too much Glay
I had a great day today. I met two of my former students this afternoon. During the year I formed a casual English speaking club and these two students came to every meeting. They also helped me out when I held an English camp for the younger class at this school.
We went and did karaoke for two hours. I have a terrible singing voice, but they didn't seem to mind too much. I picked a lot of easy song (Hotel California, YMCA) and enjoyed myself. I was a little nervous at first, since the only person I sing around is Michael, but once I got started I was able to relax.
Glay is a band here in Japan. Between the two of them, they sang six (6!) Glay songs. One of them also sang the SMAP song. SMAP is a group that has been around for longer than my students, and for some reason they have this one song that is immensely popular.
One of my students had just returned from a trip to Korea and brought me some omiyage, including some Korean seaweed, which is far tastier than Japanese seaweed. Unfortunately, you cannot get Korean seaweed here. I'm hoping that will change as all things Korean become popular. There is a Korean show on television that has convinced hordes of Japanese women that they want Korean husbands. Older, married women go on tours of Korea to the main actor's favorite spots, and it seems that some of them are having a hard time differentiating between the actor and the character.
It's nice to see more tolerance for Koreans, but I am afraid that this is a fad and not leading to any true cultural understanding. Japan is all crazy about crime committed by foreigners, especially foreigners from other Asian countries. There's a lot of discrimination that happens, and even second and third generation Chinese and Korean Japanese citizens are considered Chinese and Korean and are usually not granted Japanese citizenship. Recently a headline in the English language newspaper proclaimed that a Korean had won a seat in the Diet. His mother was Korean, but his father was Japanese and more notably so was he. But to the paper and to the people, he was Korean.
We went and did karaoke for two hours. I have a terrible singing voice, but they didn't seem to mind too much. I picked a lot of easy song (Hotel California, YMCA) and enjoyed myself. I was a little nervous at first, since the only person I sing around is Michael, but once I got started I was able to relax.
Glay is a band here in Japan. Between the two of them, they sang six (6!) Glay songs. One of them also sang the SMAP song. SMAP is a group that has been around for longer than my students, and for some reason they have this one song that is immensely popular.
One of my students had just returned from a trip to Korea and brought me some omiyage, including some Korean seaweed, which is far tastier than Japanese seaweed. Unfortunately, you cannot get Korean seaweed here. I'm hoping that will change as all things Korean become popular. There is a Korean show on television that has convinced hordes of Japanese women that they want Korean husbands. Older, married women go on tours of Korea to the main actor's favorite spots, and it seems that some of them are having a hard time differentiating between the actor and the character.
It's nice to see more tolerance for Koreans, but I am afraid that this is a fad and not leading to any true cultural understanding. Japan is all crazy about crime committed by foreigners, especially foreigners from other Asian countries. There's a lot of discrimination that happens, and even second and third generation Chinese and Korean Japanese citizens are considered Chinese and Korean and are usually not granted Japanese citizenship. Recently a headline in the English language newspaper proclaimed that a Korean had won a seat in the Diet. His mother was Korean, but his father was Japanese and more notably so was he. But to the paper and to the people, he was Korean.