Waku Waku

Waku Waku

via Blackguard on 5/24/10

[52 pages, digest size, $5.00, Amy Richardson >>> prettyprettyyumyum.wordpress.com +++ amz.richardson (at) gmail.com ]
This was my big score at the MCA zine fair yesterday. In April 2008 Amy started a working holiday in Osaka. *Waku Waku* means *thrilled, excited* - thus the perfect name for a zine about visiting/working in Japan! The onomatopoeian theme continues throughout, for example I learned that in Japan dogs don't say 'Woof! Woof!', they say 'Wan! Wan!' Cats say, 'Nyan! Nyan!' and 'Gatcha! Gatcha!' is the sound capsule machines make when you turn the metal dial.
There are a bunch of interviews with other Westerners living and working in Osaka, with some funny answers:
WakuWaku: My job in Japan was...
Kris from LA: "A trained monkey on display - I mean an English teacher."
There's a Hello Kitty quiz, thanks to which I now know that Hello Kitty weighs the same as three apples.
The centrefold (like the cover) is an awesome blast of colour images - smiley, kawai *face foods*.
I loved the two pages of Japanese emoticons, with some very imaginative examples, like this fish:
<+))))><<
or this one, meaning "It's cold":
{{ (>_<) }}
Kansai books/manga (Haruki Murakami, Junichiro Tanizaki, Hisaya Nakajo) and Kansai cinema (Maiko Haaan!, Lovely Complex, Lost in Translation) are briefly reviewed.
Finally Amy explains that there are two categories of English teaching in Japan: working at an eikaiwa (English conversation school) and working as an Assistant Language Teacher (ALT). She interviews Nikolas Hanson about working at an eikaiwa, and herself about working as an ALT.

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