Let's make Tim Buckley funny!

In Japan the school year starts and ends in April. Since exams for the third years in my junior high school finished a few weeks ago and graduation is still a couple of weeks of there's a dead space where the teachers can relax and not have to worry about following a curriculum. Some foreign teachers show movies or T.V. shows like the Simpsons to their kids and others just play games all day. One increasingly popular option is for teachers to give the kids comics with all the words removed so that they can write their own. This gives them an opportunity to use English creatively, express themselves through a familiar medium and all that other high-minded jargon that is written in the plethora of teaching handbooks. So, I tried this with my pupils and whilst not all of them wrote in English those that did produced amazing results. I used three of my favourite comics (plus one I can't stand) for them to fill in. So I hope you read these comics and laugh at their use of non-sequiturs, puns and abstract comedy rather than at their lack of finesse in the English language.

The Manga - Yotsubato 


Original - http://koiwai.biz/eng/v9/ch59/59_28_png.htm


http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/9070/whyrl.jpg
http://img268.imageshack.us/i/notonthevocablist.jpg/
http://img69.imageshack.us/i/handmedown.jpg/
http://img189.imageshack.us/i/deathofateddy.jpg/
http://img163.imageshack.us/i/communalbathing.jpg/
http://img36.imageshack.us/i/anatomyofcute.jpg/


The webcomic - The Perry Bible fellowship

Original -  http://www.pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF032-Todays_My_Birthday.gif

http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/5642/toolate.jpg
http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/441/sredpen.
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/8559/salarym
http://img844.imageshack.us/i/raidenn.jpg/
http://img193.imageshack.us/i/organharvesting.jpg/
http://img577.imageshack.us/i/imperitiveform.jpg/
http://img191.imageshack.us/i/exclamation.jpg/
http://img835.imageshack.us/i/dairyworker.jpg/
http://img827.imageshack.us/i/clairvoyance.jpg/

The newspaper funny - Calvin and Hobbes

Original - http://bdcentral.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/cartoons_calvin_and_hobbes_chocolate_frosted_sugar_bombs_01_sweet1000x333x256.gif

http://img687.imageshack.us/i/heypr.jpg/
http://img141.imageshack.us/i/hellocornflakes.jpg/
http://img222.imageshack.us/i/endofapartnership.jpg/
http://img840.imageshack.us/i/dayatthebeach.jpg/
http://img135.imageshack.us/i/calvinthekiller2.jpg/
http://img30.imageshack.us/i/calvinthekiller.jpg/
http://img195.imageshack.us/i/bigmistake.jpg/

The other webcomic - Ctrl alt Del

Original -  http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20110121 (warning: as with all Ctrl Alt Del comics it is not funny in the slightest)

http://img839.imageshack.us/i/yakuzas.jpg/
http://img600.imageshack.us/i/sevitude.jpg/
http://img34.imageshack.us/i/personalitychangingdevi.jpg/
http://img835.imageshack.us/i/oikobayashi.jpg/
http://img713.imageshack.us/i/katurameanswig.jpg/
http://img402.imageshack.us/i/illfittingclothes.jpg/
http://img819.imageshack.us/i/hardgay.jpg/
http://img840.imageshack.us/i/gottinhimmel.jpg/
http://img88.imageshack.us/i/ethantheoracle.jpg/
http://img19.imageshack.us/i/emoyj.jpg/
http://img52.imageshack.us/i/differenceintaste.jpg/
http://img810.imageshack.us/i/beards.jpg/
http://img573.imageshack.us/i/badlanguage.jpg/

Bonus

http://img827.imageshack.us/i/img0661c.jpg/

Anata Dai-ski

Ah, Skiing; the sport of kings! Well, not kings so much as middle aged professional couples called Oliver and Imogen who “just thought they’d pop down to Geneva for a mini-break with the kids.” Lacking any pistes ourselves in the UK, if we want to indulge our impulses to hurtle down a mountain wearing a couple of planks of not-wood and wear more clothes than you ever have in your life, you have to travel to Europe, or if you’re even more hoity-toity – America; spending vast amounts of money on planes, hotels, food etc. Skiing is not the sort of thing you can do if you’ve just been laid off, or you owe the mafia a lot of money or you recently became a Scientologist and really, really want to purge your body of Thetans. ‘It’s quite expensive’ I suppose is what I’m trying to say.

I’ve only ever been skiing a couple of times, both times with my school; the latter one being particularly memorable for being the first time I ever bought a beer in a bar as well as the first time I ever had to carry a friend in a drunken stupor home. Since my town is only a couple of hours away from the ski slopes I joined my friend and his daughter on a two day round trip. After arriving, and putting on my ski boots, skis and goggles coloured to look like the spectrum of light you see in a puddle of petrol, I got on the lift and proceeded to half way up the mountain, whereupon I immediately fell over, ripping a hole in the crotch of my brand new trousers.

I should probably inform you, dear reader, that I was not wearing anything underneath my ski trousers bar a single pair of boxer shorts. It was 10am on the first day of a two day trip. I was faced with the prospect of spending the best part of two days at the top of a mountain amidst quite heavy snow with nothing between the elements and those parts of a man’s body he treasures the most, but the thinnest of fabrics. I found that in general, I didn’t feel the cold going down (friction is a wonderful thing), but going up was sometimes tortuous, especially in the snow. If you want a vision of that time, imagine a man shovelling ice cubes into your underpants – forever. The worst thing is, there’s nothing you can do to stop it, you just have to sit and take it like a man, or whatever you are after the frostbite robs you of your manhood, since you can’t cross your legs. As the day wore on, (and the occasional stumbles, missteps and full-blown crashes tallied up,) the hole became bigger and bigger. The only respite was when I walked back inside the hulking, brutalist ski lodge for food and beer; the latter being especially welcome.

After a full day of subjecting my genitals to torture a Guantanamo Bay prison guard would balk at, I headed for the small Japanese style bed a breakfast to soothe my weary body in a hot bath. So, dressed in a slightly ill-fitting yukata that my pitying hostess had loaned me, I joined the middle-aged men for a drink around the small wood burner in the middle of the foyer. These must have been the only middle-aged men at the entire resort, as winter sports in Japan are primarily a young persons’ activity. Also, no-one skis; everyone snowboards. At one point in the evening one of the older men made his excuses and made to go to bed, at which point my friend suggested that he fetch his daughter since I was (at that time) a single man and his daughter was an attractive university student. To my endless surprise, he agreed, rather readily in fact, and he went upstairs to wake up his daughter, for the sole purpose of talking the night away with a complete stranger.

As the night wore on and we continued drinking, huddled around the portable wood burner, it emerged that the daughter (henceforth referred to as Mika) had had a falling-out with her father. In fact, they were on such bad terms that they refused to even sleep in the same room as one another, with a moment’s hesitation my friend offered her a spare futon in our room, to which she happily agreed. I was quite happy, as the two of us got on quite well, so after a bit more drinking, we went to bed; the four of us in one room. As Mika and my friend’s daughter chatted about ghost stories and T.V. programmes, I drifted off to sleep. It was only a few hours later that I awoke to sound of Mika vigorously masturbating in the futon beside me. I suppose on reflection she could have just been moaning in her sleep, but at 2am after a day of strenuous physical activity, the thought didn’t cross my tired mind. Needless to say, I was a little too embarrassed to make much in the way of eye-contact with Mika the next morning, and soon after breakfast we went our separate ways; she to return to Skikoku with her hated father, and I to pack more snow around my testicles.

Later that day as I sat in the outdoor onsen, snow gently falling on my head, I reflected on my experiences on the Japanese ski slopes. If there were two things I’d learnt, it was; to wear earplugs when sleeping in ski lodges and never to buy ski trousers that cost 1500 yen and are two sizes too small.

With apologies to Edward Said

Apologies to my readers (both of you) for not updating for such a long time, but a busy Christmas holiday coupled with sheer apathy and laziness stood in my way. Well, now I’m back and will resume my usual schedule of snobbish orientalism. Today, let’s talk about Christmas and, being as it’s the first day of February, we find ourselves in a position of detached analysis. Perhaps, we can look back on that most sacred of festivals and reflect on what it means in a culture that is largely agnostic, where the holiday is stripped of most of its religious and traditional connotations and reduced to merely its most commercial aspects. Most likely though, we’ll all stare and go “ooooooh isn’t Japan wierd?!?”

Christmas in Japan is not Christian; somewhat of a confusing state of affairs considering Jesus’ name is right there in the name of the holiday. I for one welcome this development, all throughout my childhood and adolescence I was subjected to many angry column inches in right wing bastions of bitterness like the Daily Mail about the so-called “War on Christmas.” The conspiracy goes that left-wing bureaucrats and petty politicians are conspiring to kill Christmas out of a mixture of spite, political correctness and wanting to be the Grinch from that Dr. Seuss book. Those columnists painted a picture of a terrifying brave new world in which there was to be no mention of anything vaguely related to Christianity or traditional Christmas activities lest it offend the sensibilities of religious minorities. I always thought this was a ludicrous fantasy, “No way would there be a Christmas entirely divorced from its original meaning” I thought smugly to myself. But I was wrong. It exists, and it’s wearing a kimono.

The Japanese Christmas curiously enough is actually dating season. If you were to walk down Central gardens, or any of Nagoya’s other romantic hotspots on Christmas Eve, the place would be packed with young couples holding hands and making hushed conversation under the glow of the ‘irumineeshon’ (Christmas lights.) I have to admit, dear reader, that I followed suit and arranged a date for Christmas day – “When in Rome...” as the saying goes. I understand that the early sunsets and the plethora of Christmas decorations help to create a romantic atmosphere, but I’m still a little confused as to why it is that the Birth of Santa (or whatever Christmas is about) acts as an aphrodisiac to Japanese women. Maybe it’s the beard...

As I mentioned in my Junk food post, Christmas is the time for KFC. I was a little sceptical about how true this claim was when someone first told me, but seeing the queue outside of the Nagoya branches of KFC stretch around the block quashed any suspicions I had. In fact, if you want to eat at KFC on Christmas Day, you have to make a reservation weeks in advance and wait for hours just to get a seat (think using British rail services). I for one didn’t go to KFC, but I did get some KFC style chicken from a cafe, (which was also crowded) where it came wrapped in two slices of bread and served with some lettuce. Yes, it was a KFC sandwich.

Now I think about it maybe Japanese Christmas isn’t all that different from Western ones - a lot of time spent with loved ones (or even people you’d rather not see again) and a tradition of consuming food that’s not very good for you. The Japanese still give and receive Christmas presents, though, like in the West, it’s mainly for the kids and I’m sure if you flicked trough enough channels on T.V. you could probably find a batty old woman, giving a dull monologue that bores you to tears, which could fit your Queen’s speech needs. So, Merry Christmas from over a month ago, perhaps in June I can get around to wishing you a happy New Year as well.