The Otaku Files

This is my Japanese language teacher. Okay, you’re right, this is Prince Malagant from First Knight. Yes, my professor looks like Prince Malagant from First Knight, only just not as bad. In fact, not bad at all. He smiles like some Japanese do. How? Check this girl and you’ll find out (center, red coat).

My professor lived in Japan for I don’t know how long. Maybe that’s why he smiles that way. He always makes me participate in class, whether I like it or not. I have to write stuff on the board, answer his questions; he knows my name and calls me Laurasan. I wonder if he does all these things because he likes me or because he hates me. Anyway, I’m planning to do my best to succeed in it.

The hardest thing must be learning how to write and read new characters. It’s like becoming a kid all over again. When you learn French or German you just change the pronunciations for the same old characters you’ve always had. However, this time we must learn a new system all over. In some ways I feel like a kid that’s already a little older, you know, the kid who has been taught how to read by her mother before she starts school. Minori and Kotaro taught me how to read, Minori taught me how to write, Yoichi taught me some vocabulary. I’m very grateful to them.

I’m sure I wanted to write something much more interesting about my Japanese class. Oh yeah, my Japanese language class is full of otaku. They’re anime freaks who think the main (or only) reason to learn Japanese is to be able to read manga and understand anime without the subtitles. It’s uncomfortable. Especially because they think they know everything about Japan just because they’ve seen it on screen or in a comic magazine. NO! It’s like thinking you know the US because you’ve been a Superman fan for decades! NO, NO, and NO!!! Of course Superman has its own history, but that goes beyond the movies, shows, comics.

Same thing happens to anime, I guess.

Right now, and very contrary to my usual hatred towards television, I’m following Sakura Tsuushin (aka Sakura Diaries or Sakura Mail) and Nightwalker. If you judge Sakura Tsuushin by the commercials in Locomotion, you’ll think I’m a very sick girl who watches hentai. Well, NO! It does have some weird scenes, but they’re more suggestive than anything else. I’m actually chasing the last episodes (all the Urara shining thing and all). Call me corny, call me lovesick. I’m lonely, I’m glum, let me live. And NO, it doesn’t have super explicit sex or anything. I’ve seen worse things on tv.

Nightwalker is actually interesting; it’s got some suspense, and I used to watch it with Minori (or else I would never have bothered to try). The theme music is incredible.

Where was I? Oh yeah, all of this comes to say that I think my professor is an otaku too. Too bad. Well I guess Japanese-speaking people end up preferring anime? I don’t know. I don’t like TV. I just like to torture myself thinking all that stuff that’s happening there is so far from me (Urara and Tonma are even living together! Urgh!!!), or that there used to be a time when I didn’t have to sit here all by myself.

Whatever I’ve written just comes to prove I’m in an urgent need for new air and/or a huge dose of Minori.

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