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After lessons today, some of us Durham students attended a Japanese
English-conversation lesson in order to help the students practise their
English. The teacher is this great American guy, who’s a lot of fun. He
brought with him his friend from Canada, Jared, and told us all that he
had an interesting job – which we all had to guess by asking yes/no
questions. After a while, we discovered that he was a mortician!
Apparently, the practise of embalming is not very common in Japan, but has
recently become more popular so Japanese funeral directors are looking for
foreign morticians to work in Japan. His work sounded fascinating. He told
us that it took him three years of training as an apprentice to become a
mortician, and that he’d wanted the job ever since he was a young child.
Jared told us all about the process of embalming. First, he must go to the
hospital where the person has recently died, and inject a preservative
that drains the blood and pigments the skin. Then, he goes about the
process of putting make-up on the corpse, and if necessary, performs
re-construction in the cases of those who have died in an accident or from
severe disease. This obviously requires much skill – clearly, embalming is
both a science and an art. He’s been in the business for 22 years now, and
has worked in Canada, New Zealand and now Japan, for 7 months. It does
sound like a really interesting job – maybe, if I can’t think of anything
else, I can train as a mortician after my degree and go and work as an
embalmer in Japan – I’m learning the language after all, and the job is
apparently more well-paid in Japan than in England.
After Jared had told us all about his work, we got on to the subject of
superstitions. The Japanese have lots of superstitions that we don’t have
in England. For example, you mustn’t cut your nails at night, because you
won’t be with your parents when you die. Nor should you whistle at night,
because snakes will come. Ian and Andy, who are both BBCs (British Born
Chinese), also told us about some Chinese superstitions – like, the
numbers 4 and 7 are considered unlucky, and that you must never give
someone a clock as a present, as the word for “clock” sounds like “death”
in Chinese.
We also had several funny incidents today involving the Japanese
pronunciation of “L” and “R.” You might know that Japanese people find it
very difficult to tell the difference between the sound “l” and “r,” and
often get them mixed up. So, at one point during the English conversation
lesson, our Japanese friend Marie (pronounced MA-ree-eh) asked Jared if he
was a pirate, when she meant pilot! And earlier today, all of us British
students had a giggle when our grammar teacher struggled over the word
“election….”
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