Friday, February 6, 2009

Yes we (fu*king) can!!

Look, I’m not saying I dislike Barack Obama. Unlike a lot of people, I don’t think he’s the Savior, the new Jesus, the best thing since sliced bread. I mean, you’re supposed to judge a man by his actions, and he hasn’t done much yet. I wouldn’t start carving his face in Mount Rushmore just now.

But the reason he really aggravates me is this: in the past 6 months, 50% of my 1700 students (read: all the boys) have told me ‘Yes we can!’. They think it’s hilarious, I think it’s actually pretty laaaame. When you think about it, it is a pretty meaningless 3 words when it comes out of the mouth of a Japanese 9 year-old. I wondered: ‘Maybe I look like him...’ but NO.

So I’m guessing it’s a geography thing. As a geographer, it pisses me off that these kids think that Montréal, Québec, Canada is the same thing as Nashville, Tennessee, USA. On the other hand, when my soccer buddies learned I was moving to Japan, they said: ‘So you’ll hook up with a lot of Chinese girls you piiimp??’ (so so wrong). When I pointed out that Japan and China are quite different, they impressed me with the fact that the only thing they knew about Japan was the movie ‘Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift’. I just wish Obama had chosen a better slogan, something in the lines of : ‘P-Y you rock and we wish you were the king of the world’ or ‘P-Y can’. That would have been bitchin'!

I think I need a vacation, which is why I’m leaving tonight, on a boat, to Sapporo! Yeah! Snow festival, parties and snowboarding at Niseko (
http://www.niseko.ne.jp/en/) are on the program....for five days.
You know you’re jealous.
P-Y

2 comments:

Thunderstorm said...

Wow. Beau parallèle P-Y! C'est fou à quel point nous avons de la difficulté à discriminer des différences si importantes lorsque nous parlons de peuples que nous connaissons peu. D'ici, les asiatiques viennent tous du même pays et ils ont tous les yeux bridés.

De l'Asie, nous sommes tous des Américains. Et de l'Europe, nous sommes tous des Indiens!

Bonnes vacances
Guillaume

Anonymous said...

Je te trouve un tantinet...présomptueux.Yes,you can et tu nous le prouves encore en profitant de ton séjour pour faire de beaux projets et j'en suis très heureuse pour toi.Je t'aime et j'ai hâte d'aller te voir.Bises Mom