Mandatory Kids Are Hilarious Story/Johnny Cash Reference:
So I'm teamed up with a student teacher to teach a unit on nicknames. We explain a short dialogue of the "Hi, My Name Is James, Call Me Jim" variety, pass out some fake nicknames that the kids will appropriate, and get ready to start a dialogue game in which they collect as many names as possible in a short amount of time using the English dialogue we've prepared. Pretty standard stuff. The moment we pass the names out, a kid throws out the biggest "MY GOD, THIS SUCKS" (In Japanese, "men do kusai!!") and, when questioned, expresses that he is unhappy with his nickname, as it's a girl's name and he's a manly little eighth grader.
The name? Romeo. Oddly, the boy across the room with "Juliet" seemed entirely unperturbed- so we whipped out a list of nicknames, and ran down the list asking the students whether each was a boy's name or a girl's name. Turns out that Deborah is a man, Romeo is a woman, and there's really nothing wrong with a boy named Sue.
Mandatory Japanese Is Hilarious Post:
Check out this promo poster for an upcoming epic film on the rise of a gangsta superstar:
The title, in katakana, reads "getto ricchi oa dai torain"- which, after sufficient verbal gymnastics, resolves into Get Rich or Die Trying. That's funny enough, but the real kicker here is in the fine white print, which advertises "Hip-Hop World's Charisma: 50 Sento!"
also: Osaka
is crowded. To charm you, it has:
great manhole covers,
cathedrals wedged into hotels,
and spiral escalators.
1 comment:
Speaking of which! I downloaded (i think the first half of) something calling itself "K Dub Shine" or some such. Despite the name, it turned out to be particularly non-noteworth j-rap (or whatever the kids are calling it), except that it was the first instance of that genre i've come accross to be so obviously bling-oriented. "Kane, kane, kane" and all that. I could even pick out the names of cars and expensive liquors.
So! Not that i expect the topic to be important to you, to what extent would you suppose this is a japanese developement and to what extent borrowed? American urban culture comes in a panoply of flavors and i wonder how these are represented over there, how they're modified and paralleled. Thoughts? Comments?
In other news, i've got an internet connection at home now. I'll drop you an email, it'll be from the preposterously long gmail address. (this information only being usefull if you [remember | can decipher] who would [identify themselves | write something] like this.)
-the real k dubby, please stand up, please stand up.
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