Lost In Translation

Quote of the Day (June 29, 2007)

From Japan Today:

"It's ironic, but it took this crisis to make universities realize they actually have to educate their students." Atsushi Hamana, president of the Kansai University of International Studies, saying that financial pressures and a lack of students are forcing universities to improve or perish, a big change in a country where higher education has long been viewed as a four-year break before entering the work force. (International Herald Tribune)

The dirty little secret of Japanese higher education is that it is a simulacrum of education. Therefore most companies feel that they will need to train their employees and pay little attention to the field of study or grades, rather they rely on the prestige of the school. I don’t really see it changing yet. I guess slowly you are getting changes like having benchmark TOEIC scores for students before they are allowed to graduate. But essentially, it is business as usual. Low expectations, low standards and little actual learning.

Interview: Ryan Adams

The AV Club has an interview with Ryan Adams, next moth my review of the album, Easy Tiger, will be in The Japan Times next month. Until then here's the intro:

After spending the first decade of his career as either the most promising singer-songwriter of his generation, or a braying jackass too wrapped up in himself, depending on who was passing judgment, Ryan Adams briefly became a pop-culture punchline, mocked for his prolific output and hard-partying lifestyle. Over the last couple of years, Adams has quietly reformed. Since assembling his touring band, The Cardinals, Adams has re-dedicated himself to his craft, writing and recording hooky, rootsy albums that are more calmly assured than obnoxiously virtuosic. The latest, Easy Tiger, brings Adams' pop side more to the surface, while still ambling behind the bright, clear path of his familiar folk-country muse. Adams recently spoke with The A.V. Club about his process and his philosophy, and why he'd rather be a professional musician than a plumber—or maybe even a rock star.

Why Not Cambodian Tonight?

There's a feature on Cambodian food in Salon that I found really interesting. I love SE Asian food, but I don’t remember being impressed with Khmer food when I was in Cambodia, but it makes me want to re-evaluate the food. To be honest I was only in Cambodia for five days and most of that in Siam Reap for Angkor Wat. Perhaps it's time to revisit Cambodia in general.

Here's the intro to the article:

You wouldn't know it from looking at me -- perched upon a wooden stool window-side in the Kampuchea Noodle Bar, on a trendy street in Manhattan's Lower East Side -- but I'm eating my way to the past. I'm hunched over a bowl of something named Phnom Penh katiev, and the long white strands of rice noodle are dripping off my chopsticks back into a cloudy broth. Let it splatter. I'm fishing for the shrimp, lapping them up and wondering if the tingling on my tongue is a hint of MSG.

This is New York, food capital of the world, where you should be able to get whatever you want, whenever you want. But I'm just not finding it. Kuy thiew (koy-TEA-oo), not "katiev," is breakfast in Cambodia. I came here hoping to be transported back to the corner of Street 130 and Preah Ang Eng Boulevard, downstairs from my river-view apartment in Phnom Penh. There, under the rotating fans at Rthy's sidewalk noodle stand, bright pink plastic chairs are arranged around bright blue plastic tables, each with a can of metal spoons and plastic chopsticks in the center. The clovers of sauces are so dark red and corrosive and oily that not even the 90-degree heat can spoil them.

In New York, transplanted Hong Kong hands have a couple of Chinatowns to choose from. Colombians can head out to Queens for an oblea caramel wafer and yucca bread under the elevated train tracks. Eastern Europeans longing for a borscht can ride the F train to Brighton Beach. West Africans have the Bronx, North Africans have the East Village -- and even the Uighurs, the Sephardim of the Silk Road, can find home cooking out in Rego Park. But for Cambodians (and nostalgic travelers like me), a taste of home remains elusive.

Last year, such was my longing, I made the trip to Lowell, Mass., just to order a plate of pliah, marinated beef salad, and sit under posters of pop stars in silk dresses and whiteface. By the odd topology of refugee migration, a quarter of Lowell's 105,000 citizens are Cambodian. (One grocer told me he stocks his vegetable counter with the help of a Cambodian immigrant in Florida who found the Mekong Delta-like Everglades perfect for growing tropical greens.) "Is this how it's supposed to be?" my uninitiated companion asked about the pliah, gazing around the Formica-clad dining room with an expression approaching horror. "This is it," I said, chomping on a dangly piece of cold tripe. The acid from the Asian coriander bit through my teeth. "This is right."

Over the past three decades, the West has fallen in love with the cuisines of Thailand, southern China, Vietnam and Malaysia, even Burma (for its barbecue), but somehow, Cambodia's food has slipped through the cracks. It has been nearly 30 years since "before Pol Pot" became "after." Two million tourists converged on Cambodia last year to see the temples at Angkor and what's left of Phnom Penh's French colonial grace. A generation of refugees resettled in America and France and had children of their own. Slowly, Khmer cultural heritage is being restored, protected, re-created. A no-fly zone covers the temples at Angkor, to keep engine blasts from shaking delicate foundations. The nation's Royal Ballet has trained a new troupe of hyper-flexible ingenues to perform on world tours. And Khmer shadow puppetry, called sbaek thom, or "big skin," now carries UNESCO's seal as one of 89 "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity." Why not Khmer food?

Tokyo Quality of Life High

This is from Japan Today:

Tokyo has been ranked fourth in a "Quality of Life" survey conducted by European-based monthly magazine Monocle. In addition to often used criteria such as housing, cost of transportation, crime rate, education and environment, the survey also included criteria such as accessibility to international airports, availability of public Wi-Fi net access, restaurant hours and availability of bars open at 2 a.m.

Munich placed first due to its quality housing, low crime rate, growing economy, low unemployment and availability of greenery inside the city, as well as its accessibility to the Alps.

The general trend is for smaller cities to rank higher with the exception of Tokyo. The majority of the ranked cities have a population of 2 million or fewer and six cities among them have a population of less than a million.

Below are the Top 20.

1. Munich 2. Copenhagen 3. Zurich 4. Tokyo 5. Vienna 6. Helsinki 7. Sydney 8. Stockholm 9. Honolulu 10. Madrid 11. Melbourne 12. Montreal 13. Barcelona 14. Kyoto 15. Vancouver 16. Auckland 17. Singapore 18. Hamburg 19. Paris 20. Geneva

Plato-Neoconservative?

I first studied Plato in high school and later in college and there are aspects of his philosophy that were troubling for me. For example, the fact that he was against all types of art and thought that philosopher kings should rule the “polis.” Who gets to decide who these people are? One of my college friends said that he felt that some people weren’t competent to make their own decisions to which another replied: “That sounds a bit fascist to me.” To which the other replied: “Well I guess I’m a little fascist.” Or perhaps a neocon in the rough. Simon Blackburn, author of a book on Plato’s Republic, discusses the misinterpretation of Plato by the likes of Leo Strauss and his attitude toward the great philosopher with Alex Koppleman in Salon:

Sometimes, even the newest ideas have ancient roots. Take, for example, neoconservatism, the radical philosophy that supposedly guided the Bush administration's ill-fated foreign policy decisions. Who would have thought the classical Greek philosopher Plato had anything to do with the invasion of Iraq?

Twenty-four hundred years ago, Plato wrote a book called "The Republic," in which the famed teacher Socrates and his pupils discuss the ingredients of an ideal government. They decide that there is a higher realm than mere physical reality, that it is the duty of a small cadre of enlightened, elite citizens called "guardians" to become philosopher kings, and that only these rulers can grasp what is truly real and Good. Over the years, "The Republic" has been invoked to justify everything from authoritarian elitism to liberalism, but during the 20th century, neoconservative godfather Leo Strauss reinterpreted it to his own political philosophy, with its controversial assertion that it's OK for the enlightened elite to tell "noble lies" in the service of the Good. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz actually took courses on Plato from Strauss at the University of Chicago; other neoconservative hawks with Straussian genes include Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq and current ambassador to the U.N.; and Bill Kristol, neocon pundit and co-founder of the Weekly Standard.

In his new book,"Plato's Republic," Simon Blackburn re-explores the seminal work. The professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in England (yes, the professor of philosophy -- in England, Blackburn explains, professor really means head of the department), Blackburn was from 1990 until 2001 the Edna J. Koury distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina. He's also written for the New Republic and the New York Times Book Review; this is his ninth book. Salon spoke with Blackburn to get his perspective on why Plato is a hit with modern American conservatives, and what the ancient Greek philosopher might think of George W. Bush's flight suit.

Click here to read the interview. I thought it was really engaging, I guess it helps to know something about Plato, but probably not.

Letters From Iwo Jima / Flags of Our Fathers

I recently saw both Letters From Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers. I think Letters From Iwo Jima made a stronger emotional impact that Flags of Our Fathers. But both had their moments and were noteworthy for the amazing battle sequences, but it was the human story in both that resonated. I think there were elements of both films that were whitewashed as well. For example, in Letters From Iwo Jima two of the military commanders had lived in America and were sympathetic to the enemy. This was a sort of mini-motif. From what I understand, the reason so many soldiers committed suicide was a combination of the bushido samurai spirit and effective propaganda dehumanizing the Americans as savages, and there was very little of that in the film. I know that this was the case in the Battle of Okinawa when I visited the memorials there and read what lengths the civilians did to avoid capture. I wonder if the anti-Native American Indian racism in Flags of Our Fathers was softened in the film as well. I guess they get credit for making it an issue at all, though. It is another case where seeing a film makes me want to read more about it. In this case I’d like to know more about the Pacific Theater of battle in WWII.

Cultural Conundrums: Teachers On Task

Kate Elwood, in her latest column in The Daily Yomiuri, discusses the differences between American and Japanese teaching styles and the amount of time spent off or on task as teachers. The results aren't so surprising really:

Ah, the secret lives of teachers. I hadn't speculated much about the lives of my teachers when I was a student in the United States. Or so I thought, and then I realized that I knew quite bit about many of them so I hadn't had a need to contemplate such things. About Mr. O., a history teacher, I remembered that he preferred beer to other stronger alcohol, the name of his wife, and an interesting episode from when he was a young boy in which he had been given a baked apple by a nun at his Catholic school when he was sick. At the time we were told this particular vignette we were studying the French Revolution and in retrospect it does seem a pity that I remember the particulars about the fruit dessert so vividly but nary a detail about Robespierre bar his name.

Regarding a math teacher, Ms. G., I knew even more personal information. She was single but had once been engaged to be married until her fiance got cold feet and broke it off. These facts were not simply a rumor, but information that she had freely given when a student asked if she were married. And the stories could go on. Of course, some teachers did not reveal much about their private lives, but perhaps the great amount that I knew about others had satisfied me and certainly convinced me that all teachers have their own interesting outside-of-school existences.

In Japan my students are very interested about my personal life and when I give them a chance to ask me questions after their introductions inevitably these questions come up: How old are you? Are you married? Do you have a girlfriend? What do you think of (Japanese girls, Japan, this school)?

The applied linguist Patricia Mayes has written a whole book analyzing three Japanese cooking courses, with classes once a month for six months, and three American cooking classes, with classes once a week for six weeks. In the chapter related to differences on the discourse level, she notes that while the American teachers as well as students frequently engaged in personal stories, jokes, or gossip, all of the Japanese teachers' lessons were entirely task-oriented, with no personal stories, jokes or gossip at all. In addition, the Japanese students did not participate in the discourse as speakers but only as listeners.

Mayes compares the content of one of the Japanese transcripts with one of the American transcripts. In the Japanese class, the teacher explains how to use daikon radish, then demonstrates how to make buri to daikon no nimono (boiled yellowtail and radish) and subsequently shows how to make sekihan (azuki beans and rice). And that's what she does, step by step, very efficiently and very knowledgeably.

The American teacher explains how to make beef carbonade and gnocci. And that's what the teacher does, but also he: 1) finds a spider in the pan and jokes about the extra protein it will provide; 2) makes a joke about the handouts; 3) makes a joke about the woman from the registration office; 4) explains beef carbonade is from Belgium and talks about his old boss who was Belgian; 5) tells a story about his first experience working as a cook in a French restaurant; 6) tells a story about a friend and his kitchen; and 7) tells a story about a woman buying milk at the supermarket that day.

***

Mayes further notes that the Japanese lessons were generally unidirectional with little backtracking, while the American lessons were less well-organized, with the teachers moving back and forth between the recipes they were demonstrating. A Japanese corollary of "a place for everything and everything in its place" seems to be "an order for everything and everything in its order."

I think I reveal less as an ESL teacher, than I did as a high school English teacher in America. Possibly because it seems tedious to do so in simple language, but then again I will make comments regarding my likes and dislikes as well as make comments about student answers to questions in class. Generally try to stay on task, but high-level classes can easily sidetrack me when they ask my opinions on articles we are reading about politics or other controversial topics.

36 Hours In Bali

The New Times Travel section does 36 hours in Bali, a wonderful place:

SAY Bali and most people think paradise. There are stunning sunsets, sculpted rice terraces and a temple on almost every corner. And for less-spiritual seekers, this steamy Indonesian island also has great surfing and a rollicking nightlife. Sure, it's gotten pretty touristy, especially on the pub crawl along Kuta Beach, where beer-swilling Australians rule. And while recent terrorist bombings have rattled Bali's blissful pace (it is a Hindu-majority island in a Muslim-majority nation), they have done little to temper its popularity or discourage super-chic resorts from being built. Paradise, after all, is as close as the nearest temple, finding yourself on your knees with a blue flower pressed between your fingertips, asking for blessings from Brahma or one of the other gods.

Another Meal

Here's a mini gydon (beef bowl) with Dan Dan Udon (spicy Chinese-style Japanese noodles).

The Larry Sanders Show

I’ve recently finished watching all six seasons of The Larry Sanders Show and it is one of the best comedies of the 90s and perhaps all time. I didn’t have HBO so I think I saw a couple of episodes, but I think you need to be a regular viewer to truly appreciate the highly crafted characterizations that even the secondary characters brought to the show. The triumvirate of Garry Shandling (Larry Sanders), Rip Torn (Arty), and Jeffery Tambor (Hank Kingsley) was the key to the humor and success of the show but all of the secondary character actors had their moments in the sun as well. This list includes Jeremy Piven, Jenaene Garafalo, Penny Johnston (who with late coming regular Mary Lynn Rajskub would go onto to further fame in drama in the 24 series), Wallace Langham (as the head writer Phil), the foxy Linda Doucett (Hank’s personal assistant Darlene, who is replaced by Kids In The Hall member Scott Thompson in a role that prefigures Ari Gold’s gay Asian assistant Lloyd in Entourage), and Sarah Silverman among others. That’s not mention all the great cameos throughout the years by actors portraying versions of themselves and the many comedian friends of Shandling that found their way on the set. Some of my favorite guests include: Bruno Kirby, David Duchovny, Dana Carvey, David Spade, and the list goes on.

Getting back to the triumvirate of Garry Shandling (Larry Sanders), Rip Torn (Arty), and Jeffery Tambor (Hank Kingsley): it was the interactions between these three that created most of the most memorable moments in the series. Garry Shandling’s anal, needy, insecure, and high maintenance character was necessary for interactions with people like Hank and the guests. Torn, the gruff man’s man runs the show, has the experience and confidence to command the utmost authority from everyone on the show. Hank is the also needy insecure and Tambor was willing to do almost anything to get a laugh from Hank’s pathetic outbursts tempered by his selfish tirades. Hank is one of the greatest losers in comedy: think George Costanza, think GOB from Arrested Development.

This show was seminal and paved the way for so many others. Without it there would be no Curb Your Enthusiasm or Entourage. It was a model of how to blend reality with fiction. I’m under the impression that it suffers from low ratings numbers like the current brilliant critic’s choice The Wire. Tambor has the distinction of having appeared on two of the best TV shows of all time after his stint on Arrested Development.