Issun-kyoshi (the Little Teacher) 一 ー寸教師 －

Because of his school’s spring vacation, my 9 year old son was at home during the day a lot over the last couple of weeks. 

I could go and talk to him between English lessons I was teaching. 

“Daddy, could I teach English, do you think?” he asked. 

“Yes, I guess so.  Maybe when you are a bit older, you could teach English,” I said. 

He watched me picking up the lesson fee I had just received from the table. 

“I could help you teach English soon, Daddy.  You can give me a test and tell me when my English is good enough to teach.” 

He wanted me to pay him as an assistant teacher. 

I told him his English would have to get better.  He answered, “Okay, can you teach me now?” 

So I sat him on the opposite side of the table to me, and started teaching him as if he was my student.  He did well answering questions such as, “Where do you live?” and “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” 

Then I got him to ask me questions.  I would say, “I am from Scotland,” and he would have to ask, “Where are you from?” 

I said, “I like to go to karaoke, and I like to play the guitar.” 

He thought for a moment, then asked, “What are your hobbits?” 

It might be a little early for my assistant English teacher to start teaching, unless his students are studying Lord of the Rings.

 

Pet Rock －ペットのロック－

I was listening to the BBC news this week, and there was an item about pets.  Apparently, the number of dogs and cats in the U.K. is very large – more than 13 million dogs and more than 12 million cats in a country of 69 million people. 

To give a bit of context, a news reporter went to a pet museum, where an expert talked about the history of pets.  That expert also talked about odd trends in pet ownership, such as the mummification of cats in ancient Egypt and the invention of Tamagotchi as virtual pets.  Then he mentioned “pet rock.” 

I had a sudden image of a rock band featuring pets.  The human drummer bangs his drums:  badda, badda, bing, bing, crash!  The human guitarist strikes his instrument: kerrang!  Then the spotlight shifts to the vocalist: miaow!!! 

I realized that this would be ridiculous and then had another thought.  The rocks are diamonds, emeralds and rubies.  Rich pet owners are dressing their dogs in jewellery for a walk in the park. 

But this thought was wrong too.  Apparently, in the 1970s, an American businessman picked up some stones and put them in a box with “breathing holes.”  He then sold these rocks as pets, and made a successful business out of his pet rocks. 

The real pet rock turned out to be the stupidest idea of the three.  I actually think a cat vocalist accompanying loud guitar and drum music would do well on Spotify.

 

Smarter than the Average Bear －平均的な熊より賢い－

“I’ll steal from the rich and give to a poor bear – me!”

Cartoon character, Yogi Bear

 

I have been reading an interesting book about the attempts of scientists to communicate with animals. 

There is a lot of scientific debate and disagreement about how intelligent different animals are, and whether animal communication can be called language. 

On the intelligence of bears, the writer mentioned a problem staff had at Yosemite national park in America.  Nobody could seem to design a bin that would allow human tourists to put their rubbish into, which the bears would not be able to also access. 

A frustrated staff member said, “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest human tourists.”

 

Three More Pizzas, and a Little More Gold, Please －ピザをあと3枚、それとゴールドをもう少しください－

The Oscar Awards will take place soon.  After the ceremony, there will be a celebratory dinner for 1,500 guests. 

The feast will be prepared by 75 chefs, who will cook a variety of foods, from sushi to vegan options, Austrian dishes to Mexican.  It sounds a bit like a buffet breakfast in a nice hotel, except probably better.  I wonder if they have those little sausages you usually get at a buffet? 

The guests will also receive a statue dusted with real gold.  That reminded me of comedian David Cross talking about his experience of being given a meal to eat with real gold on it. 

“Odorless, tasteless gold – to eat!” 

As he said, is there any reason to eat real gold except to laugh at poor people? 

The organizers are also preparing to serve 7,000 glasses of Champagne, 600 pizzas and 90kg of steak. 

Of all the delicacies you can imagine, from all over the world, and prepared by high class chefs, would you really order pizza?

 

Eyes, or an Eye, in the back of my Head －僕の頭の後ろにある目－

I remember wondering about eyes when I was a university student.  I understood the idea of evolution, and accepted that it was the best explanation for how life appeared and spread across the Earth.  But I couldn’t imagine how eyes could have evolved.  If each evolutionary change was a small step, how could something as complex as an eye appear?  How useful is half an eye, or a quarter of an eye? 

Luckily, there are scientists who study these things.  There are stages in the development of eyes, from more simple to more complex and effective (and sometimes back again, such as creatures that start to live underground).  We can feel sunlight on our skin.  Perhaps the eye started with a patch of skin that was just a little bit more sensitive at finding the sunlight. 

I heard about some new research about the evolution of eyes this week.  Scientists have found an ancient life form, which lived before the evolution of fish.  It had a worm-like body and one simple eye in the top of its head to help it detect sunlight.  The scientists believe that later animals such as fish evolved from these creatures.  So if you travel back far enough into our evolutionary past, there was a time when we were born with one eye, not two. 

The story also made me think of the English expression, “I have eyes in the back of my head.” 

Parents often say this to their naughty children.  It means, “I can see you, even when you think that you are out of my line of sight.” 

“Stop reading manga when you are supposed to be doing your homework!  I have eyes in the back of my head.”

 

Haven’t I Seen your Face Before? －あなたの顔を前に見たことがあるんじゃないか？－

I heard an interesting story on the radio this morning.  An elderly British man needed to buy some groceries.  So he went down to a local shop to pick up his bread, milk and so on. 

As he was walking through the aisles, selecting products, one of the shop staff came over to him. 

“I am sorry, but I am going to have to ask you to leave the shop, Sir.” 

The confused old man was led away towards the door.  At the door, he turned around and asked why he was being thrown out. 

“Our cameras have facial recognition software.  We have a contract with a company that registers the faces of suspected serial shoplifters.  The software has just set off an alarm, telling us that you are a serial shoplifter.” 

The old man had never stolen anything from a shop in his life.  He protested his innocence.  The shop staff gave the man the contact details of the company which had registered his face as that of a criminal. 

After some emails and discussion back and forth with this company, it was accepted that the man’s face had been added to the database in error.  He had visited a shop at around the same time that a shoplifter had.  The elderly man had to go through his banking details with the company to prove that he had paid for the items he had bought in the shop. 

So in the end the elderly man’s face was removed from the database of suspected shoplifters.  But he says he feels nervous when out shopping, and tries to avoid walking in front of surveillance cameras, in case the same thing happens again and he is shamed in public like a criminal. 

It seems like this is the future.  As more and more often we are being watched by technology, who is watching the technology?

Paperwork Problems －ペーパーワーク問題－

Governments love paperwork.  You need the correct visa, passport, form, permission slip, stamp or signature to get anything from the government.  And new governments love to change the paperwork.  The old stamp is no longer sufficient.  Now you need the new, and more expensive one. 

Now the stamps have been replaced with an online system.  But electronic permission is even worse than stamps, since there is never a real human being available for you to explain your problem to any more. 

“You will find all necessary information on our website.” 

Things get even worse when the government forgets to tell people that the process has changed. 

One such case of a sudden paperwork change has been making news this week in Britain.  The change affects people who hold dual nationality – that is, a British passport and also the passport of another country. 

Until this year, those dual nationals were able to enter the U.K. using either passport.  Now these people have to enter the U.K. only with their British passport. 

But the government did little to publicize the change.  Many dual nationals have let their British passport expire and made travel plans, not realizing that they would be unable to reenter Britain.  They are now scrambling to get their passports renewed, or are having to stay outside the U.K. longer than they had planned. 

The situation reminded me of the opening of Douglas Adams’ novel, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.  An alien fleet of ships suddenly appears above the Earth, ready to demolish the whole planet to make room for a kind of highway through space. 

The United Nations and the governments of Earth frantically complain that they hadn’t heard of these plans. 

The alien is entirely unsympathetic. 

“The plans have been available in the local planning office in Alpha Centauri for the last nine months.  Honestly, if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local government plans then that is your problem.”