Strange English Lesson
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010I was trying to find a Japanese T.V. program to watch while eating lunch earlier this week. While flicking I came across what I thought was an exercise program. There were three woman skimpily dressed in yellow, orange, and purple sports wear doing aerobic exercise while chanting, “Are you serious about anyone” in English. This was strange but not as strange as the next scene which showed three salary men in business suits doing the same thing. At this stage I still thought it was some strange exercise program and they were showing people carrying out these exercises in the work place, some sort of lunch time exercise madness.
But then it moved on to two Western people sitting at a table laid out to look like a romantic dinner. There was soft lighting and hideous outfits more suited to the 1980s than 2010. The woman said in ridiculously slow English, “Shall we make a toast”. And the man responded with, “Here’s to your lovely eyes”. Well, since the program also had subtitles showing a translation of the English I finally worked out that this was a program designed to teach English.
I couldn’t decide what was more strange – the weird exercises or the phrases they were teaching. I mean, if I was on a date and someone made a toast to “my lovely eyes”, I would either burst out laughing or try to think of a way to quickly be somewhere else. But then watching salary men do what looked like bust improvement exercises while chanting, “You look sensational in that dress” was one of the strangest things I’ve seen on T.V. Well, at least in the last month, I do after all live in the land of strange.
