Would you drink a Kit Kat from soda machine?
Well, in Japan there is a mega-abundance of drink machines—even dozens along uppermost trail leading to top of Mount Fuji. However, candy or snack machines are quite rare. So they fill round cardboard containers with Kit Kat bars and stock them in drink machines if the demand is high such as now when with are entering Japan’s Kit Kat season.
Yep, right now Japan is entering the Kit Kat season—-the juken/test season in Japan, when thousands upon thousands of pathetically-sleepy high school students are making the the final push to taking the university entrance exams they’ve prepared for over the past three years. So of course, all the students here in Japanese Examination Hell need to buy Kit Kat chocolates.
Huh?!
What do Kit Kats have to with entrance exams?
Due to a happy linguistic accident, the name Kit Kat sounds similar to kitto katsu (”you will surely win”), which has made it the official snack to munch on while preparing and taking their tests. Sounds Japanese, doesn’t it?
Sixty-one percent of teachers in Japan are mentally ill and the rest are just batshit crazy…
61% of teachers taking sick leave in 2006 suffered mental illness JapanToday.com – Saturday, December 29, 2007 at 05:00 EST
TOKYO — The education ministry said Friday that 7,655 teachers at public elementary, and junior and senior high schools took sick leave in the 2006 academic year, of whom 4,675, or 61%, suffered mental illness including depression. Both figures are record highs, according to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology...more…
Why do I say “batshit crazy”?
The average public school class size in Japan is 45 students, teachers have to work from 7am to 7pm, Japanese students cannot be expelled or punished, they have to teach-to-the-test according to an often bogus curriculum that is set on the national level, etc., ad nauseum.
Here’s a conversation from the ultimate must-read book, Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan (Chapter 12) talking about Japan’s “juku” scam that requires most students to attend eight to ten extra hours a week of cram school classes (costing parents additional millions of yen).
Alex Kurr– “If Japan’s schools are so very good, why do you have to spend so much money for extra education?” Education mother*– “The children do not learn what they need to know to pass the exams for university in public schools.” Alex Kurr– “Well, what are they doing in school, then?” Ed. mother– “They are learning to be Japanese.”
‘Nise’ (fake) chosen as kanji character of 2007 , Mainichi’s mycom.co.jp, Dec. 12
Seihan Mori, chief priest at Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, writes the Chinese character…
Most of the Word-of-the-Year choices made by the public were negative, but the reason that Nise* — fake is Japan’s official keyword for 2007 are rash of frauds that dominated the news all year. Japan had nearly weekly frauds being uncovered—from major processed food manufacturers, scandals in sumo wrestling and boxing, well as the collapse of the NOVA, Japan’s largest English-conversation school chain. Note that Japan has been in sober mood in terms of words for some years now—WhatJapanThinks.com listed the 2006 Words-of-the-Year included “ran” (confusion/disorder), “utsu” (depression/deep funk), and “do” (anger/perturbed).
Back in the early 90s on Japanese TV there was a lot more surreal comedy skits like these exercise cum engrish lessons.
Of course, the tongue-in-cheek joke is that every Japanese has studied at least six years of English yet few can speak a complete sentence…..and every Japanese is willing to try silliest crackpot English teaching method.
My drinking buddy, Rob Pongi, just posted this YouTube video of Honda’s Asimo robot transcendentally dancing the “robot.” The video was made at the Great Robot Exhibition now showing at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo’s Ueno Park, until January 27 of next year. See the exhibit’s English website for details.
Here’s a video of a “chopsticks bra” for busy women in Japan who want to stash their recyclable eating tools on the go from the ITN Channel in the UK. Click to watch.
According to the ITN report, ‘Triumph spokesperson Hiromi Shinta said: “Its small step, but because many Japanese chopsticks are disposable, big chunks of forests are being cut down. So we thought we could help promote the use of My Chopsticks and help cut down on disposable chopsticks.’
Actually, making a big issue about recylable chopsticks is misguided eco-bandaid in Japan where people wastefully tear down their houses after 25 years. It has been noted that if airlines adopted wooden disposable chopsticks instead of plastic or heavier metal utensils, could definitely save both fuel costs and reduce plastic pollution. Also noted is that disposable chopsticks contribute to the maintenance and welfare of the mountain people in China rather than having them flood into the already overcrowded, eco-horrors of urban China.
In addition, disposable chopsticks are often made of waste timber and lumber that normally would be burned as waste “slash.” Japan’s foremost ecologist, C.W. Nicol, has gone on the record for disposable chopsticks, “if trimmed-out lumber — such as cedar, for example — can be utilized, I will readily continue to use them. Disposable chopsticks are hygienic, easy…”
Rather than making a feel-good fuss about disposable chopsticks, creating a ban on all PLASTIC disposable eating utensils and plates would be more effective. Add to that rules for using only waste wood for chopsticks, and then there would be something to get excited about.
NOVA gone nova update: Nova teachers offer classes for food Japan Times, Friday, Nov. 2, 2007—A union representing teachers of Nova Corp. said Thursday its ranks will soon launch a “Lesson-for-Food” campaign in which they will offer free classes to students of the failed foreign-language school chain in exchange for basic food or meals...more…
BANKRUPT!*
Nova applies for court protection from creditors; president missing, 4 execs resign japan today -Friday, October 26, 2007
OSAKA — Japan’s largest language school chain, Nova Corp, filed for court protection from creditors Friday under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law as the scandal-tainted company gave up on trying to turn itself around....more...
Japan’s largest language school chain, Nova, is also the largest company employing foreigners—more than 4,000. Now all those engrish teachers are looking for a new job. HINT: Now is NOT the time to come to Japan looking for a job.
From what I hear, ex-NOVA teachers are swamping the other schools with job applications. In typically slimy fashion for Japan’s super sleazy engrish industry, the other big chains have begun laying off their teachers and replacing them with ex-Nova teachers at much lower salaries (which were some of the lowest already).
However, there’s one good thing about this mess. With NOVA under bankruptcy protection it makes it easier for all the gaijin that were working for NOVA to collect their back salary (after six months of waiting) and maybe even unemployment benefits (for those working full-time for more than one year).
Machine-translated version of AFPbb.com, Oct. 18, 2007—
…for a price of 20 million yen the super luxury pen, the “1010,” is put on sale in Tokyo…. The pen is made of 18-karat gold, diamonds and rubies…more…
”This is a pen.” is the first English sentence taught in schools in Japan and it’s painfully burnt into the mind of every Japanese. However, in this case, ”THIS is really a pen,” for only $174,000 USD by the Swiss luxury brand, Caran d’Ache. The ”1010” pen that is being flogged in Japan is the only one of ten pens offered as the company’s very limited edition.
Meiji Curl Stick — Smorky Cheese
Meiji’s superdelicious puffed corn snack Curl is a standard favorite of everyone here at J-List, and snack that you can see people eating all around Japan….This delicious flavor is the outrageously good Smoked Cheese version!
As you can read towards the end of the text that smorky is actually smoky, but this begs the issue of why there are so many “No Smorking” signs in Japan even though Japanese write it in Katakana “No Smokingu” without any “r” .
The rest-of-the-story is that “No Smorking” is an extremely common typo on Japanese signage as you can see in this Google Image Search.
The linguist Ben Finney explains the cause of smorking in the archives of sci.lang.japan as: over-generalisation… A Japanese will learn that “long
a” at the end of a Katakana word is probably “er” in English; and a
“long o” in the middle of a word is probably “or”; and a few dozen
other “rules” based on an over-generalized idea of consistency in
English orthography.
Saaaa, gee after 20 years here in Japan, I still learn something new everyday. :-)
Above screen-shots are from “Maid in Japan“—a simulation game for English study—where you can try to pick-up a virtual maid, named Sophia who comes from Vancouver.
According to a crappy but entertaining machine-translation the official website of Maid in Japan(メイドさんと英語クイズ ):
The game is an excellent—A.I.—artificial intelligence, which reacts to the words that the user inputs as they play with Sophia the Maid via a variety of English quizzes. The animation of Sophia the Maid reacts to the user input depending on how good an impression the user makes on Sophia. That “good” impression increases with the number of correct English responses the user makes…which results in a method of enjoyable English study.
Unlike this so-called “English study” game, our sponsor JList sells all sorts of wacked dating simulation games, the most famous is, Peach Princess’s “Little My Maid”. All these dating sims have been translated from the Japanese into English by JList/JAST. The objective of dating sims is to choose from among several characters to date and to score a “romantic” relationship.
Check it out if you want to cop a feel of Japanese maid simulation adventure. Also, watch a demo video the newest maid game, Bazooka Cafe.
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Sixty-one percent of teachers in Japan are mentally ill and the rest are just batshit crazy…
Click to watch.
