Hangman

I lead an English conversation group here in Chiba, Japan that is comprised of Japanese undergrad and graduate students from the university (Chiba University). Yesterday i was sitting in a coffee shop with them and decided that maybe it would be fun to teach them how to play Hangman.

For those of you who don't know, here is the Wikipedia summary of the game (skip it if you know the game).

Anyway, the typical flow of the game is pretty fast in the States. Most Americans that i know tend to have no problem with guessing letters, and so they guess a few vowels then try to get some consonants and the hopefully they can guess the word. If they word is tricky and they can't figure it out at first they just keep guessing until either they get it or they run out of guesses and lose.

However, surprisingly, this is not how Japanese people play the game (at least not the members of my conversation group). In contrast to Americans, my group members were extremely cautious. They thought for a very long time between guesses. At time i had to tell them to just guess, that it was ok. It was really strange for me for some reason. They would talk to each other about the word, and make statements that are undeniably obvious. For example, imagine the word is t__c_ion, and they have already wrongly guessed s. They would say something like "Yea, it can't be (shun) at the end can it? No 's' and we already have 't' and 'c'." But it wasn't just one time. They would keep making comments like this to each other until finally someone made a guess. I can't really describe the atmosphere well enough.

I'm not really sure where i wanted to go with this when i started. I guess it is just an interesting and unexpected cultural difference. In the States people don't mind just guessing things on their own without consulting the other people, and they know that if the letter is right then the others will be happy with them, and if it is wrong then they will take the blame for failing. I think for Japanese people, as should be expected i guess, the game is much less individual. Maybe they really feel like a team trying to figure the word out; maybe they really are together, in a much mre real sense than a group of Americans trying to figure out a word. Whatever the reason, it was very interesting to witness. I wish i could actually make it interesting when i type it, but you will have to deal with what i wrote. Apologies.

Anyone else find this somehow familiar?

From The Onion's front page on the 14th

Some People Just Need To Know...

Which one doesn't belong?

So you may or may not have heard that Michael Phelps got busted for pot. Regardless, here's a well-written letter that, as the title says, i'd like to see but won't.
(note: original source linked from letter title)

A Letter I’d Like To See (But Won’t)

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

Dear America,

I take it back. I don’t apologize.

Because you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months per year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture.

I put myself through hell. I make my body do things nature never really intended us to endure. All world-class athletes do. We do it because you love to watch us push ourselves as far as we can possibly go. Some of us get hurt. Sometimes permanently. You’re watching the Super Bowl tonight. You’re watching 300 pound men smash each while running at full speed, in full pads. You know what the average life expectancy of an NFL player is? Fifty-five. That’s about 20 years shorter than your average non-NFL player. Yet you watch. And cheer. And you jump up spill your beer when a linebacker lays out a wide receiver on a crossing route across the middle. The harder he gets hit, the louder and more enthusiastically you scream.

Yet you all get bent out of shape when Ricky Williams, or I, or Josh Howard smoke a little dope to relax. Why? Because the idiots you’ve elected to make your laws have have without a shred of evidence beat it into your head that smoking marijuana is something akin to drinking antifreeze, and done only by dirty hippies and sex offenders.

You’ll have to pardon my cynicism. But I call bullshit. You don’t give a damn about my health. You just get a voyeuristic thrill from watching an elite athlete fall from grace–all the better if you get to exercise a little moral righteousness in the process. And it’s hypocritical righteousness at that, given that 40 percent of you have tried pot at least once in your lives.

Here’s a crazy thought: If I can smoke a little dope and go on to win 14 Olympic gold medals, maybe pot smokers aren’t doomed to lives of couch surfing and video games, as our moronic government would have us believe. In fact, the list of successful pot smokers includes not just world class athletes like me, Howard, Williams, and others, it includes Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, the last three U.S. presidents, several Supreme Court justices, and luminaries and success stories from all sectors of business and the arts, sciences, and humanities.

So go ahead. Ban me from the next Olympics. Yank my endorsement deals. Stick your collective noses in the air and get all indignant on me. While you’re at it, keep arresting cancer and AIDS patients who dare to smoke the stuff because it deadens their pain, or enables them to eat. Keep sending in goon squads to kick down doors and shoot little old ladies, maim innocent toddlers, handcuff elderly post-polio patients to their beds at gunpoint, and slaughter the family pet.

Tell you what. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll apologize for smoking pot when every politician who ever did drugs and then voted to uphold or strengthen the drug laws marches his ass off to the nearest federal prison to serve out the sentence he wants to impose on everyone else for committing the same crimes he committed. I’ll apologize when the sons, daughters, and nephews of powerful politicians who get caught possessing or dealing drugs in the frat house or prep school get the same treatment as the no-name, probably black kid caught on the corner or the front stoop doing the same thing.

Until then, I for one will have none of it. I smoked pot. I liked it. I’ll probably do it again. I refuse to apologize for it, because by apologizing I help perpetuate this stupid lie, this idea that what someone puts into his own body on his own time is any of the government’s damned business. Or any of yours. I’m not going to bend over and allow myself to be propaganda for this wasteful, ridiculous, immoral war.

Go ahead and tear me down if you like. But let’s see you rationalize in your next lame ONDCP commercial how the greatest motherfucking swimmer the world has ever seen . . . is also a proud pot smoker.

Yours,

Michael Phelps