ECC and Me!

Trip Start Mar 18, 2004
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Trip End Apr 12, 2006


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Wednesday, September 15, 2004

A few weeks ago, I was approached by the director of ECC Fushimi (Miki)--where I work on Fridays--who asked me if I would mind having my picture taken for some promotional material. I said sure, not really knowing what I was getting into, and promptly forgot about it. The following week I arrived at work as usual (wearing basically no makeup, down to my last shirt of the week, and feeling a little sick, actually) to find that one of my regular lessons had been booked off so that a photography crew (yes, an entire crew could take some photos.

There was the photographer. And the photographer's assistant. And the guy in charge of the shoot. And his boss. And an "interviewer" guy, who asked me some standard questions about teaching English ("what is the most important thing students should know when learning English?") and of course, the Model. And none of them spoke English, and of course I can't speak Japanese, and Miki was busy downstairs with something or other, so throughout the entire shoot I had a genuine Lost In Translation experience 01 - First Shoot Pic #1
01 - First Shoot Pic #1
 . Seriously. When I first saw that movie last year, I thought it was an exaggeration. I realized that day that it wasn't. The photographer and model would discuss things very hurriedly (and at great length) in Japanese, and then the photographer would turn to me, and talk some more, and make some emphatic gestures. I, in turn, would look at him with a questioning look on my face. Then he would say, "Look at the camera. Smile." or sometimes just "You OK." (and it wasn't a question). It was bizarre.

Anyway, what resulted were a series of pictures of me pretending to teach a girl Japanese. They appeared in a magazine called "Recruit", which (as far as I can tell) seems like a glorified Yellow Pages, with lots of ads and coupons for schools, restaurants, hair salons, and anything else you can think of. It was in colour though, and it comes out every month. Anyway, I was in the ECC spread for September.

I have a copy of the magazine that I got as a kind of "souvenir", but I haven't gotten around to scanning the pages yet. And to tell the truth, as time goes by, I'm starting to wonder whether I want to scan them at all, as most of the pictures aren't very flattering. In the meantime, however, I've posted some pictures of the pages that I took with my little cell phone camera. I had to compress them to email them to myself (in order to get them OFF the camera), so they are very small and blurry. But anyway, here they are. Enjoy :)
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