Friday, February 25, 2005

Eden and Josh in Japan

Do You Mind?

I've had this problem recently where I reply to questions in the exact opposite form of what I mean. Eden has been known to ask me, "Do you mind taking out the cutlery?" to which I always respond with, "Yes." It has really been confusing. My defense is that Japanese is confusing me and I forget how to respond in English, Eden just thinks I'm special. In Japanese a lot of polite requests happen to be formed in the negative form such as "Won't you come to the next class with me?" with the answer being, "No, (I will come)." When in English it should be, "Yes, (I will come)." So the end result of all this is that I am a very confused person and tell my teachers that I won't be coming to class and to Eden that I won't do anything around the apartment.

On another note I noticed something interesting in class the other day....

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All of my seventh grade students at school have these laminated banners on their desks with catch phrases that the students made. (Not sure if catch phrase is the proper term, but I can't think of what else to call it). Anyway, most of the students have phrases like, "Let's study for at least an hour everyday." or "Studying and sports club are equally important." or "Let's greet each other in a loud voice." that sort of thing. One girl in particular had two phrases that I liked, the first was, "Let's listen carefully to what the teacher says." and the other was, "Endure (persevere) through cleaning period." As the students have to clean the school, but for the most part do a very poor job and mainly just sit around and chat, although a few do really work hard. I just thought it funny that all the students wrote these sucky phrases and have them on their desks. I didn't see one that said anything about enjoying school but almost every student had one about studying or enduring/persevering. Sad.

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KimagureVenus said...
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