did i stutter?
so do japanese people stu-stu-stu-stutter? i asked a friend about this yesterday, and her reply was no, categortically, that japanese people do not stutter. i find this hard to believe but then as i though back on my time here i realised that i`d never met a nipponese stutterer. so have you? if i return to the Mother Country to teach english stutterers japanese will they be cured? or is it something to do with the fish?the stutter reminds me of a friend i knew who was afflicted with tourette`s syndrome. a fantastic woman, bright and breezy, she was however prone in the middle of a converastion to shouting things like "godsuckshitheadbangladeshipiss!", and then seamlessly continuing with her dialogue, having no idea that such a stream of invective had forced its way out of her throat. italian restaraunts seemed in particular to trigger her off, so she was double cursed in that not only did she have this particular ailment but that she also loved italian food. she had verbal and physical tourette`s, which meant that not only could she come out with the greatest rage of obscenities at completely random moments, but she also would flinch and jerk from time to time. her housemates at uni told me that they had to buy plastic plates and bowls after she`d smashed just about every piece of crockery in the house. the ceiling apparently had curry stains all over it.
she`s getting better now i`ve been told, and she will always be cool as heck.
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we do not appreciate how similar we are. patriotism of any kind is the first instrument in the tyrant`s kit bag. loving your country sucks. i chastise myself for getting snagged by the england world-cup charabang every 4 years and cheering on the deadbeats, but i put that down to temporary insanity. i understand that people from countries that have been opressed see it as a right to be proud of their nation, but in any real sense patriotism is about being proud of a (to all intents and purposes) fixed set of percieved-to-be shared ideals. shared that is by a group of people within the borders of a nation state. our shared ideals have got to become international, common in the sense that their result is equality for all people irrespective of everything other than their humanity. if we can reach that goal then we can perhaps be proud of our nations. i bring this up because i`ve just spent 15 minutes trying to remove (again) the union jack sticker from the back of my car, cursing the patriotic dim-wit who stuck it there.
there was another catalyst for this post - i was in an izakaya on i think friday and i met this friend of a friend, a japanese guy about 26. he was a bit too-cool-for-school but seemed nice enough, when in very broken japanese we started talking about what he thought about modern japan. he started going on about how he loves the emperor, how he wants to change japan and restore it to it`s former glory, to bring back the samurai values, and went on to say that he was kamikaze, that he believed he emboidied the spirit of the Divine Wind nutters of WW2. nuts. he did buy me a drink though, so not all bad.
Definition: [n] love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it . (hyperdictionary.com)
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today i`m sat at school the day be4 the tests begin and all 3 classes have been cancelled, which is nice. well it`s kind of nice because i am in fact (don`t be shocked now) a work-shy fop whose philosophy in life could be defined as `the path of least resistance`, but i actually almost like my job. i get on pretty well with my students and with most of the teachers. and it`s not murder to come to work, which for me is a step-up on almost every other job i`ve had. of course it`s not my dream job, nor is it even a half-dream job, but i think that after having done so many crap jobs in my life i can appreciate a good deal when i see one. if only SmellyBreath Teacher would find someone to tell him to use Listerine, well...
i know kim mentioned the pains of another person`s bad breath - how the hell do they not know? are their noses bust? can no one who loves them tell them? maybe over a nice dinner, candles, soften the blow- `i love you but you mouth stinks like a hippo`s arsehole, my dearest`.
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