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While my Japanese may be getting better the longer I live in this country it is still far from perfect. This fact has often led me to some very embarrassing language mistakes. This latest one was pretty amusing and I thought I would share it.

In Japan there is a very popular game for the Nintendo DS handheld system. In the West it is known as “Animal Crossing”. The Japanese name is “Doubutsu no Mori”. This basically translates to “Animal’s Forest”. I was talking about this game with one of my students and I said it a bit wrong. I didn’t even notice the error at first until the student shuddered for a second and then began laughing. You see instead of “DOUbutsu no Mori” I said “DAIbutsu no Mori”. Find out why that is funny by clicking below.

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This is another in my growing list of experiences that at first don’t make any sense to me. As time goes by and my perspective changes, however, I have found that a lot of the things I used to dismiss as “the wacky Japanese system” actually are fairly logical.

Last week were two “Sports Competition Days”. During this time there were no classes at any jr. high school in the district. Instead, every sports club had their final city tournaments on the same day. Each school hosted one sport; the school I was at was doing basketball.

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