Hey Jude

I picked my karaoke tunes carefully last night. Five Japanese teachers, me and not one Western song that any of them had heard of apart from Rainy Days and Mondays by The Carpenters, and you can only sing that so many times (three) before you want to try something else.

So, knowing exactly what I was doing, I put on The Beatles and waited for it.

I waited eight seconds. And then one of the teachers frowned.

"I know this one," he said in confusion.
"Me too," the other agreed.
"It's The Beatles," another one said crossly. "Even I know The Beatles."
Two shrugged and pulled their bottom lips out to show that they didn't care what he knew, because they did not.
"Where do we know this from?" they asked me.
There was a pause while I told Jude to go out and get her.
"Imagine you've got a duster in one hand," I told them eventually, "and a brush in the other."
"It's the cleaning music!" they both shouted in delight."It's the song they play when we're cleaning the school!"
I nodded. The teacher who loves The Beatles put his head in his hands.
"It has words?!" one said.
"Yes. The original isn't just violins."
"Is it about cleaning?"
"No. But it's quite good anyway."
And they both happily hummed along, pleased that they had known some Western music after all.

The Beatles achieved a fair amount in their time - probably because they were bigger than Jesus - but it makes me sad that they will never really know the full impact of their music in this part of the world: that, for the rest of time, Hey Jude will be known to 300 Japanese children and 30 adults as The Cleaning Music but with, you know, some man singing over the top.

And if that's not worth na-na-na-naing to, I don't know what is.