David is smartness...sort of... (1/19/13)

Hey oh y’all,

I’m back. And still alive!

Let’s see – some thoughts for this week.

I am starting to get the hang of public transportation! That’s a start!

And by get the hang of I mean halfway convince your host family that you may not actually understand the basis of Euclidean geometry. You know, the whole “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line” thing? Yeah…that one…

See, I somehow managed to turn a normally 10-minute trip into a 35-minute trip. Both ways. My host family asked how my trip was, and I told them my route and how tiring it was and whatnot and was met with looks of confusion and disbelief. I didn’t think my Japanese was that bad…it’s not…my sense of timing and direction is though. This of course caused me to end up taking the shuuden (last train) and missing the bus…this ladies and gentlemen is why taxis are invented but rarely used. They’re nice because they exist and get you home much faster than walking alone in the dark and rain, but they are also expensive. A normally 150 yen bus ride becomes 600 as a taxi.

But in a lighter note, taking the shuuden is not scary at all – many people, from sleeping businessmen to teenage couples texting on their keitai denwa (cell phones) and even a few obaa-sans were on my train. Plus, trains are well lit and comfortable, and the stations remain staffed. Compared to the United States, quite safe.

This safety even applies to long distance domestic travel. You can take a cheap night bus from Kyoto to Tokyo. But there are also companies that specialize in female-only buses. Granted, I haven’t actually taken one so I can’t personally attest to its service, but I’ve heard it’s nice. Then again, I think if I can’t even make trains work correctly, I’d better avoid buses as much as possible.

But hey, maybe if I keep working on trains, I can see a Densha Otoko play out. Densha Otoko (lit. train man), is a popular Japanese internet-chat story/movie/drama/manga/pop culture icon, based around an otaku (nerd/geek) who saves a woman on a train, then with the help of an anonymous online community, gains the confidence to ask her out, and the (warning spoilers...)











 two eventually fall in love. I definitely recommend reading/watching, especially the movie. Only about an hour and 40 minutes, but way funny!

Now for a complete change of pace, here’s a little segment called say dis dat way:

It’s basically a collection of funny puns – both English and Japanese and sometimes mix that make abroad language learning even more fun!

Starting with everyone’s favorite – the law of tautology.

So we met up with some bilingual Japanese friends, and our conversation happened upon religion. Being one of our classes, Daniel wanted to compare the class discussion to our friends’ actual experiences. So he asked, “how would you describe bukkyou (lit. Buddhism)? One of the friends started to respond “Bukkyou wa (Buddhism is)…” and paused, only to have another friend jump in explaining “Buddhism! (as in it's Japanese for Buddhism, duh).” The first friend snapped back, “I know that!”

Then there are English puns you hadn’t thought of before:

The fact that I can hold a can brings much amusement to others.

Then of course there are English to Japanese mojidoori (literal translations):

Blow your hanamizu (nose water) into the hanakami (nose paper).

Then there are Japanese sound-alikes.

Don’t tell people you want to go to appear in a keimusho when you mean to go to a ge-musho.

Keimusho – jail.

Ge-musho – game show (though you might not want to appear on a game show either…have you seen them before?).

See? I can be smart and witty and cool and stuff! Kind of...

Ok. That’s way too much thinking for one night. Sorry. See y’all soon!

DC