Thursday, 28 March 2024

A Disaster at a Rural University

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A Disaster at a Rural University

hougen_big.gifTwenty some years ago, I studied at a state university in a rural town of Idaho. I had to take some units in the humanities to meet the general education requirements. I didn’t want to have trouble with English, so I decided to take a class in Japanese history, a familiar subject to me. I thought that I could get credits effortlessly by taking this class, which turned out to be wrong. Instead, it created a disaster. But, who could expect it? The instructor was an American whose specialty was Chinese history and she wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about Japanese history or the Japanese language. It seemed that she had no choice but to teach the class because there was no better teacher for it.

One day, the instructor explained that the English word “LIKE” is “TSUKI” in Japanese. I was sitting in the first row, perplexed. I assumed that she had learned the word “SUKI” with a wrong pronunciation, “TSUKI.” So I raised a hand and corrected her pronunciation (…well, I thought that’s what I did).

That instantly made this instructor look unhappy, her face turning reddish. Then she started retaliating against me. “Where were you born in Japan?” she asked. “I was born in Aomori,” I replied. Then, she gave a big, triumphant smile, wagging her index finger from side to side in “no-no,” and said, “That’s how you say in your dialect! In Tokyo, they say, ‘TSUKI’! I guess you didn’t know it!” Gosh! I was so shocked that I almost fainted.

Our exchanges led to big laughter in class and I was unfairly humiliated. While the class continued, I was in the state of shock. This ridiculous instructor also listed the “Jomon Period” and “Yayoi Period” in a wrong order on the black board, but I had no strength to say anything.

Jomon Yayoi