A Grand Old Team to See in Japan ー日本で見る、偉大なる古いチームー

Last week I took my son to see his first football match.  The team I support, from my hometown in Scotland, played two games in Japan.  We went to see Celtic play Yokohama F. Marinos at the Nissan Stadium in Yokohama. 

We chose the more enjoyable of the two games, even though Celtic lost.  The game we watched finished 6 – 4 to Yokohama.  Although Celtic won the next match 1 – 0 against Gamba Osaka, I am glad that we got to experience the excitement of 10 goals in a match. 

My son enjoyed the singing.  I taught him one of the songs the Celtic fans sing, and he had a chance to sing it out loud at the match several times. 

I enjoyed hearing the accents of quite a few Glaswegians who had come over to Japan to watch the match.  We even nearly got to see a fight between two fans just in front of us.  One extremely drunk fan, who had been singing and shouting the whole match, got very angry when Yokohama scored their sixth goal.  He then started shouting and swearing at his own team.  Another fan told him to calm down.  The drunk fan didn’t like this, and ran over to the other guy, pointing and shouting in his face.  Eventually, they separated without hitting each other.  The drunk guy said to the other fan, “You will die before me!”  I suppose the other fan must have been quite old. 

Then the old fan said loudly, “What a half-wit!” 

What wonderful nostalgia I felt.  Ah, this is Scottish football, I thought: the love for your team, the singing, the drunkenness, the hint of violence. 

I am just glad I could introduce my son to it all.  I wouldn’t want him to live his life without it. 

“…For that we only know,

That there’s going to be a show,

And that Glasgow Celtic will be there!”

 

Vocabulary:

“A grand old team” – The first lines of “The Celtic Song” are, “For it’s a grand old team to play for, For it’s a grand old team to see…”  Celtic are quite an old team now, having been founded in 1888 to raise money for charity to help poor Irish immigrants who moved to Glasgow in large numbers around that time, due to famine and poverty in Ireland

a half-wit – a slang term of insult, meaning a person with only half of a normal person’s mental capacity; an idiot

 

A Very Naked Mouse —とても裸のネズミ—

Scientists revealed this week that they had successfully developed a technique for testing cancer drugs, using a see-through mouse.

All of the fats and pigmentation are removed from a dead mouse, making it transparent.  The end result looks like a plastic toy.  The researchers can then detect tiny cancers within the mouse’s body, or the effects that drugs have had on the mouse’s body, that they would otherwise have missed.

I wonder how this technique will be developed and used in the future?

How about see-through clothes for nudists?  For nudists who want to show off their bodies on a cold day, they will be able to wear clothes made of transparent mouse skin.

Cruel jokes played on vegetarians?  Pranksters will put transparent mice in the meals of vegetarians, who will not notice the mice meat until it is too late.

Honestly, I hope this research has some genuine benefits.  It’s not such a great life to be a mouse.

Vocabulary:

pigmentation – the natural or internal colouring of animals or plants [eg., Due to illness, the baby’s skin had a yellow pigmentation.]

transparent – of a substance, able to be seen through [eg., Glass is usually transparent.]

a prankster – someone who plays practical jokes [eg., A tv show used hidden cameras to record the surprised reaction of the public as pranksters played practical jokes.]

 

The American Mowgli

I heard an interesting story from the 1950s, which gives some insight into the different roles played by nature and nurture in developing someone’s character. 

An American family took a trip deep into the countryside.  Unfortunately, their two-year old child ran off and became lost in the wilderness.  The family searched for the child, but couldn’t find him.  Eventually, they gave up searching. 

Then, four years later, the child was found by a different group of travellers.  The child was running along the ground on all fours, along with a pack of dogs.  The child howled and barked like a dog, and ate raw meat like a dog. 

Well, of course the child was rescued and returned to its family.  Little by little he learned to behave like a human once more.  He learned to walk on two legs, to eat with a knife and fork, and to speak English. 

The child was very intelligent and progressed rapidly.  He did well in his school studies, catching up with the other children.  Eventually, he managed to pass his exams and made it into Harvard University at the age of 18. 

Unfortunately, he died in a traffic accident shortly thereafter, when he tried to chase a car down the road. 

* 

This is of course not a true story.  It is a retelling of a joke told by 1950s American comedian, Lenny Bruce.