Introducing Vegemite to people in Japan is a particularly tricky thing to do, particularly if you have trouble articulating the subtleties of the spread in Japanese. Nevertheless, it’s probably something that most Australians working with children in any capacity may feel inclined to do at some stage, even if only for lack of anything else to do in class.

I’ve introduced Vegemite to 4 groups of primary school children here in Kochi prefecture, and more recently to a group of retired folk. Before taking on these people I tried to research how to approach the task, but most of what I read about from other people’s experiences with giving it to classes seemed overwhelmingly negative. The Japanese tasters couldn’t stand it in most cases. That made me sad.

So, I formulated a cunning plan to brainwash my students into liking Vegemite. And lo and behold, for the most part it seems to have worked. To that end, I’ve made a small list of things to do and not to do which may help your own endeavours should you be that way inclined:

(By the way, this guide is pretty Japan-specific, but if you are planning to introduce Vegemite in another country the basic principles still apply: focus on the similarities between Vegemite and your target culture, rather than the differences!)

Don’t:

• Give people Vegemite without priming them first.

If you introduce Vegemite by saying “ha har, get a whiff of this!” you’re not going to do your students any favours. The victim’s reaction will undoubtedly be hilarious and make for a fun class, so if that’s what you’re going for then go right ahead. But if you are trying to introduce a bit of Australian culture on a deeper level and attempt to cultivate some intercultural understanding in young minds, maybe veer away from that line of thinking. Priming is really important!

• Talk about how ‘different’ Vegemite is from Japanese cuisine.

This puts people in a mindset where the flavour is completely alien to them and the strong peer pressure in Japanese schools will practically guarantee that everyone in the class will spend more time saying ‘eewwww!’ together than they will actually trying the food they’ve been given.

• Make a big deal about how most people hate Vegemite, especially foreigners.

Again, this isn’t conducive to giving the food a fair go. I think it’s a good idea to mention the fact that many people from outside of Australia find it strange, but in the same way that Japanese natto (fermented soy beans) is considered to be a ‘Japanese pallet only’ food. I’ll talk about this in more detail next.

Do:

• Explain that Vegemite is like ‘Australia’s natto‘.

Natto is a fermented soy bean dish which is native to Japan and quite, quite foul to many people (including many Japanese locals). One of its main detractors is its strong smell. Sound familiar? Yep, that’s our Vegemite there. If you introduce Vegemite by pointing out this similarity, people will know to be prepared but at the same time be reassured by connecting it to a food in Japanese culture. Here’s a simple way you might be able to say this:

Vegemiteはどちらかというと「オーストラリアのなっとう」です。なぜなら、地元の多くの人がよく好きですが、外国の方がよくきらいです。そして、ちょっとくさいです！

Vegemite wa dochiraka to iuto, “oosutoraria no nattou” desu. Nazenara, jimoto no ooku no hito ga yoku suki desu ga, gaikoku no kata ga yoku kirai desu. Soshite, chotto kusai desu!

If anything, Vegemite is “Australia’s natto”. This is because many locals enjoy it but many people from overseas hate it. It also smells a bit!

• Explain that the flavour is very salty, and similar to salty miso soup.

This will help people to know what to expect taste-wise. When I prime people like this, I find it gives them confirmation bias to a degree. I get a lot of feedback of “yeah, it really does taste like salty miso soup!” Here’s an example of how you might be able to express this in Japanese:

ちょっと塩辛い味がするし、赤味噌汁の味と似ていると思います。

Chotto shio-karai aji ga suru shi, aka miso shiru no aji to niteiru to omoimasu.

It’s a bit salty, and the flavour is similar to red (salty) miso soup.

• Give everyone a chance to smell the Vegemite from the jar before serving it.

Be sure to keep the jar held far enough away from each person that they won’t get a big whiff of it, just a light smell. From a distance it really does smell a little like strong miso soup, so hopefully this will help them to relax a little. Also, keep an ear out for which students recoil and which students seem interested; when you are serving, try to serve the calmer, less repulsed(!) students first because most kids will base their own reaction off the reaction of the first person. A little lesson in peer pressure there.

And there you have it. Thanks to some good priming/brainwashing beforehand, more than half of each group of kids found that even if they wouldn’t want to eat it every day, it didn’t really taste so bad after all. I had an even better reaction with the retired folk, who ended my session with them conspiring to travel to Australia for a holiday. I suspect they appreciate salty foods more than the children do.

Probably the most prejudice to come out of a Vegemite introduction session actually was from my perspective, unfortunately. After exposing a group of Grade 3/4 students to the joy of Vegemite, one of the kids approached me eagerly after class.

“Will you bring something else to class next time?” he grinned, clinging on to my arm (which I HATE but am too polite to react to).

“Yes, I’m sure I’ll bring something else at some point,” I replied.

“Ooh, I hope you bring sweets next time!” he gushed, looking up at me hopefully with pleading eyes.

This is something that I would expect all children to say. However, the little child in question was the most rotund of the class, and I couldn’t stop myself scoffing in the depths of my subconscious: “Well, of COURSE you would, wouldn’t you?”

If you have any more suggestions for how to serve Vegemite to students in any country, please write it in the comments section!

In the meantime, I’ve finally gotten around to uploading photos from the past several months. Here they are below:

October – A month of taiko, sports days, the henro pilgrimage and Halloween parties.

November – A month of inter-prefectural travel, more taiko and more henro.

December – A month of mochi making, catsitting, end of year parties and Christmas in Yusuhara.

Hope you enjoy the photos, and there’s plenty more to tell! Any day now, I’ll get the time…

Apparently, though, it seems that even for non-ESL speakers, some of the more specific Christmas-related terminology can get mixed up. Take this web site, for example:

I saw this picture and I read the description. I guess in a way you could think of the mouse as an elf, if perhaps Santa employed anti-discrimination laws in his workshop and allowed mice to help out. The Christmas cake is a bit of a long shot, admittedly, but it is a dessert that you might eat at Christmas, so maybe it could fall under the category of ‘Christmas cake’. The mistletoe was thankfully spot on. Wait, that’s holly! Sigh.

I decided, however that my doubts as to whether these pictures were actually what they were labeled as were entirely subjective, and moved on.

Now, I can’t be 100% certain, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a reindeer at the top, there.

Greg is destroyed, murdered and killed (possibly in preparation for eating) by children at Mishima shrine during a local festival.

The knife is a plastic retractable one that was being sold at a stall at the shrine (go figure). We lent it to that little kid and after a while of excitement he forgot it wasn’t his so we let him have it.

I wonder what his parents said when he got home. I hope this won’t look bad on me!

Unfortunately, the video taken of that performance is of very low quality, so I won’t share it here, but it was amazing, being surrounded by 3,500 candles while performing in front of a local crowd!

This weekend we had our second performance held at a shopping complex as part of an even that happens once every 5 years, the name of which I can’t actually recall!

I think we performed much better for the second performance, but apparently we ran out of film…

Anyway, without further ado, here is our morning performance!

Our first song. I’m second from your right.

Our second song. I’m not playing but I’m sitting sternly second from your left.

Our third and final song. My debut on the huge dai drum at the back. So nervous!

We have another performance at the end of November at the re-opening of a rest stop in Susaki. We’ll be playing a new song there so look forward to it!

Of course, it is unethical to take advantage of such a position of power for obvious reasons, and as a professional translator, I see no point in questioning this position.

Still, the occasional chuckle arises when one word can make an otherwise serious film title sound ridiculous!

Sometimes I put silly place-holder words and phrases into translated texts, so that I can immediately know the literal meaning in English without having to recheck in the dictionary. I go over the text a few times, revising it until the word or phrase sounds natural and acceptable, so normally the place-holders are replaced. There are times when I grow attached to them, though!

Like this week, when I had to translate a Japanese program into English for number of film screenings which no non-Japanese speaker would bother going to. The director of “Suicide Club”, a grotesque cult hit in the West, is having a spotlight screening of many of his films at some point here in Kochi, but there is going to be no support for non-Japanese speakers such as subtitles, which makes one wonder why the organisors insisted on an English program!

Still, one of the films was called “気球クラブ、その後” (Kikyuu Club, Sono Ato). 気球 (kikyuu) means balloon, as in hot air balloon, and その後 (sono ato) basically means ‘afterwards’. From the sentence-long plot description, all I could really glean about the film was that it was a drama about a group of  people who used to be members of a ballooning club, meeting 5 years later and reminiscing about their time in the club.

Unable to find an official English translation online and asked to write translations of the unknown titles in brackets, I put in a silly place-holder and chuckled to myself at the dramatic nuance the title had now taken on. Unfortunately, the more I worked on the project, the more the place-holder grew on me until the final title for “気球クラブ、その後” became:

Ballooning Club: The Aftermath

Despite knowing next to nothing about the film, I now felt like I understood the entire story: There is an elephant in the room at the ballooning club reunion. The question is what is that elephant? What really happened at ballooning club?!

In the end, the person who gave me the job decided to do without the unofficial title translations in brackets. As sad as I am to see my baby deleted from the final translation, I can’t say I blame him!

At a Susaki Road Safety event, there were quite a few cultural presentations, including this taiko performance by students from Susaki Primary School.

I can’t believe how talented they all are!

Apologies about the bad quality film and occasional blur; my camera is reaching the end of its life!

I’ve been a CIR (Co-ordinator of International Relations) on the JET programme since August 24th this year, and am currently considering the pros and cons of recontracting. Let’s see how that goes.

This web site will be under construction for a while yet, but now that I finally have Internet access from home, I will be able to work on it again.

While waiting for the backlog of posts regarding the JET Programme and what it entails, here are photos of some of my adventures for first little while I have been here:

August: JET Orientation and Shimanto River fireworks

September: Snorkelling and baby sea turtles in Otsuki, my new apartment, the Tengu Highlands and sports days for primary and middle schools

Enjoy, and I’ll be back shortly!

My British friend Laura and I went on a little sojourn to Hokkaido towards the end of our year living in Japan. It was fantastic fun, and full of life experiences such as this one.

This is the third part of a series of videos we took going mad on golf buggies while staying in Niseko. You probably don’t need to be told, but neither Laura nor myself had driven before this.

My British friend Laura and I went on a little sojourn to Hokkaido towards the end of our year living in Japan. It was fantastic fun, and full of life experiences such as this one.

This is the second part of a series of videos we took going mad on golf buggies while staying in Niseko. You probably don’t need to be told, but neither Laura nor myself had driven before this.