maxiewawa

Aika found the hotel that I have been staying at in Tokyo on the internet. On the site it says that foreigners are not welcome, but residents are. I have heard bad things about Japanese hoteliers so I was a bit nervous about staying there (I remembered Ben Ross’ post at his blog about crabby Japanese hoteliers). I asked her to make sure that it was ok for me to stay there when we checked in.

As we walked in, there was a sign on the door. “We welcome guests who speak Japanese or have a Japanese speaking contact. Thank you for your understanding.” Ah, so that was it. As it turned out, it was the kind of hotel where they don’t let you take your key out the door. The front desk closed at midnight, so this meant that you had to be home before 12 or you’d get locked out. I am guessing that some 外国人 had misunderstood the instructions given to him and raised a stink about it. For this reason, anyone without a Japanese speaking contact (or who couldn’t speak Japanese themselves) was barred.

I speak Japanese quite well. If someone asks me a question, I can answer 90 percent of the time. But when japanese people talk to other Japanese people I can’t catch very much. I wasn’t sure if this counted as speaking for the purposes of checking in to this “only Japanese speakers” hotel, but as it turned out since I had Aika it wasn’t a problem.

I haven’t had to speak to the guy at the front desk very often. He has welcomed me back every night, let me know when Aika called if I wasn’t in the room, greeted me in the morning, and was kind enough to lend me an umbrella this morning. I have asked him about leaving luggage in the lobby, about what time to check out, and asked him for another business card once.

These efforts at conversation haven’t been major, I feel like it’s been quite an achievement. This elderly guy that mans the desk at this modest hotel was the first person that I have spoken Japanese to that a) didn’t know me and b) wasn’t a teacher or a friend. I have of course spoken to waitstaff/asked people for directions but this was the first time that I had to do something that couldn’t be explained with body language and pointing.

Next is Korean: I hope to have more than a 2 second conversation with a Korean person (every Korean conversation I have at the moment ends in me going “뫄/huh?”)

I wrote the following post last Thursday, on the 10th. We weren’t able to find an internet connection in Shikoku, so I’m only able to post it today.

I write this on the bus to Shikoku, for those not familiar with Japan’s geography, Shikoku is one of the main islands of Japan. It’s about 13 hours from Tokyo, where we are setting out from. I have a long journey ahead!

Today was a lot of fun, we were up early and visited the Chinese Embassy. Aika handed over the relevant documents, and we left. It was easier than we thought. But her visa hasn’t been approved yet, let’s cross our fingers and hope that we don’t have any further complications!

After that we went to the Innovative Languages International Headquarters in Akihabara. I was really excited to go there, and rapt that everyone seemed to know who I was (from my youtube exploits I think!). I met such on air personalities as Peter先生、マーキー先生、ひろこ先生, 桜先生、ゆき先生 키스선셍님 and のり先生.  桜先生s reaction to meeting me was 「あの有名なの？？！」(The famous maxiewawa?) and after realising who I was seemed as nervous to meet me as I was to met her! Something that I will always keep with me.

I’ve been working for Innovative Languages from a lonely desk in Shanghai for so long, and it was great to finally put faces to all those names.

I’m in Japan! Aika is here to apply for a work visa, and I’m coming along. We went for a look around tonight at 渋谷, which was a very interesting area. I, being the silly sod that I am, forgot my camera, so I’ll have to rely on my memory.

Can’t write much now though. Tomorrow I’m off to the global headquarters of Innovative Language Learning. I’ve listened to their programs for about 3 years now, and been working for them for about 8 months now. I’m excited to meet everyone whose voice I’m so familiar with. I feel a bit like when Bart Simpson visits the headquarters of MAD magazine.

Stay tuned for more!

And am I showing my age by making an obscure reference to a cartoon show that has (maybe) passed its prime?

I told almost the exact same story on another blog years ago when I first started learning Japanese. If you read that story, this one is almost the same, but it’s 100% true!

The first thing that hits you when you walk down Shanghai’s picturesque Nanjing East Rd (南京东路) is the people trying to sell you stuff. “Watch? Bag? Dvd?” They are really annoying. Even if you say “no” they just keep pushing their business cards at you.

Since I started learning Korean, I was sure that I’d be able to confuse them. If I obviously didn’t understand what they were talking about, they’d ignore me, right?

I replied the first person who started hassling me the other day thus:

“아니,아니. 이미 있어.” (No, no, no. I already have one.)

Without missing a beat, the guy continued pushing his business card on me.

“시게? 가방? 여기와!” (Watch? Bag? Come here!)

The bugger spoke Korean too!

You have to give these annoying salesman credit when they are due. When I tried to be a Japanese tourist, they let me know in stilted Japanese that their fake bags and watches were the best in all Shanghai. When I spoke in Korean, they replied in Korean! There’s no getting rid of those crafty bastards.

I would have written this mini-review earlier, but a touch of RSI in the my left hand stopped me from typing properly. I might have written something but such vital letters as “w” “e” and everyone’s favourite “t” would have been absent, so I thought it better to leave it until later.

To celebrate Aika’s first paycheck from her new job, we decided to go out. We left after dinner at home, and wandered down the road to the House of Blues and Jazz on Fuzhou rd.

There was a band tamely playing jazz standards, and they were pleasant enough. Aika and I were looking forward to sitting upstairs sipping drinks and listening to the band, and to that end we went downstairs to get our drinks. After a few failed attempts, we managed to accost a waiter by the scruff of the neck and extract a drinks menu from him. He tried to get us to sit on a few stools squashed amongst other patrons, and I told him politely that we’d already found a nice spot upstairs. “Not open,” he said. “You can’t sit there.”

After a half-hearted look through the drinks menu and a look around to see if we could find any better seats (we couldn’t) we decided to leave.

If we had stayed we would have been squashed onto two stools next amongst strangers, straining our necks to see a band playing tame music, which had its heyday when Duke Ellington was alive. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the Duke, but when one is sipping a beer on a Friday night, “Satin Doll” just isn’t a suitable soundtrack.

And a good thing we left. In retrospect the 10 minutes that we spent in The House Of Blues And Jazz on FuZhou Rd was quite substandard. The band was fine, but we had to accost a waiter, were told that we weren’t allowed in the nicest part of the bar, and were pointed towards two stools squashed in amongst strangers.

We made our way to City Diner, on the corner of TongRen and Nanjing West rd (if you want to go, show this address to your driver: 同仁路，南京西路 and tell ‘em maxiewawa sent you). The first thing that hit us was the music. They were small, as they always are at City Diner, (sax, drums, vocals, rhodes) but awesome. They played funky jazz and blues and really kicked along.

But now that I think of it, the service at City Diner was horrible. Trying to find a waiter, at one point I wandered into the bar area (something that will get you thrown out of a bar from where I’m from!) and actually ended up serving some bewildered patrons who, like me, were having trouble finding a waiter.

It’s strange that I didn’t remember that immediately… after my whinging about bad service at the House of Blues and Jazz I forgot how bad it was at City Diner. I guess it goes to show how good music can make up for bad service.

Anyway, we found seats to our liking at City Diner, helped ourselves to drinks (like I said, the waitstaff weren’t really on the ball that night) and sat, toetapping along to the band.

Eventually I worked up the courage to say hello to a group of Koreans, but only after a few drinks. Whenever I hear a language that I’m learning spoken a public place, I just have to say hello! Everyone was very complimentary after they realised that I was speaking Korean (ha!) and we all made friends. Aika was of course popular, being a foreigner who speaks Korean very well, and soon everyone stopped complimenting me, since it was quite obvious that I don’t speak all that well actually. We had a great time, dancing, singing and drinking.

The moral of this story is simple: stay away from the House of Blues and Jazz on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday night; there is a much better alternative at the City Diner, where Five Point Punch (or is it Three Point Kick? Sorry I forgot the name!) play. You might have to pour your own drinks though.

The House of Blues and Jazz is located on FuZhou rd ［福州路］, near the bund. You can recognise it by the laidback music, and a second floor that has no one there. The City Diner is located on TongRen rd, near NanJing West rd. ［同仁路近南京西路］You’ll recognise it by the uplifting music and the throngs of people gettin’ down and boogie-ing inside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KNEAk7g9L8

The last part of the taxi driver series! Where are we this time??

I realise now that the whole idea behind the Taxi Driver series might not be immediately obvious. Let me explain!

The whole story starts about 9 months ago, when I started a 4 month course at Shanghai Foreign Languages university, studying Chinese. (Yes, I realise that in China Chinese isn’t a foreign language, I don’t know why they teach it at that university.) One of my classmates and her best friend were from Belgium.

At the end of the 4 months, when everyone parted, we promised to stay in touch. All being language students, we all promised that the next time we met, we’d be speaking each other’s languages. To this end, I’ve been listening intently to FrenchPod101.com, trying to learn French. At FPod101 last week, we heard a dialogue between two passengers in a taxi.

The dialogue goes something like this:
Passenger: The Champs ElysEes please.
Driver: OK.
Passenger: What’s that?
Passenger 2: That’s the Louvre.
Passenger: What’s that?
Passenger 2: That’s the … the…
Passenger: The Eiffel tower! Pfff… Really!
Driver: The Champs ElysEes. (We have arrived)

I adapted this to fit another city, Brussels, as a nod to my Belgian friends. The passengers wanted to go to an address in Brussels, and the landmarks they pointed out were notable Brussels locations. I hit up Hyunwoo, who helped me with the French for the various landmarks, we met up on Skype, I pressed “record” on Garageband, and we did our thing!

The idea to do the other languages was Hyunwoo’s. We adapted the same dialogue for Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

We had great fun and learnt a lot. Expect to hear a lot more of these little skits in various languages from Hyunwoo and I. And if you want to participate, let us know by replying to this message. And don’t think that because you don’t speak Chinese, Japanese, Korean or French that you can’t participate. The only reason we didn’t do more languages is that we don’t really have the expertise to adapt it into other languages, not because we didn’t want to.

More from Hyunwoo at why-be-normal.com.

It has occurred to me that not everyone can see the video from the place they are. Well if you can’t see it here, have a look at it at youtube.

The saga continues. Where are we? Leave a comment with your guesses!