip, where some Japanese is spoken (poorly) on The Office, go check it out!

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Round 3 is screeching to an awkward halt today in front of your eyes! I thought I might continue this posting series that I started waaay back in early 2007. It’s only 2 posts long thus far, and rather than rewrite, I’ll copy some intro text from the previous installments - I had far less traffic back then, so people may have missed them. Then I’ll move into the stories. I’ve culled 17 primo stories this time, so I’ll post half now and half later this week. Enjoy!

The following stories were written by students at one of my schools during a chain writing activity. I won’t put their names or year in this post. I purposefully left all of the original mistakes in the text - so these are copied verbatim, incorrect capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammar included. I have been correcting these for about 2 days, and thought I’d share some of the ones that struck me as particularly interesting. This is not to make fun of their English (though I excuse native speakers who giggle at the funny stuff), but to show what kind of weird stuff comes out when you tell them to write with a time limit and nearly zero direction. It also shows you the level of English that I tend to deal with in high schools. Each story was written by a group of 4 in 5 minute shifts without any outside ideas. I hope you enjoy it.
- Student Stories, 20 February 2007

Ready for round 2? Come and get some love. (Or a suspicious box of bananas, depending on which story you read first.)
- Student Stories Part Deux, 23 February 2007

Alright, on to the good stuff. This time I’ve got images up with the students’ actual handwriting. Because they wrote in pencil, sometimes it can be hard to read. I checked them though, and I feel like most of them are legible. Also - please view them on a screen with an appropriate resolution, or the pop-up will automatically resize them to fit. If you need to read them on a smaller screen, I recommend clicking with your mouse wheel on the links to open the images in tabs.

Which story was your favorite? Let me know in the comments. Ha ha. Fun stuff. Also, if you found these really difficult to read, I’ll put up a plain text copy of the stories. Just let me know!

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This is a clip from a recent Mythbusters episode in which Adam and Jamie are attempting to polish poop. Frustrated with their methodology, Adam goes to a guy named Jason Arnold to learn how to make doro-dango. (And that’s pronounced “dahn-goh,” not “dang-o,” by the way. Wince-worthy, really.) Doro means mud, and dango is a type of small spherical, traditional Japanese sweet. You’d be fine translating it as “mud balls” or “mud dumplings.”

Anyhoo, I first learned of doro-dango via Japan Probe, where a post linked through to Professor Fumiyo Kayo’s English language instruction page at the Kyoto University of Education. It sure seems that they’ve become quite the trend elsewhere since catching the public’s eye a few years ago, thanks to Professor Kayo’s revival efforts. If you’re curious, you can find instructions for how to make doro-dango all over the web. (There’s even a dorodango.com! It’s the personal site of Bruce Gardner.)

Anyway, I found this application fascinating - using the doro-dango method to find out whether or not poop will take a luster. Kind of gross, sure, but kind of a cool cultural, artsy solution, too. What do you think?

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Man, I have had this same problem for the longest time. Irksome for an east coaster. Also, the tool tip (if you mouse over the comic on the home page) reads: “Also, is it just me, or do Japan and New Zealand look suspiciously similar? Has anyone seen them at a party together?” I think my NZ JET friends would have to answer, “heck yeah.”

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So, it turns out that there are sand dunes in Tottori Prefecture. Why? I have no idea. They are naturally occurring, though. Or at least they are under protection as a natural monument according to the Japanese Wikipedia entry. But in any event, they are a tourist attraction now. On my most recent visit to Tottori City, I made the trek out to see these mythical dunes. (And by trek, I mean short bus ride from the station.) It is really uncanny how the greenery sort of abruptly becomes coarse, patchy, and then…well…desert-like. The area has a number of attractions.

For instance, there are (obviously) the sand dunes themselves. You can walk out barefoot, like I did, carrying your shoes. I’m told that this is impossible in summer due to the intensely hot sand. You can also take a horse-drawn cart ride down to the beach - but it looks really boring. Just trying to save you a few hundred yen. You’ll find the lady standing on a pole (which was newsworthy just a while back - no rhyme or reason to it other than she causes people to look at her curiously) and the horse carts at the closest point to the parking lot. You can also take a camel ride there, which seems very similar to a pony ride or any other 2 minute loop around a set track carnival ride would provide. It’s cheaper if you ride 2 to a camel.

When you’re done checking out the dunes, you can wash your feet off just to the left of the stairway back down to the parking lot. If you’re like me, you’ll gaze at all of the license plates as you walk by - there were people from ALL over Japan at these dunes. I was honestly pretty surprised. Once you’re clean and you’ve got your socks and shoes back on, you can go grab some Asian pear (nashi) soft serve ice cream. This stuff is amaaaazing. I’d have gotten it twice before leaving had I any room in my stomach. Ha ha. You’ve really got to try it. You can walk through the typical souvenir shops, too, if you like. Then you can head into the “Sand Museum.” It’s basically a collection of sand sculptures that are semi-protected from the elements. They were pretty cool for the most part. After you’re done with that, go wait for the bus back into the city.

Below you’ll find some pictures that I took, but I’d urge you to check out this gallery for some much cooler pictures of the dunes without people stomping all over them. They look far more….authentic. Also - the dunes are a bit of an optical illusion. It is really difficult to judge distance up and down them for some reason. The pictures don’t do them justice. Perhaps I’ll upload one of the faux 3D shots I took to help you get a feel for the distance. Anyone who is capable of crossing their eyes and wants to see a 3D shot, let me know in the comments and I’ll edit it and get it up here for you.

Bonus: I accidentally came upon an enka song by Mizumori Kaori called Tottori Sakyuu or “Tottori Sand Dunes” when I was searching in Japanese. It’s interesting - and if you’re at an intermediate level in Japanese, it’s pretty easy to understand the lyrics. Click here to watch it in a pop-up overlay - the clip was originally found on YouTube here, but embedding is disabled, so I’ve hosted it here.

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