The Quiet Pain...

Japan is awfully smart when it comes to certain things. I was given a newspaper article, from my father, about the following...

A lot of places don't really like teens loitering so what do they do? They send out this high high frequency that is usually so high, adults can't really hear it. Young people, on the other hand...we can hear it. Loud and clear. I stepped out of a convenient store and I felt this pain in my teeth and I could hear this pitch. I remembered the newspaper article and thought "well...it seemed cool when it was on paper, but this is just stupid." I also learned that a lot of kids use this to their advantage and get cellphone rings that are these frequencies because their teachers can't hear them sending messages in class to each other.

Everyday in class we have to arrange desks into a circle. We just changed rooms from a carpeted room to a room with a hard floor. Let me tell you what the most painful sound ever is... arranging desks into a circle by dragging them. Japanese desks are all very old and heavy and no one reallly wants to lift them, with good reason. This is also another one of those sounds that makes your teeth hurt. This isn't anything that is specific to Japan, but I just thought I'd add it on since it's a new part of my stay here...

In other news, more gooder news...

I have my first part time job (Arubaito) with my host mom. She teaches English, and for some extra money, she does a night class thing for younger kids. I get go in and teach with her. The kids are all 12 years old and have no english learning experience. They know a little, just from hearing it and other random things, but they've never studied it. My host mom says English sounds beautiful when spoken by a native, she especially likes when I talk to my family on the phone.

I personally think English is a really funny sounding language. I even asked my host sister to speak in English jibberish. We all kind of do fake jibberish of other languages, I was curious what we sound like to those who don't know English. We all kind of do funny Spanish or Italian, maybe Chinese stereotypes of what we think languages sound like...though I cannot transcribe what the English Jibberish sounds like, I must say, it is really really hilarious. There was a lot of B's L's and R's and my host sister said that there's a very specific rhythm that stands out when we speak English which I thought was funny.

That's all for now really, nothing else too new is going on.... I'll update more later.