I made my first joke in Japanese today!
I was driving my Japanese teacher to the station after class, and on the way we passed an incident with a lot of fire engines and ambulances outside a house with smoke pouring out of it. Let’s call it a ‘fire’.
My teacher said he had seen a lot of fires today, to which I replied, ‘that’s because it’s Tuesday!’.
Guffaw!
日本語で：
今日は日本語で私の最初の冗談を作ったよ！
私の日本語の先生は：「私は今日は火災の多くを見ている」を言った。
私：「はい、火曜日ですから！！」
（笑） ^_^
It was great to see everyone back home doubt the Japanese government and tell me they were hiding The Truth from us regarding the doses of lethal radiation we were receiving. No, really. I didn’t know that I knew so many nuclear physicists.
Meanwhile, I kept checking the local governments web page (if you are using Google Chrome it should offer to translate it for you) that kept us up-to-date (twice-daily) with the airborne radiation levels in the town I live in, the levels in the water supply and the prefectural levels. Of course, the totally non-biased, non-propaganda Russia Today website would probably have you believe it’s all lies. Trust no-one!
I digress. Let’s assume that the readings are accurate. As far as I remember, the readings went up to a maximum of one-point-something-something-something (I knew I should have been a scientist) at one point, which was pretty scary. I was reassuring people here and back home that it was fine and ‘apparently parts of America are higher’ and other stuff like that, while googling for numbers. I learned a lot about it though, in a round about kind of way. Hey, at least I’m not pretending to be an expert, like so many others thought they were.
Anyway, I am writing this now because I just checked the radiation in my town again this morning and as you can see, it appears to have bottomed-out at around 0.08 microsieverts per hour. That’s not good, is it!? I want 0.00 microsieverts per year! OK, obviously there has to be some in the background, so 0.01 would be fine, I suppose.
So I had a look for background radiation levels in the USA and Cornwall (a place with a fairly high background level, I hear) and found this article.
“The U.K. Health Protection Agency estimates the typical Briton receives about 2,200 microsieverts of radiation per year from background radiation, or about 0.251 microsieverts per hour — more than double the levels registered in Tokyo.”
“Cornwall, a popular tourist destination in southwest England, has four times the level of radon as other parts of the country, he said.”
Is Bloomberg.com partial to a bit of anti-cornwall propaganda? Please let me know.
I have done a fair bit of travelling now and have been learning 2 languages – Spanish, and now Japanese. Neither are perfect by any means, but I have come a long way in a relatively short time. During this time it has dawned on me that new languages can be picked up and learned very easily. I have discovered the key, the rosetta stone. In fact my key makes it so easy, it can all be condensed into 3 simple, straightforward steps. I was going to get my book published and make lots of money but I decided to give something back instead… so here it is:
Continue reading “Learn to speak any language in 3 easy steps!” »
That’s me joined a Karate dojo in my hometown of Kuki. I have been going for a few weeks now and I am enjoying being part of something which is 100% Japanese. As a Gaijin with a very limited Japanese ability it is pretty tough, but I am being taught by very experienced (and patient) instructors and I am managing to copy the basic movements so far.
By far the most difficult and painful thing I have to do, though, is the kneeling. Bare feet on a cold, wooden (if you’re lucky) floor for 30 minutes or more is just murder on the knees, ankles and feet. I can’t stand up afterwards, it’s too painful and my feet are completely numb by this point anyway.
It’s good, though. I like it. I always wanted to learn a martial art and it will keep me fit. It is helping my Japanese ability too, of course. The best thing is Susan and I feel like a part of the community now. Yesterday was the end of year show and party. We had a huge banquet and lots of beer and I even managed to have a few with the mayor of Kuki.
Susan and I met up with my cousin Neale (whose name is Robert), along with his wife Sam and friends Richard and Alan. We had a lovely day out, we walked from Shibuya over to Harajuka where we saw some rockers performing and people arriving at an Ayumi Hamasaki concert dressed in costumes as weird and wonderful you would only expect in Tokyo.
Continue reading “Harajuku” »
The huge Japanese clothing and fashion chain Uniqlo has announced that it will require all its staff to be able to converse in English as well as Japanese by March 2012. Continue reading “Japan’s push for increased internationalisation” »
Do’s:
You would need to be crazy to attempt to drive, go on a bus, or walk near a road here.
All right, all right, I am exaggerating slightly, but to drive it seems you need to learn how to be part of some special collective consciousness where road users know when to stop, when to go and when to swan into the lane adjacent to them. The roads are for the most part set out in a grid with one way streets with alternating directions, like in the centre of Glasgow (or if you don’t know Glasgow, similar to some other grid-like road layout, such as Lima for example). This means lots of cross junctions with no road markings or lights or signs. People just seem to edge out and/or go for it and hope for the best. The policy for taxi and bus drivers is to either accelerate as hard as possible or break as heavily as possible, which is most fun when negotiating the speed bumps which are littered everywhere. It’s a good laugh. Oh yeah, and everyone constantly uses their horn to let everyone know they are there. Surprisingly we have only witnessed a couple of accidents so far.
In other news, we fly to Tokyo via Toronto on 11th May at 1.45am.
Photos