Takamatsu

Takamatsu, 高松, which means "tall pines," was our destination after Kobe. We got there via a ferry, which took about three hours. Takamatsu is the largest city and capitol of Kagawa prefecture, 香川県, meaning "fragrant river." Kagawa is one of four prefectures on Shikoku island, 四国, "four countries," the smallest of the four main islands of Japan. It's not exactly a popular tourist destination, but it seemed like a cool place to spend a day and why not take a ferry and save money over taking a train and not see it? Also, it is famous for Sanuki udon, which is basically just cheap and good Japanese style noodles. Delicious.


This little dude greets you in front of Takamatsu station. I think he is one of the oni (鬼) from the story of Momotaro, the peach boy. I'm not sure of that, but he seems very cheerful and unlikely to steal your goods.


We went to see Takamatsu castle, which I think used to be called something like Tamamo castle, but I am not sure. It's also supposedly in ruins, but it looks pretty nice. Here's a shot of the garden. It was winter, so things weren't in bloom, but it was still kind of nice. Sorry, no pictures of the castle. I wasn't the photographer.


Here's a neat manhole cover from Takamatsu. I'm not sure why it has that archer on it, but I forgot all the history stuff I learned from the castle, which it is probably related to.

That's pretty much it for Takamatsu. However, observe this:


Just bread, but worth buying just for the pun. Bread in Japanese is pan, パン, and panda is panda, パンダ, so combining the two with the copula da, you have "it's bread," パンダパンだ (panda pan da). I'm pretty sure that's what they were going for, but what is interesting is that a couple weeks ago I was teaching place names, and one of those places was a bakery. The bakery on the flash card had "panda bakery" written on it, but in roman letters, so the kids couldn't read it. I had to read it for them, and then say "panda pan da," which they thought was hilarious. Weird.

Speaking of teaching weird things, a little while ago I had to give a little speech for first and second graders about Valentine's day in America. I did this in English just so they could get used to hearing it, and then had to translate it so that they could know what was going on. One of the kid asked if in America we gave stuff like chocolate to our friends, so I explained that it was mostly one's other (actually the best translation is lover, probably), or aijin (愛人). It was funny because the kids didn't seem to get it and the teacher laughed and said that they didn't know that word yet, so I had to choose another one, koibito (恋人), which they then got. I just thought it was a funny example of how trying to talk to kids in another language can be crazy.

Today I got to read stories to the kids and then translate for them (generally by asking them what words that I think they could remember or pick out mean in Japanese and then actually sort of putting together a sentence). I got to do this three times in a row, which meant that I was actually alright at it by the end.

We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in Japanese, harapeko aomushi (ハラペコ　あおむし), which seems to be very popular here. I think that is due to the fact that there is a version with English and Japanese, which is what we read. Incidentally, kids seem to think the phrase mada mada onaka ha pekko peko is hilarious, and I have to admit it has a nice ring to it.

The other book we used was Richard Scarry's Animal Nursery Tales (I am fairly sure of this title and not going to look it up). The stories we did were Little Red Riding Hood (赤ずきんちゃん), The Three Little Pigs (３匹の子豚), and The Gingerbread Man (ショウガ入りパンマン), the last of which was definitely my favorite. I enjoy that shougairipanman is rather similar to anpanman, Japan's favorite bean-jam stuffed bread-headed hero. I brought my anpanman finger puppets for reading this story, which the fifth and sixth graders thought was excellent. Also, I just enjoy the fact that it is about a stupid cookie-man getting eaten because he is an idiot.

I hope you enjoyed this update.