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Hello from Anaheim, California. We're here at the
2005 Anime Expo, getting ready to enjoy one of the coolest anime
conventions anywhere. If you'll be attending the show, please
pop buy booth #353 and say hi to us -- we'd love to meet you,
and we've got lots of cool stuff available.
The Japanese generally study English for six
years during school, more if they go on to college, but sadly,
most don't really master the language all that well. There are
dozens of reasons for this, including ineffective curriculum
designed on a national level by the Ministry of Education,
teachers that aren't actually competent in English themselves,
and treating "English" (the grammar and vocabulary of
the language, which is what appears on tests) as a totally
different concept from "English conversation" (the act
of communicating usefully in English). Another reason is that
the Japanese usually spend lots of time studying the English
language itself, and never actually do much with their language
skills, except maybe write to "pen friends," translate
Beatles song lyrics or occasionally travel abroad. A much better
way to learn English would be to study another subject in the
language -- computers, history, music, just about anything would
be fine. When my wife learned Spanish, she used textbooks from
the U.S., which allowed her to learn Spanish using English and
build connections between the two, which helped her a lot. At
his new experimental school my son learns most subjects in
English, so we know he'll be fine.
When you become fluent in a language, you
actually develop an alternate personality that becomes dominant
when you're speaking that language. For some reason, my Japanese
"self" is much more prone to make bad jokes and puns
than when I'm speaking English. Want to know some of these bad
jokes? Well, I'll tell you, since they can be fun to use
sometimes. One famous "oyaji gag" -- a joke that
middle-aged men tend to say -- is "Umi ni, iruka iruka?"
("Are there dolphins in the sea?"). Since "iruka"
means dolphin as well as "does it exist?" (for people
and animals only), it's a joke, although not a very good one.
One bad joke for sushi lovers is "Ikura wa ikura?"
("How much is the salmon roe?"), since "ikura"
refers to both sushi with salmon eggs on top as well as the
phrase "how much is this?" In Japanese, the color blue
is "ao" (pronounced AH-oh, like the exclaimation
"ow!"). What is Michael Jackson's favorite color?
Shout this color name in Michael's trademark high-pitched voice
and you might get some laughs.
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