The Japanese only started accepting Western culture only relatively recently, with the ending of the Edo Period and the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when the Emperor was theoretically "restored" to power after centuries of having things run by the Shoguns. One thing I've always found interesting is the number of words in daily use here that remind you of the differences between what is Western and what is Japanese, many of which employ the kanji yoh, meaning "Western." When you get up in the morning, you probably put on some clothes, but in Japan, you put on yoh-fuku, or "Western clothes," the word used to separate the shirts, trousers and other things you wear from wa-fuku, or Japanese style clothes like kimono or yukata. If you go to a restaurant that serves spaghetti and "hamburg steak," you're eating yoh-shoku, or Western-style food, which is treated as a separate category entirely from the various types of Japanese or Chinese dishes eaten here. Japanese film aficionados break into two groups, those who enjoy yoh-ga or films from American and Europe, and fans of hoh-ga, or Japanese film. And while I've become quite accustomed to living in Japan, I still prefer the good old yoh-shiki toilet with a seat I can sit on to the seatless wa-shiki toilets, which require just a little too much dexterity to use sometimes.
Before I started selling Hello Kitty ice cube trays and Totoro bento boxes, I was an teacher of ESL, or English as a Second Language. I taught English to students from the age of three all the way up to an elderly woman whose family business was running the local Buddhist temple, which was always an interesting conversation topic. During my years as a teacher I accumulated quite a collection of English textbooks, vocabulary cards, and various games I would play in class. One such game was "English baseball" in which teams of students would get "hits" if they answered questions using English, which I passed many a lesson with. Another is the popular Japanese game "fruits basket" in which you put, say, ten chairs in a circle and put one child in each chair, with one more standing in the center. This child must ask a question like "Do you like bananas?" and all kids who like bananas must change seats as quickly as they can. The one left in the center is "it" and must ask the next question to the group. Another fun game is the classic Simon Says, which is good because it allows kids to listen and react without actually having to produce any speech, which mimcs how children acquire language. I'd have to prepare my students for a shock, though, whenever I told them, "Simon says...touch your chin," since chin (or more accurate, chin chin) is a common word for a boy's private parts used by children. Which makes that line in the Three Little Pigs just a little too embarrassing...
