Tell Tale Thriller: Michael Jackson and Japanese cadets

For Performance Day 2005 at the National Defense Academy of Japan, each English class had to be on stage for seven minutes. English classes are mandatory each year of undergraduate education for cadets who need international communication skills.

One of my classes chose to perform Michael Jackson’s hit, “Thriller.” I declined to initiate a discussion about his child abuse trial that had just begun in the United States. The 20-year olds appointed a dance master, watched the video, cleared away desks and practiced for months. I tried to keep up.

Another class opted for "The Tell-Tale Heart." The students wrote a script and refused my offer of a metronome for the victim’s heart beat. Instead, the sound effects man called out in a loud, flat voice, “Do-ki, do ki."

He nodded acknowledgement of my praise. It sounded good, but I wondered what it meant. But linguistic discussion in a low level language class can be taboo. The question was not asked. Acceptable classroom level of inquiry restrains. Jackson was acquitted of all charges in June, during summer vacation.

In November in the big new auditorium commemorating the 50 year establishment of Japan’s security forces, I sat with my colleagues. The performance began with Poe. Ms. Horie whispered, “Do you know what ‘do-ki’ means?”

“An arbitrary sound?” I guessed.

“’Do-ki’ means ‘rapid heart beat,’” she told me. The two Japanese English teachers cited other Japanese onomatopoeia. A "sh" sound means tears, but "only a woman's tears."

I’d drilled pronunciation with a cadet about the mouse crawling across floor. “’It was only the wind in the chimney or a cricket chirp.’"

"She's a very good English speaker,” Mr. Horie said.

“I offered to shorten the sentences, but she protested," I recalled. Her performance was magnificent.

Five hours of skits proceeded. Shakespeare had been banned the previous year. Dance ensembles of Lion King and Sound of Music were popular this year.

A professional actor spoke at the end of the performance ceremony. "Don’t give up NDA to be a dancer," he said. "Except for the class that did 'Thriller.'”

I was elated. But he did not mention “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Perhaps he had arrived late.

"Please don't tear the flower."

Friday evening in June. The flower of the month in Japan is hydrangea. A man in front of a house tends round dark blue blooms. A sign hangs from a flower. I mimic, “Don’t pick the flowers?” The man assents, his posture apologetic.

A Japanese friend translates. The sign cautions, as a mother to a little child: "The flowers are crying. Please kindly don't tear the flowers."

Add a language, add a pun.

A Cat-like Mountain

Comparing landscapes to lifeshapes seems natural. A mountain near San Francisco is sometimes called “the sleeping Indian princess.” From different angles, one imagines postures for Mount Tamalpais.

Three hills stand near my apartment in Kyoto, a river valley surrounded by hills on three sides.

“Let’s go up to the roof,” I encourage visitors from out of town.

We can identify the famous hills with large markings in which there are summer fire ceremonies. But I did not know that the small hills had names.

After a day of sightseeing, strolling and learning local names and histories, we eat dinner in the apartment. The cat lays at the window.

“Takagamine!” exclaims Kazushi, pointing at the cat.

It is the name of one of the hills.

“Exactly,” I reply.

The New Flu Touches Me: a timeline

MONDAY, 11 May
I ask students in conversation classes at Kandai University what news item to discuss next.

“The flu.”
“The flu in Japan?” I ask.
“Yes,” they reply.
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WEDNESDAY, May 13
I find English language flu information on the Ritsumeikan University website. I plan to ask students if our university has such information on its website.
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SATURDAY, May 16
By chance, I meet an administrative assistant from Ritsumeikan University at a Kansai-Stanford annual event in Kyoto. I mention the flu page.

“We have a lot of short-term international travel among students,” she explains.

Someone else at the gathering mentions the news that a Kobe high school student had been diagnosed with the new flu.
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SUNDAY, May 17
1340 hours. A phone call from Kandai informs me—in English-- that a meeting in progress will decide whether to cancel classes because of the flu. I am instructed to check the Kandai website in Japanese after 1500 hours to learn the decision.

“Will I get another phone call?”
“No.”
“Where on the website will the information be?”
“On the first page, on the upper right.”

I imagine that discussions about whether to close universities must be taking place all over western Japan this Sunday afternoon; I wonder whether the universities coordinate their discussions and decision making, and whether health agencies are involved.

1500 hours
I check the Kandai website. I see a posting about the flu, but it was uploaded in the morning.

1700 hours
I check the Kandai website again. There has still been no update since the morning. I send email to my boss at Kandai asking whether classes are canceled.
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MONDAY, May 18, 2009
0520 hours
I check the Kandai website and find the new information in Japanese. I read enough words on “Translate Google” to convince me classes are canceled. The other information matches that from the Ritsumeikan University website regarding dangers, symptoms, referral websites.

I read my email, including a message sent Sunday night about 2300 hours from a head of English department that classes at Osaka University are cancelled all week. Osaka University is the other university at which I teach:

“Dear Colleague,
I am writing to you to let you know that Osaka University has just decided to close all classes from 17th to 24th because of the recent cases of influenza. Please keep watching the University homepage for further information.”

0800 hours
A Japanese friend who also teaches at Osaka University sends email:

“Here is a announcement about cancellation of all lectures at Osaka University. According to newspapers Kandai University also canceled all classes. (Please make sure by yourself).”

I teach Tuesdays at Osaka University.

0930 hours
My boss at Kandai confirms class cancellation. I teach classes Monday and Wednesday at Kandai.

Noon
I get a phone call from Osaka University, in Japanese. I confirm in English: classes are canceled this week. I am to consult the university website frequently to find out whether classes will be cancelled next week.

1500 hours
I twitter about university closures: “Shrill Sunday phone call. Epidemic start or end. Colleges are closed.”

1600 hours
I read New York Times article headlined “W.H.O. May Raise Alert Level as Swine Flu Cases Leap in Japan”

1700 hours
I get the Japanese newspapers. Frontpage stories illustrate the "new flu" fear as people wearing masks: 5000 parents buy masks. A masked mother and daughter shop for disinfectant. Numbers of infected people range to 96.

ONE is the most difficult number

“ONE” IS THE MOST DIFFICULT KANJI

I go to teach at the university by train at 7 in the morning. I scan the advertisements and news and inspirational messages that adorn the inside walls of the commuter train. Here is something I might be able to read. Hmm, I understand the individual words. I conclude it is the Japanese version of the aphorism, “He who travels alone sees the most.”

In class, my students read a newspaper article about the historical difficulty of learning to write. The newspaper commentary says that from time to time, Japan considers abolishing the hard-to-write characters. Not surprisingly, the Japanese sophomores do not want to trade their language’s Chinese characters--called Kanji-- for Roman characters.

Next, I ask the young men and women to discuss favorite and least favorite kanji.

One student claims to hate to write “one” – a horizontal line segment.

I am astonished. “Why? What is challenging about a straight line?”

“One” is hard to align properly, the student says. It tends to crumble into an underscore or a dash. “What is your favorite kanji?” she asks back.

I think of the aphorism in the train. The poem repeated the kanji for “one person”. I ask for the correct pronunciation; the two are pronounced the same. Thus enabled, I garble enough of the poem to achieve recognition.


The poem means, “’Everyone can do one thing uniquely well,’” the students agree. And by implication, they add, the poem suggests, ‘” Find that thing for yourself.’”

I had been wrong about the meaning. But I am very glad for the effective classroom communication. It is a conversational English class.

Way Out

IT TAKES TWO TO READ A MENU

Kyoto--Ah! The reading lesson for the day appears in the form of an exit sign. The square is a mouth, useful for entrance and exit. The top specifies direction. “Way out.”

I am sight seeing in Kyoto during Spring with friends from California. We are at a shrine.

At a restaurant, my Chinese-American friend can read all the Chinese letters on the menu. I can recognize only “bird.” She can read the modifier that specifies chicken.

However, she cannot read the phonetic Japanese script at all. I can. “Curry.”

Naked Magnolia

 

The Magnolia bloomed in March.  I’d been anticipating the opening since noticing the downy buds in a neighborhood shrine on January 1.

 

Ancient, Kyoto is a new city for me.  It is not often that I move to a new city:  Santa Cruz, Tucson, New London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.    Most recently, I had been eight years in Yokohama. 

 

In Kyoto, I walked the forty minutes to the train station for months before the rainy season, not needing to understand the buses. A family-run fish store sells generous slabs of tuna.  The big street curves to the main post office.  Bicycle traffic converges near the station. 

 

Most surprising, the map of the city was etched in my brain as my cursor feet walked. 

 

After a year’s residence, with the flowering of the old tree, a sense of place is fulfilled in the stony Buddhist garden.

 

It is a naked magnolia, an alluring adjective I learned from my mother driving through Los Angeles.

 

The Kyoto sky is clear enough to see the Big Dipper.  Sleeping on the apartment roof in the elevated northern suburbs on a hill, I imagine the apparent turning of the constellation as a key turning in a lock.