Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey caught my attention recently. It’s a slasher movie which is a type of horror flick that typically involves a masked stalker hunting down a group of people. Think Nightmare on Elm Street, Chucky (Child’s play in English), Scream, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween.
Has anyone heard about this new movie coming out soon? It is supposed to be premiering in Japan in June. Already it has started showing in some countries around the world. It is causing a bit of controversy as it depicts the cuddly, soft Pooh as a gone-feral, blood-thirsty killer along with his wild boar looking side-kick Piglet. Spoiler alert: apparently the catalyst for Pooh going feral is Christopher Robin leaving home and going to university which leaves Pooh all alone, starving and trying to fend for himself.
You might be thinking, hey, copyright infringement! How can they do that to Pooh!? Well, they can and they have. AA Milne, who originally wrote the story, had copyright on Pooh for 70 years (It’s 95 in the USA). So now it is open to the public domain which is how we’ve come to this point. What do you think? Is this a desecration of a beloved character or a creative twist on a boring old bear.
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We were recently practicing telephone English in a class at ACE. It’s funny because a lot of teachers and probably students sometimes say “Oh, do we really need to study telephone English?” and “These days we don’t use the phone for calling so much so is it really necessary?” Probably there is some truth in both of those comments but I am a bit old fashioned about it and it still remains one of my favourite lessons. I guess having worked in an airline call centre back in Australia we were strictly drilled on how to deal with customers over the phone so I am trying to pass those things on to English learners here. Also, as a foreigner living in a country where English is not the main language I can’t count how many times I have had to use the phone in Japanese for various services and getting things done. Even when I went back to Australia recently, I noticed that the telephone was still important for getting things done quickly. Sure, you can text or email a restaurant for reservations but they’ll take much longer to get back to you than if you call them directly. Speaking to someone over the phone still remains the most efficient way. Another example was when my mother misplaced her bank card. By making a phone call I was able to put a stop on the card relatively quickly and make an appointment for her to get a new card. Although it takes some time to get through to an actual human, once you do, it is very useful and reassuring. Those things can be done without speaking to someone of course but often you feel more secure with an actual human. Call centres are clearly making use of technology such as automated telephone banking and automated guidance over the phone so they can free up their staff for more profitable interactions with customers. Fair enough, and if that saves us time too, I am all for it.
Anyway, during the telephone lesson I was teaching recently, one of the tasks was to talk about your experience talking on the phone in general. One particular student’s experience stood out. It was back in 2001. September 11th. Actually on the day of that world changing incident. A student’s father was travelling to New York on that very day and was up in the air still, approaching New York, when the attacks began. Meanwhile, back in Japan, the student (who was just a little boy back then) and his mother saw the news and tried frantically to get in touch with the father over the phone. Of course, all the lines were busy after that fateful event and they were not able to get through to him or anyone. In fact, the lines were so busy that they were not able to know of his safety or whereabouts for well over a month. Even email was not working at that time. Eventually, someone contacted them from the American side and gave them vital information about the father. Frustratingly, neither the mother nor the little boy could understand English well enough to be able to know what was going on. The boys school English teacher was able to help out and after much angst they were relieved to hear that everything was alright and that the father would be able to get in touch with them soon enough. I found it a nice story. The little boy, who with his mother, couldn’t find out about Dad in New York, but now, who was doing well with using English on the phone and somehow making up for that feeling of helplessness back in 2001.
How about you? Do you think calling on the telephone is becoming extinct?
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One of the overlooked bonuses of wearing a mask is the ever-so-slight muffling of some pronunciations in English. It does lead to some fairly amusing moments in class. One such example was in a recent level 5 class when a student was explaining to me that they were ‘a piggy’. The topic had been food and I can’t quite recall the specifics but all I was hearing was piggy. Granted, there is liable to be some deterioration in hearing ability on my part but I could not compute why this student was insisting they were ‘a piggy’! In the end, we worked it out. Thanks mainly to the student’s patience and communicative ability. Actually, it was a pretty good word; the student had been trying to say ‘picky’. Needless to say, we all burst into howls of laughter. The following week the same students were all in attendance and the curse of muffled pronunciation struck again! The topic again was food, in particular, synthetic food and alternative sources of food in the future. There were a lot of great comments from the students who all shared opinions really well. Towards the end of the class one student questioned the class and myself if we liked ‘korokke’(croquettes in English). Both myself and another student answered in the affirmative, stating that we both shared a love for the pumpkin variety, which coincidentally we preferred served in a sandwich! The questioner then looked confused and reacted with some level of surprise. We thought she had said ‘korokke’ but she had actually meant ‘kourogi’ (cricket in English, cricket the insect that is, not the sport). Eventually we all got on the same page and heads were shaken in disgust at the idea of eating a cricket! Apparently, they are gaining some level of popularity as a food source these days. So, in both the above examples we can see the ‘ck’ and ‘g’ sounds are being a bit muffled by the wearing of masks. If you don’t believe me, ask Andy. He told me he was asked about his bag recently in easy speaking class. He was surprised because he didn’t have a bag in class with him! He hardly ever has a bag, actually. The ‘ck’ ‘g’ pronunciation strikes again! By the way, Andy’s back is much better now so he tells me.
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A word I keep hearing recently is ‘fluid’, or more precisely, ‘we’re in a fluid situation’ or ‘things are a bit fluid at the moment’. I think this is a useful word and I’d like to point it out to our learners here at ACE.
If things are fluid then they are constantly moving, changing and definitely not stable. This word keeps coming up these days as it fits the current climate we are all living in.
We don’t know what will happen next or we may find that it is hard to make plans too far ahead or arrange our work schedule with any degree of confidence or security.
My friend Mathew (same spelling as my name) who lives in England asked me whether we could meet up later this year. He wants to fly back to Australia and also New Zealand where his wife is from with the hope of popping in to Japan on the way back to Australia. I said that it sounded great but my situation was a bit fluid at the moment. I actually meant that I was planning to go back home myself this year but like most people I’m waiting for the pandemic to settle down a bit as I wouldn’t like to get stranded in Australia and not be able to come back to Japan.
I also heard the word ‘gender fluid’. Can you work out what that means? It’s the same kind of thing as I mentioned before, a kind of floating status, not fixed.
I am not sure if there is such a word as ‘fluid situation’ in Japan or whether this word has become used a lot recently because of the current state of the world. What do you think? Is your situation ‘fluid’?
Just like the title of a recent Bruce Lee documentary, ‘Be Water’ everybody!
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Scrolling through Amazon Prime’s video service recently I came across this curious title: ‘Enjoy: Shark Cull - Season 1’. Hmm..., ‘enjoy?’ I wondered how the words ‘enjoy’ and ‘cull’ could be used in any TV program title? It got me curious. A quick look on IMDB revealed a high rating of 8.5. If it is over a 7.8 then I’ll generally watch it.
10 minutes into the program, I finally understood. The actual program title flashed up on the screen; ‘Envoy: Shark Cull - Season 1’. Envoy? Not, enjoy? Ahhh, I see! Well, I saw it clearly eventually. Further confirmation of my deteriorating eyesight! I was wearing my new Daiso glasses at the time as well, apparently the 1.5 magnification isn’t enough. Enough about me, back to the sharks.
Anyway, as the program points out early on, sharks actually don’t have much of a say in anything so, a group of scientists, surfers, divers, environmentalists amongst others have decided to speak for the sharks. They are the sharks' envoys. Through their various first-hand accounts, scientific evidence and some stunning underwater photography we learn about the situation of sharks in Australia.
Most of us have probably seen Jaws which has helped frame how we tend to think of sharks. However, I did learn a lot more from watching this program. For example, did you know about drum lining? Shark netting? What about shark culling? The scientific evidence presented in the program paints a bleak picture of what happens when we deliberately try to reduce shark numbers. We also learn about how the media has given sharks a bad name with use of the phrase ‘shark attack’ now shifting to ‘shark bite’ or ‘incident’ as governments shift their language in line with scientific thinking.
I’d recommend this show to anyone who loves good underwater photography, is interested in animals in general or is curious about some issues which are controversial in Australia. One tidbit for you before I get back to my TV viewing. Did you know that if you eat fish and chips in Australia, chances are you are eating shark? Shark meat, known as ‘flake’ is one of the most common varieties of fish that is sold in the popular dish of fish and chips. I prefer mine beer battered but that’s a story for another time. Thanks for reading!
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