Umm…Chas? Meet me in the Pit, pal.
Moderator’s Notes
Please be aware that some of the posts in this thread have been toeing the line of personal abuse. We understand that some people have strong feelings about this issue based on personal experience, but please keep the discussion to the subject and personal inferences to yourself or prepare for this to be headed to the Pit.
Thanks.
I tried to post this from work a couple of hours ago, but apparently it didn’t go through. Let’s see if second time is lucky…
Yikes, this thread did get a wee bit nastier than I had planned…I hope no one feels the need to whip out a comically oversized wooden mallet or anything. 
I did want to clarify that I have nothing against anime, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with watching and enjoying anime. But I do think that many anime fans (even those who are otherwise bright and well-informed) fall into the trap of believing that anime is not merely entertainment but some sort of illustrated guide to Japanese culture. Well, it’s not. Some aspects of anime may be drawn from real Japanese culture, but you get a lot more fantasy, satire, and stereotypes. Imagine what a warped view of America a foreigner would get if she took “The Simpsons” as a realistic representation of life in the States! And few anime series are anywhere near as popular in Japan as “The Simpsons” is in the US. Even some anime that is well-known in American fan circles is completely unknown by the average Japanese citizen.
I don’t speak Japanese at all, but I know that the Japanese professor at my school has had to work hard to break students of the dreaded schoolgirl dialect they pick up from anime. So apparently anime isn’t even very good for helping people to learn the language. This isn’t to say that anime is bad or useless, just that no one should try to make it into something that it’s not.
If you look at sympathetic “gay” characters in anime, you will find that they are almost always junior high students. There’s a reason for this. From speaking with my Japanese friends I got the impression that the Japanese are fairly tolerant of same-sex crushes in early adolescence. The thing is, such crushes are not considered a sign of real homosexuality. It’s just a childish phase that normal people soon grow out of.
True homosexuals in Japan are generally seen as laughable freaks. This may be better than seeing homosexuals as evil sinners bound directly for hell, but it’s not exactly accepting.
Ummm. Yes. I understood it exactly that way. Two stones equals twice the pay for the stonemason. That’s the way you described it. That’s the way I understood it. It didn’t take me six weeks.
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Again, no wonder it took you six weeks to figure this out. You’ve had all day to interpret my two sentences as you’ve quoted them, and you’ve failed miserably to garner my rather precise meaning. Yes. I did understand it from your description. I got it the first time. Do I need to quote what you said just a few posts ago to prove it? The remarkable depth and subtlety of your little comic was not lost on me. And, quite frankly, it’s really not such a big or mindbending concept.
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Ah yes. The comic. A unique Japanese cultural totem. We here in the U.S. could never possibly hope to comprehend such a thing without the benefit of an advanced degree. Even more, the inscrutable Fu Manchu Oriental subtlety of couching a political or social message in a newspaper comic is far beyond our barbaric occidental ways (Doonesbury.)
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Oh, I’m by no means an expert. I merely have spent some time in Japan, and have business dealings and Japanese clients and associates. I just know enough to recognize a fraud.
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Tsuro no Sugomori, dude. You’ve already lost. You’re just not able to see the way the stones lie.
**
::sigh::
This is silly. Whatever do you mean? If you’re looking at U.S./European history than the correct answer would be about 500 years. It’s not like there wasn’t a continent with people on it before than, and it’s not like their cultural influences haven’t extended even to modern U.S. Society.
It’s not like all our ancestors just materialized 350 years ago, and we don’t have lineages extending back just as far as the Japanese. It’s not like modern U.S. European doesn’t have influences extending back to Ancient Rome and Greece. They are every bit as valid as the Japanese 4000 years of continuous history you refer to. Much of Japanese culture reflects Chinese/Korean influence, and it’s been every bit as adulterated as Western culture. Many Japanese just don’t choose to recognize this fact.
Don’t worry, though. Your misconception is common among the overeducated/underinformed.
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Well, in High School I read the Iliad, and Odyssey and took a course on the Rise of Rome.
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No. Not that it has any bearing on anything, but I don’t have much facility for foreign languages.
And this proves what point?
Most US. kids have to wade through some Chaucer. Most U.S. kids have a foreign language requirement.
Knowledge of languages is nice, but it doesn’t make you a cultural representative.
Actually, it is quite the opposite, comics are horrible for beginning Japanese-language students, but OK once you’ve achieved a moderate level of fluency and can begin to see what’s going on.
What you are forgetting is that Japanese “green eggs and ham” level comics are targeted at young native Japanese children, who have already achieved a wide vocabulary, yet are still not able to read. Many of these comics use “babytalk” that would be totally counterproductive to study. The goal of children’s comics is to translate oral speech knowledge into written comprehension. Additionally, these children are still acquiring vast amounts of vocabulary.
On the other hand, most second-language learners already have fluency in reading and writing their native language, and need to translate much of their vocabulary into Japanese, and learn the grammar structures. Every native speaker knows their native grammar almost intuitively, even at young ages where they can’t reproduce it accurately, this makes vocabulary acqusition a breeze, even though they are often learning the meaning of a word at the same time they learn to speak and write it. Adult learners (and even the young teens that make up so much of the otaku world) have more severe problems since they must learn the foreign grammar at the same time they’re learning vocabulary. Native speakers (and advanced students) can usually suss out a vocabulary word from context alone.
Anyway, I’ve just barely scratched the surface of this topic, since it was one of the major areas of study by the professors at my university. If you want to acquire a second language, the best approach is to start with textbooks and study materials designed for second-language learners, these materials are specifically written to account for the differences between native language acquisition and second language acquisition. You will not find any such materials in manga or anime.
And you STILL don’t understand it. It’s not funny because the stonemason will make twice as much money, it’s funny because the stonemason will NOT make twice as much money. You would never know this without knowledge of funerary practices in Japan.
BTW, when I was in Japan I lived in a temple for 2 months, right next to a graveyard and I learned all about this stuff firsthand, and I was the only person in my class who got the joke.
Duh. But the implication is the misconception that he will. Like I said the first time, got it.
Good for you they graded on a curve.
I didn’t mean to overlook your reasonable and nonflaming response so I apologize for the late reply. I should focus on posters like you and not get dragged down into the mud by flaming otaku…
Yes, my school has the same problem, the teachers are getting quite demoralized about all the un-teaching they have to do before they can begin teaching. I’ve already made the leap that you aren’t willing to, I will declare that anime and manga ARE bad for students, it is absolutely destructive to normal learning.
Our teachers did much research on the optimal methods for teaching second languages, it is their primary goal, and sometimes I felt like the students were just guinea pigs. But it did result in some excellent classes. They have a whole pedagogical philosophy about what order to teach certain things, and it is essential to build upon proper foundations before proceeding to more advanced stuff. They don’t even like to give recommendations to allow students to study in Japan before they’ve completed 2nd year, they think you pick up bad habits if you go overseas before completing 3rd year.
But the otaku come in with a jumble of ill-comprehended advanced stuff they picked up from anime and it takes them much extra effort to straighten it all out. So far (and I’ve dealt with HUNDREDS of otaku students over the years) NONE of them have ever straightned it out completely and gotten a grasp of the language to the extent that any average non-otaku does. They just have too much miscellaneous junk running through their heads, they never get it under control. And it’s a darn shame, if only they spent half as much effort on their studies as they did on their otaku stuff, they’d be ahead of everyone!
An anime thread moved to The Pit. I’m guessing that this is (going to be) a first.
Well if you’re going to give Japan the full weight of Asian history then let’s be fair to the United States. If you want to understand US history you have to go through quite a lot of English and European history. That includes Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and to some extent Egypt. These subjects were all covered in classes I attended from middle school on up. They’re suppose to have a deeper culture because they spend some time studying classical Japanese? Well hell, everyone who went to school in Texas spent at least a year in Texas History.
Marc
I didn’t know it could take a whole year to teach tx history, I figure you could do it in a couple of hours…
But seriously, compare the differences in British and US education. Most of the better UK schools still teach the classics, but it is extremely rare to find Latin or Greek taught anywhere in the US but at universities. You really should read Alex Kerr’s book, I cannot possibly do justice to his argument by condensing it. It’s an amazing book, he wrote it in Japanese, it became a bestseller and he was the first foreigner ever nominated for the top literary prize in Japan. But I digress… Kerr attended Oxford and describes the differences between US and English education too. There is a particularly interesting anecdote about his first time at the Oxford student cafeteria, being served a beer in a stoneware mug with the date 1430 stamped on it, and being astonished that he was the only person who thought it was astonishing. But that is just the beginning of his story.
There is a huge difference between walking down a US street and seeing nothing older than 100 years, and walking down a Japanese street and routinely seeing things nearly 1000 years old. American kids don’t even know about the Vietnam War, but there are still plenty of people in Japan holding a grudge over the Onin War in 1467.
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Not that I’m bragging but Texas as a state does have an interesting history. Though personally I don’t find any of the cities to be interesting. Then you have states like California who has an interesting state history plus some wild cities like L.A. and especially San Francisco which are just as interesting.
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I don’t know about most schools in the US. But most schools in the D/FW area offered Latin at least. Although I do think all the schools did teach the classics just not in Latin or Greek.
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Well it sounds like he really stroked their egos. No wonder it became a bestseller.
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If deep culture was limited to physical objects you might have a point. Buildings in the US have had their influence from all parts of Europe as well as the native population of North and South America. The same can be said of of every aspect of our lives from the food we eat to the language we speak.
Now perhaps I’m just misunderstanding what is meant by deep. By deep do you mean more ingrained and less prone to change?
I don’t know many kids in high school who don’t know about the Vietnam War. And it strikes me as silly for anyone to hold a grudge over a war that happened 500 years go. But what the heck, different strokes for different folks.
Marc
FWIW, I took two years of Latin in highschool. Public highschool, too.
It seems there is still some confusion about the etymology of “otaku.”
Otaku means “your house” since it is composed of the kanji for “house” preceded by the honorific “o-” which would never be used to refer to one’s own house (which is “jitaku,” lit. “self house”). In Japanese language, one never uses honorifics to apply to anything associated with oneself or one’s family, the standard is to use only humble terms to apply to one’s own house or family. So o-taku literally means “honored house” which is obviously anything except one’s own humble house.
In Japanese, the language of respect (keigo) is extremely complex. One of the most vexing aspects is the use of personal pronouns, like “you.” Some personal pronouns for “you” like “anata” can be vaguely insulting in some contexts, so there are quite a few indirect ways of saying “you.” O-taku is one of them, albeit rather mangled grammar. An example might be “otaku wa ikaga desu ka” (your house, how is it?) which really means, “is everyone in your home doing fine?” Unfortunately, this is really bad keigo and isn’t really proper usage, nor was it ever widely used. However, it is a very indirect way of speaking and indirectness is always considered politer than direct expression.
At some point around the early 80s, the term became popular with desocialized shutin anime and videogame freaks, apparently it made the rounds through fax newsletters written by these fanboys. When they could be cajoled out of their rooms to make actual human contact, they almost exclusively referred to “you” as “otaku” in a feeble attempt at respectful language. Language fads tend to come and go in a matter of months in Japan, but this fad happened to occur at the time of a particularly heinous murder by a manga fanatic, in a recreation of a murder directly inspired by a violent comic story. The term otaku was picked up by the mass media, and from that time on, the term stuck.
In more recent years, anime freaks have tried to “reclaim” the word in much the same way that homosexuals tried to reclaim the word “queer.” This “reclamation” of otaku is flat out ridiculous, it is like a mental health organization trying to reclaim the word “psychotic.” It is very hard to change the meaning of a word in a language other than your own, particularly when the word is so clearly associated with heinous murderers in the minds of the Japanese public.
Thank you so much for correcting me. I must have been doing it all wrong for the past 16 years. All those Spanish and Korean speaking students that I’ve taught to speak and read English would have been much better off with an instructor who was following some textbook manufacturers’ ESL program. Reading the literature of the language you want to learn must not be one of the keys to becoming a fluent in that language. The research that I did for my M.A. in reading and PhD. in Children’s lit must have been all wrong. Comic books must not be the excellent motivators that my students seem to think they are. I bow to your greater wisdom and knowledge.
But I am confused by something. Earlier, you said:
Wouldn’t this seem to indicate that anime, and by reasonable extension, manga, have motivated the people who say this to study the language and culture that produced them? Hmmm. But maybe motivation is irrelevant to learning a second language.
I had a Korean girl in my 5th grade class last year. On her first day of school her entire English vocabulary consisted of “Hello, my name is Chingmay”, and I taught her that. When the school year ended, she could read English at a better than third grade level. What a shame it is for her that I didn’t use “textbooks and study materials designed for second-language learners” and “specifically written to account for the differences between native language acquisition and second language acquisition”. Obviously I should have kept her away from those Richie Rich comic books that she went through over and over again until she could read them on her own. Maybe, if I had only taught her as you suggest, using commercially produced instructional materials instead of real literature, she would have made five years of progress instead of just 3 1/2.
Can you come show me how to teach second-language learners the right way? Or is your expertise only in teaching Japanese to English speakers?
Don’t get snippy with me, you are well aware that I am specifically speaking about English speakers learning Japanese. My remarks do not apply to Asian language native speakers learning English. That is a whole other can of worms.
Thank you. Ignorance successfully fought. And all stemming from a discussion of Anime.
And Chas, flaming Otaku? Where? I don’t see any. Just some folks that take exception to rampant stereotyping.
Well, since Chas decides top selectively ignore arguments directed at him, and isn’t capable of saying anything new, or backing up his assertions, I’ll just add him to the list of people not worth bothering with.
Um… I have nothing to post,I just wanted to turn off the e-mail toggle so I am not bothered when the next obsessive posts something.
Since the board is now bogging down (5 minutes to open this posting window) and I’m a little busy, I will try to respond with a few quickies. I hope to respond in more detail later when necessary. I’ll have to do this from memory since I’m getting the “this is a long thread. click here to review it” message and I can’t see what I’m responding to. Sorry if I mix up names, etc.
Scylla, perhaps if you could put your rant in the form of a question, I could form a proper answer. But I don’t have any inclination to debate with someone who is so disingenuous as to claim they got a joke (AFTER I explained the punchline) when it’s obvious they didn’t. Perhaps I should offer you another comic without explaining the punchline this time, and see how you do. Additionally, you could bolster your argument by avoiding flaming remarks like “it’s bullshit.”
Menoccio, you say you reject stereotypes and then rapidly accept one (an incorrect one, I might add) that is derived from someone’s second-hand reports based on anime. Japanese attitudes towards homosexuality are much more complex than that. For example, when I was in Japan, I saw a TV interview with two lesbian activists who said they cannot even hold hands in public because of the massive gay-bashing directed towards women. Yet male homosexuality is relatively accepted on a weird level, since it has been associated since ancient times with the prestigious samurai classes, as well as kabuki actors.
Somebody or other (sorry, I forgot) if you took latin in HS, you were lucky, I tried to take it but they wouldn’t offer the class because they could only get 3 students total. But what I’m talking about, it is my understanding that classical languages are mandatory in british private schools. There is a huge difference between a culture that considers its classics as a baseline education, and one that considers it an option.
#6, your statements about ESL have intrigued me, even though they are basically off-topic in this thread. From my recollection of a report on ESL students in elementary and high schools here in my town (with 51 different native languages!) students who receive only minimal tutoring in English perform very close to their grade level within a year. I am going to check with the local school board and see if I can get accurate stats on this but it will take a while to get the facts. When I get a little more time, I’ll offer you some recent neurological studies that show that second language students (of ALL native languages) under the age of 12 are not really acquiring a second language, they are acquiring a second native language. It is a major distinction that I will get into when I get more time, if you want to hear it.
Well, there’s probably more there I missed, but I can’t see it because the review still hasn’t loaded. That’s all for now.