Last week, 5 year olds at my school learned about barn animals. This involved singing “Old MacDonald” and imitating said animals complete with barnyard sounds. I tore into this task with gusto – I love my 5 year olds and will take any chance I can to play with them, regardless of how silly I […]
The Acquisition of Language
From Arigatou to Zed
I would like to direct your attention to the newest member of I Eat My Pigeon’s Pages family: The Glossary. The Glossary was born at 2:48 p.m. Tokyo time and provides story-and-joked-filled descriptions and definitions for various terms I often use in my blog entries. Said terms range from Arigatou to Zed. It is also […]
One, Two, Three … WHORE!: Part Ni
Just for you, P-Jay …We here at my English school not only categorize typical Japanese pronunciation mistakes (See “One, Two, Three … WHORE!”: Part Ichi) but sometimes we discover brand new ones. Today I taught my class of adorable, wriggly 2 year-olds again. Kazuki, the wriggliest of them all, bumped his nose on the folding […]
One, Two, Three – WHORE!: Part Ichi
During our initial training to teach at my school, our trainers alerted us to Japanese pronunciation errors we might come across. The infamous “l/r” issue is indeed a reality – in our lessons, there are prates of flied lice, soaps on lopes, crassical concerts and lipped stockings galore. A lesser known pronunciation error of the […]
Words of the Week Part 2 or “Fluff Post in Lieu of Something Better”
I have several potentially interesting posts brewing in my head, but until I can sit down to give them the attention I hope they deserve, I give you another round of “Words of the Week.” ototoi – the day before yesterday. Perhaps meaningful only because it was the last word I wrote down in Western […]
Words of the Week part 1
At first, I blamed my none-too-frequent blog posts on a lack of internet in my own apartment. Now, about a month after the happy home internetting event, I find myself still posting intermittently so, in an attempt to post at least once a week, I shall begin to chart my growing grasp of Japanese in […]
No More Questions or Why I Love Weird Al
Each day, the names of the adult students taking classes are printed out on a sheet and taped to the wall of the teacher’s lounge. At this tender stage in my Japanese cultural training, I still find many of the names foreign. Worse, I often have a hard time telling the difference between male and […]
Momo is the old Pink
New knowledge gleaned the other day that made me happy; in the olden Japanese days – before the katakana English word “pinku” was used – “momo” was the word used to describe the color “pink.” š
A Natural
At this tender point in my tenure with my school, I have only a few regular shifts. Every once in a while, when, I suppose, there is a surplus of substitute teachers, I have been called in to do something out of the norm. Today was one of those days. I received a call from […]
Weird Al
At my school, the staff encourages the students to keep journals in English. Between classes, theĀ English teachersĀ are asked to check out and proofread said journals. This is a request that appeals strongly to me – not only do I get to brandish my editing skills from my former life but my love of Engrish will […]