Hello again all. I had an exciting event this week, a typhoon no less!!! what`ll they think of next. I thought Oz was exciting with bushfires and floods but maybe not...
Works keeping me more than busy, which is both good and bad, I`ve had to restrict my sightseeing but I can shop more... I hiked 4km to a little known Eagle fly zone, I`d seen it on my way to check out the monkeys at Mt Takasaki, so I thought seeing as the weather was finally nice that I might stroll there. I took a few pics of the pretty birdies but had a number of amused Japanese road workers watching me. I gather I have reaffirmed the opinion that foreigners are odd!!!
You know these Japanese people are all rather odd, I put a question to my students `you have been shipwrecked and You are now on a tiny island in the middle of the sea, what 5 things would you want to have with you (a boat and a radio were not allowed)` In order of importance the responses were 1) food, 2)knife, 3) salt, 4) water 5) rocket. Now these were my highest level students whose issues are not vocab but fluency and accent and this was their response after the 40minute class in order of importance...SALT??? Message beacon, or signal beacon replaced rocket after they described what they meant. But salt??? I did mention island in the ocean, they nodded and said salt was necessary and that it was more important than water.
and they think foreigners are odd.
Oh and lets not forget the constant amazement when I say I can use chopsticks because you can`t find chopsticks in Australia...and sushi, how do you know what sushi is? you don`t eat sushi in Australia. You eat steak... I can hear the vegetarians squealing from here!!! Of course this was very amusing in a low level class had called `what is in your fridge` so I had my students describe my fridge, granted they have limited english vocab but it was something like this... You have beef, you have onions, you have eggs, you have water, you have milk, you have cheese, you have bread, you have hamburger (s), you have pork. In their fridges however... I have tofu, I have sushi, I have carrots, I have bok choy, I have a pea (s), I have apples, I have oranges, I have rice, I have (two other well known Japanese dishes). Alas I actually had cheese, yoghurt, bacon (no eggs), carrots, brocoli, beans, tofu and orange juice but that would be considered healthy...not a healthy foreigner!!!! My students of course regularily think I make this stuff up. Especially trying to explain the population of Bucca (Mum`s place ~ 200 people?) AND NO VENDING MACHINES!!!!
Of course I am becoming rather fond of vending machine hot coffee... later
posted by Schmoo at 11:00 PM