By Alexander Pearl

For the last couple of months I’ve been considering the prospect that, were I to publish compositions, I would do it under a male pseudonym.

Studies like this suggest why.

To support this discussion, I presented to students the results from a study I did a couple years ago involving the Heidi Roizen case. Specifically, with Harvard’s permission, I changed the original materials so that one section of the class received a version of the case called “Howard” Roizen (same case, just different pronouns) and the other section received the original case. Before class, I had the students go online and rate their impressions of “Roizen” on several dimensions. As you might expect, the results show that students were much harsher on Heidi than on Howard across the board. Although they think she’s just as competent and effective as Howard, they don’t like her, they wouldn’t hire her, and they wouldn’t want to work with her. As gender researchers would predict, this seems to be driven by how much they disliked Heidi’s aggressive personality. The more assertive they thought Heidi was, the more harshly they judged her (but the same was not true for those who rated Howard).

Music composition is one of those fields where there simply hasn’t been a woman to make the grade. I hardly believe it is due to lack of talent. Even Clara Schumann, one of the most likely persons for the job in history, didn’t buy into it.

“I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?”

It reminds me of when I was in college and signed up for a “Women Composers Concert” mailing list. Every email was a desperate-sounding cry for submissions, and when they had enough, no one attended the concert.

An impetus driven by the mere power of observation.

Anpanman and Another Anomaly

Today one of my students from English Conversation Class told me that he was shocked to discover that an auto insurance client of his was a 94 year-old man.

When I asked him if his client was hunched over and senile like most men his age, he told me that, on the contrary, he stood straight and tall and dutifully watched over his bed-ridden wife, who was 5 years or so younger than him.

A rare breed indeed.

In other news, a quote from the English Wikipedia entry on Anpanman:

Anpanman doesn’t need food or drink to sustain himself and has never been seen eating. It is believed the bean jam in his head gives him sustenance.

From the epicurian archives:

Anpanman! Betrayed by your own deliciousness!

アンパンマン！かわいそう！！ [WARNING! not a correct translation..... ^_^v]

How to speak Utopian

I’m so consumed with studying today that I walked around the teachers’ office with a mechanical pencil dangling from the elbow of my sweater for some time without realizing it. It snapped me back into reality and I decided to write a blog post to celebrate.

A Mexican friend of mine, who lives in Japan with his fluently English-speaking Japanese wife, once told me that we are living in Utopia. With great healthcare, polite people, low crime rate, tasty and healthy food, and beautiful scenery, how can you disagree?

I thought it might be fun to share some of my favorite phrases I am currently studying from my Utopian grammer workbook in preparation for my Utopian Proficiency Test. These are the English translations provided with the book.

—-How to speak Utopian:

I’ve been feeling rather tired, because of continuous overtime work.
There’s nothing to do, but do it as much as you can.
The reason I get so angry is because I care so much about you.
You washed it? Even still, it’s not clean, is it?
Even though he’s healthy, he pretends he is sick.

Since I am driving, I will have juice instead of beer.
He is not only a good student, he is a good athlete as well.
My family doesn’t have a bicycle, let alone a car.
Everyone, let’s enjoy drinking and forget about work.
I would like my sushi without wasabi please.

You forgot something again? Oh well…
So that I wouldn’t disappoint my parents, I did my best.
It is rude to speak to your superiors that way.
In contrast to the rising population in the cities, the population in the countryside is falling.
It’s about the size of a grain of rice.

The less baggage you have, the better.
If you don’t improve your bad living habits, you will not be able to be healthy.
Admission is free only for those who are 70 years or older.
Recently, not only women but men as well wear make-up.
I bought a cell phone. Now that I have just this, I don’t need a watch or a camera.

As a woman and as an actress, she is the best, but as a wife, I wonder?
I watch TV programs about environmental problems.
It’s not that I hate it, but I don’t eat very much meat.
My mother dropped everything and looked after my father in the hospital.
It is said there is no budget, but on the other hand, the budget is being used wastefully.

With the increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, Global warming will continue to increase.
I will reply after consulting my family.
The food at this restaurant comes in small portions and looks nice, so it is suited for women.

There is a saying, “a small but happy home.”
Toys should be safe above all.
I have no choice but to continue my unpleasant job for a living.
Even if I am not well, in a letter to my family, I will write that I am well.
Starting with his appearance, he looks sloppy. He is probably the same in other aspects.

There may be some Japanese customs that are very strange when seen from the foreigner’s perspective.
I want to eat it, but I don’t want to get fat. To eat or not to eat, this is how I think.
Think about the role of our nation in the international community.
We welcome you regardless of nationality.

Study even though you are not taking the entrance exams.
Medicine is meant to be bitter.
It is hard commuting on a packed train everyday.
Not everything is good in excess.
Just because you have money, it does not mean that you are happy.

—–Now repeat after me please…

Well I AM a junior high school teacher…

My blog clearly needs more jargon in it. (@_@)

To be or not to do

Today at lunch I noticed that the male teachers I was sitting with were wearing suits. When I asked one of them about it he said it was because the students have a test today. The teachers have to wear suits for the formal end of season tests. I’m not sure why I never noticed it before.

In regards to the test, one of the English teachers asked me if this was correct:

Who is the teacher who teaches you math?

Ms. Inaba does.

I told him that this sounded strange, but I tried to explain why this English might not be correct. It occured to me that in English, answering a question using “to be” verb with “to do” verb sounds strange. The question should be answered:

Ms. Inaba is.

Thus:

Who teaches you math?

Ms. Inaba does.

makes sense, while the aforementioned does not. Or, it is nonsensical.

I do not understand. I am confused.

The “to be” verb unnecessarily muddies our language, in my opinion, but who am I to argue with the lexical capabilities of a history of collective thought?

Middle School Survey/ 中学校のアンケート

Here are my answers to a survey my students gave me about my town.

The survey translation is in italics, my answers are not:

Nice to meet you! I’m *******, a 3rd year student at ****** Junior High School. I am collecting information under the theme “Is Tsubame City an easy city for foreigners to live in?” We would appreciate your cooperation in taking this survey. Thank you.

Q1: What do you think of Tsubame City’s natural environment?

The rice fields and mountains are beautiful.

田圃と山が美しいです。

Q2: Compared to your hometown, are prices more or less expensive?

Mostly the same, but fruit and DVDs are much more expensive.

だいたい同じだけれど、果物とDVDはアメリカよりとても高いです。

Q3: In your everyday life, when are times when you think, “This is different from my hometown.”

In America, it is not unusual for a non-white person to speak English. But in Japan, it is very unusual for a non-asian person to speak Japanese. I think it is very strange.

アメリカでは白人では無い人が英語を話せるのは珍しいことではありません。でも、日本では日本人以外の人が日本語を話せるのはとても珍しいことです。不思議な感じがしました。

Q4: What interests you the most about Tsubame City’s culture?

The food culture is very fun. The origin of foods or how foods are healthy is very important here; I like it.

食べ物の文化はとっても面白いです。日本人が原産地とか栄養の知識に興味を持っているのはいいことだと思います。

Q5: Is the food delicious?

Yes, very!

はい、とっても！

Q6: Is your workplace good?

Yes, the teachers and students at Yoshida are very kind to me. I enjoy working here.

はい、先生方と生徒も私にとても優しいです。働くことを楽しんでいます。

Q7: Do you ever feel sad as a foreigner? If so, what times?

I feel sad when people just see “foreigner” and don’t see “person.”

”外国人”として見られてしまって、”個人”として見られていない時は悲しい感じがします。

Q8: While you are living in Tsubame, are there ever times you think, “They really ought to change that.” What times for example?

I wish that there was central heating in schools and homes. It is too cold sometimes.

学校と私のアパートにセントラルヒーティングが欲しいです。時々寒すぎます。

Q9: Do you want to continue living in Tsubame?

I prefer big cities like Tokyo, but for now, Tsubame is nice.

東京のような都市のほうがすきだけれど、今のところ、燕が良いです。

Q10: Henceforth, what do you want Tsubame City to become?

I’m not sure, but I’m looking forward to seeing it.

良く分かりませんけれど楽しみにしています。

That’s all of the questions. I think they will be very useful for my class. Thank you for cooperating with my survey.

I sent the survey to three other JET teachers in the area and asked that they might send back their English answers before today so that one of my teachers can translate them for the students at my school to use for their class project. No one has sent back answers yet.

A Delivery

[Knocking on door]

Delivery Man: “A delivery for you.”

[Pearl opens door]

Pearl: “Good evening, how much is the package?”

Delivery Man: “Ah, you already paid in advance so just sign here please.”

Pearl: “Okay.”

Delivery Man: “You can speak Japanese?”

Pearl: “Yes.”

Delivery Man: “Thank you very much for your business.”

Pearl: “Okay.”

[Pearl closes door]

–The End–

Paranoia and Curiosity

I am finally beginning to understand the JETs I met when I first got here, mainly the ones who, at the time, seemed crazy to me. They were paranoid, frustrated, loved what they were doing but clearly needed to relax.

I understand them because I can tell I am becoming one of those people. I just wish for once, that the teachers I work with, whose job is to teach English, actually understood what I am saying. Even if I use the slowest and simplest words possible, it doesn’t work. I am afraid to use Japanese because I believe that if I did, they would never speak to me in English. Half of them don’t anyway. I don’t want to lose my identity to my language. It strikes me the most benign of situations and yet somehow so difficult for me to understand and fix.

Recently some students have been creating surveys to give to the English teachers for a special class project. I was sent a survey from a different middle school comparing my hometown to this town in convenience, and under the question, “What is inconvenient about this town?” I wrote that “I don’t go shopping very often because people stare at me”. After sending it, I began to wonder if this answer was too candid, or I had done something bad.

I’m always wondering if my reactions are right or wrong, if going from my gut is wrong, and it bothers me. I can’t intuit situations and use what is familiar to me to understand them. I wondered if I should have said “I don’t go shopping because everyone is curious about me.” This is what they always tell me to explain it, that they are curious about me.

Salmon Experiment

Today in class, I chatted with the English teacher, Ms. Nakamura, about natto/納豆.

We both love natto, and we were talking about the different variety of things you can mix into it, like eggs or green onions. One of the students was bragging that he had mixed umeboshi/梅干 (pickled plum) with his that morning. We took a vote in class and agreed it sounded disgusting to everyone but him.

Then I told them about how a couple days before, I had put two slices of raw salmon on top of two cups of rice into my rice cooker and turned it on “fast cook” mode. The salmon and rice turned out perfect and I was able to use the leftovers to make instant ochazuke/茶漬け last night.

I was told that this was like an “experiment” and, like the umeboshi with natto, they had never heard of someone doing it. Actually my Japanese language/Japanese cooking private teacher, Ms. Yokoyama, had mentioned it to me before, but she used a special machine that was specially designated so as not to potentially taint flavor of rice later made in this machine.

I am hardly one for sacramentalism however; I didn’t even go to my own Prom.

On an unrelated note, I’ve been trying to write this post for the last 10 minutes but three of my students have been bugging me in the staff room, one of them jabbering at me in nearly perfect English. His friends are following behind him wondering what he is saying, and the other staff are commenting that they are surprised I understand him and are visibly annoyed by the noise they are creating.

Normally this kid just talks out at me in class; this is the first time he’s ever tried to sustain conversation with me. Looks like I should set up an English conversation time after lunch.

Happy Birthday

Today’s my birthday. Yay, I’m 25.

Today I figured out a new way to study Japanese that, for some peculiar reason, didn’t occur to me before. I take my homemade flashcards from words I gleaned off of quiz websites and run 5 or so cards, then I rerun that same 5 cards several times very fast mouthing the reading and thinking the English meaning in my head. Then I add another 5 cards and run them the same way.

The difference in this method is the speed at which I have to recall them; if I can’t recall them immediately I move them back to the original pile. I’m at a little bit of a crunch for time before the JLPT 2 and already this method is helping me learn faster. I’ve decided to also apply this method to my bass practice and see that I can’t make similar progress.

I had one class today. The students refused to say the class greetings in English, which they are required to do. In rare form, I got angry at the end of class and told them they were rude.

After living here for a year and understanding the attitude that produces such disregard for English, and hearing the students mumble about “foreigners” and how similar and ignorant we are when I am standing up in front of them during class, it is difficult for me to see such behavior as simple adolescent antics. When you live here, you become English, and disregard for it becomes disregard for you. I see it as a product of this society as a whole and it infuriates me.

I’m translating an opinion piece I found in the newspaper written by a Japanese as a call to other citizens to abandon this cultural attitude; more on this later when I’m finished with it.

Really, I love living here most days, I really do. Tonight my friends are throwing me a birthday party and I feel lucky. I’ve never been thrown a birthday party by my friends before.