Today, after much deliberating and procrastination, in fulfillment of the New Years Resolution I'd conceived after a week's wandering in the Tohoku region, I began writing the opening paragraphs of what, with a little luck, will ultimately become a novel. Am I crazy? Perhaps. Or, maybe just determined to capture something that's been kicking around my head for a long time, and I've finally realized that it's better to be actively working on it than dreaming about it.
More on this later.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Snuck Sneaked In
Fill in the blank with the correct form of sneak. Don't think too much about the question, just write your natural response:
Everyone in the house was sleeping, so he _________ across the yard. [sneak]
Some of you (or most of you, considering how much of this blog's readership comes from people I know personally) may have gotten this brief survey in their e-mail last week. The issue came up in my advanced junior high school class when we were reading about a nature photographer who snuck up on a baby lion to get the perfect photograph. The wording was a source of confusion for one student, who checked her dictionary to find that "sneaked" or "snuck" were both acceptable, the former listed as "more formal." This sounded wrong to me, for I, as a native speaker of English, would never use "sneaked," and told the class as much.
The matter bothered me, so I did what most eikaiwa teachers would never do: I looked it up. (Or did a quick Google search, if you want to get technical.) A majority of what I found seemed to agree that while "sneaked" was the original past form of "sneak," "snuck" had more recently become acceptable (though some people, like Jennifer Garner below, strongly argued the contrary).
I was curious to see if more people agreed with Jennifer Garner or me, so I sent out the survey. Roughly 80% chose "snuck" as their past tense form of choice, some strongly, and some through great deliberation. (A few did the same Google search I did, or discussed varying situations in which they would use "snuck" or "sneaked," and I did not count these in the final results.) My trusty Random House dictionary says that, "SNUCK has occasionally been considered nonstandard, but is now so common that it can no longer be so regarded."
Students come to me to learn common English for social situations and practical use. They want to express themselves, understand what they read, and speak natural English that will not cause them shame or embarrassment. I would never correct a student who used a past form of "sneak" that I didn't agree with, just as I would never correct a student who used "hopefully" to refer to a future wish, or who used "their" as a gender neutral possessive pronoun. These are mistakes that millions of native English speakers make every day, and that all but the strictest of grammar critics would brush aside in natural conversation. Occasionally I have students whose English is good enough to understand and appreciate such finer subtleties, but for the rest there's no point in correcting errors that don't sound brutally jarring to the average gaijin.
Everyone in the house was sleeping, so he _________ across the yard. [sneak]
Some of you (or most of you, considering how much of this blog's readership comes from people I know personally) may have gotten this brief survey in their e-mail last week. The issue came up in my advanced junior high school class when we were reading about a nature photographer who snuck up on a baby lion to get the perfect photograph. The wording was a source of confusion for one student, who checked her dictionary to find that "sneaked" or "snuck" were both acceptable, the former listed as "more formal." This sounded wrong to me, for I, as a native speaker of English, would never use "sneaked," and told the class as much.
The matter bothered me, so I did what most eikaiwa teachers would never do: I looked it up. (Or did a quick Google search, if you want to get technical.) A majority of what I found seemed to agree that while "sneaked" was the original past form of "sneak," "snuck" had more recently become acceptable (though some people, like Jennifer Garner below, strongly argued the contrary).
I was curious to see if more people agreed with Jennifer Garner or me, so I sent out the survey. Roughly 80% chose "snuck" as their past tense form of choice, some strongly, and some through great deliberation. (A few did the same Google search I did, or discussed varying situations in which they would use "snuck" or "sneaked," and I did not count these in the final results.) My trusty Random House dictionary says that, "SNUCK has occasionally been considered nonstandard, but is now so common that it can no longer be so regarded."
Students come to me to learn common English for social situations and practical use. They want to express themselves, understand what they read, and speak natural English that will not cause them shame or embarrassment. I would never correct a student who used a past form of "sneak" that I didn't agree with, just as I would never correct a student who used "hopefully" to refer to a future wish, or who used "their" as a gender neutral possessive pronoun. These are mistakes that millions of native English speakers make every day, and that all but the strictest of grammar critics would brush aside in natural conversation. Occasionally I have students whose English is good enough to understand and appreciate such finer subtleties, but for the rest there's no point in correcting errors that don't sound brutally jarring to the average gaijin.
Monday, December 13, 2010
In Which the Author Recounts his Experience Taking the JLPT, and Promises Yet Again to Blog More Frequently
I have a set pattern of advice I impart on fearful Japanese people before they take standardized tests:
1. Get a good night's sleep
2. Eat a good breakfast
3. Don't be nervous
After taking the JLPT, I can now confidently add a fourth entry to this list:
4. Don't daydream before the test
I was not at all nervous before the JLPT; I actually worried more about finding the test center than about my ability to pass. I arrived on an early train and sat in the Gakuin University courtyard reading Jessie's book on hikikomori (more on this later) while crowds of East Asian students flipped through test prep books and cheerful Brazilians posed for group photos. I was the only white person in the test room, and also the oldest, the majority being Brazilian middle-school students wearing a mix of neon and black. I read, reread, and attempted to understand the hiragana instructions on the blackboard, and watched the test proctor, a nervous woman who did her best to make her Japanese easy to understand, shuffle awkwardly around the room. She was assisted by a college kid who carried in the test booklets and watched over the room without doing very much. He wore a jet-black suit with a loosely-knotted pink tie and dirty tennis shoes that betrayed an obvious unfamiliarity with the post, a welcome break from Japan's usual flawless appearance.
I had arrived just before noon, and there must have been some rule about starting the test at exactly 12:45 because the proctor spent a grueling ten minutes staring at her watch while we waited with the test booklets in front of us. I used this opportunity to think about the book I'd been reading, silently make fun of the college kid's sneakers, look forward to other weekend plans, work some transitional issues out of a story I'm writing, think about women I'd like to sleep with, and worry about whether I'd remembered to turn off my cell phone so that I was shocked into action when the proctor finally gave the signal to hajimete. It had also been so long since I'd taken a standardized test (eight years by my count) that I'd forgotten the importance of speed over thoroughness. I wasted a lot of time in the Vocabulary section mulling over pieces of sentences that had no bearing on the actual answer, and deliberated over questions whose solution I could only guess at. I was surprised when the proctor called time and collected our answer sheets: I still had two questions to go.
That turned out to be a good thing because it showed me that this test, even though it was the lowest level, was still a force to be reckoned with. Success wasn't going to come easily. I spent the remaining two sections locked in a state of intense concentration, especially during the Listening section, which required me to reorient myself to a new set of instructions every ten minutes. (The whole test, by the way, was in Japanese, with nary a hint of English to help us figure out what to do.)
Maybe that was the challenge I needed to sharpen my focus. It occurred to me during the break that I've been taking the easy route too often lately, and that having a challenge again made me feel good. And why have I been avoiding challenges the past few years? Post-college burnout? Fear of failure? Massive derailment without a set structure to guide me through life? Or is it just plain laziness?
I'm pretty confident that I went on to smoke those second two sections, but even if I don't pass, that moment of enlightenment was reward enough. With the test out of the way I've been free to get things squared away for Christmas (which gets a lot more complicated when there's excessive mail order shopping involved), and when that's finally over with, I'll be able to focus on some other writing projects, both fiction and pieces for this blog. More on those projects later, but for now, I assure you that I will be posting more often, for serious this time.
1. Get a good night's sleep
2. Eat a good breakfast
3. Don't be nervous
After taking the JLPT, I can now confidently add a fourth entry to this list:
4. Don't daydream before the test
I was not at all nervous before the JLPT; I actually worried more about finding the test center than about my ability to pass. I arrived on an early train and sat in the Gakuin University courtyard reading Jessie's book on hikikomori (more on this later) while crowds of East Asian students flipped through test prep books and cheerful Brazilians posed for group photos. I was the only white person in the test room, and also the oldest, the majority being Brazilian middle-school students wearing a mix of neon and black. I read, reread, and attempted to understand the hiragana instructions on the blackboard, and watched the test proctor, a nervous woman who did her best to make her Japanese easy to understand, shuffle awkwardly around the room. She was assisted by a college kid who carried in the test booklets and watched over the room without doing very much. He wore a jet-black suit with a loosely-knotted pink tie and dirty tennis shoes that betrayed an obvious unfamiliarity with the post, a welcome break from Japan's usual flawless appearance.
I had arrived just before noon, and there must have been some rule about starting the test at exactly 12:45 because the proctor spent a grueling ten minutes staring at her watch while we waited with the test booklets in front of us. I used this opportunity to think about the book I'd been reading, silently make fun of the college kid's sneakers, look forward to other weekend plans, work some transitional issues out of a story I'm writing, think about women I'd like to sleep with, and worry about whether I'd remembered to turn off my cell phone so that I was shocked into action when the proctor finally gave the signal to hajimete. It had also been so long since I'd taken a standardized test (eight years by my count) that I'd forgotten the importance of speed over thoroughness. I wasted a lot of time in the Vocabulary section mulling over pieces of sentences that had no bearing on the actual answer, and deliberated over questions whose solution I could only guess at. I was surprised when the proctor called time and collected our answer sheets: I still had two questions to go.
That turned out to be a good thing because it showed me that this test, even though it was the lowest level, was still a force to be reckoned with. Success wasn't going to come easily. I spent the remaining two sections locked in a state of intense concentration, especially during the Listening section, which required me to reorient myself to a new set of instructions every ten minutes. (The whole test, by the way, was in Japanese, with nary a hint of English to help us figure out what to do.)
Maybe that was the challenge I needed to sharpen my focus. It occurred to me during the break that I've been taking the easy route too often lately, and that having a challenge again made me feel good. And why have I been avoiding challenges the past few years? Post-college burnout? Fear of failure? Massive derailment without a set structure to guide me through life? Or is it just plain laziness?
I'm pretty confident that I went on to smoke those second two sections, but even if I don't pass, that moment of enlightenment was reward enough. With the test out of the way I've been free to get things squared away for Christmas (which gets a lot more complicated when there's excessive mail order shopping involved), and when that's finally over with, I'll be able to focus on some other writing projects, both fiction and pieces for this blog. More on those projects later, but for now, I assure you that I will be posting more often, for serious this time.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
No Ticket
Just as I feared (i.e. predicted), my entry ticket for the JLPT was not delivered to my work address because, in a massive display of Japanese adherence to labyrinthine regulations, my name was not printed on the mailbox. This is entirely my own fault for not understanding the directions clearly (Travelers Tip: Understanding rules will get you far in Japan). I can't even make the excuse that I didn't see the part about marking one's name on the mailbox, since there is clear evidence of my having retyped it as part of a previous blog entry.
Fortunately, a co-worker's well-timed call to the Testing Center yielded me with a freshly-faxed ticket and vaguely-printed directions to the testing center at Yamanashi Gakuin University. In return, I agreed to decipher the loopy script of a letter from her elderly Australian host father. I wish I could say the latter task was as successful.
Wish me luck tomorrow.
Fortunately, a co-worker's well-timed call to the Testing Center yielded me with a freshly-faxed ticket and vaguely-printed directions to the testing center at Yamanashi Gakuin University. In return, I agreed to decipher the loopy script of a letter from her elderly Australian host father. I wish I could say the latter task was as successful.
Wish me luck tomorrow.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Further Reflections on a Subject that Interests Only Me
A few weeks back I picked up a copy of the McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar (and by "picked up" I really mean pulled off my bookshelf where one of my apartment's previous inhabitants had left it) and started devoting a morning or two every week to expanding my knowledge of grammar, usage, and all those pesky technical terms. This may have been a poor decision since the Japanese Language Proficiency Test looms forebodingly on the horizon and I already had a lot of grammar and kanji to brush up on, but I knew it would be helpful for my writing, my ability to self-study, and my job. The latter was really the biggest contributing factor, as students will often come to me with grammatical queries ranging from the commonplace to the minutely detailed.
"I have a question," asked a particularly curious high-school girl after the lesson had ended.
"Of course," I replied in a tone of utter confidence.
"What's a modal?"
My blood ran cold as I leaned over the grammar page of her textbook (which was thankfully in English) and read a note about how to adjust the structure of requests using modal verbs with an example that did not make at all clear what a modal was. The other students were attracted by her question and looked at me in intense anticipation of some useful bit of information they could only get from a native speaker. There was a dead silence in the room as I ran through the sentence trying to figure out which of those words could possibly be a modal, a term I knew I'd skimmed over lightly in grammar textbooks a dozen times without bothering to understand the meaning of.
I waited as long as I reasonably could keep up the charade of interpreting the textbook example, then feigned an exaggerated note of recognition. "Ah, I see! Here, a modal is a kind of special verb in English, but don't worry about this too much. Basically, this sentence means..." (Here I lapsed into an explanation of the example sentence using the grammar we'd covered in class while dodging the initial question, which yielded thoughtful nods from everyone in the room.)
This situation happens more often than I care to admit. It is particularly humiliating when the question comes from one of my junior high-school students, a precocious girl who is studying for several major English exams and is interested in nuances so subtle that they boggle my mind. There is an expectation inherent in every class that a native-speaking English teacher will always know the answer, and to admit that I don't dashes students' confidence to a crippling degree. It also makes me feel like a gaijin hack who gets by using only his natural ability rather than any actual knowledge of English grammar, and it is a sad reminder that any English-speaking idiot can come out here, hold up the cards, play the CDs, and be an eikaiwa teacher. I guess I just want to do it better than that.
Some interesting facts I learned from my foray into English grammar:
"I have a question," asked a particularly curious high-school girl after the lesson had ended.
"Of course," I replied in a tone of utter confidence.
"What's a modal?"
My blood ran cold as I leaned over the grammar page of her textbook (which was thankfully in English) and read a note about how to adjust the structure of requests using modal verbs with an example that did not make at all clear what a modal was. The other students were attracted by her question and looked at me in intense anticipation of some useful bit of information they could only get from a native speaker. There was a dead silence in the room as I ran through the sentence trying to figure out which of those words could possibly be a modal, a term I knew I'd skimmed over lightly in grammar textbooks a dozen times without bothering to understand the meaning of.
I waited as long as I reasonably could keep up the charade of interpreting the textbook example, then feigned an exaggerated note of recognition. "Ah, I see! Here, a modal is a kind of special verb in English, but don't worry about this too much. Basically, this sentence means..." (Here I lapsed into an explanation of the example sentence using the grammar we'd covered in class while dodging the initial question, which yielded thoughtful nods from everyone in the room.)
This situation happens more often than I care to admit. It is particularly humiliating when the question comes from one of my junior high-school students, a precocious girl who is studying for several major English exams and is interested in nuances so subtle that they boggle my mind. There is an expectation inherent in every class that a native-speaking English teacher will always know the answer, and to admit that I don't dashes students' confidence to a crippling degree. It also makes me feel like a gaijin hack who gets by using only his natural ability rather than any actual knowledge of English grammar, and it is a sad reminder that any English-speaking idiot can come out here, hold up the cards, play the CDs, and be an eikaiwa teacher. I guess I just want to do it better than that.
Some interesting facts I learned from my foray into English grammar:
- A modal verb is one of a special list of helping verbs paired off with other verbs to talk about the future or clarify other meanings: can, may, must, shall, will, and their past tense forms.
- The only English verb without a past tense form is must.
- In American English, commas and periods should always be placed inside quotation marks. However, in the rare case where a semicolon or a colon overlaps with quotation marks, it should always go outside. Question marks and exclamation points can go either way, depending on the situation.
- Went, the past-tense form of go, comes from the older English word wend, which also means to travel.
- Apostrophes were originally used only in place of omitted letters in words and contractions such as can't. During the Elizabethan era, grammar handbooks started recommending them for use in possessive forms as well, citing that the phrase Arthurs land was really a shortened form of Arthur, his land, and so the former needed an apostrophe: Arthur's land.
- Even after carefully studying that entire book, there will always be grammar questions I can't answer.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Duck Under Glass
Most Japanese restaurants store plastic replicas of their food inside glass cases out front so that passers-by can get a clear idea of what delicacies (or cheap noodle bowls) await them. This duck, which was the centerpiece of an all-you-can-eat restaurant in Yokohama's Chinatown, is the largest and most elaborate one I've ever seen. There's something eerie about the plastic eyes staring back at you.
Plastic food in Japan has fascinated me since I've come here, though most of the good replicas have to be ordered directly from the manufacturer. The only ones you can buy easily are cheap keychains and tiny cuts of sushi. I want some very badly as a memento.
Two weeks ago, workmen came to gut the building and take the glass cases of food away. They are probably in a dumpster somewhere now. Part of the sidewalk is closed off, and I hear drills roaring and see the occasional cloud of dust float down as construction crews shape the building into a new restaurant with pristine replicas to greet its customers; for there is no place left in Japan for the old and faded variety.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
The Girl at the Bookstore
One experience more than any other lead me to understand the artificial constructs of Japanese society. I was at the bookstore paying for a book when I was suddenly struck by the girl working the register. She had long, wonderfully straight brown hair tied back in a ponytail with bangs hanging low on her forehead and big bright eyes that shone as she smiled at me. And what a lovely smile it was. I’ve always been a sucker for a pretty smile; and the way her whole face lit up as she took my money, wrapped up my book, and graciously thanked me for my purchase sent my head spinning. I smiled coyly back and responded with a flirtatious you’re welcome in Japanese, to which she again bowed with that enchanting smile.
I was proud of myself—she was a beautiful girl, and here she had shown me such rapt attention. I turned to catch her eye again and saw her backed against the wall, arms folded securely in front of her as she stared vacantly into the distance ignoring me who had just flirted so successfully with her. She had become a completely different person. Our interaction had finished, and there was no further need for her to even acknowledge my presence. Her face, which had once radiated such bright energy, was now blankly devoid of all emotion. The change was so abrupt and so complete that it left me feeling confused and uneasy about what I had seen.
The girl at the bookstore had been ordered by her boss to smile and bow politely at me even though she didn’t want to. She did it because she had to. I see that attitude everywhere I turn now, and I can’t make it go away.
I was proud of myself—she was a beautiful girl, and here she had shown me such rapt attention. I turned to catch her eye again and saw her backed against the wall, arms folded securely in front of her as she stared vacantly into the distance ignoring me who had just flirted so successfully with her. She had become a completely different person. Our interaction had finished, and there was no further need for her to even acknowledge my presence. Her face, which had once radiated such bright energy, was now blankly devoid of all emotion. The change was so abrupt and so complete that it left me feeling confused and uneasy about what I had seen.
The girl at the bookstore had been ordered by her boss to smile and bow politely at me even though she didn’t want to. She did it because she had to. I see that attitude everywhere I turn now, and I can’t make it go away.
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