Languages of Dream

Last night I dreamt I was at Grossmont College in San Diego, the community college I went to before SDSU. I was in a little garden and I found a shaggy grey cat under a shrub, in a drain pipe. There was also a kitten but the kitten was exactly like the adult cat. That is, a scale miniature, with the head in the same proportion to its body as the adult cat. But the fur couldn't scale so it looked like solid, moulded plastic. It was kind of a pale plum colour instead of grey.

I've been remembering my dreams a lot lately after a very long period when I was forgetting them. The night before last, I dreamt the new Doctor Who episode was written by someone who wanted to skewer the Church of England but knew absolutely nothing about it. So in the story, Rose had a part time job as a bishop down at the local church. She had to wear black robes every day and her coworkers called her lazy even when she was working hard.

Here's a pretty music video one of my students recommended:

One of the most striking things to me about K-Pop is often the lyrics include English. It's a reflection of how much stronger South Korea is in English than Japan. Japan just recently ranked shockingly low again in English education. Usually when I ask teachers for their opinions as to why, they say Japan focuses too much on testing--that is, memorising grammar and vocabulary instead of practicing conversations and role playing. I would say that's part of it. English is kind of studied like a dead language and the rules are much stricter to be more conducive to memorisation. Yesterday, I was talking to a teacher who was stressing the importance of differentiating "shrine" and "temple". In Japan, Shinto structures are called shrines and Buddhist structures are called temples. It's useless for me to point out that actual English is far less strict and the words "shrine" and "temple" are applied to all sorts of things, well beyond the spheres of Shinto and Buddhism.

Mostly, there's just a pure lack of interest in truly learning English in Japan. You'll hear the occasional one or two lines of English in a J-Pop song--and quite often bad English. Meanwhile, in South Korea, pop artists are writing whole songs in perfectly intelligible English. There's a market for it and therefore an interest. I just don't see it in Japan.