August 29th, 2003
5:11 pm
Had a nice experience today, while I was riding my bicycle outside a policeman rode next to me and said “konnichiha”.
I said, “oh, konnichiha”
Policeman said, “err, ima chotto ii?” (err, can I have a few minutes)
“oh, hai hai” I said
I got off the bike
The policeman then said something about the bike which I didn’t quite get, so I said “sumimasen, demo watashi ha nihon jin ja nai desu”, which means “sorry but I’m not a Japanese”.
The policeman was surprised, and asked “chougoku jin desu ka?” (Are you Chinese?)
“iie” I said. (No).
He then asked “kankoku jin desu ka?” (South Korean?)
Then I replied “iie, watashi ha igilisu jin desu” (no, I’m British), I then handed over my alien registration identity card.
The policeman and his colleague then asked me a bunch of questions, like where I live, and when am I leaving Japan, and what’s my occupation. He then confirmed my staying address with his walky-talky unit (which was extremely fast), and then he praised my Japanese saying how good it is and then said “go ryoushin ha nihon jin desuyoo” which mean “your parents are Japanese right?”, I then when through my usual self introduction process.
I then said “doshimashita ka”. (Is there anything wrong)?
The policeman then said it was just that I was wondering around on the bike very slowly, going from left to right looking all over the place, which made me look very suspicious. I think the policeman actually thought the situation was quite amusing too; he then said that I should be more careful and left.
August 23rd, 2003
5:10 pm
One of my students invited me to dinner with her friends last Wednesday evening, she said to me that she’s got some interesting friends who would like to meet me, well I guess I must be a good enough teacher (or the other way round) to be talked about outside. I decided to go, since I would never refuse any chance to meet new people, and as usual I tried to think completely in Japanese for the few hours before I depart; since that let’s me speak Japanese A LOT better.
Well I did meet this very interesting girl, we’ve started to talk in Japanese/English (I spoke in Japanese while she spoke in English), and then when she learnt that my mother is Taiwanese, she said, “can I speak in Mandarin?”
I said “OK”, and she started to speak in Mandarin! I was really quite surprised since I’ve never met any Japanese who’s any good at Mandarin before, so both of us can speak the same three languages, although the ordering is different, my best is English, hers is Japanese, my second in Mandarin while hers is English (although I must admit that her English is better than my Mandarin), then my Japanese and her Chinese is about the same. How damn cool is that, I mean to meet someone who you communicate in three different ways, it’s like we could work as spies together.
Oh, but after a while the conversation got too complex, so we’ve both changed to talk in English for the remaining 80% of time.
Below is really quite boring, so I don’t recommend reading unless you’re really bored.
Well, I’ve learnt a lesson on shopping this week, you see for some silly reason I’ve managed to convince myself that I “need” a PDA, so I’ve ended up picking up a super duper SONY Clié running palm OS5 last Thursday, immediately after I bought the thing I thought, “god Joe, what the hell were you thinking, you’ve just bought something that’s utterly useless”, but anyway I took it home and played around with it for a while, I also had to buy a copy of Missing Sync for it to work with a Macintosh. It turned out that I wasn’t much impresse by PDA, I mean it does all sorts of cool stuff, but it does it badly and also for no practical reason, I mean would you really want to store video clips in a little handheld computer with memory card that cost a fortune?
“What about address books and contacts?” You ask.
Well I think I would look like such geek carrying one of those thing with me, also quite often when you take down someone’s address you ask them to write it down for you, now do you really want to teach someone how to use your super duper expensive address book every time you exchange addresses? Oh, I thought it was very interesting to find that finding addresses and checking up calendar events can be done a lot faster on a iPod!
“What about maps etc?” Well a picture from the Internet can be uploaded to a digital camera faster than trying to get your PDA to sync.
Well anyway, I think you got the idea, so I took the thing back on Friday, and the shop took it back without any questions asked! Although I did use that chance to try my Keigo (ultra polite Japanese form).
“watashi ni, kore wo kaesasete kudasaimasen ka”
Sadly I still wasted £20 on the missing sync software, any one want a free copy?
So I’ve learnt my lesson on not buying things when you’re not sure what you’re doing, but I’ve also made a mistake on not buying things soon enough, you see I’ve planned to buy a Japanese Dreamcast and some games to take home, I saw Crazy Taxi 2 (first hand) on sell for less than ¥400 once, but I’d thought there’ll be plenty left to buy later, but I was wrong, and if I want one now, it would cost ¥1900 for a second hand. Man decision is so difficult sometimes.
August 19th, 2003
5:10 pm
Most of you probably don’t know that I plan to go over to Taiwan and China after Japan. For going to China I need a VISA, so I went to the Chinese embassy yesterday. The procedure for making the VISA was a bit confusing, and there weren’t much information given in English, and I guess I was too lazy to try reading the Japanese or the Simplified Chinese (which to me is a lot harder), anyway I went to window 6 on the first floor, and I thought that I’ll speak in Chinese (the person in front of me was speaking in Chinese), bad idea. The lady behind the glass window obviously thought that I was some silly Japanese boy trying to be smart, so she replied back in Japanese “san kai”, but because I wasn’t expected her to reply back in Japanese, and the fact that the Japanese for the number three is the same as Chinese (and I think she said in more of a Chinese accent), I was really confused, - san what? Why is she talking about mountains? - Then she said “nihon no pasupoto deshou” which means, “aren’t you a Japanese passport holder”, that I understood right away since it’s distinctively Japanese. So she was saying that I should go up to the third floor.
Anyway, I went up to the third floor (which is equivalent of the second floor in Britain) and found an application form to fill in, then I joined the queue for handing it in, in front of me was one of those silly arrogant English speaker that you often see in Japan, whose attitude towards the Japanese girl who was dealing with the application form wasn’t very good I thought, “hay look at me, I’m a real English speaker, I’m better than you. Do you understand the words that’s coming out of my mouth?”
When I got to the window I handed my form in and said “onegaishimasu”
And the girl said “nihon go wa daijobu?”
I said “chotto wakarimasu”
She smiled and said “koko de chougoku no kanji de namae wo kaite kudasai”
I said “hai” - scribble scribble
She said “kon getsu nijuni nichi moku youbi ha daijobu?”
I said “hai, OK desu”
She said “ja otsukarisamadeshita”
I said “arigato gozaimashita”
So that went alright, anyway why am I telling you all this, well I just thought it was amusing that I can speak fluent Chinese, yet I got the job done using Japanese. OK so some of you might question my Chinese ability, but I really don’t think my Chinese sound too far off from a real Taiwanese.
I really need to stop myself from going to Akihabara from now on, since it’s far too easy to waste time there, there’s just so many interesting and wonderful shops there, there’s even Adobe confidential CD and Apple Developer CD from 1996! Oh and there are lots of very cheep second hand things on sell too, you can pick up the latest SONY Clié with Palm OS 5 and camera and all the funky stuff for £120! And believe me, Japanese second hand goods are basically indistinguishable from new. It’s often difficult to try to stop yourself from the thought of taking your wallet out, but then you think to yourself “there might be a shop just around the corner that sell the same item for a far lower price, even if this is a good price already.” Anyway, so right now I got my eye set on a SEGA Dreamcast karaoke plug-in system, oh and you can pick up a SEGA Dreamcast for around £25!
Last Friday Hiro took me to his grandmother’s house in the countryside, it was quite a nice experience, the house was a very traditional looking Japanese house, with paper door and big tatami laid room, it all reminded me very much of the film from Akira Kurosawa that was set in Nagasaki, which please forgive me for not remembering the name the name for.
There were also some pigs on the farm, which reminded me of Sen to Chiro (Spirited Away”. By-the-way I did very much wanted to go to the Ghibli museum, but it’s very difficult to get the ticket, they only sell them on the 10th of the month for the following month, plus that it is now summer holiday, all the real little kids would be blackmailing their parents to get the tickets.
Got one of those tiny USB memory stick thing, so I’ll be able to carry my files about more easily now, which probably might mean more frequent updates to the website! Maybe.