Life, Love and Learning Japanese

Welcome to Easy Stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from okay to good and from good to great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today’s episode is a bit of an experiment, a bit of me messing around, a bit of, God, let’s just try something new. For the first time in a very, very long time, perhaps for the first time ever on the main podcast, I’ve decided to wing it.

When you wing it, you just improvise. You turn on the camera, turn on the microphone, and see what happens. And that’s exactly what I’m doing today. I decided I should do a conversational episode because I haven’t done one of those in a while. One of my faithful and loyal listeners, one of my long-time lovely learners, even reached out to me by email and said, Ariel, when are you going to do one of your conversational episodes? I love them so much! So I thought, okay then, let’s just try it. 

I decided to experiment. Also, because I’ve been, you know, learning a lot of language, hmm, that doesn’t sound very good. I’ve been studying, that makes me sound more clever. I’ve been studying a lot of language recently. No, specifically I’ve been studying Japanese recently. In fact, I have a Japanese textbook in front of me as we speak. 

If you’re watching on YouTube, you can see me holding it. And if you’re not watching on YouTube, that’s what the book sounds like. Hear that? That’s the sound of Nihongo, or Japanese, as we say in English. Yes, I’ve been studying a lot of Japanese because I’m doing a Japanese exam. In fact, I’m doing the highest level of the Japanese language proficiency test in July. 

Why am I doing the highest level of the Japanese language proficiency test in July? Well, partly to say, hey, I’m really good at Japanese. I’ve got the highest level of this exam, but also for a secret reason, which I can’t tell you yet, but rest assured, I’m studying Japanese for a good reason and I feel like the more I talk about it without saying what the reason is the more annoying it is, like you’re probably thinking just tell us just tell us the reason you’re studying so much Japanese!

Oh, I sound like a Muppet, sound like a cartoon character! But the truth is I think it’s really dangerous to talk – oh God, sorry, I’m putting my arms up and I have holes in the armpit of this jumper, so please don’t judge me. Actually, I lie. You can judge me all you want. Look at this hole! Look, I’ve got other holes in this jumper! 

But you know what? Some would say I wear clothes with holes in them because I’m cheap. I would say that I’m just a friend of the environment. I care about being environmentally friendly. Why buy a new jumper when this perfectly good one full of holes exists already? It’s fine. It’s perfectly good. Stop looking at me like that! 

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, why am I studying Japanese? And I won’t tell you the reason. That’s because sometimes in life we have these really big plans, these really big goals, projects. A lot of people want to write a novel. Or go travel somewhere very specific, maybe somewhere far away. Maybe people want to learn a skill that’s quite difficult to do. And a lot of the time we tell people about it. We say, I really want to do this. I’m going to do this. And then we never do it. We never do it. We take all that pent up, that bubbling energy, that desire, that motivation to do the thing, and we don’t do the thing. We waste that energy telling people about how much we’re going to do the thing.

Oh, I’m really excited for my novel. Oh, I’m really excited to write this novel. I’m going to write this novel. Oh, I’m thinking about this novel every day. But, you’re thinking about it, and you’re talking about it, but are you doing it? Are you writing the novel? No. So, I’m not gonna tell you what the thing is that I’m planning on doing until I’ve done it because I thought about… let’s just say it’s an application. I thought about making this application the past two years and I didn’t. So this year it really is sink or swim. Either I will do it and swim or I will fail to do it and I will sink. Yeah? Sink or swim. You do it or you get out. 

We, uh, the other thing we say is, this is a bit rude, but you know what? If you’re a child, stop listening. If you’re a parent listening with your child, first of all, thank you so much for passing on Easy Stories in English to the next generation. But also, turn off your child’s ears now. Hmm, children aren’t machines. Push the child away, or maybe pause. No, don’t pause. Get rid of the child and keep listening. Now that all the children are gone? Are all the children are gone? Are all the children gone? That’s correct English. Now that all the children are gone, I can tell you this slightly rude phrase in English.

And that phrase is, shit or get off the toilet. Shit or get off the toilet. That means you either do the thing, you do the difficult thing. I guess the difficult thing in this case is shitting. Or you get off the toilet so someone else can use the toilet. 

Okay, so this year for me is really going to be sink or swim. Will I make this mysterious application that I won’t tell you about, but it has something to do with Japan? That’s a big clue. Will I sink or swim? Will I shit or will I get off the toilet? I feel like I have piled together too many metaphors at this point, and I’m buried in a pyramid of metaphors. Ooh, pyramid, bit of an Egyptian vibe. Like that. 

Okay, why was I talking about learning Japanese? That was the other plan I had for this podcast, is to be unplanned. I decided, you know what? I’m a good chatter. I’m good at yapping. I’m good at talking. Chatting shit. There we go. Hopefully the children haven’t come back into the room because I said that word again.

Chatting shit means just yapping, just talking endlessly about anything. And I’m good at that. And I have a feeling maybe it’s something all of you would appreciate. I’ve also been thinking about – oh, here we go. This is why I talked about studying Japanese. 

I’ve been studying Japanese by listening to podcasts every day on the train, going to work and reading books. So I’ve become more aware of, as a language learner myself, what do I want in a language learning podcast? And I’ve noticed that I like listening to these shows where people are talking and talking and talking, and sometimes my brain zones out for a few minutes, but I can just come back and keep listening. 

Hmm, maybe that means my attention span has got worse. Maybe that means I’m not so good at paying attention now. Or maybe it means I just like yapping. I like people chatting shit. I don’t know. But I thought, hmm, that’s not something I really do on my podcast. I do conversational episodes, but I tend to plan them and I have like bullet points of like, this is what I’m going to talk about. I’m doing a little bullet point dance on the video, okay? 

Um, I tend to talk in quite a structured way on my conversational episodes. I know it may not seem that, but normally when I record, I have a bunch of bullet points in front of me. But today I decided, you know what? I’m just going to go completely unstructured. I’m just going to hit record and see what happens. Because that could be quite interesting for all of you and also for me. So there we go. I’ve been studying Japanese and it’s helped inspire me to try something different on this show. To be fair, I’ve also been inspired by just the desire to do something new.

You know, I started a new job. I started teaching at a language school in London late last year. Ooh, that’s a bit of a tongue twister. A language school in London late last year. And so I’ve had less time since then. So I’ve had less time to kind of think strategically about the podcast, to write longer stories to really get into like a deep psychological place when I’m writing.

And so I thought, okay, well, let’s find another way to do something different with the podcast. I think it’s also great for creative people to just do things differently every now and then, try new things. Why the hell not? 

On the note of me doing things differently in the past few months, since I moved to London, I feel like I’ve definitely become a dirty little consumer. I know I was joking earlier about the holes in my jumper. But generally, since moving to London, I’ve been buying a lot more things. I’ve been thinking about buying more, and shopping, and holidays, and all that stuff. And it’s perhaps unsurprising that living in a massive metropolis, plastered with adverts, with adverts absolutely everywhere, working in a building that’s on one of the busiest shopping streets in the world, possibly. I work on Oxford Street, which is a very busy shopping street. It’s unsurprising that in those circumstances, one would become a bit more consumerist, a bit more of a dirty little capitalist. That’s another way we can say it. 

But there’s definitely a part of me that feels uncomfortable with that. I suppose I’m quite lucky in that I’m very introspective. I have a lot of perspective about myself. So even when I’m going through a, even when I’m changing a lot, when I’m going through a process of change, I’m pretty aware that I’m changing, whereas I guess a lot of people change without realizing it. This is the kind of stuff I spend my time thinking about. I know it sounds very philosophical, but you know what? It’s my podcast and I’ll talk about philosophy if I damn well please. 

Oh, damn, that’s sort of a rude word. The children can be half in the room for damn, like maybe you open the door and they kind of put one leg in the room and have one leg out of the room and then you say damn. Damn isn’t too bad. Although some very Christian Americans would disagree. They would say darn instead, because darn is less rude than damn. 

Um, speaking of sort of rude words that aren’t that rude, you can have your children halfway into the room for this one. Maybe 25 percent into the room. Like maybe they have just an arm sticking into the room, but the rest of their body is outside of the room.

Uh, a word I taught my students today is bastard. Bastard, B A S T A R D. Now, traditionally, bastard refers to a child who is born out of wedlock. Meaning a child who is born outside of marriage. Um, this can either be before, two people get married or when, uh, usually it’s the man from a married couple goes and sleeps with another woman and then she gives birth to the child and that child is a bastard.

And this was a very important thing back in the olden days, uh, you know, throughout most of history because for kings and princes and lords and all of those people, it was very important to have a legitimate heir. Heir, H E I R. Your heir is the person who inherits your money, your kingdom, whatever.

So obviously if a king only has bastards, well they can be the heir, but they’re usually not the legitimate heir. The legitimate heir usually comes through marriage. But nowadays we just use bastard to mean an annoying person, someone we don’t like. And it’s just a great word to use. I don’t know, I find it very satisfying to say. Bastard!

Speaking of bastards, I’m currently reading. Why am I shouting from? I’m currently reading. I won’t do the podcast shouting across the room. That’s not very professional now, is it, Ariel? No, I’m reading this book. Which, obviously, if you’re listening, you can’t. I keep doing things just for the video viewers, but they are very much in the minority. So let me, I’ll tell you that I’m holding the book up to the camera, but I’ll also tell you the name of the book. The name of the book is The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. 

Now Hilary Mantel was, because unfortunately she’s passed away, Hilary Mantel was one of the most well known British authors. She wrote historical fiction. So she wrote a very famous book called Wolf Hall, and this book, The Mirror and the Light, is the third book in that series. So there’s Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light. And these books are all about Thomas Cromwell, who was the advisor to King Henry VIII. 

King Henry VIII was probably the most infamous king in British history. He was alive around the 1500s, and he had six wives, not at the same time, but one after the other. When we’re at school, we learn a rhyme to remember the fate of each wife. We say, divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived. 

So divorced means their marriage ended. Beheaded means that wife had her head cut off. She was beheaded. She had her head removed. And unfortunately, it’s quite hard to survive without your head. So those wives died. And then the last wife survived Henry. She lived longer than he did. He died before her. And the third wife, who died, died shortly after giving birth. So again, the rhyme to remember Henry VIII’s six wives is divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived. 

There’s even a musical called Six, which is about King Henry VIII’s wives, and I think one of the songs opens with all of the wives, and they’re all like dressed like divas, they’re wearing these like fun, sparkly outfits, and they’re like, divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived, um, which I find very funny. I know nothing else about the musical, uh, but I kind of want to go see it. 

Anyway, very interesting period in British history. Wonderful books, very interesting books, very big books. This book is like 800, 800 and something pages. It’s a long book. I’ve been reading this book since I got it for Christmas. Oh, um, but the reason I mentioned this book is because of bastards, which are a very important feature of the story. That certainly, uh, they were certainly something that preoccupied King Henry VIII a lot. They were something he worried about a lot because part of the reason King Henry VIII had so many wives was he was struggling to get a male heir, a male son.

A male son, all sons are male. He was struggling to get a son who could inherit his throne, his kingdom. And at one point he was considering making his bastard the heir, but then his bastard died of an illness. Oh my god, so many people were dying of illness in these times in the middle ages. Unbelievable. The women were like matchsticks, just so easy to break. 

Also, if you notice, the language level in today’s episode is a bit harder, I’m trying to talk a bit less filtered. Normally when I teach and when I talk on the podcast, I really carefully choose my words and speak very slowly. And there’s definitely a time and place for that. But I realized when I was listening to podcasts to learn Japanese, that there is this gap between intermediate or upper intermediate and native speaker content, where it’s still useful to have someone who explains cultural concepts and difficult words, but who doesn’t control how they speak too much, right? They speak in a more natural way. 

So most teachers have the problem that they find it hard to simplify their speech for most learners, for lower level learners. And I now kind of have the opposite problem with some of my upper level learners, where I have to like deliberately raise the level of my language so that I’m continuing to challenge them and to improve their English and to teach them lots of delicious and useful little words. 

Also sorry there’s a radiator down here next to me and my room is so cold that I kind of just shove my hand into the little radiator so if you hear some noises it’s probably me molesting my radiator. Molest. Now there’s a word that’s not technically dirty, but you might want your child halfway out of the room for that one, depending on the context. In this case, I’m only molesting a radiator, so it’s probably okay. 

Anyway, I don’t know if I have that much updates to give about my life, to be honest, because I’ve just been doing my yoga. Actually, I lie, I do have an update about my life, and it’s something quite personal, so I’m like, do I talk about this? But I think I will. Because why the hell not?

I, um, I’ve been dating a lot recently. Dating, romance, love. Traditionally, I’ve been a very romantic person. I’ve fallen head over heels in love. When you fall head over heels in love, it’s like you’re toppling over. You’re turning over 180 degrees. Your head is going over your heels. Okay, you’re falling completely and, uh, traditionally I have often fallen head over heels in love. I’ve fallen for people very quickly and very deeply and then when we break up I get very emotional. 

But recently I’ve been experimenting with what I like to call slow dating, which I think most people would just call dating. I’ve been on six dates with someone and we’re still not an official item. We’re still not an official couple. And that’s kind of interesting. That’s new for me. Now I’m very wary of this situationship thing. 

You’ve maybe heard of this, uh, this idea that, you know, People sometimes now date for like six months to a year without saying they are partners and then suddenly their relationship ends because one of the people says, well, we weren’t in a relationship. That’s called a situationship and I don’t want to be in a situationship, but also it’s, it’s nice to take things slowly and just see where they go and I don’t know, I think in the past I was always like, I need to define this, this needs a label, I need to put this in a box, I need to examine all my emotions and all my relationships very seriously and categorize them and solve any problems, even if they’re very small. Whereas now I’m much more relaxed. I’m just like, I like this person, I like spending time with them, let’s see where it goes, whoo! 

I think this is genuinely another example of how London has changed me. It’s a bit weird, you’d think living in a massive city full of people where I have to commute on a noisy train every day would make me more anxious, but actually it makes me less anxious. Um, I think because I’m like swimming through the river of life with lots of other fishes. That’s a weird metaphor, but there’s a lot of stressful stuff in London as well. 

Like today, as I was going down the escalator to get on the tube, the underground, someone pushed me and they pushed me quite hard. He pushed me to the side, they were like BAM, and I didn’t like that. And then when I got on the tube, there was a really smelly guy, like, he stank so bad that people were getting off, people were getting on that train and then getting off and going to a different carriage. Um, those are just some examples. 

Actually, that’s not even the most stressful thing. The other day I was in class with my students and then we heard this really loud noise coming from the front of the school, like these horns being honked, like kind of like cars but not like cars. So we went into the other – So we went into the other classroom to look out and see what it was, and we saw a bunch of tractors driving through the city. So I looked it up. So there was this tractor protest. This is actually something that’s happened in France as well and maybe some other countries. I think there was a truck protest in Canada. 

So a tractor protest is when all the farmers drive into the big cities with their tractors and block all the roads. And the reason the tractor process happened, sorry, protest happened, if you don’t know, a tractor is like a big, big, uh, car with massive wheels that farmers use to work the fields. The tractor protest was happening because the government announced that it would start taxing farmers. 

So we have inheritance tax. Inheritance, there it comes again. Inheritance tax is tax that is taken when money is passed down through inheritance and traditionally, farmers were exempt from inheritance tax. They didn’t have to pay inheritance tax. But now, farmers whose assets whose land is valued at more than £1 million will have to pay 20 percent inheritance tax. 

Now that’s a lot of money, £1 million. But on the other hand, farms are expensive, and they often are very large, and they’re often family businesses. So the amount of farmers who will actually hit that threshold who have assets worth more than one million pounds is about a quarter of them and those farmers will have to pay 20 percent inheritance tax.

However, Nigel Farage, who is an awful, awful man, who is the politician who really pushed for Brexit and basically led us into Brexit, whipped them up into a fury. He, he, you know, told all these farmers to get really angry and I guess inspired this tractor protest to protest the inheritance tax. Now, I don’t want to, actually, you know what, I was about to say, I don’t want to get too much into politics on this podcast, but why the hell not? Why not talk about British politics? 

So the British government is in severe debt, like our money situation is not good, and it’s been bad for a long time. And like the conservative government, Brexit and COVID all together have just made it so much worse. So yeah, the government’s having to do a lot of difficult, they’re going, they’re having to make a lot of difficult decisions to make up the money.

So I think on paper, yeah, it is a good idea to charge inheritance tax to these farmers, especially since it’s only affecting the ones who make a lot of money or who have a lot of assets. But on the other hand, the United Kingdom does not have particularly good food security. We import 42 percent of all the food we eat, so we do need to protect our food supply, we do need to make sure that people can actually farm sustainably in the UK. 

Um, and I know that farms are usually family businesses, but I don’t know enough about agriculture to really have an opinion on whether this is a good thing. My instinct is that it’s, if not rich people, fairly well off people complaining that they have to pay taxes like the rest of us, mmm, mmm, mmm. But you could also argue that it’s bad for our food security, I suppose. 

I don’t think it’s very likely, but hey, if any of you are farmers, if any of you listening are farmers, reach out. Let me know your opinion. I’d be very interested to know. 

What else have I been up to recently? I went to the Royal Academy of Arts. The Royal Academy of Arts is one of the big and very old institutes of arts, of fine arts, in London. So they have a school where they train artists in sculpture and painting and all of those kinds of things, and they frequently have exhibitions of different artists. They do a lot of classical stuff like Michelangelo, Van Gogh, but this exhibition was about Brazilian modernism in the 20th century. And it was pretty interesting. 

Yeah, I guess I don’t have that much to say about Brazilian modernism. You know, unless you’re really into the art world, I feel like fine arts and visual art is something that’s very difficult to talk about on a podcast, or at the very least, I’m not super well equipped to talk about the visual art. On a podcast, um, other than saying, I liked some of the pictures. They looked good.

It’s also been weeks since I went, so I kind of don’t really remember what I saw. But it was on a date. I went there on a date, and it was nice. It was fun. I love discussing pictures with people. 

And when I used to go to art galleries, when I was younger, when I originally went to art galleries, I was like, oh my God, I have to like have an opinion. I have to think deeply. I have to read the little descriptions of the artwork. And I found it quite a stressful process, but now when I go to an art gallery, I’m like, like it, don’t like it, hate this one, this one is interesting. And I just kind of go with my gut reaction, I go with my first thoughts, and then I like to discuss the pieces with people. But I don’t force myself to try and find something interesting if I don’t think it’s interesting, and I don’t spend a lot of time reading the descriptions. 

Because I find for visual art, the descriptions are often unnecessary, they force a certain interpretation on you, or they’re really stupid. They’re just really, really like, um, I’m trying to think of a polite way to say this. They’re really self indulgent, like, oh, this piece encapsulates the memory of a feeling that perfectly mirrors the immigrant experience within the kaleidoscope, or just, just say it’s a picture. It’s a picture made with paint, or crayons, or pastels, or whatever you want. 

That’s not to say that art can’t have depth. Of course, art does have depth. And there is a lot of merit in discussing art and analyzing art. But generally, if the descriptions are written by the artists themselves, then they’re, you know, visual artists don’t want to write their descriptions. Usually, you know, they would rather just let the piece speak for itself. And then if the gallery writes the descriptions, then it’s even worse because they’re trying to kind of like show how clever they are. Or I guess the person who writes the description is trying to show how clever they are. I feel like I’m talking a lot about a topic that I really don’t know that much about, but um, if any of you listening are art curators, fine artists, or work in an art gallery, let me know your thoughts in the comments. 

So, I’m gonna wrap up soonish, I’m gonna finish this episode soonish, because I’m tired. I’m running out of steam. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these talky episodes, and I’m kind of out of the habit. I’m slightly out of practice. I was like, I’m gonna record for three hours, and then I was like, that’s a long time. Maybe let’s do one hour, but even one hour of non stop talking is a lot harder than it sounds. 

But, I will finish with a phrase, little did I know. This is something I taught to some of my students today, and I love it. Little did I know is a phrase that means I wasn’t aware of something, and we use it in a story to imply that uh oh, something bad is coming up. Okay? 

So, for example, let’s say this morning when I was getting on the tube someone shoved me so I shoved him back and jumped onto the train before he could follow me. Little did I know that man was a new employee at my company and he was very angry when he came into work late and saw me. That would be an example, not a real example. Thankfully. Let me think of another example. 

Jennifer showed up to her dance class excited to learn ballet with her shiny new pink shoes. Little did she know she had signed up to the wrong class and this was in fact a breakdancing class and by the end of the class those beautiful shiny pink shoes were a mess. 

Well, I guess, honestly, if ballet shoes are good enough for ballet, they probably wouldn’t get ruined by breakdancing, but whatever. Hopefully you get the idea. Little did I know. 

And maybe when you started listening to this episode, you were like, oh, I’m really excited to hear Ariel tell a story today. But little did you know, I was actually just going to chat shit for, hmm, well, I don’t know exactly how long, maybe 35 minutes. Because I haven’t edited this episode yet. But, you know, the amount of time that I’ve been talking. Little did you know that I was just going to chat and chat and chat. Yap, yap, yap.

There’s this phrase that I’ve heard people use, uh, yappa yappa. I don’t know if it’s like, I feel like the only people I know it are Arabic speakers. And it kind of sounds like, uh, Arabic, like yappa yappa, but it’s basically people who yap a lot, people who talk a lot. And I feel like I’ve been fairly yappa yappa today, and so it’s time to say, um, you know, I was trying, I was trying to think of like a, a bappa bappa or something, but that doesn’t mean anything. So I think it’s time for me to say goodbye. 

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Easy Stories in English. I would love to hear your feedback on this episode. It’s something very different from what I normally do, even from the usual conversational episodes. So I’d love to hear if you think it was useful. Was it interesting? Was it too fast? Too slow? I doubt it. And do you like it when I kind of talk in a free flowing way, or would you rather I stick to specific topics? Write a comment and let me know. Thanks again for listening and see you soon!