Posts Tagged ‘English’

Foreigner feigns ignorance of Japanese to avoid speeding ticket

A clip from yesterday’s “Real Time News” in which a police officer in Kanagawa prefecture stops a Mercedes Benz that was traveling at 128 km/h (80mph), 58 km/h over the speed limit:

The driver of the car is a foreigner, and when the Japanese police officer starts speaking to her in Japanese, she pretends she can’t understand and speaks English. The officer cannot speak English and isn’t quite sure what to do. If he were to give up and wave off the foreigner without a ticket, his action would be caught on film and he would no doubt end up like the Tokyo police officer who resigned in shame recently for failing to enforce the law in a similar circumstance.

The officer continues to speak in Japanese to the woman. Eventually he notices that she seems to understand what he is saying, so he suggests that she can actually understand Japanese. She finally caves and and admits she can speak “a little” Japanese. He then informs her of that driving 128 km/h in a 70 km/h zone is a grave speeding offense that will result in a suspension of her license. The woman is shocked, so shocked that she suddenly develops the ability to speak enough Japanese to make the accusation that, “this country doesn’t treat gaijin like humans.” The officer says he is not treating her in such a way.

She starts to cry and say (in Japanese) that she will kill herself. The officer calms her down, tells her to drive carefully, and sends the woman away with a ticket. The woman will have a chance to dispute the ticket in court. Hopefully the judge will have a chance to see the video footage of the incident and get a look at how she tried to weasel her way out of taking responsibility for her violation of the law.

I don’t believe this woman’s action to be an isolated incident. I’ve met quite a few foreigners who swear by the “I don’t speak Japanese” method of avoiding traffic tickets, and anecdotal evidence across the internet seems to support the claim that this kind of thing is very common. When police officers are not on camera, many prefer to let foreigners off without a ticket instead of going through the hassle of dealing with the language barrier.

Note: This is just a short clip from a segment that included several other lawbreakers, all of whom were Japanese. Its primary focus was not on foreign criminals.

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Japanese TV news reports on poor working conditions of foreign English teachers

NTV’s “Real Time News” sometimes airs some pretty dumb special reports, but it also devotes considerable time to serious issues. Here’s a very good report on how using dispatch companies to employ foreign English teachers is killing the quality of English education in Japanese public schools and making foreigners endure poor working conditions (subtitled in English):
Part 1

Part 2

These videos were originally uploaded by the General Union, which seems to be doing some good work fighting for better working conditions and posting the latest news on this issue.

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• dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
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Osaka English teachers stage sit-in

The OFSET Union has held a sit-in to protest education budget cuts and a reduction of their monthly salary:

After submitting the letter shortly before 4 p.m., the Osaka Fu Special English Teachers Union, which comprises 20 of 34 native English teachers employed by the prefectural government, began a 24-hour sit-in at Osaka Castle Park in Osaka to protest the plan by the Osaka Prefectural Board of Education to cut their monthly salary of 303,000 yen by 4 percent from August.

The teachers have not received a pay raise since 1996.

“If the government has 300 million yen to spend for Midosuji Ave.’s ‘light up’ project, it should spend the money on education,” said Steven Thompson, general secretary of the union.

Osaka Prefecture is nearly bankrupt, and the OFSET union has been fighting hard to save the jobs of its teachers since budget cuts began earlier this year.

The hyperbolic hype of Japanese advertising

When I first arrived in Japan I was taken aback by the extravagant and grammar-challenged English blurbs that I saw on various and sundry products. For example:

“Delicious and healthy life!

We are wishing that your life is healthier and is filled fortunately.”

This comment seems to be well intentioned, but to take a dim view of the reader’s present lifestyle and prospects for the future.

And this on a new electric fan:

“30cm. Blade antique fan. This fan make old generations remember old good times. And this will be made a new impression on young people.”

I was more surprised by the extravagant claims made about the products than by the fractured grammar, but I put it down to the copywriter’s limited facility with English; I couldn’t believe that anyone would intentionally make claims that were not just false advertising, they were entering the realm of the absurd. But then I started learning how to read Japanese and realized that some of the ad copy written in Japanese was even more outlandish than what I’d seen in English. My early impression had been correct, but the copywriters’ poor command of English was not resulting in unintentional hyperbole, on the contrary, it stymied the flourishes and embellishments that they wanted to throw on the lily to give it a good and proper guilding.

I recently came across an extreme example in a Coca-Cola Japan product called “Aquatherapy Minaqua”. It’s ordinary mineral water, but that “aquatherapy” part makes me wonder whether I should drink it, take a bath in it, or get someone to give me a massage with it. Anyway, here’s a translation of the label:

Aquatherapy

Minaqua

Natural Water

Blessing of Select Japanese Forests

(Soft Water)

On the back side of the bottle it says:

Blessing of Select Japanese Forests

Soft water that assuages and enriches you body

and soul, and allows you to realize your true self.

I think those are some magnificent claims for a bottle of mineral water. One thing that’s laughable is that this is soft water (軟水), which means there are few minerals in it. Coca-Cola Japan is flogging non-mineral mineral water and billing it as a tonic for the body and soul, a veritable “aqua therapy”. One thing I can say for them is they’ve got chutzpah. If you visit their website you’ll see that they advertise some of they’re other products in the same over the top way.

Mark Ledbetter comments about teaching English on Japanese TV

Remember our January 13th post about Japanese TV shows that teach English? The teacher/author who appeared in the video clip we posted, Mark Ledbetter, has sent us an e-mail responding to the post:

Good evening, all. Just stumbled onto this site. And find myself being seriously raked over the coals. Are there really that many gaijins watching? I had no idea! Well, let me say that I actually agree with most of the comments here. In my defense, I did what I could within the restrictions of the show.

Those being:

1) Everything has to be really simple with problems easy enough for elementary school students to understand.

I’m limited to everyday katakana words, as school kids know those. One writer above suggested I talk about the asobu/play problem. Another suggested cunning, mansion, smart, and challenge. In fact, I have dealt with all of these in my books and with mansion on earlier Sekai-Ichi shows. Asobu/play type problems are, to me, much more interesting than katakana words. My favorite in that category would probably be oboreru/drown. Since you don’t have to actually die to oboreru, you hear things like: “My father doesn’t like the ocean because he drowned last year.” Alas, elementary school students don’t know “drown” or most other problem words based on one-to-one translations. So I just can’t do them on the show.

2) Answers should be black and white, right or wrong.

I try, really!, to explain that everything is context-driven, that often right is wrong, and wrong is sometimes ok. I’ve actually managed to get a bit of that into earlier shows, though most of the time it is edited out.

3) It all has to be funny.

Unfortunately, I’m not really a very funny guy. So I have to leave it to the “talentos,” or to the staff to come up with unlikely problems that may arise from katakana pronunciations. In fact, many of the problems (like cool pond) are from real life experience. That one seems pretty unlikely to me, but who am I to dispute their actual experiences?

4) All items have to be considered interesting by mysterious producers I never meet, people who hold all-nighters to discuss the content of the shows.

Most of the things I find interesting are “too difficult.” Most of the things they find interesting are, to me, rather boring. But, apparently not boring to most of their Japanese audience. Again, who am I tell them that what their audience finds interesting, is not?

I’ve proposed a number of, I think, really useful things for their show. The people I propose them to often agree, and even become a bit excited about presenting some important heretofore unintroduced language issues on TV. But the ideas always get shot down when explained second-hand to the decision makers higher up. I just hope that if I’m patient with the system I’ll be able to eventually talk about things that matter a little bit more. I have some hope that that may happen.

Thanks Hartz, and a couple of others, for a few nice words in the relentless (if basically correct) stream of denigration. That’s right, when I use a “textbook” at all (which is rare), I use the English version of Conan. Mangas are often a great source of true-to-life conversation.

Well, thanks for the feedback! It’s always appreciated and, to tell the truth, this is the first I’ve ever gotten.

Osaka City Government Cutting Budget: Foreign English Teachers Losing Their Jobs?

Some of the most experienced foreign English teachers at Osaka public schools may soon lose their jobs:

Nearly three dozen native English teachers called Monday on Osaka Gov. Toru Hashimoto not to cancel an education program that places native speakers of English in the prefecture’s schools and expressed concern that the teachers have only been offered four-month contracts.

The Osaka Fu Special English Teachers Union (OFSET), which represents the 34 native English speakers working at prefectural-run high schools and special education schools, hand-delivered a letter to representatives in the governor’s office in the afternoon and requested a meeting as soon as possible.

“The Osaka Prefectural NET (Native English Teachers) Program is currently under threat of cancellation due to budget concerns. NETs, working closely with Japanese teachers of English, have spent years developing sophisticated English programs at schools throughout Osaka Prefecture. Without NET teachers, these programs would become unsustainable and simply vanish,” the letter says.

After taking office in February, Hashimoto announced that the prefecture would enact a four-month emergency budget to run from April to July.

By then, two special project teams, appointed by the governor to review all prefectural spending, are expected to have their final recommendations on what should be cut. Osaka Prefecture has nearly ¥5 trillion in outstanding debts and is nearly bankrupt.

Many NET teachers are very unhappy about their four-month contracts, fearing that it may be a sign that their jobs will cease to exist under the new city budget:

At a press conference attended by about 15 union members, Steven Thompson, general secretary of the union said: “A four-month contract [for teaching work that requires long-term planning] is just crazy. It’s a terrible problem.”

For more details on the situation, check out the OFSET Union’s homepage.