Ok, so Japan is in the middle of a hip-hop fad right now. Which depresses me oh so much. "But why?" You ask. "Isn't that a good thing?" You'd think, but remember that everything Japan gets is filtered. So Japan defines hip-hop through MTV. Not cool. Not only that, but now they're trying *really hard* to be ghetto. No. Just...no. It's like wiggers...only ten times worse. My friends and I have dubbed this "jiggers" for lack of a better term.
I went to a hip-hop club with a friend a few weeks ago, and pretty much everyone there was wearing the exact same thing. The guys ALL wore NY Yankees caps, to the side, a sweater, a coat, some "bling-bling" for good measure, and big pants. The girls all looked like a tit-less, ass-less version of Beyonce from one of her videos. I swear, it's like they went to K-Mart and bought "Hip-Hop in a Can" for $9.99 and popped it open....voila! I'm ghetto now! ...No you're not! The other thing that depressed me about this club was that no one really danced...they all "swayed" to the music, while holding cigarettes. In neatly arraigned lines. That's Japan for you.
Also, the DJ at one point screamed out "Everybody say HO!" and everyone just kind of stood there in confusion. As a music lover, but first and foremost as an English teacher, I had to fight the urge to rush up there, take the mike and yell "It's a command form! You're supposed to *do it*!"
So anyway, my bastard ninensei boys at the ghetto school have gotten caught up in the hip-hop craze. They wear big sweaters over their uniforms, and wear their pants around their thighs to simulate bagginess. They think they're the shit too, but when I look at them I just see kids who don't know how to wear pants. There's one ichinensei boy who is also a brat and idolizes these kids. He just sits in class and stares at me or the teacher, and if we try to give him work he swats it off his desk and laughs over how "cool" he is. One day I noticed something peculiar...his hair. Apparently, he wanted cornrows. But of course, he doesn't have the hair for cornrows. So he'd just shaved lines in his head to represent cornrows. I actually laughed quite a bit over this. And just in case you're thinking I was being a bit harsh, this kid is an absolute bastard so don't lose too much sleep over him.
This past week, one day in class the worst boy came over to me and wanted to talk. Ordinarily, I would have been happy to talk to him...if this wasn't in the middle of class. I told him to be quiet and go back to his seat. But he didn't care and pressed on. "Do you know Chingy? Chingy?" He asks. Some rapper or something, my idiot ex downloaded a song of his on my computer. Hey, I've been away for awhile, I have no idea who's in and who's not back in the states. "Yeah yeah, I know him, be quiet already." I say. The boy is highly pleased with this. "Of course you know Chingy, you're black!" Because, you know, all black people like rap and hip hop. Boy howdy, gimme some Chingy and some fried chicken, and I'll be one happy negro! *thumbs up*
I wish I could say it stopped there, but from that point forward, any time any ONE of the bad ninensei boys saw me they'd exclaim "You know Chingy? Chingy! You know his song?" Sigh. Friday was a holiday, but if I'd gone to school and heard "Chingy!" one more time, I think I seriously would've snapped and gone Tyler Durden/Fight Club on them. "You're not black. Listening to hip-hop will not make you black. Wearing bling-bling will not make you black. Wearing your pants around your ankles will not make you black. You're not your fucking MTV. You're a 14 year old Japanese schoolboy, and nobody thinks this is cool."
I don't even like Chingy
**this comes from a guy's website who teaches English to middle schoolers in Japan! I want his job...to check out the rest of the funny shit that happens to him, go to http://outpostnine.com/
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