Benny Lewis and his website fluent in 3 months were a huge influence to me when I began learning my first new language. With school educations force-feeding you grammar, endless internet resources only providing you with further podcasts and learning materials, and internet forums dominated by language-learning problems and cynically predicted times for fluency acquisition, it was fantastic to have a voice of positivity shining through like Benny.

After reading his guide, I quickly stopped my saga of reading through piles of books on Italian and instead started to immediately find actual Italian people to go and talk to. From that day on my progress has been fantastic, and I used similar principles later on when I went on to learn Japanese. I have his book and advice to thank for that.

During my first three months of learning Italian I would read his blog everyday, hungry for new posts, monitoring my progress and craving to find out just how he was becoming fluent so quickly. Towards the end of those three months this excited craving started to turn more into disappointment as I realised I was never going to be anywhere near fluency by the time the 90 days were up. I wondered how he was managing to do it and I wasn’t.

This was about 2 years ago when Benny first embarked on his crusade to get a C1 in Chinese in just 3 months. I believe his blog has changed a bit since then. His definition of fluency is something along the lines of ‘being able to participate in conversations without having to slow natives down and being able to express myself clearly’. I felt this was a nice definition and target; something practical, unacademic and achievable. He too believed it was achievable, in three months at that, and I think when he started to learn Chinese he honestly believed he would get somewhere near in those 3 months.

To have him talking about reaching that level in a language like Chinese while I was still so far away from anything close in (the comparatively much easier) Italian, was a feeling that bred both intrigue and at times despair. I think it was why I read his blog so avidly, I wanted his secret.

But in the end the secret was simple; he just wasn’t getting fluent in 3 months. Of course in some ways this is no secret… he’ll be the first now to admit that his aim for C1 in Chinese or (recently) Arabic only acts as a high bar that he sets to push himself to go as far as possible.

However I still think that this is at heart a little deceitful and false. I can understand why you would set the bar high, but why to something impossible? An architect who lays down the plans for a building tries to give the shortest time possible for his construction, and a good architect achieves it in this shortest time possible. You don’t need to make ridiculously high aims in order to achieve your maximum, and if you do, why not just say a B2 in Arabic or Chinese? You’ll still be extremely unlikely to get there. One has to admit that in saying a ‘C1′, he is in some way admitting or alluding to that it is within his capability.

In this way he has a brand; fluent in 3 months, and hence he has to maintain the ‘C1′ in his endeavours. Though due to the trials presented to him, over the last 2 years I believe he’s had to change the brand into more of an aim than an actual feasible achievement.

But I must admit that it doesn’t feel nice to be negative about Benny, it makes me feel another naysayer like those I criticised in the first paragraph of this post. I don’t read his blog anymore because I don’t think it offers so much helpful advice once you’re past the initial jerk of getting going in a language, though for many – including myself once – this getting going is the hardest part, and there’s no-one better than him for getting you over that hurdle. For this he is a real great force on the internet, and I’ve met hundreds of expats in my travels who could greatly do with his advice.

I just wanted to spare you from feeling like I did once; being slightly disheartened as if I were – despite my hardest efforts – never able to come even close to this enigmatic authority of online language learning. No-one can get fluent (at least to what I feel is a worthy definition) in 3 months, languages by their nature take time. And I don’t believe admitting this makes me a naysayer, but just a reasonable person. However this doesn’t mean that you can’t still get super impressive after 3 months and be having conversations about anything with anyone you meet. So use Benny and his advice to get there, and have fun along the way, but don’t be bothered about the whole fluent in 3 months thing; it’s just a branding issue that he’s roped himself into.

Returning to the UK and then Italy, it seems much of my friends and family have a slightly misconstrued perception of what my time was like in Japan. This ranges from simple beliefs such as that I spent all my time miserable, depressed and working in a place I hated, to more elaborate misbeliefs such as the rumour that I was working in a Japanese brothel where I one day bumped into my mum’s ex-boyfriend (once the British ambassador to Japan) who walked in as a client. While the latter can be attributed to a game of turbo charged Chinese whispers (one in which only those with the powers of exaggeration shared by my mother and her three sisters are licensed to play), unfortunately the fault of the former belief can only lie with myself and this blog.

Though if it is the fault of this blog that people believe I misspent my time in Japan, or were sour for any of it, then it is the responsibility of this blog to make corrections. For the truth is that if I could return to Japan and do it all again, I’d barely change a thing.

A post currently only half-released (Sega Town Part 1) by it’s finish will reveal what I came to understand about Japan through working in the bar which I so often lamented and drunkenly complained about (eg 1, 2, 3, 4).* I will leave those understandings to the rest of that post, but I will let it be known now that however much I felt ill towards my job, I was also simultaneously glad for the experience that it provided and for what it allowed me to see.

I went to Japan to understand it, and working in some sleazy bar allowed me to get quickly in touch with elements that would take much longer to other visitors to Japan. Though saying this I can imagine many people (especially given the numerous Japanophiles who won’t hear anything bad of the country) would argue that a two month shift at some sleazy bar doesn’t show you the true Japan, but instead only a dark side that is not reflective of the culture at large. However to this I would argue that the dark side is as much a part of Japan as is the greatest sushi master, and more so than any tea party filled by people wearing Kimonos. If you want to find out about somewhere you can’t just look at the bits which are good. If a Japanese person were to work in Tiger Tiger in Oxford St, of course I wouldn’t imagine that it would give him the best impression of England, but I would never deny that it didn’t show him a very real and prominent side of our country.

What are these dark sides of Japan? Well as I said this will all be left for ‘Sega Town Part 2′, for now I only wanted to say that I enjoyed myself there.

*(eg 1, 2, 3, 4) If you enjoy this blog, those four posts are some of the best bits of writing here so I’d advise to read. Usually written drunk (but edited sober of course) and after sleepless nights, they are filled with reflection and also strange incidents and characters.

PSS And if you really like this blog, then you should subscribe to get posts by mail using that box on the right… go on…

I once briefly wrote that there were two Japans; one of the night and one of the day. It was a slightly offhanded comment at the time, but as I observed more from different angles, I found myself continually reflecting upon just how much truth it carried. I saw them both, I experienced them both, and to some degree I began to understand them both.

Isazeki mall, this was my stomping ground for the three months I spent in Yokohama. I cycled down that road almost without fail on every day that I had stayed in the city. It’s a long, wide, pedestrian strip that is littered with cheap restaurants, vintage clothes shops, and odd independent stores with their own specialisation (eg the Korean boyband merchandise store). At first I saw and watched that street every day because it lay between my house and the gym, and later every night, as it lay between my apartment and the bar.

During the day and early evening, Isazeki mall had rows of lights that hung above and across it, while some speakers (that I could never find) constantly lulled out this calming music upon the street consisting of smooth and slow tones, devoid of emotion and in tune with this, also of words or lyrics. The music did not only play on the streets, but in every restaurant also. These restaurants were usually catered towards solitary eating; stools surrounding the bars were occupied by those finishing or breaking from work, and tables with multiple chairs were hardly to be found. I instantly recognised the style of music from SEGA video games, perhaps from menu screens, or areas where you explored calm and happy new towns. Before I’d figured it were only the theme music to the odd, usually animal towns of Japanese video games, though after arriving in the country I quickly came to realise that it had instead perhaps served as the theme music to actual Japanese life. The music carried the people down the street quietly and calmly, into the diner in which they silently slurped their soup and ate their rice, before they re-entered the street and were transported by further soft tones to their front door. One hip hop clothes store did however lay in stark contrast and defiance to the serenity. Here gangster rap playing from the front would briefly interrupt the Isazeki mall waltz, and you’d hear characteristic rap lyric signatures such as ‘muthafucka’, ‘nigga’, ‘fuck a bitch’, and ‘fuck a muthafuckin bitch nigga’ fade in and fade out as one passed, something that I’m sure was lost on and barely noticed by the rest of the crowds, and so something that never failed to amuse me. I often wondered if had the words ever been understood, if it would have then been allowed to continue.

Though the more regular interrupt to the calm came from the shouting. The silence of the people was frequently broken by the (if unprepared) startling screams of ‘ilashaimassenn!’ (welcome) that simultaneously were flung your way from all members of staff present in whichever establishment you entered. The words would be delivered with a bow and a smile, and you’d be ushered to take a seat before being provided with that world famous Japanese service. This service extended from prompt placement at restaurants with quick delivery of drinks and food, to the handing over and unwrapping of ‘oshiburo’ (packaged hand wipes), to the front seat operated opening of taxi’s rear doors by the driver. Perhaps it was due to my western upbringing, but I was never too appreciative of such services. It often only had the effect of making me feel retarded, where I was left thinking I could’ve unwrapped that myself, opened that myself, or just generally done that thing myself, and was half expecting that they’d strap a helmet to my head when I tried to leave in case I were to walk into the door (though then again the doors were always automatic, or if not someone would open it for me anyway, so perhaps they felt they had already catered to this risk).

Despite the tranquility and quietness of the stores’ surroundings, the shouting part of the Japanese service however never seemed out of place. Emanating from smiling lips, in unison, it gave the impression of the happy and collective town I’d witnessed in the video games that had played the same songs. And just like the characters manning those fictional towns, I sometimes felt as if the staff too were running under script; bow intensively, smile, speak in formal Japanese, hold yourself in formal body language, serve customer. If you did something that they didn’t expect, you’d cause chaos and have all members of staff at a complete loss of what to do. When I once walked into a cafe/restaurant high up on a building because I wanted to see if there was a good view to film from, the waiter followed me, and though I explained what I was doing, he couldn’t comprehend at all what was happening or the protocol for it. Some other staff joined him and they were all speechless, trying to point to chairs, and staring at me with quivering smiles, the lips shaken by a panic more vividly noticeable in their eyes. I’d done something different, I was a foreigner, I was something different, and people couldn’t or didn’t know how to react. This was the Japan of the day; the calm, quiet and composed town where everyone just silently and efficiently got on with their business, where everything worked, where everyone smiled, where people behaved as expected, where you got what you expected. This was the Japan of the day; this was SEGA town.

And during my first few months I thought I knew SEGA town.

But another world rumbled underneath…

(to be continued)

RECENT POSTS ————————————————————————–

Over 53% of public school children between the ages of 9 and 11 have private tutors helping them after school. I made that statistic up, but it might as well be true. The recession has caused a decrease in the job market and hence an increase in pressure amounted on young peoples to do well at school. In their darkest hours, parents and students have turned to the only dim light of hope that somehow still manages to perpetuate through the mist of despair and doubt cloaked over this youth’s future;

The private tutor.

Yes: the private tutor, clearly the right (wo-/)man for the job. With a degree in something irrelevant, no qualifications in teaching, and very little previous experience, who could ever stop them from getting any child to achieve all of his wildest dreams in grade attainment?

And if you’re fresh into the child-saving business, you may have a few questions about how exactly you are supposed to go about this mammoth feat. Well fret not… As known in the business, Sam ‘The Surefire Thing kid’ has got all the answers, so sit back, relax and digest this A-Z bible of the tutoring and mentoring world:

A – Anger Management

As much as you should always be playing the ‘cool friend teacher’ card, kids also need to know that you mean business and are not to be fucked with. Here I swear by the one sentence rule; if you are ever going to be angry, only ever raise your voice for one sentence, eg. ‘SIT IN THE FUCKING CHAIR’, then just continue talking normally and smiling as if nothing ever happened. Your students will be stunned, comply, and perhaps even possibly wonder if they just made the whole shouting thing up.

B – Brazilian Ju-Jitsu

If the last paragraph is about asserting dominance, what better way to cement it than a solid grounding in Brazilian Ju Jitsu? (cement.. grounding… themed verbs, just one of the many bits of extra thoughtfulness that you can come to expect here at http://www.samuelstravels.com) This is a martial art that allows even small people to take down giants, and it can be – and has been – used to submit more rebellious and hyperactive children into doing more studying. Best of all it does not involve any striking or bruises, so things will not hold up in court.

C – Coach

Don’t be just a maths teacher, but become a life coach. The benefit of this is that you can then justify to yourself spending thirty minutes of the one hour lesson telling your favourite anecdotes, and walk away thinking that you in doing so taught your student something about life, and thus did your job.

D – Do It For Them

Doing things for students doesn’t help them in the long run. It’s that old expression where you give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, but if you teach him how to fish he’ll eat for a year. Though however as much you should abide by this rule generally, if it’s coursework or anything that actually contributes towards their final grade, then yeh, just write it yourself.

E – Eleven Plus

If you are tutoring in England, then you’re a fool if you’re not specialising yourself towards the 11 plus. This is guaranteed weekly work for anything up to three years, and in a seasonal and unpredictable business it can give you your only guaranteed supply of weekly cash every week.

F – Fear

Tutoring is about establishing the exact correct amount of fear in your students, at the exact correct time intervals. Without fear the student will never work, but with too much they will be paralysed and lose hope. You need to be a constant reminder that failure in everything in their whole life is just looming round the corner behind those exams at the end of the year, yet also that with you and the right attitude, nothing will stop them from winning everything.

G – Gym

A sharp tutor is healthy in mind and body. While additionally so is a good Brazilian Ju Jitsu artist.

H – Hope

Never lose hope in your students. No matter how stupid someone is, and no matter how many times it seems that there is nothing you can do, they will always eventually surprise you.

I – Influence

You may forget just how maleable and impressionable a young mind is, and with your new found powers you must realise that you truly carry a lot of influence with your students. Hence with great power comes great responsibility and you must watch your words and actions accordingly. I sometimes smoked in front of a 15 year old student once and then he started to smoke within the next week, and I’ll forever (/most temporarily) feel guilty for this.

J: Jokes

In my experience if you are not laughing with your student every few minutes, then they’ll stop listening and become bored with you like they have with every other classroom and teacher. Feel the vibe of the room man, never let it get too serious.

K – Knowledge Fail

Not knowing the answers to stuff was something I was really afraid of when I started tutoring. But now it’s a daily occurrence and I’m pretty used to it. There’s two ways to play this when it happens, 1; just admit you don’t know it and say I’ll find out for next week, or 2; say ‘this one is a bit tricky so let’s just come back to it at the end of the hour’ and then hope that they forget about it, which they will.

L – Liquor

If you don’t get this kid a pass next week the superintendent’s gonna be blowing smoke so far up the principle’s ass that it’s gonna be coming out of his mouth and blowing all over my ass, and all that smoke up my ass means I’m gonna be shitting all over you and it’s gonna be a smoking ass shitstorm coming so hard down over your head that you ain’t gonna believe. That’s how I Imagine the tutoring life when presented as an American cop show… and when it’s only March and you’re already called in for the tenth case of literary homicide of the year, another Bronte classic laying soaked in the blood of red ink corrections after being raped and murdered in the first degree, like the central protagonist of one of these shows you too may find yourself turning to the bottle. Here a hip-flask and toilet breaks are your best friends, but make sure to stock up on the breath mints.

M – Molest

Don’t molest the children.

N – Nod pensively

Parents don’t give a crap about you. Generally speaking they only want to talk your ear off, and the best thing you can do is just listen. Avoid speaking too much about what your plans are with the kid as they’ll slowly realise that you are a massive blagger and don’t know what you’re doing. Just let them speak, say hmm a lot, and nod pensively. They’ll respect you for your seriousness and be intrigued by your veil of thoughtful mystery.

O – Off Shore Bank Accounts

With all the cash in hand work and self-employed nonsense, you’ll need to create an off shore bank account to evade the taxman. Don’t worry it’s easy, Ask men tell you how here.

P – Praise

Everything your kid does is fantastic, even when it’s awful. Make sure you are filling them with positive praise and energy at every opportunity.

Q – Questioning

Kids will do whatever they can to not listen to you. Every second that they are not listening is a small victory to them, especially when they manage to play it like they were paying the whole attention the whole time. They have many sly ways of doing this, so make sure you are asking questions at the end of every sentence to gauge exactly how much is going into their head.

R – Rewards

People need incentives. Offer rewards for if the kids do well, though know that you never actually have to fulfil your promises… There are a bunch of iGCSE taking kids around Milan at the moment to whom I owe a lot of Parman prosciutto.

S – School Sucks

Kids who need tutors are generally in this position because they hate school, often bunk, and even when at school spend most their time on their blackberries. Never try to convince them that school is actually fun. Better is to play the ‘I was also quite the bunker’ card and both agree that school is the worst time of your life, though also both agree to get through this together and come out the other side successfully like you did once upon a time.

T – Teach

Not to be forgotten, make sure to teach them something during your time together. Though also not to be overcomplicated, don’t get bogged down with yourself in the philosophies of teaching and technicalities of different methods… Just know that if by the end of the hour the kid knows stuff that he didn’t know before you came, then you did your job.

U – Unprepared

I can’t remember the last time I took some teaching materials to a lesson. Bringing materials means you are prepared to do those materials, while being completely unprepared means that you are technically equally prepared towards any task and hence truly flexible to your students’ needs.

V – Values

‘Dear, did you not have an English homework in for tomorrow though?’, this kind of innocent question at the dinner table is then often followed by a rapidly escalating tantrum and the teenager moping off to his room and slamming the door. If you have not seen these reactions to even the slightest of academic enquiry from a parent, then you have not been in the tutoring and mentoring game very long. However you my friend are in a rare position from which you can actually mitigate relations between parents and students. When mentoring you should use your influence and position to instill some old fashioned values into the child, and help them see their parents and others’ point of view.

W – Wrong

Man up when you are wrong about something, don’t give any excuses, just accept that you’re student beat you and that you weren’t correct. And then plot for revenge as to how you can show them up next time.

X – Xenophobia

While teaching subjects like geography or more wish-washy new subjects such as global perspectives, presented with all the global statistics of human activity, you may start going off on a rant about humanity as a plague to the Earth and how fucked we all are. If you do choose to do this however, do refrain from blaming India and China for having billions of children, while berating them for not having any means to properly support them. And then maybe don’t add that while birthrates in the west are wisely going down, people immigrating in from poorer countries are arriving and still having 15 kids, and th… yeh… avoid this kind of thing. Don’t make your students racist.

Y – Yapping

14/15 year old girls can be the pandora’s box of the tutoring clientele. Often initially quiet, you may desperately struggle to get even a few words from them at the start. However once the rapport is built and they’ve opened up a little, you may then find that they never stop talking, that the cat is out the bag, and in between hearing about why Alice isn’t speaking to Laura anymore it is getting increasingly difficult to find time to teach them anything. It’s rude to stop them mid-yapping as it will tell them you don’t care (which you don’t) though if you let it go on the rant may not end for another 10 minutes. The only solution is to stop the yapping before it starts; you must be vigilant for signs of the beginning of a long piece of gossip, and cut it at the root before it is allowed to flower across your whole lesson plan.

Z – Zahavi’s handicap Principle

In nature, male animals can often have debilitating traits that are considered ‘sexy’ by the female of the species. Examples of this are brightly coloured fish and birds (who are thus not able to camouflage), and deers with unnecessarily large antlers. Zahavi’s handicap principle stated that the reason females are attracted to these males is because the male has shown he is so strong that he can manage to survive comfortably despite handicapping himself with these ridiculous features.

Debilitate yourself as a tutor by not bringing a bag, nor making any effort with your appearance whatsoever. Though saying that let’s just quickly note now that this paragraph is not going to be about appearing ‘sexy’ to the students… Instead how this works is that you are sent to family’s homes through recommendation from either an agency, person or other client, yet you arrive looking completely unprofessional and often late. However parents know that you are trusted, and also see the reaction in the kid after the hour’s lesson and hopefully then the progress in the next weeks. They then look to their neighbour’s tutor wearing a “shirt” and carrying a “bag”, and see how he has to dress himself up just to survive in this game. They then reflect on their current tutor, knowing he must be the real deal if he can carry on working and being successful despite such debilitating traits in his appearance. Exceed where it matters, and fail where it doesn’t, this will only come to accentuate your success and strengths in the real meat of this whole business: getting the kid through school.

In Milan it’s pretty commonplace to have someone standing by the ticket machine in a metro station. From the machine’s side they can easily pester you for whatever change it spits out, and I imagine there’s probably even quite a lot of behind the scenes territorial skirmishes involved in seeing who is allowed to stay there.

Today an old lady was hovering by the machine of the metro station I entered, and I felt sorry for her as I drew near to buy my ticket. Of course you feel sorry for all of the beggars who are there, but she was older than any I’d seen before. And although I’d only glanced at her (as one tends to avoid looking at those that they are inevitably going to have to ignore), even in just that brief glimpse, I could see that there looked something a little kinder to her than did any of the others.

I shot her a brief smile as I approached the machine to buy my ticket. I don’t know what effect such smiles have on these guys, but I imagine or hope that – even if you are not going to give them what they want – at least acknowledging their presence and that they are a person may make their difficult job a little less shit. I’m not saying I’m some Mother Teresa for doing this, it’s just I only assume that it’s better than not giving them any money and also completely ignoring them. Though I also accept the likely possibility that they probably couldn’t give less of a shit about how I act unless they’re getting some coin.

She said Ciao, and I said Ciao back. She then interrupted me as I started to buy my ticket, asking me about where I was going. I told the beggar I was off to Cernusco, and barely looked in her direction as I said it. However if I had looked in her direction at that point I may have noticed then that her clothes looked very clean, and her make up was that of a lady who looked after herself, and that in fact there was nothing at all in her look nor demeanour that would ever lead one to conclude that she was a beggar, and in turn may have even concluded that she was not a beggar. But her location combined with the fact that she started talking to me as I approached the machine gave my brain all the information it thought it needed to decide what she was (in terms of self reference, it seems I separate myself from my brain when it makes mistakes).

She then handed me her day travel card, saying that she no longer needed to use the metro so I could take it and go home for free. I smiled and turned to her to try to say thanks, a movement to which she responded immediately by saying no, no, no, don’t worry, I don’t want any money, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was how I had acted that had made her think I suspected she was a beggar, or she knew that I would given where she was standing. I imagined it must have been some combination of the two.

Though when I began writing this post, its point was never intended to address the frailties in our judgements, and indeed still doesn’t. Besides from the ticket, the thing I was left with after the lady and I’s encounter was only an admiration for her thought. The lady had walked out of the station, seen her ticket was no longer useful, and instead of chucking it away had then instantly thought about how it could then be of use to anyone else.

I had a hard time imagining that anyone my age would do that. This is not to say generosity doesn’t exist in our generation; I have of course naturally seen far greater displays of altruism in many of my friends and peers than just the handing over of an unneeded metro pass. However it’s the thought behind it.

I wondered if this thought was reflective of some long lost set of values, one where the world didn’t owe you anything and instead you were raised to give back as much as possible, or, if it’s just because at a certain age you find it harder to be of use and therefore look to make the most of any opportunity that presents itself to do so.

I imagined that it probably ultimately came from the former, but was no doubt encouraged by the latter.

I wonder if us kids will ever give people our travel cards when we’re old.

I suppose a key point that I sometimes overlook of a travel blog is that it’s supposed to keep people updated about where I am and what I’m doing. And given the amount of people (who I know read this blog) that have asked me ‘how’s Sri Lanka?’ this week, I can only now conclude that I fail pretty damn hard at addressing this point.

This then makes me wonder about the 1000s of words that I publish every week, and how vacuous they must be if by the end of them people still can’t discern where I am or what I’m doing. Though then again this blog was never about much else than self-indulgence, so it’s not so surprising.

But to stop myself before it happens again: I’ve been in Milan since Saturday morning. I’m living with my Italo Japanese family. I’m very happy here.

I was thinking of leaving the post there, as that update was the sole intention of this post, however I may as well add a quick (and shit) anecdote now since I’m a writin’ anyway:

A te

I walked into a shop yesterday and brought some shiz, and then the guy gave me my shiz and my change; a pretty much standard interaction no doubt up until then.

However the ol’ shoppee threw a spanner in the works afterwards when he then looked up at me and said… ‘a te’.

A te means to you, and you say it sometimes after someone says grazie to you. Sort of like hearing someone say thank you, and then replying no, thanks to you. 

So shoppee says ‘a te’ to me but I haven’t even said ‘grazie’, and this leaves me feeling awkward. He’d already rebuked, riposted and triumphed a thank you that I was yet to give, making him either a bit presumptuous, or just very polite and gentle. His smile and demeanour made me sway more towards attributing him with the latter qualities, and hence I was left thinking ‘well I’ll sound like an idiot if I say thank you now, though also how can I be so rude as to deny this most polite man the thanks he deserves for helping me with my shoppee business?’ So I just stared at him for a while, wondering what to say.

Hence with the least conviction anyone has ever said it, and my eyes still gazing confusedly into his, I then almost questioningly delivered my line; ‘…grazie?’.

‘A te’ the response came back quick as bullet. Damn I already knew that, I thought, and I left feeling like a mug.

I remember once posting something called 5 big tips for obtaining badboy communication skills in a foreign language, where I started the post by describing a scene sitting upon an Italian hill and making a whole bunch of Italians laugh with my crappy Italian. Well now almost a year down the line, I’d say it’s been pretty common place to find myself at the centre of attention of a room of people and be having a merry old time in some other language. I’m not trying to brag here and say it’s because I’m great (but I am), the attention is just part of the territory of being an English guy abroad, especially in a place like Japan. However at the same time there are a bunch of things I’ve noticed that have made people always take a great shining to me, some traits that I am fortunate to possess, and that I was feeling grateful for at a really enjoyable dinner last night.

Handling Spicy Food

A lot of bonding happens over dinner tables, and over the last year I’ve found this has often been where I’ve met new friends and acquaintances. Sitting at a cafe, I then get warned that something is spicy and they pass it over saying watch out. But then I just slap some more chilli oil on it and eat that biznitch. Sure eating chillies is not going to automatically give you new friends, but it’s just about not being a little wuss and manning up to the task at hand. People respect that.

Being on Your Own

Being on your own shows the world you have balls. Big chilli eating balls. If you travel on your own people take an immediate shining to you, and after a bit of thought about it, I think I know why. Someone who travels on their own trusts themselves. Not only trusts themselves, but likes themselves, as is happy enough just to be out there on their own. It’s like people say ‘how you can expect anyone to love you, if you don’t love yourself?’. If you are travelling on your own, you love yourself (maybe too much), and then people want to find out what makes you so great that you show yourself all this love.

Handling alcohol

This goes with the spice territory, but you see the sake on the table and you drink it. No questions. They refill your glass and you do it again. You cheers and then down a beer. If you can eat really spicy food and drink a lot of alcohol you will make friends at every dinner table you go to in the world.

Smoking/Having given up smoking

People always offer me cigarettes in Japan as everyone smokes and you can smoke indoors, but I refuse because I gave up. Smokers have mad respect for people who have given up smoking because they know it’s the most difficult shiz in the world. Especially when you are only 24 years old. But smokers also like people who smoke, and after a relapse last night, I know that either smoking or having given up smoking will get you props from all the other smokers at the bar. The only thing that won’t get you props is just never having smoked, because that’s boring. So if that’s the case, go buy a pack now, smoke it all and then give up.

Being Young

You can’t really control this one, but people respect you for being young and out and about, and in turn give you a lot of free stuff.

Being Smart

I’m not talking about being Stephen Hawkins, but just showing that you have a brain. I think being young, smart and on your own all together creates a lot of intrigue. People can see that there are a good sack of thoughts in your head, and I think they’re impressed by the curiosity that they know must exist if your out here sitting in some strange cafe in a suburb of Yokohama. People know you are not just mindlessly walking through your life, but that you have some kind of purpose or at least looking for something, and they want to know about it.

Learning Languages

This is the most important I think. Mainly because I think showing that you are smart is actually the most important, and there’s no better way to do it than to be able to speak the language of the country you are in. The quicker you can learn, the better, so always be making that effort. You want the world to be curious about you? Then you need to be curious about the world. The better you speak a language, the more you show your desire to get to grips with your surroundings, and the more your surroundings will make efforts to get to grips with you.

Being Unphased

Calm is cool. Be a chameleon. The world is your house now, so that means even other people’s houses are your house. Everywhere you go you feel at home, no situation or place can surprise you. You just slip into every zone as if you’ve been there your whole life. I remember some people once livin’ da Sam life with me for a bit, and we got invited into some house for the night or something, and the whole time they were like ‘oh my god this is so crazy’ and were saying thank you a million times for everything, and it was like ‘bitchez chill aiiight’. I know this may sounds rude, but you don’t need to say thank you a million times when people stretch out their hand, you can still show that you are grateful nonetheless. Don’t make a big deal out of stuff, it’s boring, move on beyond talking about the situation you are in and use the situation to talk about and explore more interesting things.

I don’t care for Beyonce at all, yet for some reason that doesn’t stop me from clicking on articles about her when they trend on my facebook feed. Before reading these articles, I had only known Beyonce as just another hot singer who was better at dancing than most the others. What I hadn’t realised was that, as this article proclaims, she had become the ‘new face’ of feminism and her actions are now constantly subjected to the scrutiny that such a mantle warrants.

The article describing (or perhaps even crowning) Beyonce with this title was written in disgust and protest of the provocative photo shoot that she participated in for men’s magazine; GQ. It’s author, Hadley Freeman, starts the article by discussing a lady who in 1972 ‘sparked the pervasive second wave of feminism that shaped the western world’, and ends by declaring that half a century after her work, the movement ‘should be running much better than this’; this seemingly being Beyonce posing for photos in a bikini on a bed.

These references to an old feminist seem like a neat way to tie an article together, while also it is of course the writer’s dream to finish something on the note with which it started. But making reference to the world’s old values and past plight of women it would appear is not so uncommon to those who wish to shake their sticks at our new figure of feminism, and upon reading Freeman refer to the past, I was instantly reminded of another article which had berated Beyonce for picking her husband’s name for her new tour (calling it The Mrs. Carter Tour)  ‘despite it being 2013 and not 1066′. While admittedly this latter article is an intensely cruddy piece of ill thought journalism that for some reason ends with the reader hearing about how the author would like to go to Scotland at some point in the future, the fact that it too endows Beyonce with the supposed power to belittle all progress woman have made since not being able to leave yee ol’ spinning cloth shops of the 11th century, has left me annoyed and wanting to rebuke.

Beyonce is not a revolutionist for feminism, she is someone who has profited off feminism. That’s at least my two cents. She didn’t invent the idea of women paying their own telephone bills, she just sang about it, and at a time when the idea of women being independent had already been long since established and accepted. She sung a bunch of songs with destiny’s child that she didn’t write, and then went on to become a solo artist because she was by far the hottest of the three. Since then she has continued to make music about independent women because that’s what her market wants.

Now people are outraged because she has given into man’s evil intentions, and posed in airbrushed pictures that show off her hotness. It seems people have failed to realise that it is just her hotness that has been making her famous this whole time, just do a google image search on Beyonce and see what comes up, this is really nothing new. At heart she has always just been another figure showing off curves and facial figures ill-afforded by the vast majority of women, and through highly produced video after highly produced video, providing society with more unrealistic images of what their women should look like. She is successful because she is hot. Girls adore her because she is  a symbol of independence while simultaneously being a smoking babe, like some female Disney protagonist. If you want to look at a real feminist symbol in the music world, why don’t you look at the undoubtedly much more creatively talented Missy Elliot? Who in spite of being dubbed too fat to make it in an industry that only employs the most beautiful of women, persevered to become one of recent times most successful and pioneering artists. In spite of all feminism stands for, I’m afraid it seems to me that the mantle for the face of feminism has ironically only just gone and been given to the feminist with the prettiest face.

Men wanted to see Beyonce looking a bit naked, and Beyonce probably wanted to show off her new after-baby body so posed for them. The GQ incident was just about people doing what they wanted to do. It’s funny that men’s magazines get all the attention and slack for corrupting young women’s ideas of their own body, yet no woman ever reads them. The problem is not that women are on the front of men’s magazines, but that they are on the front of every magazine. Those directed at men have a women as this is the object of man’s desire and so it will sell. Then those directed at women will also have a woman on the front, as women want to be like that woman on the front and, in doing so, become an object of man’s desire. In essence, these magazines – which only reflect our culture – are dominated by men’s desires, where the only desire of the woman is to be something that man wants. It is not the fault of GQ that women are made to feel insecure about their bodies; it is the magazines aimed at women who often won’t accept a female icon unless she is perfect and beautiful.

I imagine the solution does not lie in women stopping posing in sexy pictures for men’s magazines, but probably in a future where women’s magazines are more prone to getting men to do sexy shoots for them. Now, in a world where women are being allowed to express their sexual interests as freely as men, where the idea of women sleeping with multiple men is less and less greeted with dirty labels and judgements, I’m sure we will begin to see a rise in women-directed media more publicly showing and adhering to women’s sexual desires and, who knows, one day we may even have the female equivalents of detestable magazines such as nuts and zoo. Evidence for this trend already comes in the sudden and steep emergence of women as a substantial audience and consumer source for the porn industry, and also in more subtle cultural nuances such as the infamous ‘girls on tour’ groups who have now begun appearing at Magaluf, festivals, or anywhere with a surplus of alcohol and a party atmosphere, adopting the ‘lad’ mentality of getting smashed, chanting songs, and walking round sexually defiling and mistreating any member of the opposite sex that gets in their path.

This shift is already somewhere in swing, and during a brief perusing of Heat magazine once, I found that they did indeed have a 4 page spread of a half-naked guy, Joey Essex (From TOWIE), getting oiled up and photoed in various sexy poses. And as prettier boys are used to sell in the same way pretty girls are, and as buff boys are paraded across women’s magazines as much as boobied babes across men’s, I’m sure what will happen is that young men will just start becoming equally insecure about their bodies as young women. This is already starting to become the case as teenage boys are showing increasing concern about their body image, and eating disorders are drastically on the rise.

I fear the true effect of feminism in this regard will not be one that rids women of their insecurities, but instead one that only makes them shared also by men. And of course this is not the fault of feminism, it is the fault of the world’s desire being dictated by the idiot producers creating show after show about glamorous, glitzy and sexy lives, and all the idiot people who spend their whole lives watching them. And again just to stress; this is not a dig at feminism here, this is a dig at society… we are all getting fucked up and it would be damn unfair if one sex is made to feel more fucked up than the other, so yeah, bring on the vomiting bulimic boys, I’ve already put all my stocks in breathmints.

But just to be clear, what this definitely isn’t a dig at is Beyonce’s role in anything. She is completely irrelevant in the scheme of things and has had no effect at all of any kind on the feminist movement, and nor will she.

She’s not the face of feminism, she’s just some hot singer who can dance better than most the other ones.

In Sri Lanka and India the rule is eat with your right hand, and wipe your ass with your left. This is a widely spread system and one that on the surface seems to make some sense: leave one hand for the dirty work while sparing the other for all that should be done hygienically.

However when you wash your hands well, you have to rub both hands together. If you don’t believe me, go take a dump now, then wipe your ass with your hand and then see how much of the crap you can effectively get off it while only washing that hand with the fingers of said hand. And if you are wiping your ass with your hand, you’d better be cleaning it well, so you better be washing that hand with both hands. But now if you do wash it well, using both hands, in doing so you’ve now combined the previously divided and designated hands, using the shitty hand to clean the foody hand, and the foody hand to wash the shitty hand, until they have both reached some foody-shit equilibrium with one another. The divide is gone and my argument is thus that it doesn’t matter which hands you do what with, since upon cleaning, this sacred rule of task designation will always be made completely redundant.

A Sri Lankan may then argue that it is not the actual physical logistics of the rule that are important, but merely the psychology behind the rule. They may say that there is something to be said of the peace in knowing that you are not eating or shaking hands with a hand that has previously been flickering through ass hairs for rogue pieces of poo, that it is a case of mental depiction over actual effect, just like how someone may still not want to eat something that has fallen on the floor even when provided with proof that the food did not pick up any harmful pathogens.

However to this I would say… how about you just don’t wipe your ass with your hand?