Misadventures in Translation

It doesn’t matter where I go. People always want to write stories about me. Before entering the Yatsugatake Road Race this past weekend, I was interviewed by the prefectural newspaper, Yamanashi Nichinichi Shinbun (The Yamanashi Daily Newspaper). Actually, a guy was going around interviewing many people. I guess I stood out since I was the only white guy for miles. Below is a picture from the newspaper article and a quick translation.

Pictured above is Adam Wooldridge (22) of Kentucky, America and currently of Hokuto City. From August, he has been an Assitant Language Teacher of English at Elementary and Junior High Schools in the area. “I enjoy running,” said Adam before participating in the road race with a friend. “The beautiful nature of Yatsugatke is an enjoyable place to run. When asked how he would do in the race, he confidently said, “I will do my best.”

When I went to school today, I was asked at least 20 times if I had seen the paper. Next time, I need to win so I can really give them something to talk about. The best (creepiest?) thing I heard was when my principal came up to me to show me the article. We talked for a bit and then he pointed at the picture and said, “Handsome boy.” Random compliments can be a little weird to handle sometimes.

The race was very fun. Since I was running, I really couldn’t take any pictures. However here is a picture taken by someone else of one of the bridges I ran over. I would give them credit, but I can’t find their name.

I ran the 10K in 48 minutes and 39 seconds. Below is a picture of the certificate I got commemorating my triumphant run. It says my member number, my name, the running category of being a male and between high school age and 29 years old, and my time. At the bottom, it congratulates me for completing the race. It also says the date. The date is different than what most people are used to. For official or formal documents, the Japanese use a year system based upon the emperor’s reign. 2006 is Heian Year 18. So, the date on the paper reads, “Heian Year 18, October 22nd.” My birth-year was Showa Year 59. So, my birthday on official documents is Showa Year 59, July 31st. This system can be a little confusing. However, most people just use a chart to understand what year an older document was made in.

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After the marathon, I got a commerative photo with my Japanese friend, Reiko, and her students from Nirasaki East Junior High School. She is an English teacher at the school. Reiko is the one the far left. The photo was designed to be a fake news article from the Yamanashi Nichinichi Shinbun.

The Yatsugatake Road Race was my big event for this week. The Friday before the race, I hung out with my supervisor, Hinori Sakamoto, and his friends. We ate at a good restaurant and then dominated karaoke until the wee hours of the morning. Here are a few pictures.

Sakamoto is on the right and his friend Kei is on the left. We were buying “supplies” at 7-11 before going to the karaoke box.

Karaoke makes you do funny hand gestures.

Sakamoto and his girlfriend. I believe this was a song that required you to make a crazy face.

This guy shall remain nameless. Why? I only heard his name once and thus quickly forgot it. However, he was still really cool. You have to be really cool to be able to wear blue sunglasses indoors. Or outdoors for that matter. And look at those pants! He’d fit in Kentucky well.

No entry would be complete without my interesting anecdotes.

I have discovered that I can scare small children with English. In one day, I made two kids cry. What was the overly complex, intrusive English question? It was, “How old are you?” Normally, these kids understand what I teach them. But for some reason, these kids couldn’t absorb what I was teaching. When I went around gauging their progress, these two kids flipped out. I bet they’ll hate English for the rest of their life. Mission Accomplished.

The Japanese are overly amazed at my language abilities. Every time I write some simple kanji, I always hear, “You write kanji well. I’m impressed.” Sometimes, their heads explode from the shocking site of a foreigner being capable of writing kanji. I’ve been writing my lessons in Japanese and English to be posted on the bulletin board at my elementary school. One of the older female teachers oversaw my awesome (horrendous) kanji skills. This lead to the following conversation she had with a couple of the young, unmarried teachers.

• “Adam’s very smart.”
• “Yes, he is. Very studious. He studies a lot of kanji.”
• “You two are young. He’s smart. You should marry him.”
• giggles

This was all in blazing fast, supersonic, high-pitched Japanese. However, I still understood every bit of it. There was more, but it’s not that interesting. I’m afraid of the imminent sexual assault.

As for this weekend’s plan, I will be helping the international center in Kofu set up a Halloween event for the poor Japanese kids who have no clue what Halloween is. I’ll also be going to a Halloween party one night. On October 30th and 31st, I have a Mid-year Conference in Kofu. It’s not really mid-year, but who is counting anyways?

Now, for your moment of Japanese zen:

This is a video of a set of Japanese pranks. This theme is quite common. Get the guys nude. Then, suddenly force them into the public. Comedic gold in whatever country you’re in. However, I don’t think some of this stuff would last in the U.S. Too easy to sue someone.

If you can’t see the video, just go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BtNN6M97q8

This past weekend, I went to visit my host family in Gamagori, Aichi. It was a a lot of fun. I took about three and a half hours to get there. I rode an express bus from here to Nagoya and then took a train from Nagoya down to Gamagori. Nagoya is huge. It’s the fourth most populous city in Japan. I got to meet to people I hadn’t seen in over four years. This leads to the interesting title. One of the people I visited was one of my host mother’s friends. She was interesting four years ago and still is. Here is a sample conversation after I said that I like weightlifting:

• “Yeah, I’ve lost weight. I’ve been weight-lifting.”
• “I see. Touch, please.”
• “What?”
• “Touch, please.”
• Lots of laughter by everyone around. She then goes into this long conversation that all I can catch is that she likes strong men with good abs. Maybe I should start a fan club over here.

Later, there was a discussion about my homelife.

• “Do you live by yourself?”
• “Yes.”
• “Oh, that’s horrible. Do you clean your apartment and clothes by yourself.”
• “Umm, yeah.”
• “Wow. Do you cook your own meals.”
• “Yup, everyday.”
• “You need Japanese girlfriend.”
• “To learn Japanese?”
• “Well, yeah. That and to cook and clean for you.”

Yet another advantage of having a Japanese girlfriend revealed to me by a helpful older Japanese woman.

I did many interesting things during my visit. One of them, was visiting a bride getting ready for her wedding. We visited because it was my host mother’s friend’s daughter. Say that five times fast. Most contemporary Japanese weddings use both traditional Japanese dress and the Western white dress. Why do they use the Western white dress? I blame American movies. Japanese women think the white dress if very pretty. Seems a little silly to me. Just more money to waste.

This dress looks like it cost a lot and took too much time to put on. Good thing it’s fall or she would be burning up.

Here are some pictures of me and the host family:

See that defiant stance? We’re about to go take down the Yakuza. This is my host father, Manobu.

Peace, dawg. This is my host sister Eri. She’s the equivalent of an American High School Junior.

I like standing to next to Japanese people. It makes me look like a giant. This is my host mother, Yoshino.

This is my host family’s house. That’s a Prius in the front. That sign is for my host grandparent’s traditional Japanese inn that is near there. One night, they fed me a bunch of yakiniku (grilled beef). Good times always equals good food.

One day, we went to Nagoya. We went to the Nagoya Port. There were some interesting buildings there with a good view of Nagoya and the ocean. Next to the Nagoya Harbor was this placed called the Italian Village. It was a pretty good mock-up of Italy. The place was filled with good Italian restaurants and Italian clothing stores. Of course, the Italian clothes were ridiculously expensive.

The Nagoya Port Building

Look at that. A Red Lobster.

That big boat is an old Japanese Coastguard boat.

These were pictures from within the Italian Village. Some Italain man is earning a bunch of money. I saw a bunch of Italians running around directing Japanese people to buy unnecessarily expensive things.

And here is something else I forgot to talk about about in my other posts. I went to the Buddhist shrine, Mt. Minobu. We went here on August 10th – a few days after my arrival in Japan. The shrine was at the top of the mountain and we had to climb the stairs to the top. Why climb the stairs? Because it’s your gateway to Nirvana. I thought about racing up the stairs like Rocky Balboa and jumping around at the top. I don’t think the Buddhist priests would have appreciated that…

Going through this huge gate begins the ascension to Nirvana.

Oh, boy. This is gonna suck.

Look at all the slow Americans!!!

I walked up all those stairs for this? I was expecting balloons, ice cream, and fireworks. I want my free katana

I guess this is Nirvana…

I am not very good at keeping these short.

Next weekend, I’m running a 10K marathon in Yatugatake. It’s a mountain area in my town. Today, the weather was good and I ran 5 km to a flower center up a mountain and then 5 km back down. It was a good run. I’ll be running the marathon with a Japanese friend next Sunday.

And congratulations to the newborn baby in the family and the new ones coming along. Big families = baby factories. I need to join in on all this baby making action. I feel left out. Haha.
Now, for your moment of Japanese zen.

If you can’t see the video, just click this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WuiSKbqYtU

Japanese girls scream like this for everything. Even for small bugs. Some girls screams have been known to cause splitting migraines.

This update comes a little early. I’m gong to visit my host family down in Gamagori-shi, Aichi-ken this weekend. It’s been four years since I’ve seen them. I’m anticipating some good times.

Now, to explain the funny title. I enjoy talking with my coworkers. Every day, I get a thorough brain-overload in Japanese. I enjoy the practice. I also enjoy the random topics that arise. At one of my Elementary Schools, the teacher’s usually want me to give them a brief English lesson during the teacher’s meeting in the morning. One day, I was teaching them how to expresses what they like. I was getting the normal boring stuff such as, “I like tennis,” and “I like running,” until I got to one teacher. With a thick Japanese accent, he said, “I really like ladies.” It’s a good thing everyone else understood or I would have felt really stupid for laughing.

At my other elementary school, I hardly ever speak English to the teacher’s since most of them know very little English. Except this one older lady. They’re always impressed with my Japanese, but I really do need to study more. This lady had the perfect solution:

• “Do you know the fastest way to learn Japanese.”
• “Umm, no.”
• “You have girlfriend?”
• “No.”
• “You must get Japanese girlfriend.”
• I laugh and say, “Yeah, that would really help.”
• “You know what would be better? 3 Japanese girlfriends.”
• “….”

Looks like the Japanese are eager to give away their women to dirty foreigners.

As some of you know, I moved from my original apartment to a new one. My old apartment was in the mountain. The area was very pretty and getting free vegetables from my neighbors was nice, but I needed more convenience. Plus, I don’t believe my little car would be able to get me home in the winter. I know live much close to everything. My school is only a five minute drive from the school and only a 10 minute drive from the nearest station. The other apartment was free, but I’m much better off in this new location. So, here are the pictures of my tiny little abode.

Look! It’s Hometown Sakamoto! The little clown car is mine.

The yellow license plate indicates that the car uses an engine I could lift out by myself. I sometimes use the car for squats.

Yeah. I’ve got a pink toaster. You can shut your mouth. I’m secure enough in my manhood to own a pink toaster.

I’ve got two things every foreigner in Japan wants: a real bed and an air conditioner.

At least I have enough room for a back-flip.

It’s a good thing that I know Japanese or I might accidently hit the button for, “destroy-the-foreigner’s-clothes.”

I hear that people in Tokyo have to live in rooms smaller than my bathroom…

In Japan, you have three types of garbage: burnable, non-burnable, and recyclable. This poster goes into detail about what goes where and when to put it in the bins outside.

Too many kanji. A poster of all 1945 kanji that I’m working on learning. Even after learning these, I’ll still need to learn more. The average Japanese person knows between 3,000 to 4,000 kanji.

I usually don’t get much control of the classes at the junior high school. I have input on certain things, but the teaching stucture doesn’t deviate too much. The junior high kids have entrance examinations for high school. It is very important that they cover certain material. Competition to get into good high schools is fierce. If they don’t cover the things outlined by the Education Ministry, they jeopardize their chances of entering the high school they want.

However, I have free reign over the elective English class. For the two classes I’ve done, I just do fun things. As examinations get closer, I will make the class more serious to help them prepare. One of the first activities I did was Pictionary. This was pretty fun. I even put my name in the pile of possible cards. Well, here is the result:

So, I have a turd for hair, windows for eyes, a mountain for a nose, and a banana for a mouth. At least they got the big chin right. As soon as they drew the eyes, the kids were able to guess it was me. I guess they’re supposed to be big, shiny eyes. We had a discussion the previous week on the size of my optical lobes. It was a little confusing. The major point I gained from the conversation was that the Japanese love big Western eyes. Go me!
This week, I had the kids try some tongue twisters. I’m unstoppable at Japanese tongue twisters, so I thought some English ones would be fun. She sells seashell by the seashore. Oh boy. At first, it went it a little like this, “Shi, serrs, shisherrs, by the shishowa.” Ouch. However, they finally got it. It made me and my eardrums happy.

I also had the kids make some stories. I gave them an intial sentence as a prompt. Then, everyone had to write a single sentence to continue the story. Of course the girl groups ended up putting me in some love story and the boy groups ended up having me kick ass John J. Rambo style. Although the grammar sucked, it was still fun. One story stood out above the rest. I end marrying a bird and spawning creatures from Dr. Moreau’s Island. My favorite sentence was, “Dinner is very DERICIOUS.”

If you need a bigger version, click here

In the last post, I forgot to post the sports day photos for Akeno Elementary School. These are much cuter than pubescent Japanese students.

The first and second year students getting ready to enter the field and take some names.

This is a traditional Japanese dance being performed by the youngin’s

You know what? I’m getting tired of watching Japanese kids run.

Some game where the objective is to grab the hats from the opposing team. The teacher in red is Aiyama-sensei. She’s almost the same age as me. Nudge, nudge, wink wink.

Who are the kids competing against? Me.

Yippie! We’re up-to-date again! Why are these so long? Maybe it’s because I’m too verbose. Probably, so. Only a verbose person would use the word verbose.

Now, for your Japanese Moment of Zen:

You’ll need flash player for this bad boy. If you don’t have it, here is what your missing:

Good ole’ Hard Gay. I’ll just let the movie explain everything.

If you can’t see the movie, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5aXjXath2Y&eurl=

I’ve actually had elementary kids come up to me and ask, “You know this? FUUUUUUU!” It’s a good thing I knew about Hard Gay before coming or I would have been even more freaked out by little kid pelvic thrusts…