Beckteria

Attack of the Killer Cold

Well, okay, still not 100% yet. That`s okay. I woke up freezing my ass off under the electric blankey and thought I was gonna hack up both lungs. What can you do? I am very fortunate this week, however, and only have 1 class today, none tomorrow, and 1 on Thursday. I think I can probably handle most of it. Mostly because I have my lessons mostly done for once. Procrastinating per usual.

On the fun side, I`m gonna teach the kids about rhyme--Beastie Boys anyone? A lot of them love rap. In fact, most of them know more lyrics than I do to many, many English songs. It`s rather embarrassing. But, that`s what happens when you spend your allowance at karaoke. I`m starting to know a couple of J songs--especially the English parts--so, I guess it makes sense. It`s a lot easier with the words flashing up on screen (although the J songs use kanji which I often can`t read unless it has the furigana).

One of my favorite students always asks me if I know some band or another. "Beckie, do you know Metallica?" Funny. They`re quite talented, those J kids.

On the other hand, I guess that they`re not really taught to think critically. I did a class on Martin Luther King, Jr. and I told them how important it is to be tolerant of other people. It`s important to treat everyone the same--something that they don`t think about because it`s so homogenous here. My principal just watched the last class I did on that topic and he thought it was really interesting. They`re not taught to think like that at all.

I was speaking to my vice-principal the other day and he explained to me how J people remember numbers so well. It`s one helluva crazy mnemonic system that`s for damned sure. He asked how we remember numbers and I said that I just simply memorize them. (I used to be the human phone phonebook.) But, that in the U.S. we don`t emphasize the memorization of numbers (the square root of 2 for example which he did in fact remember) or dates (he remembered when Shakespeare was born and died, well that`s assuming that we really know who Shakespeare is, but that`s another issue).

This really explains my Japanese classes back at the U of MN and how they tried to force us to memeorize things that we really thought was better to understand the concept. No, J people don`t think conceptually generally speaking, they memorize. Very different. Explains why they`re better at math and science though. J people also always use the same expression for explict things. Very much imbedded into them. For example, they can`t not yell "irryashaimase" at you when you enter into a store that they`re working at. Don`t mess with them or they get confused. (Some of my friends like to be sacrastic or fuck with the staff, but it ends in confusion which can be very funny.)

posted by Bex @ 11:12 AM