We use emoticons all the time and by now instinctively know what they mean. Japanese people however, use a whole different set of them which they call emoji. Quite what some of these emoji mean is hard to work out, so to get a grip on my (￣^￣)ゞfrom my
☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆ I turned to Google and found a few interesting things.

What Japan Thinks is a website that I have looked at from time to time which shows the results of various opinion polls conducted in Japan translated into English. In a old post from almost 6 years ago the site lists the 30 most popular emoji of the time. Some of the meanings are pretty obvious, such as (＾▽＾) meaning laughing, but many take some explaining. How we are supposed to discern joyful from ( ・ω・) I’ve no idea.

The question that ran across my lips while looking a these things however was, “Just what face are these emoticons supposed to represent?” You know, it’s not hard to visualise what face :p represents but U^ェ^U , that’s a whole different kettle of fish. The Google search I mentioned before threw up something that may help me, an iOS app called Twikao.

Twikao is an app which takes a picture of your face and then generates a emoji using facial recognition. Armed with this I am going to try to recreate some of the emoji I found in the What Japan Thinks post using my face and see if I can’t get a one to one match.

The challenge begins now!

1- （＾_＾）v Laughing

VERDICT: FAIL, the generated emoji is way too happy (and far less tired looking).

2- (>_<)> Troubled

VERDICT: Hmm, missing (what I think is) the arm but capturing the bags under my eyes beautifully.

3- （　ﾟ Дﾟ）Shocked

VERDICT: Looks pretty shocked to me but the mouth is all wrong. Dunno were it got that sweat drop from.

4- (*￣m￣) Dissatisfied

VERDICT: MEGA FAIL! Despite pulling my best dissatisfied face, I got a happy Wolverine.

5-（*´▽｀*） Infatuation

VERDICT: Gah! This is what I was looking for from number 3. FAIL. FAIL. FAIL.

I’m not sure what has been learnt here, other than the lighting in my room is very yellow.

It’s been a good 5 years since I started this blog and all this time I haven’t really said much about the lessons I do. Well, I’ve come across a warmer that is such a hit that I just had to share it with you.

Remember when you used to take school trips to far away places? What songs did you sing? If you were anything like me you would have sung the ever so wonderful song called ‘The Music Man’. Now with this plan you can share that experience with the cute little English learners you teach. I found it works best with elementary kids in the 5th and 6th year (so 10-12 year olds).

Preparation is minimal, you need a copy of the song as recorded by Black Lace (available on iTunes, or other sources) and a picture of a one man band (search google images for pictures, like this, or this). Also be aware that you only expect the kids to sing the chorus lines and not the lead.

And so….

1. Show the big picture of the one man band and ask the kids “Who is this?”.
2. Look at their bemused faces and tell them “It is a music man.”
3. Ask them, “How many instruments does he have?”
4. Elicit a few responses and then let them know the answer.
5. Tell them that we are going to sing the Music Man song.
6. Stick the picture to the board and tell them the first line, “I am The Music Man”.
7. Draw a picture of a house and the area around it, ask them what it is and then say the second line, “I come from down your way”.
8. Next draw a guy playing a recorder, ask the kids what it is and then say the third line, “And I can play”.
9. Then draw a question mark and say the fourth line “What can you play?”. This is the line you want the kids to say so drill it.
10. Then draw a Piano, ask what it is and tell them the line, “I can play the piano”.
11. Ask them what sound a piano makes, ignore any suggestion they give and go “Pia, Pia, Piano, Piano, Piano, Pia, Pia, Piano, Pia, Piano.” In the style of the song while making wild ‘playing piano’ gestures.
12. Get them to do it.
13. Repeat steps 11 to 13 for trombone (“Umpa, pa”) and Bagpipes (“Dur Dur”).
    

    Your board should look a bit like this, but your drawings will probably be better than mine.

14. Do a practice run of the first verse. Remember you sing lines 1-3 and 5 and to count down 3,2,1 for the kid’s line, “What can you play?”
15. Do it with the music (They may not be ready to sing their line 1st time, if this happens act all flustered and start it one more time).
16. Turn the music down and off after the bagpipes verse.

The beauty of this warmer is that if you have a set of three lessons with the same language point you can play it with the music the first two times but then can get them to suggest their own instruments and sounds for the third lesson.

Difficulties with this activity are that the second line “I come from down your way” is difficult to understand or teach, I tend to gloss over it a bit. Also bagpipes is a bit too British a reference for Japanese kids but if you are lucky at least one pupil in the class will know what they are. Just thank the lord that the verses where the music man can play Match Of The Day and Dambusters are much later in the song and can be ignored.

If the kids you teach are anything like mine, most will be giggling their little heads off but this song really is a hit. On Friday I got followed to the train station by three of my fifth year kids who demanded we sing it over and over. Even when we got to the station they weren’t tired or board with it and do you want to know the best bit…..?

Neither was I.

I mentioned how much fun I’m having with my Nintendo 3DS before. However after I bought another game and discovered that not all the boxes are super funky, my excitement wore off a bit. That was until I discovered Nintendo Swapnote.

Swapnote is a simple little program that allows you to swap notes. The clue is in the name, unless you got it in the UK, it’s known as Nintendo Letter Box there. Or Japan for that matter, where it’s called Itsuno Mani Koukan Nikki, a name which just rolls off the tongue.

The notes themselves are split into up to 4 pages and the program animates the note as it was written by the sender, it’s interesting to see how other people draw and how everyone has different writing styles. Sound and pictures taken with the 3DS’s camera can also be added. Little backgrounds (known as stationary) can also be used and add a little more animation to the piece. These all have their limitations though, you can’t manually edit the formatting of the pictures and can only add 5 second sound clips. The actual drawing is limited to black and white too, although you can write in 3D, which is fun to mess about with.

All in all this app doesn’t have very much reason for existing, other than the fact that it is fun to use. After I added a few like-minded people to my 3DS friends list it became a kind of ridiculous version of Twitter. A version of Twitter without all the news discussion, advice and useful internet links, it was all boiled down to some people writing some silly messages (in 3D). As an example, one morning I opened up my 3DS to see this message, the delightful silliness of it brightened up my day.

Being a resourceful chap, I wondered to myself whether I could somehow find some sort of proper use for Swapnote and I remembered my kanji study. I’d put my kanji study off for a while but found that coming up with silly ways to remember these things was really enjoyable.

What better way to express these ridiculous mnemonics than with a 3D note swapping program by Nintendo? Due to the note’s animation you can see the stoke order of the kanji and I can attempt to draw the picture living in my head. Said picture, the result of my odd imagination, helps me to remember the kanji.

So I bought a new kanji book, began the slow process of learning more kanji and started writing a few little swapnotes. Some of the ideas I used for them have already mentioned on this website but it is all good practice for me so it doesn’t matter. Simply because I can, I uploaded a few of the notes that I’ve done to YouTube so I can place them here. Obviously you can’t view them in 3D, you will simply have to miss out unless you get hold of a 3DS system. Which I, of course, recommend you do.

Without further ado. Let’s learn some kanji…

1 – 轢

2 – 桜

See this post for more.

3 – 象

See this post for more.

4 – 座

5 – 遊

One thing which you could never say about me is that I’m fashionable. I wear what I think looks good and it is only on very rare occasions that anyone agrees with me. The same cannot be said of many Tokyoites, you see men with more product in their hair than what your average Boots would carry and ladies who wear high heals when they go trekking up mountains. I reckon they are a bit silly but they are the fashionable ones so I guess they are correct.

With regards to make up I have always been firmly of the belief that less is more, if I don’t notice that a woman is wearing much make up then it has done it’s job. That’s why I’m slightly frightened by the current fashion here for giant eyelashes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for Mascara but the extremes I have seen walking about are ridiculous. There have been times I worried that these people would take my eye out if they walk any closer to me.

This love for these false eyelashes has led to a problem, when wearing their cool fashionable glasses these hipster girl’s stupidly long eyelashes hit the glass and irritate the eyes. To counter this they have found a novel solution, remove the lenses. As a result there are girls walking around Asia with huge black spider webs growing out of their eyes and Woody Allen style nerd glasses frames.

It wouldn’t be the first time that being fashionable has left people looking silly but could this be borderline offensive to those with bad eyesight? Maybe I’m being a bit extreme but as a glasses wearer myself, it seems like these people are taking the piss a bit. What’s next? Will we be seeing it-girls browsing the racks of ZARA in wheelchairs? Will guys be supporting their texting arm with crutches? Will Zimmer frames be the next big thing? Surely it’s just a matter of time….