"Yankee teacher returns to his old school"....This is a Japanese TV drama that originated with a real story. Is it an American guy's story? No, no, no. The story goes like this, a Japanese guy, Hiroyuki Yoshiie was such a bad boy in his high school days, he returned his old school as teacher and taught the bad boys in his class stopping them from being bad. This is his documentary show in English. Ha ha the title was changed to "Returns of Rebel". In Japan, we call bad boys and girls yankee. I wonder if American people will feel uncomfortable about this, and now I remember a Turkish bath story.
We call"sexual clubs" TORUKO BURO = Turkey bath. It was because Turkey was famous for their sauna baths. In 1984 one small article was published on the Yomiuri. It was a Turkish student in Tokyo University protest we named "sexual club" from Turkey. One day he went around downtown, and he found his land name "Turkey" written in colourful neon. He opened the door of the shop thinking of his mother land, then he was welcomed by a half nude Japanese woman. He complaned strongly to the shop but he realized it was not the name of the shop, that it was a more general term for sex clubs. In the article he appealed and said that Japan should change the name. It worked fine, and led to Japan changed the term "Turky bath" into "soap land" everywehere in Japan. (My American friend misunderstood: Soapland is just a clean place like a public bath or something and said "Let's go to soapland!" loudly in public and embarrassed his friends. Yeah Japan has no sense for naming maybe. )
Anyway we call bad boys and girls yankee. Here is some yankee samples. In Tokyo area they tend to wear street fashions. In the country, they tend to wear cheap colourful trainers. This is an online shop of a yankee magazine, This game is "Run! Soul of Yankee", actually "country" crazy drivers group; Bosozoku are our typical image for yankee too. Actually it is far from American Yankee. Why we call them Yankee? I checked internet derivation dictionary. They said in the 70s-80s in Osaka area, people called Yankee bad boys who walked around downtown, because they wore colourful Aloha shirts and pants in the American village. But Yankee was not only an American Fashion, in Osaka area people say "yanke" at the end of a word, it is a sort of a dialect. This caused the name of Yankee too. Japan Times use this American yankee and this Japanese yankee differently, so they use "Yankii" for Japanese on their web site :-)
Hmm what do you think about Yankee? You think "American dog" is much worse?
Live and let live.
Posted by: buy taobao | Saturday, November 13, 2010 at 06:10 PM
This would be a concern for gun owners and reloaders if we were to take Mr. Obama at his word. However, during the campaign we saw Mr. Obama say one thing to one group and contradict himself to another.
Posted by: Supra Shoes | Tuesday, November 02, 2010 at 04:25 PM
Hi Jay.
That is good to hear, Thanks. Anyway I am so disappointed that Yankees lost yesterday!!! Matsui did not make any hit too
!
Posted by: Mari | Wednesday, October 12, 2005 at 07:55 AM
I'm a Yankee in the sense that I was born and raised in Massachusetts, in the northeast region of the United States. I've lived in Japan for a while now, and I can't say I'm offended at all by the way the word "Yankee" is used in Japanese. It's in no sense used as a put down to Americans, regardless of the word's origin.
Posted by: Jay | Monday, October 10, 2005 at 08:20 PM
GTO was cool.
Too bad I only got to see the anime here. They say live action series is pretty good as well.
Posted by: shiro | Wednesday, July 27, 2005 at 10:12 AM
Hi There
I don't watch TV, so I don't know GTO and Dragon Sakura both. ha ha ha Anyway I feel easy to know American poeple don't care this story.
Posted by: Mari | Tuesday, July 26, 2005 at 12:57 AM
Oh..the story sound similar like the current TBS TV drama - "Dragon Sakura". An ex-gangster lawyer trying to reform the high school school. :)
Posted by: Densha Otoko | Monday, July 25, 2005 at 03:10 PM
To us Americans, a Yankee is a person from the Northeastern region of the country. Any person born in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts or Maine is a Yankee.
I myself am not a Yankee, but I have lived up in that region. (For 5 years I lived in New Jersey.) From what I have seen of them, calling bad and rude children 'Yankees' makes PERFECT sense.
Posted by: Chris Heffernan | Sunday, July 24, 2005 at 02:55 AM
Good story! I'm reminded of the derogatory words "White trash" or "Eurotrash" to describe sloppy Westerners.
But you have to change the spelling of "soupland" to "soapland" or I get really confused about what service is provided. Hmm... now I will smile all day long!!!
Posted by: Martin | Saturday, July 23, 2005 at 01:17 PM
I loved to watch GTO!!!
Mm... I think the problem starts when there are too much usage of English in Japanese language. I don't like it at all because it can erode the language.
Do Japanese find it offensive if people can them Japs?
Posted by: Cath | Saturday, July 23, 2005 at 12:29 PM
I like American dog ;-)
Posted by: david | Saturday, July 23, 2005 at 05:28 AM
Is the the story line similar to GTO??
Posted by: AzianBrewer | Saturday, July 23, 2005 at 03:46 AM