Lost in translation?

This is a little clip I stumbled across, as you can see English is not as common in Japan as one might think, compared to other countries. This clip reminds you of it and makes light of the Japanese ability to speak English.



There are many web-sites that capitalize on this such as http://www.engrish.com/. I sort of wish I had sattelite TV and able to get some foreign channels outside of the Spanish ones.

California here they come!

Aya had booked a flight and trip with a company that deal specifically with exchange student organizations “Explore America Tours”, I didn’t even know there was such a niche in the whole entrepreneurship world.

http://www.explore-america.com/

She is very excited since she will be able to visit California, her ideal state she had hoped be a part of during this exchange program stay. Sorry to say – but how it works is there are a whole lot of exchange students trying to find a placement in the United States (where they go isn’t a choice for each student, they get placed where there is a spot available, which would include a school district that is willing to accept them).

She has been updating me on other student within her organization and from her country that are having issues with their respective host families. Sometimes they get put in to families, not able to deal with hosting a family, though they signed up to be one. Sometimes the host parents and siblings have dislikes about personal interactions are and are not willing to make sacrifices. In other cases, a temporary family is found just to place a child into a home; in order to buy time to find a permanent family that will receive the student for 1 full school year. (I digress)

Aya told me she has a cousin who lives in Los Angles and wants to be able to meet up with him during the trip. I am thinking it will be difficult, since this is a tour group and where they go is dictated by the organization and not by the individual.

Her trip excerpt will be similar to this:

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“There is so much to see in our time in Los Angeles and our tour will take us to some of the most famous sights. We will visit Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, Santa Monica and Venice Beach, Hollywood Boulevard and Melrose Avenue (the best place in Los Angeles for fun fashions). And tonight, after dinner, we see a live theater production.

We will spend our last day LA day riding the thrilling rides and exploring the attractions offered by Disneyland.

We will visit the South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park and watch an IMAX show that teaches us about the Park's history - and we will have a chance to see both the Sunrise and Sunset over the Grand Canyon. We will grab our cameras and hike some of the trails around the Canyon's South Rim to photograph the Colorado River, which rages through the Canyon's floor.
We will venture into Las Vegas for an exciting tour of America's favorite playground.

Downtown Las Vegas with the Fremont Street Experience is always a student favorite.
We will drive and walk the "Strip" and explore many of the thrilling sites and attractions Vegas has to offer, from its glamorous casinos to its huge shopping facilities and roof top roller coasters.
Our days in Vegas will end with dinner and a Vegas Show.
· 1 night is spent sleeping on the bus from Los Angeles to the Grand Canyon.

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I am thinking that last note can’t be too much fun, falling asleep on a coach has got to be uncomfortable to say the least.

I suppose I can say I am a little jealous, as I lived here all my life and have not had time to go L.A. or even the earlier Niagara Falls in up state New York - sad how jobs and life styles dictate where we go and what we do. I think more of us should take the time and stop and smell the roses before the only roses we smell are the ones laid on our coffins. Life is too short to live to work, see Aya get to do all these things along with her fellow students from abroad has brought to me another light.

Having said this I want to organize the time and make time with my own family to go on trips we've dreamed about but somehow couldn't save enough or get the time off to go to. We only live once and one of us could be gone tomorrow and never get to live for today, I wonder how many people say this and never have the opportunity to fulfill their dreams.

This is Halloween

Aya expressed that she was interested in the American traditions such as Halloween and Christmas.

I thought it was only fair to introduce her to what teenagers enjoy during the spooky season.

We took a trip with my daughter’s arts & craft club to Salem, Massachusetts. The town was having a festival specifically to celebrate Halloween and the fact that Salem is deemed the town in America to have its first Witch Trials back circa late 1700’s.

It was a little over 2 hours to get there and once there we did a lot of walking. She entered one of the Nation’s first candy shops there and viewed the “House of the 7 Gables” from the parking lot. Heard it was an interesting tour (though we did not have time to do the tour).

Some of the bizarre things we viewed that days while walking around town was this family dressed in blood-spattered clothing (much like the people in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie) walking around pushing a baby carriage fully of severed body parts (disturbing to say the least) – it’s the side of the Halloween that could be left to the imagination. I supposed one could call it a roving art exhibit of the macabre.

We also isolated a date to visit a Haunted House walk-through (not a real one). I was doing a search on the web for something fun, similar to what I was used to as a kid and found this place in Douglas, Ma.

The Haunted Mansion Douglas

Of course, the night I choose was dark and stormy, literally. Fortunately for October, the weather wasn’t freezing. The rain was relentless – I can’t remember the last time I was more drenched – though I had partial cover from an umbrella and wore what I thought was a water-proof jacket. The cue for entry of this event was winding outside by a garage. The entry fee of course was the best part – all we had to do is purchase canned goods (vegetables and the like). At first I thought, how good could a thing like this that doesn’t charge real admission – I later was surprised all the work these people put into, I left impressed.

I brought all my daughters (Aya and my own). I hadn’t completely made up my mind about bringing my youngest 10 to this place, but since no one else was home to watch her, I thought she would be able to handle it; and she did.

Though Halloween has passed, I did pick up pumpkins to carve one night this week – it’s not just the day, but the events she will remember and bring home with her.

She had made a few friends at school, one of whom is that girl from Thailand who invited Aya to go Trick-or-Treating. Even though we expressed our dismay, since she is approaching 18 years old and that American kids aren't usually given candy at that age if they go door-to-door. She went to a neighboring town where there are more homes in close proximity (more candy) and accepts older teens (probably in lieu of getting their cars toilet papered, eagerly give out candy instead).

Life at school...sometimes b-o-r-i-n-g

We’ve (my wife and I) have gone to a couple of Parent/Teacher conferences. My wife usually goes to my daughter’s teacher and I split up and go to our exchange student’s teachers.

I am happy to say things are going well. The teachers seem to have an understanding on how Aya comprehends and grades accordingly. As I would imagine, it isn’t in their best interest that a poor grade is given if a student is trying and does over 5-6 hours of homework every night (compared to an average American student who does 2-3hrs). There are 2 other exchange students at the High School both from different organizations, one from Brazil and the other from Thailand.

I had learned that both of them had many more years of English than Aya (who had only 3 years of it). I know I say only 3 years, but if you were to take Spanish or French and get placed into an All Spanish or French school – I would expect more than half of us would flounder under the pressure of mental translation and understanding and to perform the written homework in a non-native language. It boggles the mind to think that someone can do it on only 3 years of English.

Aya doesn’t feel she is getting better in her language skills; both auditory and spoken language. On the contrary I sense that she is improving very well, hence the whole idea of immersion.

I recently learned the girl from Thailand had been taught English since the 3rd Grade. I am not sure about the boy from Brazil, though I heard he was a good soccer (football) player but wanted to try something different and chose to take American football and joined the team – not sure how successful he is, however he had made the sport cover page of the local paper.

We told Aya, she could suffer a letter grade in order to enjoy life in the America a little more - since most of her time home from school was put into doing essays for History class.

Blog Slacking

Red Sox
World Series
Celebration!


Sorry for the slacking in the Blog updates. I think I’ve been relishing in the Red Sox victory and overcome with Fall activities and the depressing nature during the transition from Summer to Fall.

At best I can summarize the events that unfolded since I’ve last posted.
I will try to break it up into individual posts – all intentions are good, only the end result will prove that there was success or not.

Initially I was typing my Blog on your basic notepad.exe though it was simple, it provided no way to format and spell correctly – as I cut and pasted into the Blog I noticed all my paragraphs were shifted and single lines automatically changed to double-spaced – Argggh!

Going to the World Series

RED SOX did it ...

Aya watched intently as Matsuzaka pitched and then Okajima pitched and the game was saved from a near certain loss by Papelbon save in Game 7!!

Just had to add that into the Blog somehow, as I will update the happenings in a bit.

Just showed Aya that she came to Massachusetts at a good time; Boston Red Sox came back after down 3 to 1 in the series and the New England Patriots are cleaning house in the Football department, not to mention the High School Aya attends has an undefeated Football Team...

Will post more after the celebration and work tomorrow!

Head Lines

The Big Falls Trip

This past weekend Aya went on her first big over night trip to Niagara Falls. From what I understand there were 5 full buses from all over the upper East Coast that went. Many of whom were from Japan.

Aya said she spent a great deal of talking in her native tongue with all of the Japanese and stayed up very late most nights talking about their experiences here and maybe a little about themselves.

Admittedly she said she felt bad for the other exchange students (from Europe and other parts of Asia) who were talking amongst themselves in English most of the time and were left feeling awkward during the trip since the mob of Japanese exchange students were all chatting in Japanese.

We didn’t get a lot of feedback on how else the whole trip went, only that she had a good time and talked with a lot of Japanese.

The weather this year was a lot milder compared to the previous year, when they received several inches of snow in Buffalo. Regardless I helped Aya pack a rain jacket and another layer jacket in case it got too chilly. She told me this year there was no need as the weather was tolerable.

Observations: Familia Alignment

It has been a little over two months now, since our exchange student has entered our home. She has met our family and extended family (to include my parents, my in-laws and our siblings and significant others).

I think she feels pretty comfortable in our home; she helps herself to anything in the fridge and has keys our home in case no one is around when she comes home from school, which is rare.

My wife has noticed that she tends to gravitate towards me when it comes to arranging meetings with friends, help with homework or just talk about how her day went. My wife says she only gets one or two word replies where I get a more verbose response.

My personal feeling is that because I am part Japanese and have a limited knowledge of the language and a better understanding of their culture – I am a person she trusts and can relate to better.

Several things come to mind when that I understand as the norm, but my wife and oldest daughter doesn’t completely grasp.

a) Asking permission to do just about anything (such as use the phone, PC or enter our office area every time).
b) When eating a bowl of hot Ramen, the noodle is slurped in (to cool it before it is ingested).
c) Seldom if any talking during dinner at the table (our family chats away, she remains quiet and reserved).
d) Our student removes her shoes and puts on house slippers when entering our home (as I have done in the past and encouraged my children to do the same – who give me grief about it).

I am still trying to figure out what the complication is: My wife is busy doing her college work as she pursues her B.S. and spends a lot of time shut in a quiet room. Aya also comes home with homework and retreats to a room/desk set aside for her in order to study and complete homework.

Aya seldom makes eye contact with most members of the family in general. She is getting a little more involved with online (e-mails and visiting her MySpace account) than she has in the past – most of which are with her classmates and friends in Japan, some of whom are currently in the States also doing a one year stay.

My older daughter reports that she (Aya) doesn’t sit with the group of seniors on the bus to school and up front near the door so she can be the first one off and doesn’t really seem to want to hang-out with my daughter and her friends. She hasn’t stated why or why not, just seems to always have something better to do. I can only guess it is due the age difference or the fact that they are both girls who board together so sharing the same space can cause some unsettled differences (so I’ve heard amongst females).

Psychology was not a strong point of mine and here I am trying to figure out what goes on in young women’s minds. (I am thinking, yeah right!)

[Though this sounds like a critique, it is merely my observation.]

In her letter she wrote about why she wanted to visit America and become an exchange student was to learn and live American culture and share her culture with Americans.
- Actually what she shared with us some information about Okinawa and gave a gift during the first weeks, but haven’t spoken much about Japan since.
- She has not really asking the family a lot of questions about our culture, more or less living in it or existing in it.

What we expected:
- Talk about her ever day life in Japan and how they did things compared to how we do things.
- Sharing her experiences or cooking different meals
- Teaching us the Japanese and in turn having each of us teaching her our dialect and elocution.
- Our daughters becoming buddies and going a lot of places together, playing games together and giggling like school girls.
- A more open attitude, especially when we asked her to be more open and relaxed in the beginning.


I am not sure if we are the ones that are learning a new culture or are we preventing an exchange from happening.

Time will tell. We have scheduled some time with the local representatives to act as mediator, as we still have 7 more months to go and soon a cold winter to keep us in doors more often.

Final Matsuri!

Today we awoke bright and early to get to the Big-E (Eastern States Exhibition). This is a fair we've gone to almost every year it took place since I can remember. The parking can be crazy and this being the last day of the fair, we would find ourselves with all the late-comers.

It was a perfect day out, the temperature did not go above 80 deg. F and the sky was a Windows XP Desktop background blue with white puffy clouds (since I am typing on my laptop, I can see my desktop which closely resembled the day).

Our first target was hitting the States buildings (they have a state building for each state in New England) and inside there are vendors for a variety of businesses in that state (some food, clothing and jewelery). We love to visit the Maine State Building which has as long as I can remember those Main Baked Potato's with everything on for toppings, ohhhh so tasty!

We would come back for dinner at the Rhode Island State building to grab New England Clam chowder in a bread bowl and a couple of bags of Clam Cakes (my mouth is salivating again).

There are these large building with more vendors inside for items of your home and anything else that doesn't fit a category. Needless to say our feet and legs were sore after spending 10 hours walking around.

Near the end of the day we went to the Midway section (amusement rides and games), we never play the games since the chances of winning is slim-2-none. My own daughters went on elevated rotating swings and then the Flying Bob's which is like the old Music Express (rotating cars to music - forward and reverse at some fast speed). We asked Aya several times if she wanted to ride, but she turned each down (we were surprised). Alas came the Ferris Wheel, which Aya agreed to ride. She later explained that she visited Hawaii and rode a ride called the Zipper (cars climb and tumble in Ferris Wheel sort-of-way but vertically and narrow). After that it was "Once Bitten, Twice Shy".

The day ended with a parade complete with marching bands, floats with a hint of Mardi Gras (it's not just Tuesday I feel fat) and horse drawn carts like the Budweiser horses. They threw out beads from the floats (we all ended up getting something).

On the long ride home, all but the driver had fell asleep.

High School homework becomes social atrophy

Aya had been able to get in contact with the girl from Thailand and she did it all on her own, which surprised me. Perhaps it was out of sheer frustration of not being able to get a close-knit friendship started as quickly as she had hoped.

I feel she needs to open up more so on the bus and in school.

Finding her a volleyball team in this section of New England is next to impossible, since our high school has had it in the past but since been cancelled maybe because Soccer, basketball, baseball and football seem to dominate the sports around here.


I did some searching and the closest league would be at the Hudson High School which meets like 3 times a week and travels. It is just not feasible due to the 1 hour travel time to get there for a 2 hour practice.


She has made a few friends and they would like to take her to the mall to hang-out and stuff, but we told her we need to meet these students first before she goes anywhere with them in car. Rules apply as if she were my own daughter. She is not going to be allowed to get into a vehicle and carted off to some mall to hang-out without first getting to acquaint ourselves with them first. (Call me a prude, it just makes safe sense).

The homework put out in History class is pretty intense. Aya asked her friends (other exchange students from Japan) around the country and they all expressed similar concerns. Most of the tests and homework are essays (which is like a nightmare for an exchange student with only a few years of English under their belts).

I am convinced even the local kids despise History with tons of essays measure a students knowledge.