The Gellért Hotel and Baths are generally considered to be Budapest’s swankiest thermal baths, and are currently undergoing renovations, since that kind of stuff didn’t really happen for about forty years or so during communism. In Budapest, the only thing outnumbering beautiful architectural examples are beautiful architectural examples in major need of renovations. I should not be surprised then, that the statues on top of the Gellért Hotel are held together by oversized rubber bands.
I read in this revisionist history (the good kind) book Lies My Teacher Told Me that history professors regard their inbound charges as starting their higher education with a deficit. Kids have been taught so many lies, myths, and apocrypha posing as proven facts in their primary educations that to even begin writing on the white board of their minds you must first spend a few semesters erasing all the gibberish already written there.
English education is the same way here. Adults and kids would be different kinds of learners no matter what the content of their education was, but it just so happens that it’s a load of crap. Adults come into their first post-public education English class (fun fact: public education is called “duty education” here) saddled with at least 6 years’ worth of incorrectly taught grammar – which is sadly public school English’s best area – as well as deeply ingrained katakana pronunciation (I-moo goin-goo tsu-u go tsu-u za paa-ku) and a large vocabulary of creatively reinterpreted English words like “kanningu” (cheating on a test, which indeed could be described as but not called as such).
The preschoolers have far better pronunciation and grasp of social English than the adults – yes, because kids learn those things easier, but also because they never learned it wrong. I tell all my elementary schoolers what common errors to watch out for when they start junior high English and not to be afraid to correct their teachers, which they almost certainly will have to. The sad truth is that on any matter other than spelling or extended vocabulary, they already know more than their future teachers do.
It comes down to this: either god has the ability to manifest its power in the physical world, or it’s irrelevant. If god can and does interfere in the physical world, it is observable and therefore provable. If it can’t or doesn’t, it’s not worth even trying to prove, as it can’t possibly have any affect on anything germane to us. Most believers, in my experience, attribute physical powers to god up until the point where they’re asked to give evidence of those powers, at which they declare god to be strictly immaterial, and hence safely beyond the reach of any measure or metric. Once the forces of skepticism retreat they resume crediting god with all manner of real-world phenomena. It seems god is only as immaterial as the voices asking for evidence are persistent.
I love this sign in the park on top of Gellért Hill, since every time I’ve passed it, it’s been such a misnomer. The reason is because it reads: “Főkert Rt.: For the Flower-Filled City.” Count the flowers.
Granted, I’m sure in the summer there are plenty of flowers, and yes, I snapped this picture two weeks ago, but still.
You might say all the test and test prep-psychosis that goes on here was worth it if it bore fruit in the form of smarter Japanese adults. I say smarter simply because we can all agree that “knows more stuff”, or “knowledgeability” isn’t the same as “is able to put that stuff together into a cohesive worldview made to better correspond to reality by knowledge of said stuff”, or “smartness”. It doesn’t matter, actually, since I don’t think the average Japanese adult knows more stuff than us less testy cultures anyway. What you end up with is people incapable of learning anything intuitively, ie not sanctioned by some feudal relic of a Confucian relationship, and who take a acquiescent attitude toward any incursions into their personal lives their public lives might make. Put a little distance between a salaryman and college and he’s just an ignorant, incurious sap who can’t think of anything to do but work every night and many weekends.
I’ll admit to having written these:
Some of the others maybe under duress. Maybe…
You can see how other countries are stereotyped over here.
Mark and I won’t bite. Well, at least not unless you deserve it.
L and R are not interchangeable as representations of a single Japanese phoneme. Portuguese and Spanish both have alveolar flaps, and both write theirs as R. You should too. That pretentious L and lack of final u demean both you and the alphabet-using world. Your name is Kaoru, or Caoru if you insist on people being unable to distinguish your name from that of some kind of Australian burrowing rodent.
To everyone else, don’t let anyone you know decide how your name is going to be written in the ABCs until you at bare minimum consult a native speaker of English. There have been far too many unfortunate Youkos, Itihasis and Ohishis insisting on applying the rules of the Japanese syllabary (mostly) to the English language only to end up with something that to native English speakers seems willfully insubordinate to the rules of phonics.
If you watch the video, you can see Scott Ian of Anthrax trying to play one of his own songs on Guitar Hero. Now, while I don’t consider Scott Ian one of the all-time great guitarists, you’ve got to be at least pretty good in order to play rhythm in a thrash band. And while the guitar part he has to play focuses more on the lead guitar, which isn’t what Ian plays, it’s still amusing to watch him utterly and completely fail at it.