Mutant Frog Travelogue posted about some Japanese conservative who’s trying to cut English from the curriculum in Japan. Now, what the Japanese choose to study is their own business, of course, but what I find interesting is why he has proposed the cut: The reasoning is that Ibuki (as do many conservatives) believe[s] that students’ Japanese language abilities are going down. They should work on their native language, hone that to a good level, then work on English. Studying a foreign language at such an early age a) apparently confuses the kids, and b) takes class time away from good, …
Category: KOREA
Jazz Chords and Student Essays
Some writing about music lately on various blogs brought back a memory from the first week of University. I was enrolled in the Department of Music, and all first-year music students were required to study music theory. My professor, the very theoretical Naida Archer, had this test that everyone had to take. I can’t remember whether she, or one of the TAs for that semester, administered it, but I do remember trying my damnedest at it. The test was full of questions like, “Sketch out the harmony for this melody,” and the like. Well, I had trained in jazz, for …
이지로보틱스
If ever there was a good example of what my students’ writing looked like at ym old University, it’s here: 이지로보틱스 Repeat after me: Machine translation doesn’t work. Machine translation doesn’t work. I’ll let you know when it does work. Till then, keep repeating that phrase to yourselves. (via Culture list)
I don’t want to know what “lingerie piercing” is.
Honest. I wanted to respond to a long and thoughtful comment today, but instead, I ended up redrafting an article for the campus English magazine. The kids, their hearts are in the right place, and they do have some interesting things to say, but… well, there’s a lot of rewriting involved. I know more about cosmetic surgery, foot-binding, gender-reassignment surgery, scarification, branding, and all kinds of other forms of body-modification, much, much more than I ever wanted to know. Including a horrifying newfound familiarity with the term “lingerie piercing”. I’m almost scared to google that. No, wait, I googled it …
Upcoming book on expats in Korea
Over at Galbijim there’s a post on a book project. The content (including text and photos) is to be produced by expats living in Korea and reflecting on various aspects of their lives here. We’re looking for selected articles written by 30-40 expats living in Korea, where they write about something unique to the culture that they love. For example, I’ll probably write about falling in love with galbijjim for the first time, the culture street in Daegu full of galbijjim restaurants, etc…Someone else might want to write about their hobby and cultural experiences with Korean archery. Or their enjoyment …
The Minstrelsy Lecture
Yeah, they got it. What was interesting was just that they missed layers of stuff. After I lectured a bit on the history, we watched a segment of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, and then watched it again with them noting “stereotype” characteristics, and then, when I noticed that most students had only listed a few, we went through it bit by bit and I excavated things like the watermelon stereotype, why a certain comment was sexual humor and sports humor and jailhouse humor all rolled into one, and some of the iconic characters and types in the lineup of dancers accompanying …
Current Positional Adjustments
New semester adjustments: There’s some new kind of antivirus apps on the uni PCs. They do such lovely things as prevent you installing the apps you need and nobody else needs, like apps that play both sound and subtitled for ripped DVDs that have not been released in Asia. There’s a workaround, sort of. But I hope it stays worked around long term. There’s some kind of SQL thing running on all the PCs too, and you can’t log out of it without a password of some kind. Ack! I’m trying to slow down my speech again. Having been out …
Bamboozled Redux
I just watched the Spike Lee movie again, and I gotta say, it really got me… again. I don’t get what people had against this film. The only thing I can think is that it cuts close to too many uncomfortable, sad, embarrassing truths on (all?) sides, maybe? I see those cartoons, those skits, the long set of clips at the end of the movie, and then I think of how blacks, whites, and other people are portrayed in the media in the country where I live, and I wonder: will my students get what the hell I am talking …
… San Peu-ran-shi-seu-ko~~~…
UPDATE (11/09/2006): There are a number of factual errors in this post, as to the derivation of specific Korean pop-music words. Check out Charles’ comment (appended to this post) for more info. Yeah, just goes to show you that you can’t take it for granted when people explain something to you that they actually know what they’re talking about, as I was assured of the derivation of these words more than once, back in my Iksan days. Shrug. Actually, that’s an exaggeration. The title of this post, I mean. Tonight, on the way home from the grocery store, I decided to …
On Appropriation, Race, Popular Culture, and Dorky White Asiaphiles
So I happened upon this blog post at reappropriate, and it got me thinking. To be honest, I didn’t trawl my way through all the comments that followed the post, but I did read a fair number of them. I was tempted to respond with something snide about how young people are so apt to map their personal anger into statements about the entire world, couched in politics for the greater safety from criticism and negative response. But I decided that, as generalizing and as mistaken as parts of the post are (in my opinion), it’s unfair to respond in …