Here’s a great example of putting a positive spin on things; I was talking to one of my night-school teachers about the conference we had to attend last week and I asked him what he had thought about the whole thing. Had he enjoyed the experience? Any good points? He replied, “I didn’t understand much of the main lecture. She had a strong accent and spoke too fast. I think she forgot that many people in the audience were speaking English as a second language. Also, when we were in small groups the ALTs often used slang and spoke in ways that I found difficult to understand. However I enjoyed the opportunity to listen to practical English.” My house just burnt down in front of my eyes, and I’ve lost everything I own but, man, look at all that space I can use to garden in now!

Personally, I thought jabbing forks in my eyes would have been more enjoyable (and probably more educational) than sitting through another poorly thought out and equally poorly executed lecture on cross-cultural understanding. Maybe it’s just me, but I find sweeping generalisations and shoving people neatly into boxes (he’s Japanese, he must love sashimi! he’s white, don’t give him wasabi) annoying at the best of times, but when the people that do it are paid lecturers who are supposed to be knowledgable on the topic, it really infuriates me.

I’m not entirely sure whether understanding less of what was being said, like the JTE I was speaking to, would have made it more enjoyable. Actually, scratch that, I definitely would have enjoyed it more if I could had just switched off and made up my own story of what was going on, something which I have become quite adept at doing during the morning meetings at school. Ahh, he mentioned students and, er, toilets and, umm, cleaning. Oh, 3 hours. Wednesday. Yes, he must mean the students have to clean to toilets for 3 hours on Wednesday. Then my supervisor always has to ruin things by actually translating things correctly. “Dan, I should let you know that there’s a 3 hour lecture on Wednesday about hygiene and sanity that the students have to attend.” Language, what a bastard.

Posted in Japan on Thursday November 25, 2004.

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