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Japan is nothing if not a land of contradictions, where you can connect to the
Internet via a high speed cellular connection while speeding on a fast
Shinkansen, and yet there are still fish-sellers who ride around on bicycles
selling fish to households door-to-door, where technology is embraced while
traditions, even stupid ones like the guy coming to each house in our
neighborhood to collect our 2000 yen NHK fee every month, are preserved. I
always enjoy making trips to Tokyo, where you can see an incredible range of
on the train with you: the salaryman, the teenager rapidly thumbing her keitai
(portable phone), high school girls talking in their own world...and then a
goth-loli, a cute girl wearing a 19th century maid uniform, staring out the
window as she waits for her stop. I thought Japan was supposed to be famous
for conformity? I guess I don't have this place figured out yet...
If you ever want to learn a subject well, I recommend you try teaching it.
When I came to Japan to teach English as a Second Language, I had no idea how
much of my own language I didn't understand, and yet in order to do right by
my students I had to learn. For better or worse, the Japanese usually study
English with a focus on grammar and vocabulary, since that's what appears on
university entrance exams (none of this namby-pamby "communicative" English
for them, thanks). When a student asks why an infinitive verb
("futeishi") is used in a particular sentence instead of a gerend ("domeishi"), you want to
give him an answer more substantive than "it just sounds better that way." One
especially difficult part of English are two-word verbs like "take out" "take
off" "take over" and so on. Why does "throw up" mean something different from
"throw out"? My time as a teacher gave me a lot of respect for anyone who can
tackle something as difficult as English, with its dizzying mix of
cris-crossing rules and exceptions.
The Japanese have really embraced online culture, as seen by the grown of
mammoth communities like famous 2ch BBS (pronounced "ni channel"). In addition
to spawning the true story of Densha Otoko, in which an geeky otaku found love
with a beautiful woman by asking for advice from readers of the BBS, 2ch is
also a popular place for ASCII-art creation, the most famous being the Mona
Neko cats. Mona Neko (whose name comes from the Japanese phrase "Omae mo
na!" or "The same to you!" used in online flame wars on 2ch) and his friends have
become such a popular symbol of Internet culture in Japan, we decided to make
some wacky T-shirts as a tribute, which are on the site now: an image of the
Mona Neko cats drinking their sake (they love sake), and a fun tribute to
"panchira" (which all men love, whether they admit it or not) Be sure to check
out the wacky Japanese Numa Numa video here, with attempts at matching the
words with Japanese meanings: http://www.jbox.com/mona/
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