Japanese Commercials

I'm sure that you've all heard about how Japanese people have crazy things. From crazy ideas, to crazy people to crazy television shows and movies. The Japanese culture is just strange to a Westerner's eye. And maybe to a Japanese person's eye as well (as so claimed by my husband - although I'd argue that he's more Western like than Japanese)

BUT

If you haven't...

I'm about to introduce you.

What does Coca cola have to do with vampires? Why did he stop from drinking the blood from the lady's neck? Are we to assume that it tastes like blood? Or that it's a drink that will satisfy your thirst for blood? Or is there some message about desire in there?

I'm probably thinking too hard. Let's see...

Coca Cola Zero Free tastes so good that... you want to drink it more than anything else in the world. Even the liquid that you need in order to survive.

There. That wasn't too hard. But in terms of Japanese craziness, I'd rate that as pretty tame, so let's check out another one.

So this one start out interesting. Aliens spying on a guy shirtless at the beach who is playing the piano. Normal for Japanese crazy standards so far. Bikini lady is introduced, and then some weird stuff goes on with the aliens and we cut back to the beach people who are now making out and then back to the aliens... and then the beach people with a final cut to the sand on the beach where it shows us the name of the company.

I don't exactly know what 7/11 had to do with any of that, because I've never seen any beaches or aliens inside of it. But, uh, yeah... continuing on. I'd still rate that as pretty tame.

Now we're getting up there in the weirdness. Living inside of Japan for a while now I can tell you that these baby things are in fact a mascot for a pasta sauce. What they are doing on a beach, scaring little girls, though, is beyond me.

Oh look, Arnold S...ch... yeah I have no idea how to spell his last name. To Google! Google says... Schwarzenegger. Thanks Google!

So this is an energy drink, and... I don't know. What happens when you drink it, I guess. You begin to see Arnold popping out of peoples heads.

He was really popular a while back for commercials, but I have never seen him on television.

Oh! Are you interested in a Mc Donalds commercial? No? Haha, Oh well! Here's one anyway!

I'll let that one and the next, final one, speak for themselves.......

I will warn you though, that this next one is the strangest of them all, and could be considered offensive. However it was shown on Japanese television.

English Class

So usually (This class is pretty advanced) I just let my Friday class talk if I feel the conversation is engaging or that everyone (Or most everyone) is interested in the topic. They enjoy just chatting about daily things and such, but because of this one of the previous lessons that I have done is unfinished. And one of the students is unhappy about that. He asked two weeks ago if we could get back to the unfinished lesson and I said (since it was the end of class when he asked) that we'd get to it next week. This week rolls around and he also didn't mention it until the end of class again.

These people, mind you, are not young students. The youngest is probably 35-40 and the oldest is maybe 60-75. And they all understand that they are free to speak their mind and voice any questions/concerns that they have.

So while I did say that we'd get to finish the lesson this week, the conversation took off and so I didn't want to stop it in order to get back to the lesson. (Which was just reading and discussing a short story written by and for native English speakers) And, like I mentioned above, the student didn't ask about the lesson until the end, which really is just bad timing on his part. It's not like I can say "Oh yeah sure. Everyone has an extra hour or two to discuss the lesson?"

When I answered him he did a silent fit. It reminded me of when any muppet would get angry and the lips/mouth area would curl inward. It made me feel a little bit bad, but in the end he was the only one who was concerned with the lesson while everyone else enjoyed what we had been discussing.

Actually the week before he also participated in the discussion. (He likes talking about political and educational things, not every day things like we had been discussing this week) And he enjoyed himself and seemingly only asked the question out of curiosity while this time it was out of growing concern or possibly anger.

After class I was invited out to a coffee shop with some of the other students. We talked about many things but one of them was the student above. Everyone believes that he seems more concerned about the grammar of English and the side of it that is more academic based. (Writing, much dictionary use, the correct way to use x and the many meanings of x) Which is fine, however I would say that when learning a language nothing should be put above another. No area should be given more attention because when you build it up and turn around to look at the other areas you'll fall into one or both of these categories:

The annoying one, where you'll be constantly asking why everything is what it is and refuse the answer of You'll just have to remember it like this for now.

The deaf ears, where even though we have studied or talked about it, you'll refuse to acknowledge it until much later and by that time we will have moved onto a new topic and having to go back and discuss it again causes everyone to become bored as they all understand and have learned the subject matter.

I stressed my concern about this to the other students and they agreed that it was a problem. So my solution was to give everyone a weekly email. A preview of what will be going on in the class and a review of what happened for those who did not show that week.

That was my best, and to be honest only, idea I had. Hopefully it'll work out.

Big, Failed Plans

So I had some plans for today. I figured they were relatively big, you know big "for me", I'm sure your version of big is different than my version. But... as the title of this post has pointed out, they failed. 3/4 of them, anyway.

So plan number 1) Go see the niece sing at her school performance.

2) BUY A COMPUTER

3) Watch a movie at the movie theater

4) Eat birthday cake (This is the one that was sort of not a fail. My husband did go to a cake shop and buy me an average single serving cake at our local cake shop - which I love - but technically it was mousse. I'm still not complaining though. It was delicious.) (EDIT: I love how I mentioned the cake shop twice. I'm going to blame being sick and light headed....)

And why did they fail? Well... apparently I'm sick. Again. For, like, the third or fourth time this year. That's a lot right? I need to bulk up my immune system or something. Cause this feeling? The fuzzy-light headed feeling? Yeah it got really annoying about three minutes in. Plus there's the blowing of the nose and the sneezing and it's just in general not a boatload of fun.

Ha. I say it like no one in the world has ever gotten sick.

I didn't think that I was sick, I mean the signs weren't there. Usually I get a tickle at the back of my throat but this time it was just this... odd feeling that I couldn't quite describe. And, of course, me being somewhat paranoid me, goes to look up all sorts of odd sensations in the back of the throat and trust that the internet knows what it's talking about. (And also trust that I know how to properly describe said sensation)

This is usually why the doctor stuff is left to the doctors. Since -usually- they know what they are talking about.

If I had gone to a doctor and been like:

My throat feels funny.

They'd probably shove some swabs and lights down my throat and then diagnose me as sick. Instead of my trusting my limited throat knowledge plus the internet and believe that I had acid reflux.

I didn't have any of the symptoms (Maybe one) and yet with the strange feeling that I couldn't quite place, I had decided that I had acid reflux.

Good thing I'm not a doctor.

"Human Damage Accident"

Today the train was delayed. I'm not really the kind of person to question delays unless it's really necessary. Things happen. Things break down. That's life. So when I saw that the train was delayed I didn't give it much thought, and then the words "HUMAN DAMAGE ACCIDENT" Appeared below "xxx Train is Delayed". That kinda bummed me out. I don't know exactly what happened but my guess is either someone jumped in front of a train or was pushed in front of one. There is really no other reason why a train would be delayed from "Human Damage".

Just thought I'd share my bummed out feelings with the rest of you. I know you all love me for it.

36 Pots

In case anyone was wondering - that is how many pots (Big pots) of water it takes to fill the tub. With the occasional kettle of water and splash of cold water from the tap. It sounds like a big number, and it feels like a big number when you've been hauling giant pots of water from the kitchen to the bathtub, but in reality it's just a deep tub. It's not really big. It is about half the size of me so I can't even stretch out and relax. I can have my legs dangling outside of it if I want to warm up my body and vice versa.

Pool Shower Time

The hot water or gas ... or something in this house is broken. And it seems that it will cost a lot of money to fix it. That means no hot showers. But for the Japanese people, who have grown up in Japan where bathing in hot springs (With a bunch of other naked people -same gender of course) is normal and accepted, the problem is not too severe.

Except I have not grown up that way. In fact I don't remember ever having a problem not getting hot water. So this is new to me, and as I have a huge problem with my self confidence and standing naked in front of strangers my options are limited as to where I can take a hot shower until the problem is fixed.

That is where the Pool comes in. In this town we have a public pool/gym building for exercise and recreational purposes. And, like Canada, there are shower rooms with showers on timers. In my case we have to pull down a sort of lever and hot/warm water will come out of the shower head. You can control the temperature of the water but you cannot control how long the water will last. Since yesterday was the first time that I had to go to the pool for other reasons than to swim I could tell you that the max amount of time that the water came out of the shower head was 10 seconds. Now I am not complaining because I am thankful that I can still shower but it was annoying flailing around with shampoo all over me trying to blindly find that lever so I could rinse it off.

Walking into a change room with topless old ladies, no matter where I am in the world, will still make me feel awkward.

Ramen Truck

I may have pointed this out before but I wanted to do it again seeing as there is one outside of my house as I type. A ramen truck is the same as an ice cream truck... but without the ice cream, haha. They go around in this semi large truck playing a jingle and you go up to them and order a noodle dish. I am assuming that it is a hot noodle dish but in Japan they also have cold noodle dishes for the summer so I am not too sure which one would be inside. My guess is both and that it depends on the season/weather.

I have never done it before and have only gone up to an ice cream truck once before (That I can remember anyway) but my husband says that the food is mediocre at best, burnt and tasteless at worst. I suppose getting raman at a restaurant dedicated for it would be the best bet for tasty noodle dishes, but I'd like to try it. Just once. :)

Fish Tank

I have a virtual fish tank that I thought I'd point out if anyone is curious. It is at the bottom of my blog. Feel free to click on it and give them food. They will swim around your cursor if you keep it still long enough.

So in case you thought it was a dangerous Ad and did not want to get near it, fear not. It is something I put there purely for fun and entertainment.

English Class

I have an English class that I teach every Friday and one that I teach every Saturday. To be honest, I really have no idea what I am doing. Although everyone seems to enjoy it, sometimes I panic when I do not know the answer to a question. (Is this an Adverb? An Adjective? Why is it "does" and not "Is"? Etc) My class on Friday is of a much higher level than the class on Saturday. I thought that maybe if I went really slow and explained all the sentences and the structure as best that I could that I could start them off on something easy (Like a small news article) but relatively intermediate in terms of level.

I was wrong.

It is difficult because the range of levels in Saturday's class is so great that if I did something at the beginner level, some of the students would find it too easy. But as I explained above, if I did something of a higher level it will end up being too difficult.

The class has 18 students. There are 4 men and of those four I would peg three of them as intermediate. The rest of the class is in early beginner. Also female.

The old English teacher (Who I have never met and do not know anything about besides that his name was Joshua) gave them crossword puzzles and word searches as homework. But I have been told by a few that they disliked having to do that very much. ... But 1/4 of them really enjoyed it.

It would be nice to work with a company that had a book with set lessons and such. As it is, finding and making my own is proving to be difficult and moreso as time goes on.

So what I have been thinking and researching is if I couldn't buy some English teaching books online that have set lessons in them. That would make things easier for me but now the question is... which books would be the best to buy?

New Website!

Not for me, haha. I have created enough half-done blogs for a while. But for a family member, and I am proud of it (Even though it did not take that much effort to create). Check it out here: [Link]

As of this moment it is not completed. And so it still has some stock photos for a space filler until all of the photos that are wanted can be put up. Mostly you can find the stock photos in any of the photo gallery pages of the website.

Check out the old website here: [Link]

The image used of the puppy in both homepages is the same image - one was updated in the last year. I believe that puppy is no longer a puppy now. The image is probably 3-4 years old.

I remember that I was requested to make a photo gallery that was easy to scroll through, and how they wanted the images to pop out. However I was not very good at Flash programs and could not create the website that had those things.

The host of the new website is dedicated to Flash. And they made everything as simple as dragging and dropping. Although it did crash my browser several times. I remember trying to create my own website from the same host about a year and a half back but they seemed to be having problems then as my browser crashed every five minutes and I needed to restart everything. Now it seems that my browser crashes only if I ask it to do too many things at once. I lay part of the blame on the computer that I am borrowing. It is a few years old and has many things stored on it that makes it slow already. But it is a definite improvement. Which is why I decided to share it with you :)

What does "Omnomnom" mean?

The word Om nom nom (Or three words, haha) is a sound made by eating something delicious. The sound was coined by Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, but in the past 3 or so years it has become a very popular word used on the internet. Especially in places like chat room or forums where many people can get together and talk.

I thought I would clear that up for anyone who is not internet savvy :)

I decided to use the words for my blog because I enjoy Japanese food. A lot. It is delicious. I invite everyone to try or make some. And, no, that does not mean go out and buy sushi. ;)