So, because I’m such a dedicated student of the English language, I routinely think of (what I think are) awesome titles for blog posts. Of course, I usually forget most of them. Is it just me, or is it normal to think of things to write when you’re driving, or the in the shower, or other moments not quite suited to grabbing a pen and paper?
Anyway, as you can probably tell, if I had an awesome title for this blog post, I forgot it. Because the actual title of this post is B-list at best. Let’s hope the content is slightly better.
Driving to work today, I was mildly pleased with myself at the amount of Japanese that I could read on buildings, signs, and other roadside miscellany. It made me think back on what it was like learning to read. A lot of people only learn to read once, in their native language, but I’d argue that many of our childhood selves can’t appreciate how interesting it is to learn to read. It’s genuinely fun to see what used to be funny little pictograms rearranging themselves in my mind to form new ideas.
Learning to read can lead to some amusing memories, too. I thought I’d record some of those today before getting to the obligatory (and more entertaining) photo update.
I remember in first or second grade, writing a sentence and needing to use the past tense of the verb “read”. I knew that it was “read” but wasn’t sure to how to spell it. So, I asked my reading teacher. She explained the spelling and pronunciation to me. The best part of this story is that my teacher’s name was Mrs. Reed. So, Mrs. Reed told me that the past tense of read was read, and read was spelled the same as read, but pronounced the same as red. ときどき英語はバカ. (Sometimes, English is dumb.)
I also remember learning about the subjects and objects of sentences with Mrs. Catlett. She had a tendency to be “animated” in her grammar demonstrations. So, if the sentence was “Mrs. Catlett threw an eraser at the skeleton”, she would actually do so. I recall her using that same sentence in class and throwing the eraser and missing. After some ridicule from me, she asked if she should change the complement of that sentence from “skeleton” to “Spencer”. The next sentence very well could have been, “Mrs. Catlett quickly silenced the impertinent student”.
Of course, I also have bad memories about learning to read. One of my other elementary school teachers once gave us an assignment to find words in the newspaper that were longer than 7 letters. Yeah, I don’t get the point either, but let’s move on. Instead of blindly looking for long words, I wanted to actually read the articles, and decided to do so. As a result, while most students find more than ten words, I only found three. This teacher then decided to publicly scold me for my “laziness”.
Teachers already know this, but it always bears repeating: students remember stuff.
Changing gears, you’ll probably notice that many of my pictures on this post are burger-themed. I would say that it has been a burger-themed sort of month, but that’s a half-truth. The reality is that I am living a burger-themed life. Seriously, though, it’s a lot more difficult here, but I think we’re approaching the critical mass necessary to make “Kagoshima Burger Week” a reality. I’ve got around ten solid burger places on my map now. Many of these were found by Yoshi. God, she’s wonderful, isn’t she? I should also give a shout-out to a few other ALTs and Japanese teachers for their burger-finding assistance.
Don’t worry, not all of the photos are burgers. There’s also nice scenery, a koi pond, and a giant 河童 (kappa, a kind of mythical Japanese river monster) statue.
Satsumasendai, Sakurajima, and Spencer-sensei 