Of course they don't have numbers!

You might not agree with my style, but I spend the first couple of months with a new class sort of "breaking" them. I don't argue, I don't scold, but I make a point of forcing them to question certain opinions and stereotypes they have. Besides being good in itself, I have found over the years that students who stick to the same old litany of truisms never actually improve at English too. My theory is simple: they never have to use their brains.

So people that immediately fall back on the "Japanese people are shy, Japan is a small country, foreigners are noisy, we love nature" mantra aren't actually having a conversation or putting their brain in gear. I don't insist people like my country or its politics or movies or whatever, but it just makes my job and my life much easier if I have a room full of people willing to accept something now, or to apply a little critical thought.

I really really can't emphasize enough how people who don't break this habit of just repeating truisms and headlines never progress in their English either. They might go to English lessons diligently for ten years, in fact that type often does, attendance counts for more that participation in their world-- but if you taught them on day one, continued for a year, left for ten years then came back and taught them again after ten years they'd still be right where you left them after a year of instruction. But people who are willing to reconsider their assumptions and recall later that something they heard on TV doesn't match with the facts- those people advance much more quickly as English speakers too. Someone should look into this.

So anyway I have a new class, and they still frequently do the following "must be Japan only" sonata:

Student A: Kirk-sensei, how do you say QKRGFRFGDSKU in English?

["QKRGFRFGDSKU" being a technical term like Hypoglycemia, a mythical beast like a gremlin without direct equivalent (how do you say Leprechaun in Japanese?), or maybe just a word that got garbled because the speaker was munching on crackers.]

Me: Sorry? Could you give me a hint? Is it an animal or a kind of sickness?

Student A: You know, QKRGFRFGDSKU. ...QKRGFRFGDSKU?

Me: Is it a law? Do people keep it in their home? Is it only for women?

Student B: Ah, of course, they don't have that in America.

Me: No, maybe we do, I just didn't understand the question. Please try again. Is there a simpler word for it?

Student A: Oh, they don't have it in America. Hmm, of course, ONLY JAPAN.

It's understandable to think that maybe only Japan has a high speed train, or charcoal ink drawings, but more often than not it's a much more mundane thing, like mosquitoes or fireflies, graduation ceremonies and so on. (The opposite happens too, like "Caterpillar company? What's that? We don't have earth moving equipment companies (like Kobelko and Komatsu) in Japan. We are small. Airports come out of the ground. 3M and DuPont make chemicals? Ooh, shocking. We don't have anything like that (Mitsubishi, Tooray, Fuji, et al) here because we like nature. Nylon grows on trees. The steel in our cars comes from recycled hamster tears."

So the one that I got the other day with the new class was: numerical columns.

That's right, the US couldn't possibly have columns or at least names for columns when writing ones, ten, hundreds. I didnt understand the Japanese word, so they proceeded to draw some lines and write a number like "367" and explain how "this column is tens"

It was a good explanation and I understood right away once they did so, but they took a lot of convincing to accept that in America (well in English or I imagine almost any language except for maybe some rain forest tribes) we are familiar with the terms.

In fact, not that I care, but I have a feeling that years ago in Japan there was less familiarity with the concept. True, the soroban has been around for a while, but traditional Japanese writing uses characters, not numbers, a bit like Roman numerals. It's easy to line up 23 + 14 but try doing that with XXIII + XIV -- you can't, that's why people all over the world use "arab" numbers.

Hillary's Visit = Good

I've lived here through several US elections and have often seen my Japanese acquaintances boil the entire Presidential race down to a single issue, usually "So and so will be good for Japan" or "He doesn't like Japan."

Time and again, though they might admire her, many Japanese were of the persuasion that Presidential Wannbe or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton doesn't like Japan -- she prefers China.

I think some of this perception was due to a remark she said a few years ago (?) along the lines of "In the 21st century, the US relationship with China will be of the greatest importance." Ok, yeah, she didn't say Japan was No. 1 but c'mon, I doubt there's a lot of Brits whining that the US doesn't like the UK because it likes China. (I'm sure they're whining about something else...) OF COURSE the relationship between the US and China will affect the whole world, can anyone disagree with that? and OF COURSE Japan is important to the US as an ally, in fact perhaps for that very reason.

ANYhew, maybe against her wishes (ha ha), President Obama sent Hillary here on her first trip abroad as his Secretary of State. Abroad? Secretary? I can hear the punch lines now. He also invited PM Aso to visit the USA, as the first foreign head of state to be invited to the US. The Japanese public seems pleased by this but I have a feeling it won't make it into their long term memory. Sorry to be blunt but the complaining reminds me of an 8-year old with a box full of toys who screams at his parents "You never buy me anything!" In that situation, my reaction is, might as well not buy anything.

But Hillary came and everybody I talk to seems impressed. She carried herself well, held up under a hard schedule--- I think the real feeling that comes out is she seems to be in such stark contrast to the unpopular Aso administration. Icing on the cake, same time as Hillary's visit, Aso's finance minister had to resign because during a financial crisis with worse news every day, he shows up slobbering drunk for a press conference at the G-7 conference in Italy.

So what people here see on TV is Hillary Clinton, attractive, intelligent, successful, self made, almost president of the USA (like her or not you have to admit people see these qualities in her), traveling around the world on little sleep, no problem, followed by news stories of their elite scion, hostess-bar-VIP, Prime Minister who can't read Japanese characters very well, and his finance minister red faced and slurring his speech before the international press. I'm not necessarily making these calls, just reporting on the mood.

It's kind of like during the 80's and it seemed like Japan Inc. was gonna take over the world, POTUS No. 41, George H. W. Bush, (nickname "Magog" in Skull and Bones secret society for his sexual prowess) came over here and threw up in the lap of the Japanese PM. An embarrassing own goal when you're already down 3-1.

Americans Eat Fast Food

I often don't have a choice in the material I use in class, and many times there will be a section about guns, drugs, or racism in the US and I have to give a spur of the moment summary of the issue to a room full of Japanese people who just spent the last 45 minutes trying to master their new English phrase "What time is check out?"

Over the years I've noticed that a lot of the half-assed "old school" textbooks that are the favorites of high schools and adult continuing education here find the need to perpetuate and exaggerate stereotypes under the guise of culture. Imagine if your childhood history book summed up chinese culture with "chinese like to gamble, and they used to painfully bind the feet of their young.", "Germans enjoy math and taake great pride in their work.", "Italians think romance is the most important thing in life" and "Some african tribes kill albino babies..." and you get the idea of what passes for cultural factfinding by the ministry of education. These might be side notes in books that have chapters like "We must appreciate other cultures" and "The dangers of Stereotyping."

Honestly, I can't tell you how many times I've opened a book that has the approval of the Ministry of Education, only to find sections about how other countries are dangerous or Spanish people don't like work. It's one thing if your teacher makes opinionated remarks based on his long visit to Spain but it's another thing if the ministry of Education makes books with similar content I think.

Anyway, one of the topics that comes up a lot is: Americans eat fast food (and no one else does.)

Okay, it's true, Americans do eat fast food and a lot of the big multinational purveyors of junk food are US companies but (do I need to explain this?) it's wrong for so many reasons.

1. It ignores other large purveyors of junk, like local Japanese fast food chains, chocolate companies, big international ones Nestle, Unilever.

2. It overlooks the bad, homegrown eating habits in Japan, such as instant noodles and take out boxed lunches. Not to mention long time eating habits, that arent classified as fast food but in my book are: Izakaya pubs - I love them but everythng on the menu is wrapped is grease and salt. Or ramen shops? The list goes on... Why is fried chicken in Japan a fast food only if it's served by KFC?

3. It sums up the USA, a nation of over 350 million people into a few phrases, basically "Americans eat crap hamburgers all the time and we don't and we must resist them." Have a lot of Japanese vegetarian friends? I don't, but I know a lot of Americans who are.

4. And probably most important of all for me: even if the sterotype were 100% true, **what the heck is it doing in an English conversation book?**

My German textbooks had sections about famous prime ministers, how German Xmas is different than American Xmas, the story of the Berlin Wall. Japanese texts tend to have sections about Cherry Blossom viewing and haiku.

So what would you think about a publisher that instead made the little cultural highlights in his German texts be "The efficiency with which Germans gassed people" and "A nation of alcoholics?"

Or if publishers in the US or UK had chapters in their texts like
"Koreans: second class citizens" and
"Japanese toilet culture -- anal obsessions?",
"Anorexic mothers, fathers who go to brothels, bullying, teen suicide -- it's tough being a Japanese kid!" or
"Japan's passion for erotic fetish comic books" etc.

You'd say "Well, I guess those things exist in Japan, but what the heck is the publishers problem? Do they have an agenda or are they just stupid? Do they show a true portait of what life in that country is really like? Do they even try? And do 15 year old kids studying Japanese language getting their first exposure to the country really need to be persuaded of this?"

So anyway, below is a part of a text I scanned. The topic was "slow food" and how Italians, like the Japanese, appreciate it. Then in the corner was "Fun Facts" about how american's don't know a darn thing about eating right. -- Even if you can't read Japanese, you can easily note the steady procession of the following words: hamburger, pizza, cereal, frozen food, french fries... note the pudgy American kid at the bottom digging in to a big hamburger too.




This was not taken from a conversation in a bar. It is the "Fun Facts" section of a textbook used in a public continuing education class.