100,000 Strong Against the Republican War on Women

http://www.dccc.org/pages/gopwaronwomen

taking money away from any beneficial public service is just plan wrong; especially when it's one that helps people, in this case women, with important health/reproductive issues.

So sign it, only takes 10 seconds.

Life a new~! Happy 21st!!

I just finished getting my room into a semblance of organization. Still don't have all the furniture though.

It's this but silver and minus the pink
dice (although I think I should add
a pair. XD) 

Life is putting itself back together faster than I thought it would. Already I have a job, a place to live, and a car (a silver 98 Hyundai Accord named Silverado~). The car has some character flaws (cracked windshield, belts need replacing, and oh yeah if I lock the driver-side door I'll never be able to open it again) but it runs and has low mileage on it so yee haw!.

and best of all there are no radio active
zombies to worry about!

I talked to my host family yesterday morning and they are doing fabulously (they were all drunk and had just finished eating a huge meal). They said that life in Tokyo was completely back to normal and a black out still hasn't happened in their area. Now i'm feeling a little bit angry for being forced to come back seeing as how everything is fine in my area. I'm not going to brood over it though.

I actually stayed inside on my
birthday; putting my room
together. It's just not the same
when you've already experienced
bar life ahead of time.

I turned 21today and although i've been drinking and buying my own alcohol in other countries for a couple years now, it was still exciting to buy my first bottle of wine in America (and my first beer last night at 12:30 am was pretty exciting too). It feels like i'm about to start on a whole new life now that i'm 21 and have nothing else to look forward to in terms of birthdays (not true, you have the 25 tax cut, the big 'FIVE OH' and senior discounts!). I'm excited for this new life and embrace it whole heartedly.








Here's to being able to drink legally for once,

PEACE OUTSIDE ( next post about SE Asia coming next!)
Jamie 

"Because all children prefer stories about a boy and his robot"

Bringing back my post about the New edition of Huckleberry Finn (taking the N-word out and replacing it with "slave"), I think these guys sum it up perfectly.




"...we all know that an educational setting is no place to teach difficult subjects".

Eikaiwa (English English English)

Today's interview at Minerva English School for Kids went far better than my interview yesterday with Gaba.

Yesterday it was all business and no play. Suit, tie, shiny shoes and a "go-get-em slugger" attitude. Which is fine for those who wish to work in a big corporation and move their way up the food chain. But that environment doesn't suit me well.

Minerva, although also a big corporation thus having some of the same mentalities, seemed much more laid back. The person that gave the seminar about the company didn't stand in front of us and talk through his power point like the Canadian guy at Gaba (who actually said a-boot instead of about which made the situation even more stressful because I was trying not to laugh the whole time). Instead this nice gentleman from Kansas sat down with us and started off with a short introduction of his life story and how he ended up where he is now. Long story short, it pretty much went like "I found myself here, but then decided I didn't like it so I went here; found myself a lady, had a kid then moved to Japan to help out wife's family thus found myself teaching English to children". A very laid back fellow who seems to just go with the flow but at the same time a hard working individual. Then a little about the company (blah blah, want people who are dedicated, blah blah, loves children, blah) then the individual interviews. Overall I think I left a good impression. The only snag is they contract out for a year instead of 6 months like Gaba in which case I am either going to have to lie and then quit in July, or see about them changing my visa status and staying on until the end of December when my landing permit expires. But, we'll cross that road when we get to it.

Or it could be a complete disaster, but we'll find out!

I think working with children will be exciting and great experience so, once again, FINGERS CROSSED!












-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And recently in American News; our children are getting cheated out of their education once again.

"You can't use that word!! That is OUR word!!"

What the heck is this business with Huck Fin? I mean, don't they know that the more they ban a book the more people are just going to read it? And revising it to exclude the 'N' word is just ridiculous!! I mean, yeah it's offensive and no one but black people have the right to use it, but it's an important part of our past that people need to be aware of. This book demonstrates how people behaved back then, so why cover it up and make it PC? Why skew history? I mean, it is adult material (even though it's considered a children's book) and I don't think kids should be reading it in elementary or even middle school because they don't yet know how to appreciate what they are learning about (their brains aren't fully equipped with the ability to understand things like "don't use this word because it's bad"  so you'd have kids screaming the 'N' word everywhere just because teacher said it was bad XD).

And what are they going to do about the character Jim? I mean, he's depicted as this dim-witted black dude and paints black people to be stupider than the rest of the world. Are they going to write him out of the book as well? Or better yet, make him white?! I read it in high school (wasn't banned in my district) and think that in every high school English Lit class it should be read as it was meant to be read.

Why are Americans turning into such ill-witted, PC pussies? What happened to the good ol' days of plummeting kids with red bouncy balls and swing sets? I mean, aren't us Americans supposed to be badasses with our guns and straight forwardness?  I say we get off our wussy wagon and get in touch with our vulgar sides! Viva La Revolucion!

You tell them pussy's Johnny! 

 PEACE OUTSIDE!
-J

Navy Base in Atsugi!

So one of my New Years resolutions is to improve my blog and blogging skills. One way of doing this is to update as much as possible! So, here's another update!

entrance to the base

I met up with my friend Natsuyo today and we went to go see her boyfriend in Atsugi. He is an American Navy guy and lives on the base there so I was a little excited to see what it was like. My grandpa was stationed at a Navy base in Japan back in the 60's or something (a different base from this though) and i've always wondered what living on a base would be like.

They took our passports and gave us entry permission slips at the gate. There wasn't really much there though me and Nat were only allowed to go into certain places. We went to the food court (that smelled so much like America!) where they had a Taco Bell (gross!) and some other fast food places typical of American food courts. Then we went into this mini wal-mart type store where I proceeded to squee over how cheap things were (and they only handle American money so all the price tags were in dollars which took me a moment to realize the change) and be all "natsukashii" (nostalgic) over all the familiar items.
 I bought my contact solution for half the price I pay at Japanese drug stores, as well as some Ibuprofen and a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup (Yum!). Since I didn't have any American money I had to have my friend buy it for me and I gave him yen in return. I guess even though the base is in Japan, you're technically in America...confusing? There is bigger grocery store on base but that was one of the places we weren't allowed to go into. They also have an elementary school and a huge pool with a water slide! It was like being in a mini American town almost (though I bet if we were able to go to where the residential housing was it would have felt even more like America, but he lives in the barracks so we didn't go that way).


It really made me a little homesick seeing all those familiar brands and food items, but i'm happy I got to go. We proceeded to hang out at his room and watched the Star Wars Family Guy series (never realized how awesome those are!) then had dinner in Yokohama.




Tomorrow I teach then go to the bank to try and figure out a money transfer, then hanging out with a new buddy I met a couple weeks ago!

Insomniac; one affected with insomnia

Did anyone ever notice that the title of my blog has been spelling wrong this whole time? It was "insomiac".

That being said (although it really has nothing to do with the rest of this post now that I think about it), right now i'm reading this book by Bill Bryson titled "Mother Tongue" for my Selected Topics in Applied Linguistics class. It's pretty much an intro into the world of English linguistics, laid out in such a way for people who don't have a background in linguistics can follow it with little problems. The author has a very humorous style of writing and since he is British he mainly uses examples from British English. Despite it being a book for beginner linguists I have found it to be rather informative as well as amusing and haven't been able to put it down. I love it when profs assign textbooks that aren't really textbooks. Bryson brings up a lot of interesting topics though, the latest chapter I just read being on "good" English vs "bad" English and the prescriptive and descriptive approaches to each side. I find myself in the descriptive linguist group (embrace language shifts, don't fight them!). The prescriptive people of course are those who want to freeze language where it is (or rather where it was 50+ years ago) and prevent anymore change from happening (which of course would be a Noam Chomsky school of though approach and lets face it, that man is just silly sometimes).

Why would anyone want to stop language change? I mean, I guess I can see why some people would want to solely to preserve the way they themselves speak (sorta like the way older people have their opinions on what we younger people call "music" a-now-days). I find the fact that people here in 2010 use almost entirely different vocabulary than people 30,40,50 years ago to be fascinating! And it's not a new phenomena like some people might think; language has been changing ever since people invented language! You don't see people going around saying "thou" and "hark", etc, do you? Society is an ever changing monster and if the language doesn't change with it, then it will cease to exist because people eventually move onto a different means of communication that better fits their needs (which is one factor that kills so many indigenous languages of small population because they get exposed to, say English, which fits the modern world better than their language therefore they abandon their native tongue for the more useful one). So the next time you think that our language has taken a turn for the worse remember this; people from generations before you would say the same thing about YOU. Just appreciate the changes and except that nothing can prevent it ( as it should be) and that there really is no "correct" way for speaking so long as the speaker is understood by other native speakers i.e. there ain't nuttin' wrong wit dee suthern accents cuz wut dey sayin' is completely understandable to the other speakers around them, even if outsiders have a hard time with it, so who's to say it's wrong?

Even though I am living here in Japan and therefore should be taking advantage of studying Japanese linguistics, I find myself wanting to study more and more about English. Perhaps it's because it's my native tongue but don't know much about it other than how to speak it, but ever since I took my first Sociolinguistics class last winter term (which focused a lot on American dialects and what-not) I have been captivated with all the different accents in America. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not completely wasting my opportunity here in Japan. In fact, I'm extremely interested in Japanese Sociolinguistics and have even found a book that compares Japanese and American Linguistics/Social behaviors (which go hand in hand). And of course just my everyday living here and being in contact with native speakers is a study all it's own! I'll being going on a trip down to the Kansai area of Japan (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Nara, etc) where the dialect there is unlike any other in Japan. In fact, it's so interesting that most comedians are from that region (therefore I can't understand most of the comedians on TV). But I'll be able to hear it first hand in about a months time and I am stoked!

Sorry to nerd out on you. I could go on and on for days about this stuff, so if it interests you too, lets chat privately! :D

Noam Chomsky

out
Jamie