Link: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article6531895.ece

This news is a lie

It's happened again. Another newspaper article of imaginary news from Japan. This time, its a report about the train cars in Japan.

As long as I've been here, there have been women only cars. These were created to give women a safe place to be, i.e. away from molesters. It hardly makes sense to us, but if a Japanese woman gets molested on a train, she probably wouldn't scream or fight or yell. She would just quietly take it. It's possible that the train car would be so stuffed she wouldn't have much of a choice. Either way, the woman only cars provide a safe zone, even though train molestations are few and far between.

Now, men want cars. This is a sort of knee jerk reaction to several cases of false accusations of molestation. After all, if you're crowded like sardines in a train car, it can be tough to know exactly whose hand is pinching your ass. So the men of Tokyo have called for a car of their own, one where they can be free from the threat of litigation.

The only problem is, its not news. I've showed this article to several of my adult students. One of whom is a man who rides this very train line EVERY DAY. Nobody has any idea what this newspaper is reporting on. There certainly hasn't been any news about men only cars in Tokyo.

Reader, if the mainstream media can be this inconsistent, this out of touch with reality about Japan... Imagine how easily they could get it wrong about the rest of the world.

If living in Japan for the past three years has taught me anything, its not to trust or put any faith in the mainstream news media.

There's me, the Assistant English Teacher, along with the English Teacher, standing in front of the class.

"What were you doing at 9 pm last night?" The English teacher asks me.

"I was watching television." I say in a loud, slow voice.

"What show were you watching?" He asks me.

"I was watching Terminator," I say, leaving out the Sara Connor Chronicles part.

"Was it interesting?" He asks me.

"Yes, it was." I say. He continue to translate for the class.

This lesson/conversation happened a few weeks ago. Which is why I was happy to see this ad in a subterranean Tokyo train station.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is coming to Japan. Just in time for Terminator 4, aka Salvation. This time, I'm ahead of the curve. What is new for the Japanese, is old season for me. Just look at John Connor's long hair. Japan is only just starting season one!

While we're on the subject of Japanese TV, let me mention Dora the Explorer.
The cartoon which lets kids have fun while learning Spanish. And who could forget the numerous Dora the Explorer jokes that could only be made during Joe the Plumber's fifteen minutes of fame?

It's finally made its way to Japan. This time, its dubbed in Japanese. But its also been tweaked. In America, Dora taught Spanish. In Japan, she teaches English.

I've had the opportunity to ask several classes about Dora. When I ask the question "Have you seen Dora?" every class has a few students who have. "Do you like it?" Here the answers become interesting, because consistantly--one hundred percent of the time--the answer is no. I asked one boy if he liked the show, and he really went off. I'm talking a full on diatribe of dislike. I couldn't understand his words, but the hatred was clear. The teacher, in that circumstance, translated a part of what he said for me. "I hate Dora! I'll hate
Dora so much--until she hates me!"

Needless to say, I don't expect Dora to be very popular here, or to stay on the air much longer.

The word "genki" loosely translates to happy. I continued my walk of the school grounds during our break time, when I was approached by two very genki students. Both girls were wearing their uniforms, laughing and giggling as they beckoned me, holding hands.

"Ohhh, hai!" They said. Facing me, they continued to giggle as they ran their fingers through each other's hair. "Mmmm," they said, over-emphasizing the pleasure of the moment.

Then they started to kiss the air in front of each other's faces. They kissed each other on the cheeks. "Watachi tachi--we are lesbian!" One of them said. They continued to put on a show for me, genki the entire time.

It's one of those moments that's going to stay with me forever. Ticket to Japan, $1500. Bicycle to commute to work, $100. Watching two Japanese school girls pretend to be lesbians, priceless. Most things, money can buy. For authentic Japanese schoolgirl lesbian-play, there's living in Japan.

I seriously believe and hope that this will be the final post I ever make about the "Yes we can" slogan in Japan.

As you can see, it's still going strong.

I was walking around the school grounds during the break when I came across a group of students. They had their heads down, looking among some grass and shrubbery. In Japanese I asked, "What are you doing?"

"Looking for four-leaf clovers," one of the girls said. I nodded and started to turn away. I'd done my share of four-leaf clover searching, and considered it a lost cause. Then I stopped, realizing that I understood her. Even though I'd never heard the word before, I could understand it. My excitement waned when I realized this was mostly due to knowing the word for "four" and the context of the situation (yo-tsu-ba-no-kurova). But still, priceless moments like this are how true learning occurs.

I walked away, smiling. Until she cried, "Haha! I found it." Sure enough, she did find a four-leaf clover. It's the first one I've ever seen in RL.

Seriously, I'm tired of blogging about it. But it just keeps coming up in my life. I mentioned a sports day in my last post. Well wouldn't you know I saw this written on the blackboard of my classroom.

It says that the school sports day slogan will be, "Yes! we can". Obama, your words will echo into eternity.

"Where's the principal?" I asked the office lady at the elementary school where I work.

"He's out there in the dirt field," she said. Every school has a big dirt field where the children play. We looked out the window and sure enough there he was. Out of his suit and in work clothes, he was dragging some kind of a sand rake across the field.

I explained to her in my best Japanese that we had janitors to do that kind of work in America. It's so funny for me to see the principal of a school doing manual labor type jobs.

At my junior high school, I saw the VP changing a lightbulb in a fire exit sign. I explained to another teacher about how we had zone mechanics.

"What do the zone mechanics do when there's nothing to fix?" She asked.

"I don't know? Sit around. Drink coffee? Watch TV? I don't know?"

Its so strange for me to see how two or three men at Japanese schools can perform the functions of ten to fifteen in American schools. Sure, its great being working at a job where the work is few and far between. But isn't the Japanese way so much better? It makes a lot more sense to me.

This weekend was a sports day, or field day. What's funny about this day is that they make the entire school line up on this dirt field and exercise. This includes doing pushups. In the dirt, or mud if it happens to be wet. Another thing I'd never expect to see anywhere else.

Incredibly, after exercising, the boys have to take off their shoes, and make human pyramids in the dirt. The girls have to dance. Every year, students get scraped up during this event. They step on sharp rocks and cut their feet. And yet, every Japanese man I've talked to has made human pyramids in the dirt when he was in Jr. High School.