Japanese Rumba Lyrics

[Cora Devries]

I realized that I was going to need to learn some Japanese songs to keep my coworkers happy and in doing so I realized that practicing karaoke is a fantastic way to improve my Japanese in three major areas:

Back story
I discovered this method back in late 2007. I had been living in Japan for a little over a year at the time and I had made a lot of progress in learning the language from scratch. However, being a perfectionist (the curse that it is) I was still looking for ways to speed up my progress. With all my online searching for a so called holy grail of learning I managed to hit pay-dirt in the form of a site with the very catchy address of www.alljapaneseallthetime.com .

The whole idea of the algorithm is to allow you to review a particular card just before you are expected to forget it. In this way you strengthen the memory retention effect maximally.

One of the great things about SRSs is that many are accessible from the internet so you can basically study anywhere you can connect to the net. With most mobile phones these days, that means you can literally study anywhere, whenever you have a couple of minutes free.

It really is up to you! You can find many pre-made decks online or you can create one completely by yourself and to your likings. For example, the front of your card could be a simple question (e.g. Who was the first man on the moon?) in which case the back of the card would be a simple answer (e.g. Neil Armstrong). On the other hand, if trying to learn the grammar of a new language you could write a short statement in the target language on the front of the card (e.g. Yo voy a la tienda cada maana) in which case the back of the card (the answer) would be a explanation of new vocabulary or grammar in the sentence (e.g. tienda=store, cada=every/each). You can vary your question/answer style to your own needs.

So no more excuses for not learning the names, capitals and flags of every country in the world or the lyrics to that song you love or those few key phrases in Spanish to impress that pretty latina girl at the salsa club ?

Be it the ubiquitous night out dancing that salsa represents here in Cali or the seemingly hidden sub-culture of salseros in non-Latin countries like Ireland and Japan, salsa is a way to enjoy yourself with other people, to socialize and to make friends.

Of course, these rules never get written down nor are they ever explained to you at your first salsa class or at the start of your first social night. You learn them yourself, over time, sometimes through trial and error, sometimes through the words of a friend and they begin to form part of your behaviour whenever you step out on the dance floor.

Obviously the rules will vary depending on the social norms of the country/culture where you are but I feel that these pointers here represent a pretty decent guideline to follow wherever you are in the world. Feel free to add more to your own list if need be.

Shower
The very nature of dance means you are going to be in close physical contact with other human beings. There is nothing worse than beginning to dance with someone only to catch the whiff of BO and have to endure it for the next 4 minutes or so.

Carry a Salsa Survival Kit (SSK)
To combat issues with the above two points I started to bring a salsa survival kit with me whenever I go out dancing. While you can wash yourself as much as you like before hand, the fact of the matter is that you are going to dance, which means you are going to sweat (if you are like me, you are going to sweat a lot). Thus, you may not smell that same as you did at the start of the night. This is where the SSK comes in. It consists of the following 3 items:

Asking for a dance
Both men and women should make the effort to ask out the people they want to dance with. It should not be left up entirely to the men and thankfully in Europe and the U.S. women feel a lot more comfortable asking men out to dance.

If you know the person already you might get a little playful and do what I do; from a distance, grab their attention with your eyes, give a cheeky little wink and a little head nod in the direction of the dance floor and voil, time to get your dance on. This is guaranteed to make you feel like pro.

After recoiling form the initial shock of (what felt like) having my internal organs ripped out and stepped on in front of me, I picked up what was left of my testicles and scurried away to a dark corner to hide my shame. I did however recover and go on to have plenty more dances that night but I will never forget how I felt.

I will admit, that depending on the salsa club itself sometimes traversing the floor to get to the bar, the restroom or even the exit , is unavoidable but you should always try to move around the outskirts of the dance floor avoiding the dancers as much as possible.

The rudest thing you could do is not to acknowledge it. This is not the case in Latin American culture where in general the dance floors are much more tightly packed and light collisions are much more common.

While on the point of wildly spinning hazards I should mention this;
DO NOT DANCE WITH A HANDBAG.
They are not only a hell of a lot harder than the most unruly ponytails but their long straps mean they pose a risk to surrounding couples too. Either leave it with a friend or, as salsa scenes in Europe, Asia and the U.S. are quite safe and friendly places, leave it at your table, maybe under a coat and go and enjoy your dance without the deadly weapon. Really, handbags have no place on the dance floor.

I know that when I started out, I was full of questions (I still am) and I am very grateful to all the people who have helped me to improve my salsa over the years. The same is probably true for you so do the right thing; be friendly and help out the next generation of salseros.

Off the dance floor, smiling also makes you a lot more approachable and increases the chance that someone will ask you to dance. I know one regular on the scene in Dublin who I have never asked to dance because she never smiles (and because she scares me a little).

I learned to dance salsa and bachata in a small city in Japan where close physical contact is not the norm. So, you can imagine my surprise when I first saw people dancing bachata, almost erotically, in a club in the metropolis that is Hong Kong. Then I got to experience it first hand with a local woman who insisted on dancing closely. Thank God the dimmed lights in the club hid how much I was blushing.

I moved to Colombia in September, 2011 arriving first in Bogota and then, after 3 days of rain and cold far too similar to Irish weather for my liking, taking the 12 hour bus through the Andes to Cali, the world capital of Salsa. My Mecca.

That off course neither explains why I went there nor the title of this post. For that we need to go back, way back to my chubby childhood. To a period lost in the annals of mediocrity. Back to the nineteen nineties!

However, I did manage to get them to send me to the local Shotokan Karate club so I too could be a crime fighter (I would have to try and work on the mutation stuff later). I imagine that many martial arts clubs at the time saw a jump in enrollment when the Turtles first aired, with so many kids wanting to emulate their heroes. A jump that was probably as short-lived as it was sudden.It was the first sport I ever really gave a go at and I did it for a couple of years, getting my purple belt after which I just stopped going, as children are wont to do.

The next stage of my journey with karate began in my 4th year of secondary school (1999-2000). I went through a lot of changes that year. I had decided that I no longer wanted to be the chubby kid who regularly got bullied by the other kids so I started to eat healthily, bought a cheap set of barbells and dumbbells and returned with a new passion to Karate. I practiced diligently and became relatively decent, winning a few trophies in competitions, getting my brown belt and gaining a new found confidence in myself that I never had before.

I liked the fact that in Japan there was traditionally a correct process, a way, to do things and this left me with a strong desire to go there and experience it for myself. So strong in fact that I even asked the school guidance counselor about it and she let me know about a teaching programme called JET that paid university graduates to go to Japan and immerse themselves in Japanese cultures (this also happened to be the only time that the guidance counselor provided me with anything useful in my six years at that school). I was 16 years old and completely sold on the idea. Once I graduated from university, in 5 years, I was going to Japan.

When my final year of secondary school came around I decided to focus on my studies (as I was I good boy and deep-down, a total nerd) so I put Karate on hold. I did well in my final exams and got into the university I wanted, University College Cork, studying biological sciences (the sci-fi aspect of the Turtles leaving its mark in yet another way I believe. I also learned that mutation in real life was nowhere near as cool as it had been portrayed in the Turtles).

In college, I took the opportunity to try out the various clubs that were available; boxing, scuba-diving, gymnastics, break dancing and I even went to a couple of salsa classes thanks to their clever advertising campaign pointing out the shockingly large ratio of women to men (in my 2 classes I neither learned to dance nor met any girls, imagine that!). I did however become a pretty dedicated member of the kickboxing club and to a lesser extent, due to scheduling conflicts, of the karate club. I remained a brown belt throughout college, as I never took the opportunity to try and advance further while I was there (i.e. like many college students, I was just too lazy).

While in Japan, one of my best friends, Nahoko, a very international girl who was very socially active invited me to a salsa party that she was hosting at a local bar. I went, a little reluctantly, with my girlfriend at the time. There was an introductory lesson given by two people who were to become very important in my life; Yano-papa and Yano-mama (as they like to call themselves).

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