Okay, this is a bit of an old story, but it is just too funny to pass up. So during the world cup, I made a bunch of new friends, oh the magic of soccer. Anyway, a bunch of them were grad students at the Slavic center here at the university, which is actually a famous research center I guess. Inside the center, there is a bit of a lounge room, that has a tv. Tv=soccer during the world cup, so naturally my friends who studied at the center would invite me to watch the games.
Now due to the time difference, there were 3 time slots that the games appeared on. 8:00, 11:00 and 3:00, the evening and early morning basically. So come friday or saturday night, because we are all students and have no money, we would go to the center to watch the games. Seems like a pretty good idea doesn't it? Apparently not to some people. So we are talking about Friday and Saturday nights, from 8-1 in the morning is when we would use this room, apparently one of the Japanese grad students, did not approve of this. Now of course if we would have been partying hard, making a mess of the place, and not cleaning up it would be natural to think there is a problem. But this guy's reasoning for being upset at was, was that, some people use that room to sleep at night AT the research center, so they don't have to go home and can continue their work.
As an example, one night I met my 2 friends (both of whom belong to the research center) at 10:30 on a Saturday night to watch the game at the center. On our way up we saw the light in the grad student office on, and there were maybe 15-20 grad students, in the office, working, on a Saturday night at 10:30. We watched the game that came on at 11, ended at 1, and then on our way out, we looked in again, and saw that there were still a handful of grad students in there. 1:00 in the morning on a Saturday night (Sunday morning if you will) and these grad students were still in this room doing work.
Now you may think that they have to defend their thesis in a month, or have an important report due, but this was at a time when the semester was only around halfway through, and due to the academic year at the University, most due dates for things like that aren't until the second semester in the academic year, which is from September to February, according to my friends. So these guys really have nothing to be working that hard on, and if you go there any night of the week at 10:00, you will see them in there. Honestly ridiculous.
To add the icing on top of the cake, the guy that was making a fuss about it all is actually a huge soccer fan, but in his 'strike' he couldn't come up to watch the game with us, even the Japan games, because that would have made his argument null. Ridiculous....
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Finals
Sorry for not posting in a long time guys, final presentations, research, all that jazz (including the world cup) has been eating my time away. I've got a bunch of great things to write about, hopefully over the next week I can get some time in to share them with you guys now that the world cup is over. Boo I wanted Germany to win of course, but hopefully the Netherlands can pull through.
I do have one really quick story, called the smilin' guy. Sometimes when I go to the gym, there is this guy, on one of the stationary bikes, peddling away. Now normally this wouldn't be the heart of any story, but it's how he goes about his biking routine that just cracks me up. He must be his own fan or something, because the entire time he is biking, he is smiling. And I don't mean like you know a subtle smile, I mean he is really cheesin.
Maybe that is actually how his face looks when he is grimacing or something, but it cracks me up so much. I have to hand it to him though, a lot of the times I go he is there before me, and still there when I leave, so hes obviously in great shape, but just the fact that he is honestly smiling sooooo much while biking is just too funny.
But I think there is a lesson we can learn from this, maybe smiling while we do something will make us better at what we do. So next time you feel yourself not being productive, try smiling! :)
I do have one really quick story, called the smilin' guy. Sometimes when I go to the gym, there is this guy, on one of the stationary bikes, peddling away. Now normally this wouldn't be the heart of any story, but it's how he goes about his biking routine that just cracks me up. He must be his own fan or something, because the entire time he is biking, he is smiling. And I don't mean like you know a subtle smile, I mean he is really cheesin.
Maybe that is actually how his face looks when he is grimacing or something, but it cracks me up so much. I have to hand it to him though, a lot of the times I go he is there before me, and still there when I leave, so hes obviously in great shape, but just the fact that he is honestly smiling sooooo much while biking is just too funny.
But I think there is a lesson we can learn from this, maybe smiling while we do something will make us better at what we do. So next time you feel yourself not being productive, try smiling! :)
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
hot hot hot
So...its really hot here now. But not really. It gets up to around 85, which means you kind of sweat, especially when there is humidity, but compared to the rest of Japan, it could be really worse. Down in tokyo/the areas around tokyo is is maybe 90-95 degrees, and the humidity is much much worse, so I am pretty comfortable right now.
Classes are starting to wind down, done with midterms, final presentations coming up, researching a couple of boring useless topics, but what are you gonna do? Got major sun burn the other day at a soccer game too, and we lost. Double fail.
Also the us team lost...sad face. But on the bright side I've actually been spending a lot of time at a couple of sports bars and made some new friends and stuff, which I guess you could say is a plus. It would be a lot better if I could still root for the US though.
BBQ's have been going pretty good as well, I had one last night, and for desert we had these cookies that we bought, that really aren't all that great when you buy them, but if you grill them, they sort of melt a little bit, and actually get really tasty. Did I mention that Japanese people drink a lot when they BBQ? So 2 weekends ago I was having a bbq with some guys from the soccer team and there were sooo many drunk Japanese people it wasn't even funny. But actually it was.
But I found out why there are so many crows on campus though actually. **warning this is kind of nasty**
So these 2 guys were supporting this Japanese guy in between them, and all 3 of them were just sort of wobbling their way towards the nearest building with a bathroom in it, when the guy in the middle started to lose it. He spewed....a lot. But what's worse, is that he tried to catch the stream, but ended up slapping the stream...splashing into his friends face who was walking with him. Ew....but wait, it gets better. The karas (large crows) that were watching all of this unfold, swooped in to pick up the chunks the kid had just yarked. Super nasty!!
Classes are starting to wind down, done with midterms, final presentations coming up, researching a couple of boring useless topics, but what are you gonna do? Got major sun burn the other day at a soccer game too, and we lost. Double fail.
Also the us team lost...sad face. But on the bright side I've actually been spending a lot of time at a couple of sports bars and made some new friends and stuff, which I guess you could say is a plus. It would be a lot better if I could still root for the US though.
BBQ's have been going pretty good as well, I had one last night, and for desert we had these cookies that we bought, that really aren't all that great when you buy them, but if you grill them, they sort of melt a little bit, and actually get really tasty. Did I mention that Japanese people drink a lot when they BBQ? So 2 weekends ago I was having a bbq with some guys from the soccer team and there were sooo many drunk Japanese people it wasn't even funny. But actually it was.
But I found out why there are so many crows on campus though actually. **warning this is kind of nasty**
So these 2 guys were supporting this Japanese guy in between them, and all 3 of them were just sort of wobbling their way towards the nearest building with a bathroom in it, when the guy in the middle started to lose it. He spewed....a lot. But what's worse, is that he tried to catch the stream, but ended up slapping the stream...splashing into his friends face who was walking with him. Ew....but wait, it gets better. The karas (large crows) that were watching all of this unfold, swooped in to pick up the chunks the kid had just yarked. Super nasty!!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Rules
So there are a lot of both spoken and unspoken rules in the Japanese society. This has created the image (for me at least) that Japanese people are very rule/law abiding citizens. I can't tell you how many times I've stopped at a crosswalk with another Japanese person despite the fact that the intersection is completely dead, and there are no cars to be seen in any direction. So one would assume that this rule based mindset would translate into other things, like maybe sports right? Not quite.
So I've never played college level soccer before, and maybe I'm not very accustomed to the rules, but in my opinion, Japanese people foul...a lot. Not necessarily in a dirty way with their feet, but with their hands. Lately I've been getting a little fed up with dribbling past some guy on the team, only to have him claw and scratch at me like some sort of feral animal. Or have some guy obstruct with me as much as possible with his arms and body. Like I said I might be wrong here, but for instance today, I was playing center defender, and I was marking a forward. Another forward was sliding from my right to my left, and received a pass, when I tried to intercept him, the forward I was previously marking obstructed me so much I almost knocked both of us over trying to get around him. I mean come on...that has to be a foul right? I will say that I've given them a taste of their own medicine a couple of times, and that 80kg goes a long way against 60kg, but still it frustrates me.
Another time the rules seem slightly optional is when we are running drills that involve cone made boxes or rectangles, for example a 4v2 keep away game. I can't tell you how many times the ball has rolled out of bounce but the play continued. It seems like if you try to save the ball from going out really hard, then even if it does go out, that doesn't matter. This is especially frustrating when the point of 2 players against 4 on defense is to knock the ball out of bounds. It is extremely frustrating for the ball to be OUT OF BOUNDS, but for play to continue. I've voiced my opinion on this to one of the other 2nd years and he looked at me like I was some kind of foreigner or something...oh wait.
Enough soccer ranting.
Yesterday for the first time in 2 weeks it rained. Today as well. This really bummed me out because I was planning on having a bbq today. Fudge.
I had a great conversation with the guys from Nestle the other night, we talked about the "Sony timer." For homework every week I choose an article for them to read and write a short passage on, explaining their thoughts and opinions. This past week I gave them an article describing the recent GM recall concerning their windshield washer fluid heating system, apparently something was wrong with it and GM had to recall I think around 1.5 million vehicles. Anyway, I had asked them the question, do you think this recall will hurt GM's sales? The answer by one of the guys is priceless:
I think this recall will cause big damage for GM, but is not critical damage, so their sales won’t go down very much. There are 3 reasons. The first is that GM’s owners know that GM cars have a lot of mechanical problems, but they decide to purchase GM cars because of their reasonable price, design, and because of their patriotism.
Now setting aside the grammar and idiomatic mistakes, he makes a valid point. But I have to admit when I read this I almost died laughing. "GM customers know GM cars are broken but they buy them anyway." Man that is just too funny.
So when we entered the next session, I brought up the point he made, and asked him if that is how Japanese people view American made cars, and him and the other guys agreed that that is the basic view that Japanese have of American made cars. So I asked if there were any Japanese companies that fell into the same category, and they all instantly said "SONY!"
In Japanese there is something called 決まった言い方 which means set/ritualistic phrase. Like when you go to someones house, you should always take a gift, and when you give that gift to them there is a set phrase that you say. Whether it be your in-laws or the emperor it is going to basically be the same set phrase. So when people are describing the life spans of products, they usually do it in terms of the "Sony timer." This timer refers to the amount of time a product has before it breaks. The term is obviously based off of Sony's amazing products that apparently only last 3 years, because 3 years is the standard Sony Timer. One of the guys apparently bought a Sony Viao 3 years ago, and is having some anxiety about how much longer it will last.
Good thing I bought a dell.
So I've never played college level soccer before, and maybe I'm not very accustomed to the rules, but in my opinion, Japanese people foul...a lot. Not necessarily in a dirty way with their feet, but with their hands. Lately I've been getting a little fed up with dribbling past some guy on the team, only to have him claw and scratch at me like some sort of feral animal. Or have some guy obstruct with me as much as possible with his arms and body. Like I said I might be wrong here, but for instance today, I was playing center defender, and I was marking a forward. Another forward was sliding from my right to my left, and received a pass, when I tried to intercept him, the forward I was previously marking obstructed me so much I almost knocked both of us over trying to get around him. I mean come on...that has to be a foul right? I will say that I've given them a taste of their own medicine a couple of times, and that 80kg goes a long way against 60kg, but still it frustrates me.
Another time the rules seem slightly optional is when we are running drills that involve cone made boxes or rectangles, for example a 4v2 keep away game. I can't tell you how many times the ball has rolled out of bounce but the play continued. It seems like if you try to save the ball from going out really hard, then even if it does go out, that doesn't matter. This is especially frustrating when the point of 2 players against 4 on defense is to knock the ball out of bounds. It is extremely frustrating for the ball to be OUT OF BOUNDS, but for play to continue. I've voiced my opinion on this to one of the other 2nd years and he looked at me like I was some kind of foreigner or something...oh wait.
Enough soccer ranting.
Yesterday for the first time in 2 weeks it rained. Today as well. This really bummed me out because I was planning on having a bbq today. Fudge.
I had a great conversation with the guys from Nestle the other night, we talked about the "Sony timer." For homework every week I choose an article for them to read and write a short passage on, explaining their thoughts and opinions. This past week I gave them an article describing the recent GM recall concerning their windshield washer fluid heating system, apparently something was wrong with it and GM had to recall I think around 1.5 million vehicles. Anyway, I had asked them the question, do you think this recall will hurt GM's sales? The answer by one of the guys is priceless:
I think this recall will cause big damage for GM, but is not critical damage, so their sales won’t go down very much. There are 3 reasons. The first is that GM’s owners know that GM cars have a lot of mechanical problems, but they decide to purchase GM cars because of their reasonable price, design, and because of their patriotism.
Now setting aside the grammar and idiomatic mistakes, he makes a valid point. But I have to admit when I read this I almost died laughing. "GM customers know GM cars are broken but they buy them anyway." Man that is just too funny.
So when we entered the next session, I brought up the point he made, and asked him if that is how Japanese people view American made cars, and him and the other guys agreed that that is the basic view that Japanese have of American made cars. So I asked if there were any Japanese companies that fell into the same category, and they all instantly said "SONY!"
In Japanese there is something called 決まった言い方 which means set/ritualistic phrase. Like when you go to someones house, you should always take a gift, and when you give that gift to them there is a set phrase that you say. Whether it be your in-laws or the emperor it is going to basically be the same set phrase. So when people are describing the life spans of products, they usually do it in terms of the "Sony timer." This timer refers to the amount of time a product has before it breaks. The term is obviously based off of Sony's amazing products that apparently only last 3 years, because 3 years is the standard Sony Timer. One of the guys apparently bought a Sony Viao 3 years ago, and is having some anxiety about how much longer it will last.
Good thing I bought a dell.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Yosakoi!
Good evening everyone!
The weather here has been absolutely beautiful, 75 degrees and sunny for the past week and a half straight. Couldn't have asked for anything better after an 8 month winter. I've only got maybe 7-8 weeks left here in Hokkaido, so I've got to enjoy what I can right?
This morning I had an unexpected visitor actually, not sure what their names are in Japanese but one of these was in my room, and woke me up this morning.
Follow the link to see pics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet
A giant Asian hornet, or at least the Japanese version. It was honestly enormous. Maybe 2-3 inches long, its stinger was the size of a quarter. According to our friends over at wikipedia these critters kill around 40 Japanese every year, though most of them die because they are allergic. I'd rather not find out. Anyway, I swapped it with a folder and through him back out the window, and went back to sleep. What a morning.
After that I met with a couple of my group members to discuss the topic of our final presentation. It's a pretty international group, with a Japanese student, a Russian student, and Chinese student, and me. Due to the fact that I'm the only native speaker of English a little bit more of the responsibility falls upon me, but that's okay as long as the other group members pull their own weight. We decided to try to research 2 topics. One being training practices of Japanese companies, and the other being a case study of Nestle Japan. Since I work with guys from Nestle, I figured I might try to make use of that connection to get some inside looks at Nestle Japan, and see how it works. I'm going to propose the research to them on Tuesday night, hopefully they will go through with it.
This past Thursday, one of Hokkaido's most famous festivals started up again, it is called Yosakoi. Yo as in yohan, sa as in supplemental, and koi as in the fish. It is a dancing festival that was actually invented at Hokkaido University, and I have to admit it is really cool. There are about 75 teams that came to compete, and I only got to see maybe 20 of them in the 3 hours that I watched. People of all ages were dancing, to serious or joyful songs, it was really a sight to behold. You wouldn't see anything like this in America. I've taken a bunch of videos and will try to upload them on to youtube, but they are really large file sizes so I don't know if it will work to be honest, I will get back to you guys on that.
The weather here has been absolutely beautiful, 75 degrees and sunny for the past week and a half straight. Couldn't have asked for anything better after an 8 month winter. I've only got maybe 7-8 weeks left here in Hokkaido, so I've got to enjoy what I can right?
This morning I had an unexpected visitor actually, not sure what their names are in Japanese but one of these was in my room, and woke me up this morning.
Follow the link to see pics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_giant_hornet
A giant Asian hornet, or at least the Japanese version. It was honestly enormous. Maybe 2-3 inches long, its stinger was the size of a quarter. According to our friends over at wikipedia these critters kill around 40 Japanese every year, though most of them die because they are allergic. I'd rather not find out. Anyway, I swapped it with a folder and through him back out the window, and went back to sleep. What a morning.
After that I met with a couple of my group members to discuss the topic of our final presentation. It's a pretty international group, with a Japanese student, a Russian student, and Chinese student, and me. Due to the fact that I'm the only native speaker of English a little bit more of the responsibility falls upon me, but that's okay as long as the other group members pull their own weight. We decided to try to research 2 topics. One being training practices of Japanese companies, and the other being a case study of Nestle Japan. Since I work with guys from Nestle, I figured I might try to make use of that connection to get some inside looks at Nestle Japan, and see how it works. I'm going to propose the research to them on Tuesday night, hopefully they will go through with it.
This past Thursday, one of Hokkaido's most famous festivals started up again, it is called Yosakoi. Yo as in yohan, sa as in supplemental, and koi as in the fish. It is a dancing festival that was actually invented at Hokkaido University, and I have to admit it is really cool. There are about 75 teams that came to compete, and I only got to see maybe 20 of them in the 3 hours that I watched. People of all ages were dancing, to serious or joyful songs, it was really a sight to behold. You wouldn't see anything like this in America. I've taken a bunch of videos and will try to upload them on to youtube, but they are really large file sizes so I don't know if it will work to be honest, I will get back to you guys on that.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Fitting in
I'm in the writing mood, so you guys get a 2 for 1 bonus! Maybe it is the trance.....note to self, more trance!
So I've been in this country for a long time now, and I would say I am still very far from being an expert on Japan and such, but would also like to think that kinda know my way around Japanese society and such. So the question I want to raise is, how much do you change yourself to fit into a society? How much should I change myself, my habits, and my routine so that I fit into Japanese society. I have to say right now, that in my opinion, no matter what I do I would never be considered a Japanese. Even if I lived here for the rest of my life, naturalized, became fluent, none of that would matter to the Japanese people.
That being said, I have taken some steps to do what I can to fit in. Obviously I don't run around, acting like a fool, trying to get in to trouble, but at the same time some of my patience has been wearing thin recently. One of the things that is starting to aggravate me is having to take off my shoes in lots of different places. When I go to the gym, I have to take off my shoes to walk around inside. At lots of restaurants and stores, you might have to take off your shoes. Now I don't object to this at all when it comes to houses, but honestly, at a restaurant or at the gym, it is pretty ridiculous, especially considering the fact that I've seen some Japanese people NOT obey this rule.
For example, today at the gym, a kid took off his shoes at the entrance way, and instead of....standing on his shoes he just took off, stepping up, on to the level where you can only have sox on, and then picking up his shoes and putting them in a locker, he took his shoes off, stepped to the side, picked them up and put them in a locker (remember at this point he is standing on the same level where you walk with your shoes not your sox) and then proceeded to step up onto the level where you can only wear your socks! So the bottom of his socks touched the same place as the bottom of his shoes!! Isn't he supposed to burn for eternity and his offspring have bad luck for 10,000 years or something? I mean come on, it honestly makes no sense.
The gym...ALL parts of it, not just the place where you can walk with your shoes, is...incredibly dirty. I am really sure no one cleans anything in any of these places, and that is also starting to kind of get on my nerves. In the class rooms, you put your backpack down, grab the stuff you need for class, then class ends and you grab your backpack again, only to find that whichever parts of it touched the ground are now covered in dirt, dust, and grime. Restaurants aren't that dirty, but I still feel uncomfortable having to take off my shoes, that combined with the whole tatami sitting style, where you sit on the ground to eat. It is kind of fun the first 5 times you do it until you realize that it is incredibly uncomfortable to be in that position for longer than 30 minutes.
I'm also getting sick of the foreigner look. I know I am big, and sort of goofy looking, and look like I am angry sometimes, but honestly, some of the looks I get are just disturbing which is surprising because Japanese people try to avoid like, direct eye contact and staring, unless you are ancient, in which case you can just frown and do whatever you want at foreigners. Yeah, that's right, old Japanese women give me the dirtiest looks in the world. Sometimes I want to tell them their shoe is untied or something funny like that when they stare at me for an especially long time, just to try to distract them or something. I mean honestly I am not all that interesting, just buzz off. I guess I should be used to it by now, but on the flip side, can they really be that shallow that they dislike foreigners that much? I mean their entire economy is based on foreign countries buying their goods. They should be thankful I have come to their country and might some day work to better the connection between America and Japan.
This specific topic actually, has been raised by experts who have cited cases where companies have basically said F Japan, they are too unwilling to change and too stubborn and rooted in their old ways, and taken their business to other countries, say for example China. I don't blame them, honestly. In some of the places I have been there has definitely been simply an aura of dislike towards me, and I wouldn't want to do business in that kind of environment.
In the fall I went to a school in a rural area and spent the day with school children in the 8th grade, and it was a lot of fun. I might have another opportunity like that coming up again, but I had a sort of strange thought, possibly one that only I would have. The program would involve me making several short presentations on America, and having lunch with the students. Now this sounds like fun and a good experience and stuff, but I also just had the idea that I was being paraded around the school, like I was some foreign, rare specimen they had found that they were showing the kids.
Of course the kids wouldn't see it that way, and I suppose they do really look forward to meeting people from other countries, but it also just makes me sad that such programs in Japan exists, where they want people from other countries to come and explain their culture and history to the kids. I tried to think back to my school days if we had kids from other countries giving presentations in front of class, and the only thing I could remember was every year in middle school, we had inmates from the nearby prison come and tell us not to do drugs.
Which presentation would you prefer? lol
So I've been in this country for a long time now, and I would say I am still very far from being an expert on Japan and such, but would also like to think that kinda know my way around Japanese society and such. So the question I want to raise is, how much do you change yourself to fit into a society? How much should I change myself, my habits, and my routine so that I fit into Japanese society. I have to say right now, that in my opinion, no matter what I do I would never be considered a Japanese. Even if I lived here for the rest of my life, naturalized, became fluent, none of that would matter to the Japanese people.
That being said, I have taken some steps to do what I can to fit in. Obviously I don't run around, acting like a fool, trying to get in to trouble, but at the same time some of my patience has been wearing thin recently. One of the things that is starting to aggravate me is having to take off my shoes in lots of different places. When I go to the gym, I have to take off my shoes to walk around inside. At lots of restaurants and stores, you might have to take off your shoes. Now I don't object to this at all when it comes to houses, but honestly, at a restaurant or at the gym, it is pretty ridiculous, especially considering the fact that I've seen some Japanese people NOT obey this rule.
For example, today at the gym, a kid took off his shoes at the entrance way, and instead of....standing on his shoes he just took off, stepping up, on to the level where you can only have sox on, and then picking up his shoes and putting them in a locker, he took his shoes off, stepped to the side, picked them up and put them in a locker (remember at this point he is standing on the same level where you walk with your shoes not your sox) and then proceeded to step up onto the level where you can only wear your socks! So the bottom of his socks touched the same place as the bottom of his shoes!! Isn't he supposed to burn for eternity and his offspring have bad luck for 10,000 years or something? I mean come on, it honestly makes no sense.
The gym...ALL parts of it, not just the place where you can walk with your shoes, is...incredibly dirty. I am really sure no one cleans anything in any of these places, and that is also starting to kind of get on my nerves. In the class rooms, you put your backpack down, grab the stuff you need for class, then class ends and you grab your backpack again, only to find that whichever parts of it touched the ground are now covered in dirt, dust, and grime. Restaurants aren't that dirty, but I still feel uncomfortable having to take off my shoes, that combined with the whole tatami sitting style, where you sit on the ground to eat. It is kind of fun the first 5 times you do it until you realize that it is incredibly uncomfortable to be in that position for longer than 30 minutes.
I'm also getting sick of the foreigner look. I know I am big, and sort of goofy looking, and look like I am angry sometimes, but honestly, some of the looks I get are just disturbing which is surprising because Japanese people try to avoid like, direct eye contact and staring, unless you are ancient, in which case you can just frown and do whatever you want at foreigners. Yeah, that's right, old Japanese women give me the dirtiest looks in the world. Sometimes I want to tell them their shoe is untied or something funny like that when they stare at me for an especially long time, just to try to distract them or something. I mean honestly I am not all that interesting, just buzz off. I guess I should be used to it by now, but on the flip side, can they really be that shallow that they dislike foreigners that much? I mean their entire economy is based on foreign countries buying their goods. They should be thankful I have come to their country and might some day work to better the connection between America and Japan.
This specific topic actually, has been raised by experts who have cited cases where companies have basically said F Japan, they are too unwilling to change and too stubborn and rooted in their old ways, and taken their business to other countries, say for example China. I don't blame them, honestly. In some of the places I have been there has definitely been simply an aura of dislike towards me, and I wouldn't want to do business in that kind of environment.
In the fall I went to a school in a rural area and spent the day with school children in the 8th grade, and it was a lot of fun. I might have another opportunity like that coming up again, but I had a sort of strange thought, possibly one that only I would have. The program would involve me making several short presentations on America, and having lunch with the students. Now this sounds like fun and a good experience and stuff, but I also just had the idea that I was being paraded around the school, like I was some foreign, rare specimen they had found that they were showing the kids.
Of course the kids wouldn't see it that way, and I suppose they do really look forward to meeting people from other countries, but it also just makes me sad that such programs in Japan exists, where they want people from other countries to come and explain their culture and history to the kids. I tried to think back to my school days if we had kids from other countries giving presentations in front of class, and the only thing I could remember was every year in middle school, we had inmates from the nearby prison come and tell us not to do drugs.
Which presentation would you prefer? lol
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