im not the most informed person on things Hawaiian, Im not from Hawaii, nor am I any type of expert in the Hawaiian language, but ive been getting very irritated at what the guy whose place I have taken has done to the local population out here about what Hawaii is all about... that was a little difficult to understand... so here's the deal. the guy whose place i took out here was a guy from oregon... he graduated from UH Manoa. left a girlfriend in hawaii.. bla bla bla.. very nice guy from what i know of him... but, i'll keep this as light as possible, im pretty sure he knew little to nothing about hawaiian culture. which is fine, but if youre going to join the program that i joined (the JET programme, spelled with an E for some reason even though it originated between US and Japan) you have to be an ambassador for where you came from... and it would have been cool if he represented Oregon and Hawaii... Im pretty sure he did that most of the time.. but the shit that i hear from my teachers about hawaii kills me. the most irritating of all is, every time we cheers, in japanese its kampai, the teachers say "hana hou".. it really bothers me... ive told them on numerous occations that its not hana hou... hana hou meens one more time. (as far as i know).. and i can see if it was my b ball team, and we just won a game, and it was the nomikai afterwards.. and we cheersed and said "hanahou".. i wouldnt say shit... but my teachers, at a regular nomikai say hanahou... FOR WHAT!.. aparrently this previous teacher taught them that it meant CHEERS. goddam it... (and for those interested its hipa hipa according to some dictionary).. ive never cheers'd in hawaiian.. nor have i ever heard it...
another thing is that he tried to define the shaka... man... ive actually read lots of articles about the origins of the shaka, and what it means.. and its unanimous that no one REALLY knows what it means.. its just what people do. its not just a hawaiian thing, its all across the pacific, and now im pretty sure most surfers just do it (halfway just to be cool).. so i go to school and see all these kids doing shaka's and whatever, and thats cool, but they all seem to think it means hello only. goddam it.
another thing... aloha... aloha means hello to everyone on my island.. DAMMIT. this is something that makes me angry. i brought a crapload of "live aloha" stickers when i first got here... and when i gave them to winners of games and showed them to teachers, everyone was highly confused... they said "what does live hello mean?".. jesus christ... so it seems now im constantly fixing the mistakes in hawaiian culture that have been given to these people on tsushima... not that it really makes much difference... but graduating in pacific history, and trying my hardest to represent and spread my own culture out here (my own culture being who i am and where ive been) its pretty irritating.
ok im done bitching. on a funny note, speaking of culture, i saw this today:
thought this was funny.. dont know what its supposed to say.. clap culture? it was attached to a pair of track suit pants... sports casual was correctly labled... but crap culture.. that cant be right... what do you think?
let everyone know that hitting women and doing 'Ice' originated in hawaii too.
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