One week ago today, I gave a talk about my monitor tour at an International Fair in Imabari City. The local media came out and did a story on it. Here’s my amateur slapdash attempt at translating the newspaper article that was published in the morning edition of the Ehime Newspaper last Tuesday. Many thanks go to reporter Fumihito Tawa for coming out and covering the event. I’d also like to proffer my thanks to the photographer who snapped that incredible “A-ha!” finger pointing gesture. The team made me look good! Click on the thumbnail for a larger view.

Caption: Mr. Richardson (right), an American whose theme was using foods like yakitori in a plan for promoting tourism in Imabari City.

Enjoy Imabari Even More

Increase the amount of foreign language information on websites to promote short-stay food tourism

Proposed by a sightseeing foreigner

Let’s rediscover Imabari’s tourist attractions from a foreigner’s point of view. The International Fair hosted by the Imabari City International Exchange Association (ICIEA), took place on the 7th at the JA Saisaikiteya farmer’s market, where the townspeople were able to learn about local attractions as well as ideas for drawing foreign tourists to the area.

The ICIEA received a request from the city, and so set out on a project to have 7 foreign residents undertake monitor tours from June of 2009 to February of 2010. The fair was designed to showcase the results of these tours for the people of Imabari CIty.

Deas Richardson (26), an American assistant language teacher, said of food tourism with a focus on Imabari’s famous yakitori, “Of course it is not really a reason unto itself to visit, but it could easily be a reason to stop (here) on the way to another destination.” He expanded upon his ideas, putting emphasis on using short term stays centered around culinary attractions to bolster tourism to the area.

He also raised the example of websites which anyone can edit (wikis) and are frequently used by foreign travelers, citing the fact that the city’s English and Chinese language information was scarce. He encouraged the audience, saying, “The Japanese page introduces yakitori, but there is no explanation in English or Chinese. Since anyone can contribute information as a volunteer, I would really like us to try to do so.”

Mr. Martin Samoy (44), a Belgian photographer who has lived in Imabari for 15 years, presented some of his pictures of scenery around the city. Mr. Samoy’s acquaintance and coworker, Ms. Mizumi Ide (5), also of Imabari, said “I was moved by the way that he photographed landscapes so familiar and ordinary to Japanese people with a fresh perspective.”（Fumihito Tawa）

Oh the juvenile joys of living in a country where English is widely used…poorly… By poorly, I mean simply that you wouldn’t find that particular bit of English on an electronic scoring system screen in the US. It is, you must admit, a pretty natural usage, though. Just one you more often hear than read. Super short post!

Well, folks, my tourism project with ICIEA has finally come to a close. It was a lot of fun, and I’m thankful for the experience. I created a video to precede my talk to the crowd gathered at the international fair we held on Sunday last weekend. It was a pretty fun time. I enjoyed looking over the posters and photography from other monitor tourists before showing my DVDs and then getting up to speak. Those videos have been arranged in a playlist and embedded above. The first 2 in the playlist are available in full 1080p HD, so don’t miss out. The remaining 4 have been previously featured on this site.

Anyhoo – I was asked to deliver a bilingual speech, so I frequently repeated myself, I’m afraid. I’m fairly sure that both the Japanese people and the English speaking foreigners in the crowd were able to follow me reasonably well. My take: Imabari should play up its unique food heritage in a play to put itself on foreigners’ radar. I explained the concept of food tourism, and how most foreign people who go to Hiroshima go there in order to take in the history, the museums, and the sights. But they’d be foolish to miss out on some okonomiyaki while they’re there. (Am I right?)

Imabari is the crosspoint of 3 major arteries of transportation, yet people no longer stop here on their way elsewhere on Shikoku. I urged them to think about the slogan thought up by my friend Harry; “Shikoku Starts Here.” Great slogan! If only we could get some people to take a break from their travels, spend a night here, and eat some yakitori. That’s right, yakitori. Imabari is currently the #2 city in all of Japan for yakitori, and it has a unique take on it, at that. In Imabari, shops make yakitori on sheet metal griddles and handheld steel plates instead of on skewers over charcoal. It’s said that this type of yakitori started because Imabari people are impatient and they want their food lickety-split. (It’s also likely that the ship building industry’s presence meant that loads of scrap steel plates were readily available…) DELICIOUS, by the way.

Anyway, my other recommendations were for people to get online and add information to the English language Wikipedia and Wikitravel entries. (I also told them they could pay me to do it….semi-facetiously. Got some laughs. The offer still stands, if you’re reading this, guys. Ha ha. ) All in all, I think my suggestions were well received, and I think the event went well. I want to say kudos to the other foreigners who volunteered their time and to all of the Japanese staff who worked so tirelessly on this project. お疲れ様でした！

I may or may not bring this topic up once more on this blog. It seems there may be some newspaper articles coming up out of this. And it’s also possible that I’ll post a song about Imabari’s yakitori. (No joke. It was made when we were the #1 city for yakitori. Perhaps with the aid of foreign tourism, we can reclaim the title?)

Here’s a quick note to let you know that Know Your Meme talks about Soramimi (空耳; literally “empty ear”) in the Phonetic Translations video they put up. It’s the term for facetiously attempting to comprehend something said in a foreign language by reinterpreting it phonetically in your own language. (The post also covers misheard lyrics, which are kinda-sorta related.) You can check out the Japanese Wikipedia article here (or English here). Be aware that the post is not safe for work, please. That’s why I’ve not embedded it. Also know that I seriously object to some of the forced humor in some of the examples given. As one of my favorite former teachers would have sarcastically put it, “lewd, crude, and socially unacceptable.” Ha ha, man I wonder how she feels about 90% of the Internet. Anyway, go check out the Know Your Meme post on Phonetic Translations, and make sure you hit up Harvey’s post at Japan Newbie with probably the funniest Japanese soramimi effort I’ve seen to date at the bottom. It leaves me winded from laughing every time. If you’ve got better examples, please, share!

Hey – here’s a post to answer the obvious (and totally fair) question: “Dude, you just said you were back to blogging and went radio silent again. What the heck is up with that?” Well, I’m wrapping up a huge project that has spanned about a full year. It’s a project put on by the city government and the local international association in an attempt to glean some useful information about how we can increase foreign tourism to Imabari City. If you’re in the Imabari area and you’d like to come, you can get a flyer in the city. (I might be able to upload one later, but it’s the same as the images you see.) For those who want to cut right to the nitty gritty, here’s the deal.

Where – Saisaikiteya
When – March 7th (Sunday), from 9 AM to 3 PM
What – Videos and pictures from monitor tours, a 30 minute presentation by yours truly, a slideshow by a professional photographer, a live radio talk show event, a piano “live” performance, a kids quiz & craft bonanza.
Why – To discuss how to increase foreign tourism, of course. But also to receive the free handdrawn English map of Imabari and to enjoy the international cooking demonstration. ICIEA Eco-bags are also being given to those who answer a survey.

Hope I see you there! And hope I can get back online once this mega-project is over!

I recently had several classes re-caption several webcomics. I did this for a few reasons. Using comics in class to have students develop dialogue is far more interesting / engaging than asking them to roleplay what has already been written in the textbook. It’s also far more challenging due to its unfamiliarity. These students do not know the characters from the comic, have a mere 3 frames to grasp the context of the situation, and are often pressed to be super creative when faced with these issues. I love that. I thrive on that. I like to hear the gears in their heads whir as they do something out of the ordinary. Plus, it benefited me in a way, too – I also happened to use this activity as an example in a cruddy mediocre talk I gave at our prefectural midyear seminar to other high school ALTs.

I first got the idea for this project when I saw it pop up on the blog of a former CIR here in Ehime. His Japanese examples are pretty funny, by the way, though you can tell they’re a bit dated from the jokes (not just the URL)! Anyhoo, I then traced it over to this site, which is where I saw the potential for high school kids to pull it off.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Penny Arcade, you really should be. It’s a hugely popular webcomic built around gamer interests that’s updated thrice weekly. The guys who make it, Mike & Jerry, rock out with their socks out, so go hit them up. Having said that, I feel like it’s important to offer up a note here. Note: Penny Arcade is NOT appropriate for class. The subject matter is super niche and the language alters between course, archaic, and highly sarcastic. The art, however, is perfect – highly emotive and often curious.

You can visit the source comics via the following links: 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5. That’s right. 5 comics. Examples follow. Please feel free to read them. Sorry about the poor legibility – the ditto machines are ancient at school. Ask questions and make comments if you’re so inclined! But above all else, enjoy.

Sometimes when I’m grading, I think “I should probably share this.” My students have active imaginations – sometimes they choose to use them, and sometimes they don’t. Let’s take a quick look at an example of each situation.

Situation 1: this is a common occurrence with chain stories written by indifferent students who just want a laugh. They pick an idea and they snowball it. I was happy that it paid off a bit, at least. The “crazy” part turned into a polar bear club type of outing, and the story did have a good conclusion. Also, I’m a sucker for maniacal laughs. Nicely done!

Situation 2: this is a great way to cause your ALT to have a heart attack when he’s grading, and then wonder how much he needs to defend himself against any forthcoming outrageous accusations. Ha ha ha. Holy crap. For the record, no way, Jose. No chance. Also, I don’t live in London – clearly, it’s some other dude.

I’ll be sharing some more student work soon – I did the Penny Arcade Remix activity that I spotted on several other websites, where you erase the dialogue from any webcomic (I used PA for the great contextual clues it contains) and have your students create the conversation in each frame. I hope you look forward to it!

Check out this image from the UK’s Daily Mail. It’s from a pretty big protest rally against the American military base situation in Okinawa, but with a distinctly Japanese twist. I’m not interested in the pre-printed cards that were distributed. I am interested in the hand drawn cardboard one on the right side of the frame. It reads as follows.

福は内〜！平和は内〜！基地は外〜！！
グアムに沖縄に日本に米軍基地は居坐るな！迷惑だ！帰ってくれ！！

***

Fuku wa uchi! Heiwa wa uchi! Kichi wa soto!
Guamu ni Okinawa ni Nihon ni beigun kichi wa isuwaru na! Meiwaku da! Kaette kure!!

***

Luck in! Peace in! Military bases out!
American military bases in Guam, Okinawa, and Japan, do not remain! It is troublesome! Go home!!

This is obviously modeled on the customary Setsubun holiday ritual of 豆撒き or mamemaki – throwing soy beans and chasing ogres out of one’s home by yelling 「鬼は外！福は内！」(Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!) or “Demons out! Luck in!”. People have been pretty heated up over the base situation for a long time now. I’m curious about whether it really implies a few things or not, though: that the American military is a bunch of friendly demon ogres (big step up from foreign barbarians if you ask me), that Okinawa is not part of Japan, and that Guam is upset about the military base there? Perhaps the delineation of Okinawa and Japan was kind of like “Okinawa and mainland Japan”? I dunno. But I found this interesting, and thought you might too!

Betcha thought I was dead. I mean, it’s been ages since I’ve posted regularly. Sad, really. And I’d apologize profusely, except that it was kinda unavoidable. I got crazy busy last summer, and the momentum took me all the way through to…where are we now, 2010? Sheesh. It had been so long that I blanked when I attempted to sign into my Wordpress Dashboard in the Hong Kong airport to make that last slapdash post. Not a good sign.

Tons of people have been asking me where I’ve been, why I fell off the face of the planet, etc. The most recent was my hair stylist, Shin, whose face you might remember from a goofy video I did a while back. He asked how come I wasn’t posting. Well, things are beginning to slow down a bit, so hopefully I’ll be back up and running soon. But no promises! There comes a point at which blogging for fun becomes a serious hobby…and then it begins to feel like an obligation…or, dare I say it? …it can even feel like a job. (Full body shudder!) So, to do a minimalist catch-up message, here’s what has been going on since last summer.

- I became a prefectural advisor for ALTs in Ehime, which instantly killed tons of free time and gave me a good share of new responsibilities as well. I think this is a great thing, because I feel cut out for this job, and confident in doing it. So don’t take my comments as a complaint. It’s just that I am no longer the guy who lives on a tiny fishing island with nothing to do. (Now I’m the guy who lives on a tiny fishing island with loads to do.)

- Went to Tokyo twice for PA training, and once for giggles.

- Gained a technical high school to visit, which turned into one of my favorite visitation schools.

- Organized and ran two large conferences here; the Prefectural Orientation for new 2009-2010 JETs in Ehime, and the 2009-2010 Midyear Seminar (which happened in January). Also showed up at the new supervisors’ meeting last June to talk. And had a few meetings in the capital for business-y stuff.

- Visited my girlfriend a whole bunch. I miss her lots, so I think that’s a great use of my time.

- Took a trip to Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, which I briefly mentioned earlier.

- Turned 26. Holy freaking cow.

- (Today!!!) Dumped and re-imported my entire Wordpress database into a MySQL 5 setup. Then upgraded Wordpress to the most recent version. I first had to learn how to do all of this. It was a little freaky. But I did it! No wonder I was starting to get spam, huh?

And if you’re wondering where this crazy thing is headed, I’m right there with you! I was originally on board for a 3 year stint here. 4 was not in the cards until I was scouted for the PA position and other things fell into place to make it appealing. And now, the same thing is happening, and it’s possible I’ll be in Japan for one year longer now. I’m sure my family will be thrilled. Ha ha. Anyhoo – I’ve not given up on this blog or anything, it’s just sat on the back burner for a long time. It’s been good for me, to be honest – reclaiming some of my life from the reaches of the internet. Still, I look forward to popping back on here and seeing the community come back (if you’re still out there). Thanks for sticking with me! Please be patient as I fix the site up. (I have links to non-existent stuff and broken plug-ins galore. I’m working on it, though.) Alrighty – now that that’s off my chest, I can get back to catching up. New posts coming soon. (No, seriously! At least, sooner than 4 months from now…ha ha ha.)

Hey everybody! The Japan Times published a little article I wrote for them yesterday. I was in transit at the time, so I couldn’t post about it at the time. If you’re curious about how you can abbreviate Japanese to sound more natural, give it a read! (It apparently caused quite a stir among the editors there. Especially “azzasu” and “~zzaimasu” – the legitimacy of which is…kind of the point of the article. Enjoy!)

Trip note: I’m currently writing this from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. I’ll be here in Vietnam for a bit before making a sweep through Singapore (2nd time), Malaysia (2nd time), and Thailand. I’ll see everybody on the other side of the winter break. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!