A funny thing I saw when I first came to Japan was a whole lot of Bob Marley T-shirts, ie: "Listen to Bob Marley" BUT what I saw even more of, was pot-leaf and cannibus apparel and accessories. A really popular one with my students is the pot-leaf pencil case, with the Jamaican flag's colors for the background.
What's even funnier, it turns out that a lot of these kids don't know the "imi" (meaning) of the symbol!! It's a pop-culture symbol and a lot like when you see Americans running around with Chinese/Japanese writing on their clothing/possessions/tattoos without reaaaally knowing the meaning.
Anyway, of course, me being me, I had to school them and set them straight. So I decided on an introduction to Reggae, Jamaica, Rastafarianism, and what better to do than a listening exercise to some Bob Marley songs. Cool, right?!
What's even cooler is that in each of my classes, I offered to swap music with my students - if the liked the Reggae (and it turns out that Reggae/Dancehall/Reggaeton is really popular with the students), I would burn them a CD in trade for some fresh Japanese tunes. So now, I've got a huge stack of CDs to listen to and have been having some pretty cool discussions on the real meaning of some of the Bob Marley tunes (love that Mellow Mood, daaaarling).
Teaching is COOL!
(Now I just gotta figure out how to see a man about a horse in these parts. Sheesh!)
3 comments:
Shu, perhaps you have been spending too much time with Bob Marley. You talked about him like 2 posts ago.
Oh, and would you be interested in making millions from home or viagra delivered to your door?
-Ross
Heh... Your blog is funny, man... Kancho, H.G., partys... And your kids are cute... Really, their cute faces may be the main reason why they're still in one piece, hehe...
And having freedom to do what you want in your class is really cool... don't think all teachers have that. Many still have to follow textbooks. That and ya apartment makes me think that you're good here, right?
About the T-shirts... really, after coming here I'll think twice before wearing clothings with writings or symbols I don't know... heh...
You're going to the Kenka Matsuri? See you there, or some other day during ultimate frisbee...
Till next Shuuuuuuuuuuu!! XD
I think the most important thing to remember about those giggle sticks is that it hasn't been proven to have damaging affects on the body.
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