So lets see.  This week I saw Spiderman 3.  It actually came out in
Japan before the US I believe which is crazy.  Maybe its because I am
in the Kansai area, which has USJ (Universal Studios Japan), that I
think Spiderman is famous in Japan.  All my students love the
spiderman ride.  Anyway it was really good and it reminded me that I
haven't talked about going to the movies in Japan.  Well, 1st its
expensive, it like 1800 to 2000 yen, which is like 18 to 20 bucks,
just to see a movie.  And the weird thing is you pick your seats when
you buy your tickets, so we had to sit way at the front and on the
side.  It kind of sucked.  But the movie was awesome.  Another
interesting thing about movies in Japan is that you can buy beer.  Of
course when I am already spending 20 bucks just to see a movie, I
don't want a beer.  This time though I heard its okay to bring in
drinks, so we brought our own drinks and no one said anything.  This
may or may not be true though, but I brought a bag in and they didn't
even look at it, so maybe its okay.  Another interesting thing about
movies in Japan is that often the titles are changed.  So I've been
wanting to see Snakes on a Plane, which was a huge mistake, because
that movie is just awful, but I thought it would be funny awful.
Anyway, Snakes on a Plane is called Snake Flight in Japan, which is an
even stupider name, and if you read the title in Katakana it has a
duel meaning, because it can either be Snake Flight or Snake Fright.
You can't tell which.  Speaking of Rs and Ls I learned something crazy
this week in Japanese some r's are pronounced as l's.  It's not quite
like a full l, but it is sooooo close.  So I learned the true way to
say I don't eat meat, which is basically I can't eat meat.  This is,
niku o tabelalenai.  Niku is meat, o is the direct object marker,
taberu is a verb meaning to eat, and laleru is the ability expressing
ending, nai is the negative.  But the l is how you actually pronounce
it and I learned that Ringo is the same way.  It's pronounced more
closely to Lingo (apple).  Of course the Japanese R is kind of in
between an r and an l, but usually its much more on the r side, these
examples are still not a full l, but they're close.  I've known from
my tutor that Japanese people can pronounce r and l for a long time,
its usually just the katakana that screws them up, so I've had her ask
me about words, is this an r or an l.  Of course at Nova we have a guy
that speaks pretty fluent English, he's also a master of hesitating
and joking, and especially combining the two. But to get to the point
one of his weaknesses is he always says Rearry instead of really,
which is probably a carryover from just bad practice, he doesn't do it
all the time, but just when he's really suprised by something.  He
actually uses it so that he doesn't say the Japanese version of
"really" that he's thinking, but its pretty funny.  Maybe I'll just
leave this as a short e-mail.  Next time maybe I'll mention a few
other things I haven't really talked about yet.  I haven't been doing
a whole lot lately so there's not too much to talk about.

Dan