A Response to Chick-fil-A Employees Saying "My Pleasure" Instead of "You're Welcome"

I recently visited a Chick-fil-A for the first time, having first heard of it (like many New Englanders) through its anti-same-sex marriage controversy.  I was curious to compare Chick-fil-A’s food to that of its Nebraska-staple, chicken-serving cousin, Raising Cane’s, after one of my students wrote an essay about the differences, and it seemed disingenuous that I could know so much about Chick-fil-A without ever having actually eaten there.

Everything about Chick-fil-A seemed fine—it was clean, featured a large children’s playplace, and I observed no signs of homophobic activity.  The high-school girl behind the counter also struck me as not only polite, but genuinely interested in making conversation that wasn’t rehearsed or perfunctory—another plus, as I’ve always detested space-filler conversations with waitresses and salespeople that have no merit of their own.  Then the guy in front of me thanked the server for taking his order, and she immediately replied, “My pleasure.”

Now, the phrase “My pleasure” shouldn’t have seemed out of the ordinary—in fact, it should have struck me as more authentic than a robotically repeated “You’re welcome.” When I heard it, though, I remembered a line from my student’s paper that went something like this:

“I like how Chick-fil-A employees always say “My pleasure,” which shows how much more polite their workers are.”

The student was writing from his experiences in Nebraska, while I was then in Nashua, New Hampshire talking to a different girl behind a different counter who was using the exact same phrase.  I wondered whether the girl would say the same thing to me, and when it became my turn to order I made a few jokes (probably about waffle fries) until she handed me my ticket.

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“My pleasure,” the girl replied.

The phrase, once noticed and observed as something she’d said to the previous customer, now appeared repetitive, part of a routine in which I was now a participant.  The routine was further enforced when a different server arrived to bring us our food:

“Thanks for bringing it out,” I told her.

“My pleasure,” the girl said.

The phrase now sounded almost eerie, since for two servers to have independently adopted the same phrase was too perfect, too neat, and too in keeping with the spotlessly clean tables and pristine white backgrounds on the backlit menu.  I felt as if I’d stumbled upon a terrible secret—that every Chick-fil-A employee in every Chick-fil-A restaurant in every region of the US had been instructed to use the exact same gracious phrase just as every Chick-fil-A restaurant was to offer the same menu choices and the same soft drinks and to stock the same sealed packets of sauce that I was now fiddling with at the table.  Having the same menu choices and décor didn’t bother me, but requiring one’s employees to talk in the same way seemed to cross a line, seemed to lump the very-human workers we deal with into the same category as mass-produced food and cushion-backed chairs that could be chosen by higher-ups in a corporate office.  It was an attempt to control the way workers interacted with customers, to achieve the effect of politeness through standardized phrasing. 

The problem with this model is that it takes initiative away from the workers and places it in the hands of a corporate office.  The workers don’t get to choose how to be polite with customers; they’re told exactly what to say, so the politeness is imposed on them.  Not only does this constitute a loss of worker freedom, it strips workers of both the independence and responsibility that comes from making one’s own choices, a sobering thought, considering most fast-food employees are still learning essential job skills that they’ll hope to bring to other positions.

In addition, regardless of how genuinely friendly servers might seem, the “My pleasure”s uttered by Chick-fil-A employees constitute an act performed for the customer, thus stripping the phrase of what authenticity it may have held had the server chosen to say it of her own volition.  When this façade becomes apparent, it can’t be unseen, and the “My pleasure”s don’t seem as polite anymore.  Though some may argue that all fast-food politeness is an act, I argue that at least other chains let their employees choose how to be polite, rather than enforcing specific scripts for how to do so, thus allowing for (slightly) more authentic interactions.

As unfortunate as it is, I’ve grown accustomed to how much of America has become a standardized succession of chain stores, logos, and brand names that fill out the landscape from Maine to California.  This uniformity crosses a line, though, when it’s imposed on the casual utterances spoken by workers in these places, opening up new possibilities for corporate models where everything that everyone says is the same, leaving no room for servers to voice their own thoughts at all.  In a world where fast-food serving robots haven’t yet been invented, how close can corporations come to total control by training servers that function like the machines that haven’t yet made total control possible?

When fast-food robots do become the norm, though, I don’t know if people will despise them, or if they’ll accept the change as another facet of reality and move on, maybe even finding relief in an interaction that’s as forgettable as the digital instructions on an ATM screen.  Maybe that's the world we're really moving toward.

The Guy Who Loved Video Games

A student in one of my first-year writing classes wrote an essay on the debate between PC and console gaming, and a damned good essay it was.  It wasn’t a typical essay, though: he cited the advantages and disadvantages of each argument before explaining how ridiculous it was to argue these differences at all, and ended with a page full of happy gaming memories playing Call of Duty on couches with friends and trying to beat the original Super Mario Bros. on his grandmother’s old tube TV.  It’s not about asserting one platform’s superiority, these anecdotes implied, but about the fun you have playing the game.

“So, I didn’t really get which side you were on,” a girl in our peer conference admitted.  “Do you prefer PCs, or consoles?”

There were four of us in the classroom, the student who’d written the essay, his two groupmates, and me, the teacher running the show.  The other girl in the group admitted to knowing nothing about video games and also being confused about what the writer’s opinion was, having completely missed the significance of the happy gaming memories.  This placed me in an awkward position as the authority figure: if I felt the original ending forged a moment of great significance, but others had missed its meaning entirely, could the ending be considered effective?

I slouched in my plastic chairdesk and looked at the ending again: it was poignant, well-written, and evocative, while never quite spelling out in an obvious manner what the writer wanted to say—he was more subtle than that.  Still, two out of three readers had weighed in with their confusion. 

“As a writer,” I began when it came my moment to speak, “you have to consider your audience.  Every reader reads differently, and every reader will pick up different aspects of a piece depending on their experiences.  If something you’re trying to say isn’t coming across to two-thirds of the group [and here I let hang the unspoken implication that this was a very large percentage] then you might want to think about stating your point more clearly.”

And that was all—we then moved on to an essay about Christian stereotypes.

All day I thought about what I’d said, how I’d encouraged this young writer who’d written a damned good essay to compromise his vision because two classmates who’d never played a video game and had probably skimmed the essay the night before didn’t understand it.  The ending was valuable for its subtlety—it had made readers realize for themselves how ridiculous the PC-console debate was—and here I was, an authority figure who held the power to grant this student a letter grade telling him to bow to the whims of a few readers he wasn’t even reaching out to.  I hadn’t said this directly, but I’d pressured him to follow the mainstream—to do what everyone else wanted.

So I wrote the student an e-mail.  It was a medium-length e-mail, sent late at night, with a sincerity I hadn’t shown in the classroom fourteen hours before.  It said that he’d received some opinions from his readers, but that only he, the writer, could decide how valuable these opinions were.  Did he want to write an essay that spelled things out in simple terms, or did he want his readers to think for themselves?  It was a choice he had to make.

I felt a lot better after writing that, and the student did too—he replied saying he was glad to hear I’d liked his original ending, and that now that he had my approval he planned on keeping it.  It was a victory for artists and independent thinkers everywhere.

I wonder now, though, what kind of path I’d set him on, and whether he was prepared to face the challenges of arguing for what you know is right despite the put-downs of the majority.  I think about this path and how difficult it is, how many nagging voices come at us from groupmates and authority figures, how often these people tell us what we’re doing isn’t working or is just plain wrong.  I think about how sticking to an unpopular vision is one of the most difficult choices in the world to make, but it’s where great art comes from, because the ideas that get remembered are always the ones that break free from the mainstream.

Fuck if it isn’t a difficult struggle, though.

We Want....Information

This is what happened today:

A girl: Mr. Rogers, can you send my application to B____ B_____?

Me: Of course. Let's just make sure you're not missing anything. (skims over papers briefly) Looks like you forgot to put your phone number here.

Girl: Oh, it's fine. My sister goes there, so they can just get it from her.

Me: What?! This is an application to high school, which, along with college and job applications, is one of the most important documents you will fill out in your entire life! You have to fill these out perfectly! If they ask you for something, you have to give it to them, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. If they ask you which cereal was your favorite when you were six, you'd better tell them! It's a simple sign that you can follow directions, which is all these schools really care about anyway! The simple act of filling out the form correctly implies responsibility, and thus proves you will be successful at their institution. How can you be expected to expound upon the relationship between deism and quantum theory if you can't even take the time to fill in your phone number?

Girl: (writes her phone number in the blank) Can I go now?

Me: Yes

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.

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:

• 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.

The One with the Deep Mind

Friday, 7:34 PM, Kriasho Kofu Office, Room 8.

I am teaching a Checkpoint lesson to two high school girls on advanced pronoun use and idiomatic expressions with "one." Ten minutes of drilling sentences describing cartoonishly-drawn characters in a prison line-up ("the one with pigtails," "the bald one," and the ever-difficult "the one in the floral shirt") have finally given way to a freer speaking activity. I swiftly secure to the whiteboard a series of pictures that previous teachers have hastily printed off the internet or clipped from fashion magazines: a businessman with a cell phone and striped tie, a preppy high-school student wearing a light-blue collared shirt and khakis, a glamor model with long black hair, a grave-faced office worker wearing clear-rimmed glasses, and this man:



I then come at the girls with my questions: Which one looks the most handsome? Which one looks the oldest? And finally, which one looks the smartest?

The younger girl answers first. "The one in the striped tie looks the smartest," she says hesitantly. As always, I ask why. She responds that she is not sure.

Then the older girl answers, pointing at Jim Carrey with a big smile. "I think the one on the far right looks the smartest." She too is at a loss to explain why, but fumbles steadily forward with the words to describe her feelings. "Because, he looks funny, and his face...his face is silly...but I think that...inside, he has a deep mind, and he can think of many ideas with a silly face."

Think about that.

How Eikaiwas Work

The following entry, like everything else in this blog, is a work of pure fiction. No references to any actual people, events, or corporations (including that which employs the author) is intended; and any resemblance to such persons, events, or corporations is entirely coincidental. Any claims the author makes regarding the motivations or business tactics of any corporation are completely fabricated for the purposes of fiction. Copyrighted images of Duke Togo have also never been used in company advertisements without proper permission.

To advertise a discounted TOEIC test preparation class, one of the Japanese teachers at my school made magnetic signs featuring a grim-faced Golgo 13 and some flashy statements about the cheaper price. She stuck the signs in the upper left corner of the whiteboards in every classroom where they could grab the attention of students during lessons. Though it was pretty cool to have Duke Togo looking at me during the day, the sign got in the way when I stuck practice cards on to the whiteboard and took up space I needed for writing. My annoyance with the sign grew so great that I finally moved it to the lower left where it wouldn't obstruct my teaching. Some days, however, after another teacher had used my classroom, I couldn't help but notice that the sign would be blocking the upper corner of the whiteboard again. We played a back-and-forth game for about a week until I took to shifting the sign back to the upper corner myself every time I left the room for fear of getting a talking-to.

If that's not the perfect metaphor for how English conversation schools in Japan operate, I don't know what is.

Charisma Man Walks Among Us

click for larger image

I briefly mentioned Charisma Man in an earlier post after Tom introduced me to its greatness, but found it far too brilliant to lay buried in an entry with a half dozen other links no one would bother to click on. The comic ran from about 1998 to 2005 in an old gaijin mag called The Alien (which later became Japanzine), and I'm currently on the lookout for a reasonably priced copy of the out-of-print collected series. (If any gaijin out there can help me on this quest, I'd be much obliged.)

Charisma Man is the epitome of the arrogant, self-interested, ill-qualified English teaching gaijin who flees a humdrum existence in his native country to seek fortune, respect, and lots of hot sex. Upon reaching Japan, he is transformed into a muscular hunk of pure confidence who draws scores of hot females to his side until he encounters his arch-nemesis: Western Woman.

What captured my attention most about this strip is this idea of a misfit gaijin not being able to make it in his home country, and coming to Japan as an easy way to gain power and popularity. Just like Superman on Earth, the most ordinary of Western attributes become extraordinary feats here in Japan. Guys who worked deadbeat jobs back in the West discover that their ability to speak one of the most in-demand languages in the world instantly qualifies them for a high-paying teaching position that demands instant respect from the Japanese people. Those misfits from the Western dating scene can come here and—with the help of a little confidence—win instant attention from females of all ages, sizes, and levels of English ability. The capacity to consume more than three glasses of beer, reach tall items on shelves, accomplish the simplest of home-repair tasks, wield a phallus longer than four inches, and instantly answer colloquial English questions impress people like magic. And even the simplest of Japanese language skill or chopstick handling will never fail to impress a crowd.

But this existence is all a facade. However much his newfound powers boost his ego to superhuman proportions, Western Woman proves that Charisma Man's popularity is all a sham by knocking him back to his true geek status. I see plenty of guys here using their gaijin status just to win girls, but the Charisma Man phenomenon goes deeper than that. Success in Japan for all but the truly qualified is just a lot of smoke and mirrors; most gaijin aren't doing anything that any number of Westerners couldn't do as good or better than themselves (in the classroom or the bedroom). Without real talent you are nothing; and all the colloquial-English in the world won't deliver you real success. Maybe every gaijin needs a Western Woman to hold up the mirror and show him his true form.

Still, for those who can't stand the reality of that mirror, Japan makes a great hiding place. Why face the humiliation of your pathetically-low Western job qualifications when you can make a real salary, sleep with dozens of women, and be worshiped as an eigo no sensei instead?

For more Charisma Man strips, click here or here. This article is also informative reading.

Fringe Benefits

The teacher’s room of an English conversation school. 9:25 PM.

Four Japanese teachers and one foreigner scurry around the cramped teacher’s room, marking attendance sheets, putting away lesson plans, pulling off nametags, and making phone calls to no-show students after the end of another workday. Amidst the commotion, another breathless gaijin enters waving his hands, his unkempt hair and cheap suit tousled by the exertion of the day. He addresses the teachers from the doorway as if they were a crowd of hundreds.

Gaijin: Attention everyone! I have an important announcement!

All eyes turn expectantly towards him fearing some disaster: a visit from the Head Office; a student who’s failed to renew his contract; or worse, a grammar question that even the foreign teacher cannot answer.

Gaijin: A student brought us three bunches of delicious Yamanashi grapes on Monday, purely out of the goodness of her heart. I helped myself to one of them last night and—I must warn you—they were the most delicious grapes I had ever tasted. (The others slowly go back to their work.) There are now two bunches of these famous purple mouth-watering Yamanashi grapes left waiting in the kitchen. These grapes are the size of ping-pong balls, and I myself can guarantee that they will not disappoint a single person who ventures to try them. Is anyone interested in taking them home?

Teacher #1: Nope.

Teacher #2: (shakes head)

Teacher #3: You can have them.

Teacher #4: No thanks.

Gaijin: (turning to his Western coworker) Matt?

Matt: I guess I could, but I took some grapes last time and they just went bad in the fridge. I’d rather have you take them all than have them wasted.

Gaijin: (in disbelief) All right, is it really okay if I take both bunches home? Is anyone else even remotely interested in them?

By this time everyone is completely ignoring him as they finish out their day’s work. The gaijin shrugs and goes to collect his prize.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

You would be amazed at how often this happens. Fruit in Yamanashi is so ubiquitous that people have long grown tired of the mammoth peaches, grapes, and cherries that the farmers harvest and hawk on the roadside every year. I assure you that I intend on taking full advantage.

Nova and the Eikaiwas

AEON and Geos ads in a Kofu alley. I am fairly certain that Geos has not obtained the necessary permission to use that Shrek image.

English conversation schools (eikaiwa) in Japan are big business. Many adults who studied written English in school for the dreaded TOEIC exam later find themselves wanting to actually communicate in English for business, travel, or just for fun; and over the past thirty years several huge corporations have sprung up to fill this demand (and, arguably, to create a larger demand). These companies advertise on billboards, subways, and on television; often employing actors or other traditional gimmicks to entice consumers. Aside from AEON (currently the largest eikaiwa chain) and Geos, Berlitz and ECC currently offer classes for adults and children in cities from Hokkaido to Okinawa. The rivalry between AEON and Geos is particularly strong, as the heads of both companies were once partners who split over the issue of whether to expand worldwide or to focus on conversation schools within Japan.

Even Kofu—whose rural character guarantees a low demand for English education—boosts an AEON, a Geos (technically the Geos is now located in a neighboring city, as the company abandoned the aging streets of Kofu for a brand-new shopping center to entice Yamanashi’s affluent suburban population); for kids, the Perfect English School, the humorously titled Speakeasy, Peppy’s Kids Club;* and, surprisingly, a Nova.

That a Nova school still operates in Kofu is astounding after the company’s embarrassing bankruptcy less than two years ago. Nova was the biggest, most powerful eikaiwa of them all, operating nearly a thousand schools (compared to AEON’s three hundred), and whose colorful likeness and annoying pink rabbit mascot (pictured at left) overloaded television stations across Japan, making the company’s name as well-known as McDonald’s or Lawsons. At its peak, the company employed five thousand English-speaking foreigners; many of whom found themselves stranded in Japan without jobs or back pay after the company went bankrupt. This lead to a job crunch when many teachers desperate to stay in Japan took jobs at smaller schools wherever they could. Those that couldn’t find jobs either went home or stayed with help from generous parents.

So why did Nova go bankrupt? As far as I’ve been able to piece the story together, Nova’s incredible profits and outrageous expansion were due to its aggressive marketing policies and bait-and-switch sales tricks to lure in new students. Whereas AEON and Geos offer students a reserved spot in one class (with the option to switch if a conflict arises), Nova sold ticket books that students could supposedly use anytime they wanted to take a lesson. Because the individual lesson price was cheaper if students bought tickets in greater numbers, many students bought more tickets than they could use before they expired. When students did show up, they were frequently turned away because a class had maxed out. Customer dissatisfaction was huge, and to make up for this loss of renewal revenue, Nova reached out to more new students with even more aggressive expansion. The bubble finally burst in 2007 when Nova filed for bankruptcy and cast a black spot over the eikaiwa chains.

However, that was a long time ago, and the eikaiwas march on. Expansion has slowed, and companies are now more careful about where they open new schools. Meanwhile, an organization called G.Communication—who operates, among other things, several cram school and restaurant chains—took over what remained of Nova; and now operates just thirty schools. I like to think that there is a lesson in this story about people refusing to be manipulated by the education business’s pushy advertising and sales gimmicks—but that could be wishful thinking. Maybe Nova was just stupid enough to go too far.

*A funny story about Peppy’s Kids Club: the company is changing its name after one of its Canadian teachers was caught in Thailand messing around with little boys. Not the kind of club I’d like to join.

The Sagas of Round-Up

Long before I arrived in Japan, the publishing arm of the Kriasho Corporation redesigned some of its older textbooks so they no longer resembled brightly-colored workout tapes from the 1980s. Though the new textbooks are sleeker and easier to use, the lessons chronicle the exploits of characters so absurdly two-dimensional that I can no longer restrain myself from making fun of them. Were I in charge, the textbooks would be about Japanese salarymen searching for lost Viking treasure, or a bumbling band of college students on a cross-country road trip to locate a mythical Kentucky Fried Chicken that had successfully merged Original Recipe with Extra Crispy. Maybe someday.

Take Off (Even Days): Surpassing the Love of Men
Take Off follows the everyday adventures of Meiko, a smartly dressed anime character, and her redheaded shoulderpad-wearing American co-worker Amber. Meiko bears the distinction of being the only character in the Kriasho universe with an even remotely sexy voice, though Amber's slow drawl evokes the painful lethargy of a soap opera-watching housewife. In the first Listening section, Meiko is devastated when she fails to score a date with the narcissistic Jules (who, though he is American, has adapted the Japanese men’s habit of carrying a purse)—however; after fifteen units of restaurant visits, cooking classes, and weekend trips with Amber; Meiko turns down Jules’s invitation for a romantic ski weekend because there isn’t enough room in the car for her very special friend.
Rating: 4/10. I give this story extra points for its daring lesbian undertones and a circular arc worthy of Strindberg; though that damn actress playing Amber prevents it from scoring any higher.

Gear Up (Odd Days): A Boy and His Trains
Katherine is a flaky eighteen year-old on a homestay with the Kobayashi family in Tokyo. Her host brother Hiro is a twenty-three year-old introvert who still lives at home even though he works for an international bank, and whose defining characteristics are his crippling shyness and his obsession with trains. Many an astute Gear Up reader has noted that Hiro seems to love trains a little too much—to the point where his idea of a fun weekend is riding the rails to Shizuoka and impressing upon his blonde companion the finer points of rack-and-pinion locomotion.
Rating: 3/10. Though Hiro’s train fetish and social awkwardness are good for a few laughs, this story’s lack of tension will leave readers falling asleep. Even a nerve-wracking moment when Katherine runs out of money at the mall is easily resolved when Hiro rushes to her rescue with her forgotten ATM card.

Breakthrough (Odd Days): A Narrative of the Life of Chris Quimby
Chris is the token black character of the Kriasho universe, and the Breakthrough editors—in an unprecedented display of social daring—push the bar even further by making his wife Haruka Japanese! Unfortunately, instead of speaking out against America’s narrow-minded views on interracial marriage, Haruka spends the majority of the book volunteering at animal shelters, fussing over her dog, and generally being as annoying as possible.
Rating: 1/10. This story is saved from a zero only by Haruka’s adventure-seeking father Toro, who backpacks across South America and serves as an inspiration for travel-junkies everywhere.

Breakthrough (Even Days): Why America Hates Vegetarians
This saga centers around Takashi, a physical therapy student (already I loathe him) from Japan attending college in San Francisco. We also meet Jake the pretentious art gallery owner and Jill the yuppie lawyer—though they both pale in comparison to how irritating Takashi is. In the first Dialogue, Takashi proudly announces his vegetarianism and strict abstinence from alcohol, and later—in a particularly horrendous example of sarcasm—makes a painful speech about the merits of organic vegetables. The actor playing Takashi has a voice like a rhinoceros dying of prostate cancer, and I feel the cringe of fingernails on a chalkboard every time I play the Breakthrough CD. Takashi spends the second half of the book in pursuit of an unnamed female Friend (whose voice, if I may be so bold, is almost as annoying as Takashi’s), whom he finally gets alone on a bluff overlooking the Bay in the final lesson. Sadly, Takahashi’s date comes to an embarrassing end when he prematurely ejaculates all over the backseat of Jake’s car and has to spend his New Years Eve wiping semen stains off the leather interior.
Rating: -12/10. Not even a reference to Where the Red Fern Grows can make me give this hunk of crap a positive rating.

International Health Trends

(from a low-intermediate level class)

Me: Belinda doesn't eat meat. What do we call someone who doesn't eat meat? Do you know the English name?
A student: Vegetarian?
Me: Excellent! Now—a harder question. In English, what do we call someone who doesn't eat meat, doesn't eat eggs, and doesn't drink milk?
(pause)
Another student: Allergic.

I found this far too funny not to post.