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
Hi there!
How often do you say hello during the day? 10 times? 20 times? Do you say hello, good morning, whatever to every single person you see?
When I first started studying Japanese, I never realized how important simple words like good morning, good afternoon, and good evening would be. You see, every time I go to soccer, I use one of these...maybe 15-20 times. You literally have to say it to almost everyone on the team. So let's say there are 30 people on the team, and you arrive after 4 other people, you will have to say 'hello' to each of the next 25 people that come. I guess I don't really have a problem saying hello that many times, but to be honest it is starting to wear on my nerves a little bit. It is definitely one of those group aspects of Japanese society, where you have to greet everyone in the group before anything can happen. I was trying to think back to my high school soccer days, and what it would have been like if I would have said hello to every single person each time I went to practice and I literally just started laughing by myself, at which point several of the other guys gave me funny look.
But seriously, it is something that happens every single practice, every single day.
I had a good time this past Monday night as well. After my 4 hour Japanese zemi class, we all went out for a drink to a place called Tapa. I'm not sure if the name of the bar/restaurant has any significance, but it was actually my second time going to the place. We ordered the, all you can drink all you can eat 2 hour deal, sat down, and waited for our drinks to come. The system at this place was if you have 13 people, you can order 13 dishes, and when you finish one, you can order one more.
Now when I first came to this place with the soccer team, I think there were 10-15 starving guys, so we developed a pretty good system. As soon as the waiter came and put down the first plate or bowl of food, say for instance 5 hot wings, we would instantly grab all 5 of them, start eating them, give the waiter the plate back, and order another dish, thus maximizing the amount of food we could order.
It was a good system, but this place was still super slow. This past Monday, we sat down at 6:30, ordered, got our drinks within 5 minutes, but our first round of food didn't come until 6:50, and a bunch of our food never even came at all. We ordered 4 orders of karage, or basically fried chicken ball appetizers, that come in a single bowl, with one bowl holding 4 chicken balls. At 6:50, a waitress came up the stairs (we were on the second floor), with 1 single bowl of karage, that had 4 pieces of fried chicken in it. As soon as she left we were all discussing just what the f happened. Where were the other 3 orders of the karage? One of the other guys suggested that we ordered 4 orders of karage, and that since the bowl had 4 pieces of chicken in it, supposedly the place had filled our order of karage.
I quickly objected, pointing to the picture of a bowl of karage on the menu, saying that there is no way an order is a single piece of fried chicken. Then pointing to the picture above that of a bowl packed with fries, I asked 'What if we order fries? If we order 4 orders of fries are we going to only get literally 4 fries?' This actually made everyone laugh (including the professor), and I don't like to brag about my jokes because 99% of the time they are horrible anyway, but there are very few opportunities where my language and cultural Japanese abilities align with a situation where I can really get a good joke in. I have to admit I am super proud of this one.
When I first started studying Japanese, I never realized how important simple words like good morning, good afternoon, and good evening would be. You see, every time I go to soccer, I use one of these...maybe 15-20 times. You literally have to say it to almost everyone on the team. So let's say there are 30 people on the team, and you arrive after 4 other people, you will have to say 'hello' to each of the next 25 people that come. I guess I don't really have a problem saying hello that many times, but to be honest it is starting to wear on my nerves a little bit. It is definitely one of those group aspects of Japanese society, where you have to greet everyone in the group before anything can happen. I was trying to think back to my high school soccer days, and what it would have been like if I would have said hello to every single person each time I went to practice and I literally just started laughing by myself, at which point several of the other guys gave me funny look.
But seriously, it is something that happens every single practice, every single day.
I had a good time this past Monday night as well. After my 4 hour Japanese zemi class, we all went out for a drink to a place called Tapa. I'm not sure if the name of the bar/restaurant has any significance, but it was actually my second time going to the place. We ordered the, all you can drink all you can eat 2 hour deal, sat down, and waited for our drinks to come. The system at this place was if you have 13 people, you can order 13 dishes, and when you finish one, you can order one more.
Now when I first came to this place with the soccer team, I think there were 10-15 starving guys, so we developed a pretty good system. As soon as the waiter came and put down the first plate or bowl of food, say for instance 5 hot wings, we would instantly grab all 5 of them, start eating them, give the waiter the plate back, and order another dish, thus maximizing the amount of food we could order.
It was a good system, but this place was still super slow. This past Monday, we sat down at 6:30, ordered, got our drinks within 5 minutes, but our first round of food didn't come until 6:50, and a bunch of our food never even came at all. We ordered 4 orders of karage, or basically fried chicken ball appetizers, that come in a single bowl, with one bowl holding 4 chicken balls. At 6:50, a waitress came up the stairs (we were on the second floor), with 1 single bowl of karage, that had 4 pieces of fried chicken in it. As soon as she left we were all discussing just what the f happened. Where were the other 3 orders of the karage? One of the other guys suggested that we ordered 4 orders of karage, and that since the bowl had 4 pieces of chicken in it, supposedly the place had filled our order of karage.
I quickly objected, pointing to the picture of a bowl of karage on the menu, saying that there is no way an order is a single piece of fried chicken. Then pointing to the picture above that of a bowl packed with fries, I asked 'What if we order fries? If we order 4 orders of fries are we going to only get literally 4 fries?' This actually made everyone laugh (including the professor), and I don't like to brag about my jokes because 99% of the time they are horrible anyway, but there are very few opportunities where my language and cultural Japanese abilities align with a situation where I can really get a good joke in. I have to admit I am super proud of this one.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Spring is in the air..
Hanami is the word that literally means looking at flowers, hana = flower and mi = to look, but to the Japanese people it is so much more. They have a tradition in the spring that when the cherry blossoms begin to bloom, everyone packs a basket of food, and they go and have a picnic under the cherry trees. This is a really cool tradition and stuff, but for me it was really surprising to find out that when they do this, they also drink like mad. So over the last couple of days, we have actually have blooming cherry blossoms, that noon or two in the middle of the day, you will just see a group of like business men and their wives, completely hammered, trying to stumble their way back to their homes or to the train station. Pretty funny.
Note: Next little bit has a bad word...
So I'm taking this class about 'women who have changed our world' and it's a pretty interesting class, and there are several Japanese kids in my class. Now these HUSTEP classes are in English, but Japanese students can take them as well if they have a high enough language ability. I would like to share one of the conversations I had with another one of the Japanese kids in the class. We had just read a reading selection on Jane Goodall, and we were supposed to discuss what we thought of her. So when we got done, I asked this guy next to me, 'what do you think of Jane Goodall?'
He sits there and things for a minute, then he says "she is fucking women!" I kind of sat there laughing and almost crying for about 2 minutes because just the way he said it was hilarious. I had no idea what he was actually trying to say, and he just sat there with this confused look on his face, wondering what he had just said. Man I was dying...After I finally had control of myself I asked him what he really meant and he said sugoi in Japanese which basically means great, so I think he was trying to say that she was great or something, and be cool at the same time so he decided to throw the f bomb in there just for kicks...but man was it funny.
Back to Japanese language. The kanji system is basically drawings that represent ideas, things, or places and such. So like 鳥 means bird, and 牛 means cow. One day we were in Kanji class and the sensei is trying to pronounce this Chinese guy's name, so she asks him what character he uses to write his name. Well the guy is a bit heavier than your average Chinese male, and he replied with "buta" 豚 which means pig. The sensei was doing everything she could to not laugh, and so were half the students. I felt really bad for the guy, but apparently not very many people choose to name their kids after pigs and such, but man it was pretty funny. The sensei's face was getting super red and she kept having to just look down and facepalm.
Also the Kanji for women is 女 and it is read onna, so I don't know much about the history of Kanji and all but I am pretty sure it was invented by guys because the Kanji for loud and annoying, is written by putting 3 女 figures together...thus the idea is that 3 women are loud and annoying lol.
Note: Next little bit has a bad word...
So I'm taking this class about 'women who have changed our world' and it's a pretty interesting class, and there are several Japanese kids in my class. Now these HUSTEP classes are in English, but Japanese students can take them as well if they have a high enough language ability. I would like to share one of the conversations I had with another one of the Japanese kids in the class. We had just read a reading selection on Jane Goodall, and we were supposed to discuss what we thought of her. So when we got done, I asked this guy next to me, 'what do you think of Jane Goodall?'
He sits there and things for a minute, then he says "she is fucking women!" I kind of sat there laughing and almost crying for about 2 minutes because just the way he said it was hilarious. I had no idea what he was actually trying to say, and he just sat there with this confused look on his face, wondering what he had just said. Man I was dying...After I finally had control of myself I asked him what he really meant and he said sugoi in Japanese which basically means great, so I think he was trying to say that she was great or something, and be cool at the same time so he decided to throw the f bomb in there just for kicks...but man was it funny.
Back to Japanese language. The kanji system is basically drawings that represent ideas, things, or places and such. So like 鳥 means bird, and 牛 means cow. One day we were in Kanji class and the sensei is trying to pronounce this Chinese guy's name, so she asks him what character he uses to write his name. Well the guy is a bit heavier than your average Chinese male, and he replied with "buta" 豚 which means pig. The sensei was doing everything she could to not laugh, and so were half the students. I felt really bad for the guy, but apparently not very many people choose to name their kids after pigs and such, but man it was pretty funny. The sensei's face was getting super red and she kept having to just look down and facepalm.
Also the Kanji for women is 女 and it is read onna, so I don't know much about the history of Kanji and all but I am pretty sure it was invented by guys because the Kanji for loud and annoying, is written by putting 3 女 figures together...thus the idea is that 3 women are loud and annoying lol.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Spring is in the air
Well, after the winter that lasted forever, then traveling to Honshu and enjoying spring there, only to have to return to a cold and barren Hokkaido, spring has finally reached campus. And oh was it worth the wait. The last few days have been absolutely gorgeous, and although I've had the last couple days off, we've had a couple of scrimmages. Here are a couple of quick pictures:
I tell ya, it's pretty hard to beat playing soccer in 70 degree weather, with a slight breeze, with snow capped mountains in the background.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
2nd video blog
Here's the video, and the link just in case:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ejSu0T-_ZY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ejSu0T-_ZY
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Why do Japanese people hate foreigners?
So maybe some of you readers have heard that Japanese people aren't the biggest fan of foreigners. If we think about why for a minute, we can come up with a bunch of reasons, but I would like to point out a couple more legitimate reasons that Japanese people have to actually dislike foreigners. So lets take a quick look at these pictures:
Pretty cool right? The University provides housing, internet, and other services to the people who com to the university to study, only to be repaid like this. This is honestly disgusting. The school year in Japan restarts in the spring (April) unlike America where it restarts in the fall. Thus over the last month or so you've had a bunch of people moving out and such, and I guess they thought that since they were leaving the country, they would just throw their trash and stuff out into the grass because they really don't give a damn. Honestly disgusting.
You can see on the sign that it specifically states no dumping of well, anything, but people have disregarded that and just strewn everything about. In the brochure we received when we moved in, it gave specific instructions for the disposal of all of this kind of stuff, but once again people didn't even abide by that. There are 2 piles of trash, both are next to the dumpsters where we place the smaller bags of burnable and non-burnable garbage and such, but this is so embarrassing for me honestly.
Not the best blog entry I know, but it kind of shows why Japanese people might not have the highest opinion of foreigners.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Monday
Monday
So let’s talk 5 minutes about kimonos before I get into the story of Monday. Kimonos are actually NOT part of Japanese culture, something I got wrong on this Monday. When talking to the very nice women who worked at the store, she asked me and Kay why we had wanted to wear kimonos, and I replied that they were a very easy way to really try to experience Japanese culture, and something totally foreign and yet accessible to foreigners such as ourselves. And I asked her how long Japanese people had been wearing kimonos because I thought they had been wearing them for thousands of years but she said that they had only been in Japan for about 600 years. This totally surprised me because honestly I thought they had been one of the centerpieces of Japanese society for like thousands of years. She said that they were actually brought over from China, along with basically tons of other cultural ideas and such.
Anyway, we left the hotel in the morning around 9:00 after eating all the toast we could for breakfast and made our way outside of Tokyo into Saitama-ken, and to the city of Oomiya. Entering another ‘Ken’ is basically like entering another state in the United States, but overall the train ride was only 1 hour, so things are on a much smaller scale in Japan. We arrived at Oomiya station with no problem, but with me being the ultimate trip planner, I actually didn’t have a map of the city with me, didn’t have the phone number of the store, and I didn’t know its address…So I decided the best plan of action was to…wander around for a little bit.
This would have been okay if it wasn’t for the fact that it was absolutely freezing cold outside. The sun was warm, but the cold was pretty chilly I must say, and when you are aimlessly looking around a city for a single small kimono shop, that kind of wind can be pretty annoying. So we gave up wandering aimlessly and went back to the station to ask for help. We asked these two little ladies at the ‘information’ desk if they knew anything about the store, but they actually had no idea, so we said goodbye to them and walked over to a pole where I decided to call my friend Kenji and ask him to look up the place for me lol.
While on the phone with him, one of the little ladies actually came running over with a map and said that she had found the store and gave me the map so that we could find it. Turns out my aimlessly wandering had been in the right direction but the store was about twice as far from the train station as I had originally thought. It is also incredibly hard to tell what qualifies as a street on a Japanese map because the difference between allies and street is so small because they are basically the same thing. So when you are looking at a map of just a bunch of white squares, it becomes rather difficult to decipher just what is what. But we made our way to the store and the women who worked there was actually standing in front of the store waiting to greet us.
So this was a tiny little shop owned by a single family for 3 generations, pretty cool in my opinion. We got to meet all 3 members of the family, I’m assuming the youngest daughter, who was our age, and her parents, and they were all extremely nice and helpful. It took us about an hour to get our kimonos on, but we finally did, and I must admit that it was totally worth it. Kay was wearing a light purple kimono with a golden obi (the sash that goes around the middle) and I was wearing a blue kimono that well, just wasn’t quite long enough…
Japanese people love the phrase: sikata ga nai, or syoo gai nai. A literal translation yields there is no way of doing anything, and it basically means ‘it cannot be helped.’ So the girl our age told us she had searched for the tallest kimono (I had told her my height before hand) and this was the best that she could do. Well, I am just too tall for Japan.
After getting our kimonos on, we made our way to a shrine, a park, and a bamboo forest that were all within walking distance of the shop. The shrine was a rank 1 shrine which means it was of the highest ranking shrines. Whenever there is a new emperor he must visit this shrine (and possibly all the rank 1 shrines) so it was pretty important to the Japanese people. Oomiya actually means large shrine, pretty cool. The shrine itself was super cool. We couldn’t take too many pictures of the interior because that stuff is super important, and we didn’t really know what a lot of it meant but it was still very interesting and the artwork was really beautiful.
After the shrine we walked through a pretty large park that was really beautiful. The Sakura (cheery blossom) trees weren’t really blooming yet, but they still have a pink tint that was pretty cool. There was also a river and small amusement park, and at the time we didn’t know it, but it had actually been a holiday so there were tons of people everywhere with their families, enjoying a day off.
The bamboo forest wasn’t a natural one, just one that had been made on this one corner plot but it was still super cool. The trees were so straight and thick they almost seemed fake, and the roots looked like worms. Yay.
So that was basically our entire Kimono adventure, overall super awesome.
Once we got back to Tokyo we met up with my friend Kenji and, actually went to a pizza place! I know it sounds funny that we are in Japan, but he told me that this place was super good and his friend worked there so we might be able to get some special discount or something, and I had been dying for some real pizza. We met him in Ikebukuro and went to this pizza place and I have to admit it that it was worth it and totally delicious. The pizza was made pretty well, they had a real large stone oven that they made them in, so it was pretty authentic.
So a full day of beautiful weather, getting into some Japanese customs and sight-seeing, and ending with some pizza made Monday a very good day indeed!!
So let’s talk 5 minutes about kimonos before I get into the story of Monday. Kimonos are actually NOT part of Japanese culture, something I got wrong on this Monday. When talking to the very nice women who worked at the store, she asked me and Kay why we had wanted to wear kimonos, and I replied that they were a very easy way to really try to experience Japanese culture, and something totally foreign and yet accessible to foreigners such as ourselves. And I asked her how long Japanese people had been wearing kimonos because I thought they had been wearing them for thousands of years but she said that they had only been in Japan for about 600 years. This totally surprised me because honestly I thought they had been one of the centerpieces of Japanese society for like thousands of years. She said that they were actually brought over from China, along with basically tons of other cultural ideas and such.
Anyway, we left the hotel in the morning around 9:00 after eating all the toast we could for breakfast and made our way outside of Tokyo into Saitama-ken, and to the city of Oomiya. Entering another ‘Ken’ is basically like entering another state in the United States, but overall the train ride was only 1 hour, so things are on a much smaller scale in Japan. We arrived at Oomiya station with no problem, but with me being the ultimate trip planner, I actually didn’t have a map of the city with me, didn’t have the phone number of the store, and I didn’t know its address…So I decided the best plan of action was to…wander around for a little bit.
This would have been okay if it wasn’t for the fact that it was absolutely freezing cold outside. The sun was warm, but the cold was pretty chilly I must say, and when you are aimlessly looking around a city for a single small kimono shop, that kind of wind can be pretty annoying. So we gave up wandering aimlessly and went back to the station to ask for help. We asked these two little ladies at the ‘information’ desk if they knew anything about the store, but they actually had no idea, so we said goodbye to them and walked over to a pole where I decided to call my friend Kenji and ask him to look up the place for me lol.
While on the phone with him, one of the little ladies actually came running over with a map and said that she had found the store and gave me the map so that we could find it. Turns out my aimlessly wandering had been in the right direction but the store was about twice as far from the train station as I had originally thought. It is also incredibly hard to tell what qualifies as a street on a Japanese map because the difference between allies and street is so small because they are basically the same thing. So when you are looking at a map of just a bunch of white squares, it becomes rather difficult to decipher just what is what. But we made our way to the store and the women who worked there was actually standing in front of the store waiting to greet us.
So this was a tiny little shop owned by a single family for 3 generations, pretty cool in my opinion. We got to meet all 3 members of the family, I’m assuming the youngest daughter, who was our age, and her parents, and they were all extremely nice and helpful. It took us about an hour to get our kimonos on, but we finally did, and I must admit that it was totally worth it. Kay was wearing a light purple kimono with a golden obi (the sash that goes around the middle) and I was wearing a blue kimono that well, just wasn’t quite long enough…
Japanese people love the phrase: sikata ga nai, or syoo gai nai. A literal translation yields there is no way of doing anything, and it basically means ‘it cannot be helped.’ So the girl our age told us she had searched for the tallest kimono (I had told her my height before hand) and this was the best that she could do. Well, I am just too tall for Japan.
After getting our kimonos on, we made our way to a shrine, a park, and a bamboo forest that were all within walking distance of the shop. The shrine was a rank 1 shrine which means it was of the highest ranking shrines. Whenever there is a new emperor he must visit this shrine (and possibly all the rank 1 shrines) so it was pretty important to the Japanese people. Oomiya actually means large shrine, pretty cool. The shrine itself was super cool. We couldn’t take too many pictures of the interior because that stuff is super important, and we didn’t really know what a lot of it meant but it was still very interesting and the artwork was really beautiful.
After the shrine we walked through a pretty large park that was really beautiful. The Sakura (cheery blossom) trees weren’t really blooming yet, but they still have a pink tint that was pretty cool. There was also a river and small amusement park, and at the time we didn’t know it, but it had actually been a holiday so there were tons of people everywhere with their families, enjoying a day off.
The bamboo forest wasn’t a natural one, just one that had been made on this one corner plot but it was still super cool. The trees were so straight and thick they almost seemed fake, and the roots looked like worms. Yay.
So that was basically our entire Kimono adventure, overall super awesome.
Once we got back to Tokyo we met up with my friend Kenji and, actually went to a pizza place! I know it sounds funny that we are in Japan, but he told me that this place was super good and his friend worked there so we might be able to get some special discount or something, and I had been dying for some real pizza. We met him in Ikebukuro and went to this pizza place and I have to admit it that it was worth it and totally delicious. The pizza was made pretty well, they had a real large stone oven that they made them in, so it was pretty authentic.
So a full day of beautiful weather, getting into some Japanese customs and sight-seeing, and ending with some pizza made Monday a very good day indeed!!
Monday, March 22, 2010
Hotel and Mos burger
From Narita Airport to out hotel, it's actually about a 2 hour commute, which kind of wasn't very fun because I had to stand the whole time, which doesn't sound that bad, but actually I had had to stand on the train to GET to the airport, so all in all I stood up for about 6 hours on trains, and needless to say I was rather tired.
But, we finally made it to the hotel, which I must admit is rather nice. Then we were a little bit hungry, so we went out for a bite after getting ourselves situation with the room and I took her to a chain called Mos burger. The name is actually short for Most Delicious Burger, which if you think about it pretty much the dumbest name for a burger chain in the world, but it works for Japanese people.
Aside: Japanese people really don't know just what the hell to name their stores 90% of the time. I think they just open up a dictionary and just flip to a page with their eyes close then choose whatever word SOUNDS cool. I mean seriously, who in their right mind, would name a store Boycott? Like hey guys, my store is SO COOL that you should BOYCOTT it!! Yeah rock on!! Loft is another chain that is super huge here in Japan, but what does Loft even mean? Don't even try to tell me it's a Japanese name because it most certainly is not. OIOI and Tokyu Hands are both stores owned by the Tokyu Group or whatever that conglomerate's name is, but like...OIOI? What does that even mean? I asked my friend Kenji and he said he had no clue.
So back to Mos burger anyway. It's basically the direct competition of McDonald's, where McD's aims for speed and efficiency, MB (Mos burger because I am lazy) goes for the quality and the artistic liberal side of the hamburger. They are both good, but I actually like McD's a lot more. Mos burger puts funky stuff on all of their burgers, or at least in Tokyo they do. The first time I went to an MB in hokkaido, I just got a normal double decker burger and some fries and stuff, and it tasted good, but was overpriced and the burger had the dimensions of a quarter. Down south here in Tokyo though, i couldn't find just a normal burger, because everything had this chilly/onion paste on it. All of the burgers had this stuff on it, no regular burgers, I was thoroughly confused to be honest.
So Kay told me what she wanted and I ordered for the two of us, and both of us being pretty dehydrated at this point, I ordered water for both of us as well, only to be told that they didn't have any water. My brain sort of came to a screeching halt at this point, having the little ancient man behind the counter tell me they didn't have any water, and he pointed to the list of drinks they we could get, but water wasn't on there. I mean like...how can you not have water? What's up with that? So Kay got Orange juice, and I just got Cola (not going to recommend generic Japanese cola btw) and we sat down and had our meal.
Right now the weather is pretty chilly at night, but the sun is super warm when it's out...just saying. And the wind is stupid cold.
But, we finally made it to the hotel, which I must admit is rather nice. Then we were a little bit hungry, so we went out for a bite after getting ourselves situation with the room and I took her to a chain called Mos burger. The name is actually short for Most Delicious Burger, which if you think about it pretty much the dumbest name for a burger chain in the world, but it works for Japanese people.
Aside: Japanese people really don't know just what the hell to name their stores 90% of the time. I think they just open up a dictionary and just flip to a page with their eyes close then choose whatever word SOUNDS cool. I mean seriously, who in their right mind, would name a store Boycott? Like hey guys, my store is SO COOL that you should BOYCOTT it!! Yeah rock on!! Loft is another chain that is super huge here in Japan, but what does Loft even mean? Don't even try to tell me it's a Japanese name because it most certainly is not. OIOI and Tokyu Hands are both stores owned by the Tokyu Group or whatever that conglomerate's name is, but like...OIOI? What does that even mean? I asked my friend Kenji and he said he had no clue.
So back to Mos burger anyway. It's basically the direct competition of McDonald's, where McD's aims for speed and efficiency, MB (Mos burger because I am lazy) goes for the quality and the artistic liberal side of the hamburger. They are both good, but I actually like McD's a lot more. Mos burger puts funky stuff on all of their burgers, or at least in Tokyo they do. The first time I went to an MB in hokkaido, I just got a normal double decker burger and some fries and stuff, and it tasted good, but was overpriced and the burger had the dimensions of a quarter. Down south here in Tokyo though, i couldn't find just a normal burger, because everything had this chilly/onion paste on it. All of the burgers had this stuff on it, no regular burgers, I was thoroughly confused to be honest.
So Kay told me what she wanted and I ordered for the two of us, and both of us being pretty dehydrated at this point, I ordered water for both of us as well, only to be told that they didn't have any water. My brain sort of came to a screeching halt at this point, having the little ancient man behind the counter tell me they didn't have any water, and he pointed to the list of drinks they we could get, but water wasn't on there. I mean like...how can you not have water? What's up with that? So Kay got Orange juice, and I just got Cola (not going to recommend generic Japanese cola btw) and we sat down and had our meal.
Right now the weather is pretty chilly at night, but the sun is super warm when it's out...just saying. And the wind is stupid cold.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Tokyo Japan
Long time no see guys. To be honest my life has been rather dull lately, spring break consisted of mostly soccer, eating, and studying Japanese, so there really hasn't been much to talk about. But, for the next couple of weeks or so, I am going to be on the road, so there should be plenty to talk about.
First up, Tokyo Japan. This city is stupid. The density, is stupid. It feels like one city block of Tokyo has the same amount of people living in it as the entire campus of Ohio State. There are people everywhere, doing their thing, going from A to B, and this city is huge.
So I flew down Friday morning with my friend Kenji. He actually just graduated from Hokkaido University, and is moving here to work in a venture capital firm, so I helped him move and unpack and set up his new apartment, which is pretty nice I would say. After we finally got everything set up we went to a restaurant, don't remember the name, but it was supposedly famous around honshu, aka the main island of Japan. It was pretty western style, which made me happy because I was really feeling some man food, and I was pretty satisfied with the meal.
While we were eating, we had some good entertainment too. There was this pack of kids, Kenji said they had just graduated from 9th grade and were going to be high schoolers next year (only 3 years of hs in Japan btw). Anyway, it's illegal to smoke under the age of 18 in Japan, and they were being pretty roudy and stuff and going in and out of the store a lot, and then these 3 guys showed up in suits and stuff, and started giving them a hard time. Apparently these 3 guys were police, and they thought these kids had been smoking, the conversation and seeing this kid's faces was pretty funny to be honest...silly kids.
Anyway, after that me and Kenji just went splorin (exploring) a little bit around the area where he was going to be living for an undetermined period of time, and we ended up getting to tokaidou road, which back in the good old days, was the only road between Tokyo (at that time Edo) and Kyoto. These days the road is a huge highway with stores and stuff all along the sides and stuff, but it was pretty cool to walk along the same road that thousands of samurai traveled throughout Japan's history. I wanted a Katana...
So in the morning, I packed up my stuff and me and Kenji made our way into Tokyo. I was on my way to meet my girlfriend at Narita airport, and I think he was going to run some errands and just play around a bit, so we parted ways in Tokyo station, and i was left to fend for myself, and somehow make it to Narita airport. The train system in Japan is...well it's set up somewhat logical, and I knew exactly what lines to get on and such, but honestly I was pretty scared that I would end up in some backwater part of Tokyo. But, I made it to the airport, and I met Kay, and everything went rather smoothly to be honest.
More to come later.
First up, Tokyo Japan. This city is stupid. The density, is stupid. It feels like one city block of Tokyo has the same amount of people living in it as the entire campus of Ohio State. There are people everywhere, doing their thing, going from A to B, and this city is huge.
So I flew down Friday morning with my friend Kenji. He actually just graduated from Hokkaido University, and is moving here to work in a venture capital firm, so I helped him move and unpack and set up his new apartment, which is pretty nice I would say. After we finally got everything set up we went to a restaurant, don't remember the name, but it was supposedly famous around honshu, aka the main island of Japan. It was pretty western style, which made me happy because I was really feeling some man food, and I was pretty satisfied with the meal.
While we were eating, we had some good entertainment too. There was this pack of kids, Kenji said they had just graduated from 9th grade and were going to be high schoolers next year (only 3 years of hs in Japan btw). Anyway, it's illegal to smoke under the age of 18 in Japan, and they were being pretty roudy and stuff and going in and out of the store a lot, and then these 3 guys showed up in suits and stuff, and started giving them a hard time. Apparently these 3 guys were police, and they thought these kids had been smoking, the conversation and seeing this kid's faces was pretty funny to be honest...silly kids.
Anyway, after that me and Kenji just went splorin (exploring) a little bit around the area where he was going to be living for an undetermined period of time, and we ended up getting to tokaidou road, which back in the good old days, was the only road between Tokyo (at that time Edo) and Kyoto. These days the road is a huge highway with stores and stuff all along the sides and stuff, but it was pretty cool to walk along the same road that thousands of samurai traveled throughout Japan's history. I wanted a Katana...
So in the morning, I packed up my stuff and me and Kenji made our way into Tokyo. I was on my way to meet my girlfriend at Narita airport, and I think he was going to run some errands and just play around a bit, so we parted ways in Tokyo station, and i was left to fend for myself, and somehow make it to Narita airport. The train system in Japan is...well it's set up somewhat logical, and I knew exactly what lines to get on and such, but honestly I was pretty scared that I would end up in some backwater part of Tokyo. But, I made it to the airport, and I met Kay, and everything went rather smoothly to be honest.
More to come later.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Names
So, the coolest thing about Japanese people is there names. Names like Haneda, Suzuki, Nakayama, Tanaka. What's so cool about these names? Well like most names in cultures (I would assume) the names have meaning behind them. And in Japanese, the way you decipher these meanings is by simply looking at the kanzi characters (basically pictures) that make up the persons name.
So let's look at Tanaka. In Japanese, it is written 田中。 The first symbol means field or rice patty, and the second symbol means in the middle of. Thus, if your name is Tanaka, it means you are in the middle of a field...lol. Nakayama, 中山, means in the middle of a mountain. And Nakamura, 中村, means in the middle of the village. So it's pretty cool to see the meaning of the person's name just by looking at how they write it. You can't really make the connection that Wald means forest just by looking at the letters w,a,l, and d very easily...
So this same logic applies to places as well. 東京, Tokyo, actually means eastern lantern, and 京都 means lantern city, or something of the sort. I think Sapporo, 札幌 means frozen river or something like that, I learned it when I first got here but forgot...oops.
So, the meaning of a Japanese name is derived from the symbols used to write it. Now this story is a little old, but we were talking about Japanese names in my Kanji class last semester, and my kanji teacher told us a pretty funny story. Her mother, was born on 3/7, and (according to my kanji teacher) her parents were lazy, so they named her mina. Mi means 3, and na means 7 in Japanese, so her name was literally 37 (three seven). She didn't show us what characters were used to write it, but I have to admit I thought it was pretty funny.
Now I'm going to be even more shallow, and talk about the names of some of the students in my class. Now I realize making fun of someones name isn't the nicest thing to do, but come on, it's just for giggles. The class with the best names last semester was by far my Japanese writing class.
So lets start things off with a guy whose name sounded like imdaunkyou. Or, when you slow it down a little bit, I'ma dunk you lol. Every time the professor called for attendance at the beginning of class and said his name, I just got this mental image of 2 kids in a pool and one of them yelling that. Always brought a smile to my face...
Next up is probably my favorite, tincock. Well you already know where this is going, the latter half of his name means penis in English. What you might not know however, is that tin, also means penis in Japanese. So this poor fellow's name means penis in 2 languages...I can't help but laugh a little when I think about what kanzi characters are used to write his name....
So there were some other funny names in the class but those two are all I remember, and all I care to write about right now. Now if my name means something funny in another language, I would most certainly find it funny. It's just coincidence that language overlap sometimes, and if you don't stop to enjoy it for a minute, I think your missing out on some of the fun of studying foreign languages.
So I guess Monday in Japanese, getuyoubi, is super close to a Russian cuss word. Tuesday is as well, but whenever someone says Monday you can usually see the Russians in the room smirking a little bit. Sougei, pronounced basically soo gay, means to see someone off, and meet them when they return. Keiseiki is super close to basically the worst swear word in the Korean language. It's really amazing how often these language overlap, despite being completely different from one another...
So let's look at Tanaka. In Japanese, it is written 田中。 The first symbol means field or rice patty, and the second symbol means in the middle of. Thus, if your name is Tanaka, it means you are in the middle of a field...lol. Nakayama, 中山, means in the middle of a mountain. And Nakamura, 中村, means in the middle of the village. So it's pretty cool to see the meaning of the person's name just by looking at how they write it. You can't really make the connection that Wald means forest just by looking at the letters w,a,l, and d very easily...
So this same logic applies to places as well. 東京, Tokyo, actually means eastern lantern, and 京都 means lantern city, or something of the sort. I think Sapporo, 札幌 means frozen river or something like that, I learned it when I first got here but forgot...oops.
So, the meaning of a Japanese name is derived from the symbols used to write it. Now this story is a little old, but we were talking about Japanese names in my Kanji class last semester, and my kanji teacher told us a pretty funny story. Her mother, was born on 3/7, and (according to my kanji teacher) her parents were lazy, so they named her mina. Mi means 3, and na means 7 in Japanese, so her name was literally 37 (three seven). She didn't show us what characters were used to write it, but I have to admit I thought it was pretty funny.
Now I'm going to be even more shallow, and talk about the names of some of the students in my class. Now I realize making fun of someones name isn't the nicest thing to do, but come on, it's just for giggles. The class with the best names last semester was by far my Japanese writing class.
So lets start things off with a guy whose name sounded like imdaunkyou. Or, when you slow it down a little bit, I'ma dunk you lol. Every time the professor called for attendance at the beginning of class and said his name, I just got this mental image of 2 kids in a pool and one of them yelling that. Always brought a smile to my face...
Next up is probably my favorite, tincock. Well you already know where this is going, the latter half of his name means penis in English. What you might not know however, is that tin, also means penis in Japanese. So this poor fellow's name means penis in 2 languages...I can't help but laugh a little when I think about what kanzi characters are used to write his name....
So there were some other funny names in the class but those two are all I remember, and all I care to write about right now. Now if my name means something funny in another language, I would most certainly find it funny. It's just coincidence that language overlap sometimes, and if you don't stop to enjoy it for a minute, I think your missing out on some of the fun of studying foreign languages.
So I guess Monday in Japanese, getuyoubi, is super close to a Russian cuss word. Tuesday is as well, but whenever someone says Monday you can usually see the Russians in the room smirking a little bit. Sougei, pronounced basically soo gay, means to see someone off, and meet them when they return. Keiseiki is super close to basically the worst swear word in the Korean language. It's really amazing how often these language overlap, despite being completely different from one another...
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Who cleans this joint?
So I've been getting rather fed up with the soccer team, not because of practice or what not, but because of where we practice. There are 2 gyms on the north side of campus, and I don't think they've been cleaned in years.
The first gym has 2 floors, one is the court, and the 2nd has seating for those who want to watch whatever is going on on the court. This second floor is where we change and stretch and get ready for practice basically before we can enter the gym floor, and it is so incredibly dirty. Theres hair, dust, trash, junk, you name it, all just lying around, on the same ground we stretch on. It's positively disgusting.
Now I'm not saying that I'm the cleanest person in the world. After all I am a Wald...But my allergies just go insane in this place. During and after practice I am constantly hacking and sniveling and such and it's really really annoying. The bathroom is also a complete mess. I don't think it has been touched in several years.
Every once in awhile I see this little building manager running around and stuff, but I don't think he ever cleans...at all.
As for some of the other classrooms and such, it really depends on the faculty, or so I've heard. The international student center is usually...relatively...kind of clean, and I've seen a little cleaning crew run around before, but the classrooms in the ISC are still pretty dirty. The econ building I've been in is usually kept pretty clean actually which is nice, same thing with the Slavic research center, however this other building (insert name here because I don't actually know it) was pretty dirty.
Man I guess I am just a spoiled moron American...
The first gym has 2 floors, one is the court, and the 2nd has seating for those who want to watch whatever is going on on the court. This second floor is where we change and stretch and get ready for practice basically before we can enter the gym floor, and it is so incredibly dirty. Theres hair, dust, trash, junk, you name it, all just lying around, on the same ground we stretch on. It's positively disgusting.
Now I'm not saying that I'm the cleanest person in the world. After all I am a Wald...But my allergies just go insane in this place. During and after practice I am constantly hacking and sniveling and such and it's really really annoying. The bathroom is also a complete mess. I don't think it has been touched in several years.
Every once in awhile I see this little building manager running around and stuff, but I don't think he ever cleans...at all.
As for some of the other classrooms and such, it really depends on the faculty, or so I've heard. The international student center is usually...relatively...kind of clean, and I've seen a little cleaning crew run around before, but the classrooms in the ISC are still pretty dirty. The econ building I've been in is usually kept pretty clean actually which is nice, same thing with the Slavic research center, however this other building (insert name here because I don't actually know it) was pretty dirty.
Man I guess I am just a spoiled moron American...
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Cultural classes
So this past week the university was nice enough to provide us some opportunities to engage in really traditional Japanese activities.
First up on Monday was Koto, or a type of Japanese harp. This was actually my favorite. The harps themselves are rather large, not very wide, but very long, and you sit perpendicular to them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koto_%28musical_instrument%29
So we had 2 hours, with 6 little Japanese ladies trying to help 30 of us play this Japanese song. It was actually a lot of fun. There are 13 strings, and you have 3 picks on your right hand, one on your thumb, and the other 2 on your first two fingers. You can also push down the strings to get sharp notes.
The song we were attempting to play was called sakura, which is a super traditional song, which is about Japanese cherry trees...I think. Sakura means Japanese cherry tree, in Japanese of course...but I couldn't really get the lyrics from the song, and was more focused on playing the instrument than signing the song. It was a lot of fun, even though my fingers hurt pretty bad by the end.
On Tuesday we were doing Kado, or Ikebana, or flower arranging. There's actually a ton of different ways to go about arranging flowers, and they all have their own unique styles and beauty. So I was given a couple of branches from a cherry tree, some twigs, grassy things, and 2 flowers. I began chopping and sticking and moving and removing my flowers and twigs and such, and finally ended up with an arrangement that I was satisfied with. I raised my hand to tell the sensei that I was done and she made her way over to me. She stood, examining my...arrangement...for a couple of seconds, and then sort of sighed in a disappointed manner. I was heart broken.
She then basically took everything out, and put it back in, creating an entirely different set up than I had. I was sort of insulted, but I guess that's the way of the Japanese. Maybe that's why they have so many problems with creative thinking...whenever someone creates something outside the box, they throw it away and force them back into the box....
On Wednesday, we headed to a temple, where we practiced some Soto-zen, or zahzen. Apparently this particular sect had been brought to Japan in the 6th century, and is 1 of the only 2 that are practiced in Japan. The other kind, Rinzai, has temples that are more famous, such as toudaizi (largest wooded building in the world in Nara), but Soto has more followers in Japan.
I wanted to hum...but much to my dismay this sect doesn't really do that :(. We learned a couple of hand positions and breathing techniques, and how to sit correctly, and then we bowed, sat down, and began to meditate. Normally you meditate in a special super quiet hall, and everyone faces the wall. This temple was freezing however, and so the monk turned on the heater, which roared to life, breaking the much needed silence lol. My legs were also hurting a ton, so I think I only got really into the mood for maybe 5 of the 30 minutes we were supposed to be meditating. You also have to keep your eyes open, and your posture is super important, so I wasn't exactly comfortable. Also, if the monk thinks you are getting sleepy, they can wack you with this wooden stick, so the 2 monks that were there were constantly prowling behind us while we were trying to concentrate, which was rather unnerving, especially when every once in awhile you heard the crack of someone else getting hit.
So it was fun, but meditating and such really isn't for me. I'll just go take a nice nap.
On Thursday, I went to the Sapporo snow (or ice) festival that is super popular in Japan these days. There were tons of people, and tons of foreigners. There were 3 sites, one had snow sculptures, another had ice sculptures and the last just had things for kids to do, like snow slides and such. So I only went to the 2 that had the sculptures and stuff.
We (me and a couple Japanese friends) headed to the snow place first, it was super cold and crowded, but a lot of the sculptures were really cool. Some of them were the size of a small house, others were 20 meters tall. My favorite was a sculpture of a famous church in Dresden. Also, funny little fact, all the snow sculptures were made by the Japanese Self Defense Force. Apparently they have nothing better to do that play with snow, while the people in Haiti could use all the help they can get.
Anyway, as the evening wore on, we made our way towards a tower that is at the end of Odoori Park. We went up to the top of it (by stairs btw) and were able to get some great photos. This one is my favorite. The colors are so vibrant and you can see the city and park stretch away before your eyes. I wish it was clear enough to see the mountains in the background, but I am still happy with the shot.
After the snow sculptures, we headed over to the ice ones, and I was pretty disappointed. I guess we ended up going on the last day, so most of the ice has melted somewhat, leaving some of the sculptures in a rather sad state. But it was still fun.
On Friday then I got my hands dirty with Japanese shodou, or calligraphy. I hate Japanese calligraphy...
Thursday, January 28, 2010
stuff
Next I would like to discuss something that is very strange to me, but it is something I have honestly never thought about before. I met someone, who is handicapped, and doesn't speak English. You might be wondering to yourself why I find it so strange, but for some reason it was honestly something I never thought about before. I'm not sure if I thought handicapped kids don't exist in other parts of the world or something of the sort, but honestly I have never been in the situation I was placed in this past Monday in class.
So the class was one for the HUSTEP students, aka the class is all in English, however higher level English speaking Japanese students are allowed to attend these classes as well to meet us tall foreigners to practice their English. So I sat down and one of my friends (he is Japanese) is sitting across the aisle from me, and next to him, sitting down is a Japanese girl. We begin talking a little bit because we are in the same group and we have a project due yadda yadda yadda and he introduces me to his friend.
So her name was Fumi, and something about her seemed slightly odd. Now I know that I previously said handicapped, but I think she had a slight case of Autism. In Japanese culture, asking someone else for something is considered, like, well it's just something you try to NOT do I suppose you could say. I'm not saying that it's bad that you ask someone else for something, between friends and such obviously this happens all the time. But I introduced myself, and she introduced herself, and instantly she held out her small hand, and asked me "Can I have some candy?"
I honestly don't know why it struck me so much, but I was honestly speechless. I just sort of stared at her hand for several moments not really thinking about what just happened. Like I said I don't know why, it just surprised me so much and yeah I don't really know. My friend after a second whispers something to her and he grabs a piece of bread (Japanese bread is basically like candy bread) out of his bag and gives it to her and she seemed to be satisfied with that.
I actually ended up not even responding at all, and just sort of turned back towards the front of the class. I really have no idea why I was shocked so much. I still think about it from time to time, I really don't know why...
Last for today, is a short story about a boy being late. So a couple weekends ago, me and the soccer team went to Niseko, which is Japan's most famous ski resort. We were to meet at 7:30 in the morning, to catch the 7:45 bus, but alas, like most group trips, there's always that one late kid. Now it's been awhile since I've been on a group trip, but I was pretty shocked by what happened.
So 7:45 rolls around, and we hop on the bus at the train station, and so we are sitting on the bus, and a couple of the guys have been in contact with the late kid, and he is apparently on his way to the station via taxi. This is 7:45. 7:47 rolls around, and supposedly the kid has gotten out of the taxi and is making his way towards the bus. At 7:49, I see him round the corner, and like a little kid, my face lights up because I am super happy the kid made it. The bus driver was nice enough to wait 4 minutes, and I turned to the kid next to me to express my happiness about the late guy still making the trip.
Much to my surprise, the guy next to me, along with the rest of the soccer team, was completely silent, sitting there looking rather solemn. I was pretty shocked by this. I stopped and tried to think for a second about what would happen in the states if this had happened, and well I am pretty sure everyone would be pretty happy the guy had made it, even though we DID make the bus way (4 minutes) they would still be happy he made it.
This was not the case with the Japanese guys. When the guy finally put his stuff down, he came back to where most of the soccer team was sitting and started to apologize, but no one really said anything to him. And I don't mean any kind of apology either. In Japanese there are levels of ways to say sorry, from friends using slang that would translate as "my bad" to saying sorry to your boss which would literally translate as "I humbly have no reason for my terrible actions." Lets just say he was using something that was closer to the latter. None of the other Japanese guys did anything though. He apologized several times, to everyone, and we all just sat there, completely silent.
After about an hour or so I asked the kid next to my why and he said it was because we had made the bus wait for us. I appreciate the Japanese system of transportation and how prompt and on time it is, but damn, this was pretty ridiculous. Before the late kid had arrived a lot of the guys had been saying "残念ですね” which translates as 'that's too bad,' so I hope they were using it in, a regretful manner, rather than the more literal meaning of the translation, but honestly after seeing how the situation unfolded I can't be sure which one they meant.
So the class was one for the HUSTEP students, aka the class is all in English, however higher level English speaking Japanese students are allowed to attend these classes as well to meet us tall foreigners to practice their English. So I sat down and one of my friends (he is Japanese) is sitting across the aisle from me, and next to him, sitting down is a Japanese girl. We begin talking a little bit because we are in the same group and we have a project due yadda yadda yadda and he introduces me to his friend.
So her name was Fumi, and something about her seemed slightly odd. Now I know that I previously said handicapped, but I think she had a slight case of Autism. In Japanese culture, asking someone else for something is considered, like, well it's just something you try to NOT do I suppose you could say. I'm not saying that it's bad that you ask someone else for something, between friends and such obviously this happens all the time. But I introduced myself, and she introduced herself, and instantly she held out her small hand, and asked me "Can I have some candy?"
I honestly don't know why it struck me so much, but I was honestly speechless. I just sort of stared at her hand for several moments not really thinking about what just happened. Like I said I don't know why, it just surprised me so much and yeah I don't really know. My friend after a second whispers something to her and he grabs a piece of bread (Japanese bread is basically like candy bread) out of his bag and gives it to her and she seemed to be satisfied with that.
I actually ended up not even responding at all, and just sort of turned back towards the front of the class. I really have no idea why I was shocked so much. I still think about it from time to time, I really don't know why...
Last for today, is a short story about a boy being late. So a couple weekends ago, me and the soccer team went to Niseko, which is Japan's most famous ski resort. We were to meet at 7:30 in the morning, to catch the 7:45 bus, but alas, like most group trips, there's always that one late kid. Now it's been awhile since I've been on a group trip, but I was pretty shocked by what happened.
So 7:45 rolls around, and we hop on the bus at the train station, and so we are sitting on the bus, and a couple of the guys have been in contact with the late kid, and he is apparently on his way to the station via taxi. This is 7:45. 7:47 rolls around, and supposedly the kid has gotten out of the taxi and is making his way towards the bus. At 7:49, I see him round the corner, and like a little kid, my face lights up because I am super happy the kid made it. The bus driver was nice enough to wait 4 minutes, and I turned to the kid next to me to express my happiness about the late guy still making the trip.
Much to my surprise, the guy next to me, along with the rest of the soccer team, was completely silent, sitting there looking rather solemn. I was pretty shocked by this. I stopped and tried to think for a second about what would happen in the states if this had happened, and well I am pretty sure everyone would be pretty happy the guy had made it, even though we DID make the bus way (4 minutes) they would still be happy he made it.
This was not the case with the Japanese guys. When the guy finally put his stuff down, he came back to where most of the soccer team was sitting and started to apologize, but no one really said anything to him. And I don't mean any kind of apology either. In Japanese there are levels of ways to say sorry, from friends using slang that would translate as "my bad" to saying sorry to your boss which would literally translate as "I humbly have no reason for my terrible actions." Lets just say he was using something that was closer to the latter. None of the other Japanese guys did anything though. He apologized several times, to everyone, and we all just sat there, completely silent.
After about an hour or so I asked the kid next to my why and he said it was because we had made the bus wait for us. I appreciate the Japanese system of transportation and how prompt and on time it is, but damn, this was pretty ridiculous. Before the late kid had arrived a lot of the guys had been saying "残念ですね” which translates as 'that's too bad,' so I hope they were using it in, a regretful manner, rather than the more literal meaning of the translation, but honestly after seeing how the situation unfolded I can't be sure which one they meant.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
googuru
Hello everybody!
So I've got 4 finals, 4 papers, and 4 final presentations...not much time to write a blog, but here I am!
I've got a couple of things to write about, but I will try to keep it short n sweet. So a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to go drinking with a couple of guys that work here at Nestle in Japan. I was able to meet one of them through my Japanese zemi, and he had expressed interest in the possibility of me teaching English to a couple of guys at Nestle. So we went to this American style bar which had a ton of import beers and drinks and stuff, and we sat down, me and 2 guys from nestle for a while to discuss things over.
In case no one knows, Japanese business men are called salary men, or sarari men in Japanese, and there is no limit to how much they work and sacrifice for their company. The one guy had worked a 20 hour day previously, and had already worked 11 hours before meeting up with me to go out. That is crazy.
We arrived at the bar around 7:00, but around 9:00 one of the guys got a call from work. He excused himself and spent 15 minutes talking on the phone, before coming back and saying that he has to actually go BACK to work. This is at 9:15 on a Friday night, that he is going BACK to work. He said that the majority of the employees were actually still at work. So it was just me and another guy talking and eating and drinking till around 10:30 the other guy came back from work. Honestly ridiculous.
So Japanese bars are extremely expensive by the way. For the 3 of us, from 7-11, the bill was 190$. Honestly ridiculous.
At around 11, another guy from Nestle got off work and decided to meet us, so we decided to meet him at a different place, so we walked a couple of blocks over to a Chinese joint where we met up with him. We were there till around 12:30 when we finally decided to call it a night. It was actually a lot of fun. We talked a bit about Japanese and American business, some other business type things, the difference between a cute girl, and a beautiful girl, and it was overall a very enjoyable evening.
Japanese researchers, and other academics studying Japanese language have been unable to figure out where the heck Japanese language comes from. Their written system comes from China, but their grammar is closer to Korean, but neither of them really make sense. There's not so much correlation between languages English and Latin, but I think I have finally found the answer.
Japanese people, and their language descend from WOOKIES!! That's right, the walking carpets from Star Wars are ACTUALLY the ancestors of the Japanese people.
Now of course I am joking, but I will tell you why I think this is true, Japanese people love food. If you remember, in episode 6 of Star Wars, on the moon Endor, chewie sees a small dead animal strapped to a tree, and without thinking, grabs it to start digging in. ITS A TRAP! haha. But really, Han states that chewie is "always thinking with his stomach," which I think applies perfectly to the Japanese people.
I was talking to a friend of mine, and we were talking about Europe. I was talking about how I wanted to go there to see the museums and architecture and to see a real soccer game. He commented that he wanted to go there...to eat the food!!
In my reading Japanese class, we were reading an article about Japanese people smoking, and a company that took a survey. The results of the survey showed that people who smoked, and were shown pictures of diseased lungs, yellow teeth, and other nasty things that go along with smoking, were actually LESS LIKELY to quit smoking, than people who were simply told "if you stop smoking, food will taste better." I was shocked by the results of that survey.
And finally, Japanese people eat like vacuums. Traditional Japanese portions are pretty small. You get some rice, some oddly shaped balls of things here and there, and boom that is dinner. But man sometimes Japanese people eat like 3 times as much as I do. Last Sunday night I went to a ramen joint with a couple of the guys from the soccer team, and we all got giant bowls of ramen. These are huge bowls, like a 4.5 inch radius bowl, with tons of noodles and other floating goodies inside. At each table though, were baskets of boiled eggs that we could eat along with our meal for free. So before we even get our ramen, we all open 2 up and chow down because we were mega hungry. Once we got the ramen though, they didn't stop. By the end of the meal, the SMALLEST guy at the table, had eaten all of his ramen, and 7 hard boiled eggs. SEVEN!!! That is nuts. I think like 4 hard boiled eggs would fill me up, let alone 7, plus all the ramen and stuff on top of that. I was honestly shocked.
Oh, and in my dorm we have a tv in the lobby. There are only 6 channels, though, which is kind of lame. But 2 of them are news and show channels, 1 is 24/7 soap (zz) channel, and the other 3 channels, yes 50% of the channels, are 100% of the time cooking show channels. They make the food network look like pretty bad. I mean, they are constantly cooking good on these 3 channels, with different shows and different hosts going around Japan finding strange foods (haha yeah imagine that, Japanese people finding something STRANGE in Japanese cuisine...) and eating them and yelling 'umai!!' which means basically tasty!
So whether or not Japanese people are actually descendants of Wookies (Hey it was a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away) has yet to be proven, but I think I may have found an interesting clue.
So I've got 4 finals, 4 papers, and 4 final presentations...not much time to write a blog, but here I am!
I've got a couple of things to write about, but I will try to keep it short n sweet. So a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to go drinking with a couple of guys that work here at Nestle in Japan. I was able to meet one of them through my Japanese zemi, and he had expressed interest in the possibility of me teaching English to a couple of guys at Nestle. So we went to this American style bar which had a ton of import beers and drinks and stuff, and we sat down, me and 2 guys from nestle for a while to discuss things over.
In case no one knows, Japanese business men are called salary men, or sarari men in Japanese, and there is no limit to how much they work and sacrifice for their company. The one guy had worked a 20 hour day previously, and had already worked 11 hours before meeting up with me to go out. That is crazy.
We arrived at the bar around 7:00, but around 9:00 one of the guys got a call from work. He excused himself and spent 15 minutes talking on the phone, before coming back and saying that he has to actually go BACK to work. This is at 9:15 on a Friday night, that he is going BACK to work. He said that the majority of the employees were actually still at work. So it was just me and another guy talking and eating and drinking till around 10:30 the other guy came back from work. Honestly ridiculous.
So Japanese bars are extremely expensive by the way. For the 3 of us, from 7-11, the bill was 190$. Honestly ridiculous.
At around 11, another guy from Nestle got off work and decided to meet us, so we decided to meet him at a different place, so we walked a couple of blocks over to a Chinese joint where we met up with him. We were there till around 12:30 when we finally decided to call it a night. It was actually a lot of fun. We talked a bit about Japanese and American business, some other business type things, the difference between a cute girl, and a beautiful girl, and it was overall a very enjoyable evening.
Japanese researchers, and other academics studying Japanese language have been unable to figure out where the heck Japanese language comes from. Their written system comes from China, but their grammar is closer to Korean, but neither of them really make sense. There's not so much correlation between languages English and Latin, but I think I have finally found the answer.
Japanese people, and their language descend from WOOKIES!! That's right, the walking carpets from Star Wars are ACTUALLY the ancestors of the Japanese people.
Now of course I am joking, but I will tell you why I think this is true, Japanese people love food. If you remember, in episode 6 of Star Wars, on the moon Endor, chewie sees a small dead animal strapped to a tree, and without thinking, grabs it to start digging in. ITS A TRAP! haha. But really, Han states that chewie is "always thinking with his stomach," which I think applies perfectly to the Japanese people.
I was talking to a friend of mine, and we were talking about Europe. I was talking about how I wanted to go there to see the museums and architecture and to see a real soccer game. He commented that he wanted to go there...to eat the food!!
In my reading Japanese class, we were reading an article about Japanese people smoking, and a company that took a survey. The results of the survey showed that people who smoked, and were shown pictures of diseased lungs, yellow teeth, and other nasty things that go along with smoking, were actually LESS LIKELY to quit smoking, than people who were simply told "if you stop smoking, food will taste better." I was shocked by the results of that survey.
And finally, Japanese people eat like vacuums. Traditional Japanese portions are pretty small. You get some rice, some oddly shaped balls of things here and there, and boom that is dinner. But man sometimes Japanese people eat like 3 times as much as I do. Last Sunday night I went to a ramen joint with a couple of the guys from the soccer team, and we all got giant bowls of ramen. These are huge bowls, like a 4.5 inch radius bowl, with tons of noodles and other floating goodies inside. At each table though, were baskets of boiled eggs that we could eat along with our meal for free. So before we even get our ramen, we all open 2 up and chow down because we were mega hungry. Once we got the ramen though, they didn't stop. By the end of the meal, the SMALLEST guy at the table, had eaten all of his ramen, and 7 hard boiled eggs. SEVEN!!! That is nuts. I think like 4 hard boiled eggs would fill me up, let alone 7, plus all the ramen and stuff on top of that. I was honestly shocked.
Oh, and in my dorm we have a tv in the lobby. There are only 6 channels, though, which is kind of lame. But 2 of them are news and show channels, 1 is 24/7 soap (zz) channel, and the other 3 channels, yes 50% of the channels, are 100% of the time cooking show channels. They make the food network look like pretty bad. I mean, they are constantly cooking good on these 3 channels, with different shows and different hosts going around Japan finding strange foods (haha yeah imagine that, Japanese people finding something STRANGE in Japanese cuisine...) and eating them and yelling 'umai!!' which means basically tasty!
So whether or not Japanese people are actually descendants of Wookies (Hey it was a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away) has yet to be proven, but I think I may have found an interesting clue.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Happy Happy new year!
My first blog post of 2010! Yay for insignificance!
So 'happy new years!' in Japanese is akemasite omedetou gozaimasu. Just use the same vowel sounds as Spanish and you can get pretty close without knowing any other Japanese. I thought it would be handy to know this phrase in preparation for the new year, but, well, not really.
Japanese people do xmas and new years a little bit backwards, or should I say the total opposite from Americans. We get together with family, eat tons of good food (wish I could have some :/) and give out presents. Then on new years eve we party like it's 1969, 1999, or 2009 yay, and we see our friends and have fun.
Japanese people don't exactly party on xmas, but it's traditionally a time for couples to go out together, grab a drink and spend a good evening together. And new years is the family time.
So I actually didn't see any Japanese people on new years eve, and thus never even said the phrase so a Japanese person...fail.
But I did learn that happy new years is feliz anyo nueva in Spanish!! hooray! You may be wondering why am I spouting out Spanish in Japan, well it's because I went to a fiesta for new years! wee!!
By 5:00 on new years eve I still had no plans. Hadn't really figured anything out, and time was winding down. I made a couple of calls and one of my friends said that he was meeting up with an American buddy of his, and he invited me to come along. So we showed up at said friend's place around 8, and we hung out there for around an hour and a half, and then we set out for this party that he knew about.
We got to a little restaurant that had been rented out for the evening, and converted into a small party room. There were only a few people there, but they streamed in as it got closer to 11, and by 11:15 the tiny room was jam packed with people from all around the world. For the most part everyone at the party was Spanish speaking, or of European descent. People from Spain, Finland, Columbus, Poland, and Libya. If we were in Tokyo, or maybe Kyoto I would have not been so surprised, but it was really amazing to see so many people from different backgrounds in Sapporo Japan. Turns out the only Americans that were there were me and the 2 guys that had brought me.
12:00 rolls around and everyone was singing, laughing, and dancing the night around. I shared a couple versus of feliz navidad with a guy from Panama, that was pretty funny. A Brazilian (brazziolion, how much is that again) was lighting fireworks in the street from his hand....which was rather dangerous, but he was able to not blow his arm off. darn.
Overall it was a pretty fun night. I am not going to lie and say that I didn't miss any of my friends/family/everyone and everything in America, but it was nice to meet some new people from different corners of the world, and share the joy of ringing in the new year.
Oh yeah, and did I mention that the Buckeyes won? WOOHOO!! Finally we weren't beaten by some crap SEC hicks, or crappers from the PAC. I actually got to watch the 3rd quarter via skype and my dad pointing the camera at the tv. Believe it or not the picture was actually pretty good.
Finally, if someone were to ask me what I miss about America the most right now, I would honestly have to say food. Typical American yes I know, but the 5-10 meals that I have cooked for myself the last 3 odd months have begun to lose their taste a bit. I find myself thinking in my head "Gee brain what do you want to eat tonight? The same thing we eat every night pinky, eggs, bacon, and toast!"
However, cooking allows me time to sit back and think. And I've been thinking a lot about how much homework I have. I have 4 final papers, 4 final presentations, and 4 finals. That's really not so bad, but this last week has been absolute murder. Never before in my existence have I had to do work at this time of year. Normally in between xmas and new years, I vegetate like a mushroom, or go skiing, or do anything...besides homework. So it's been really tough to motivate myself recently, but I found out why!!
Yes...I have finally found the answer. People of non-Asian descent are genetically lazier than people of Asian descent. You see, some odd 3-4 thousand years ago (maybe a little more recent I have no idea...) a couple of guys were sitting around a campfire looking at pictures they drew. A couple of the guys had created this cool new system where if you put pictures of stuff together, it means things! Like let's draw a cliff, with a rock in front of it, and that will be the picture for rock! SWEEETTTT!!
Some of the other guys at the campfire weren't so impressed though, they were too busy checking themselves out in the mirror or something, so they didn't really pay attention. When the other guys tried to teach them the language of writing, they said 'screw this' and they decided to use symbols that represented sounds, not ideas, to write with. So today, we have 26 letters, and the Japanese language has....5k Kanji...including this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biang_biang_noodles
That kanji has 57 strokes, and you have to do all that work just to write NOODLE....
And therefore, we have found my ancestry, and why I am lazy...sometimes.
So 'happy new years!' in Japanese is akemasite omedetou gozaimasu. Just use the same vowel sounds as Spanish and you can get pretty close without knowing any other Japanese. I thought it would be handy to know this phrase in preparation for the new year, but, well, not really.
Japanese people do xmas and new years a little bit backwards, or should I say the total opposite from Americans. We get together with family, eat tons of good food (wish I could have some :/) and give out presents. Then on new years eve we party like it's 1969, 1999, or 2009 yay, and we see our friends and have fun.
Japanese people don't exactly party on xmas, but it's traditionally a time for couples to go out together, grab a drink and spend a good evening together. And new years is the family time.
So I actually didn't see any Japanese people on new years eve, and thus never even said the phrase so a Japanese person...fail.
But I did learn that happy new years is feliz anyo nueva in Spanish!! hooray! You may be wondering why am I spouting out Spanish in Japan, well it's because I went to a fiesta for new years! wee!!
By 5:00 on new years eve I still had no plans. Hadn't really figured anything out, and time was winding down. I made a couple of calls and one of my friends said that he was meeting up with an American buddy of his, and he invited me to come along. So we showed up at said friend's place around 8, and we hung out there for around an hour and a half, and then we set out for this party that he knew about.
We got to a little restaurant that had been rented out for the evening, and converted into a small party room. There were only a few people there, but they streamed in as it got closer to 11, and by 11:15 the tiny room was jam packed with people from all around the world. For the most part everyone at the party was Spanish speaking, or of European descent. People from Spain, Finland, Columbus, Poland, and Libya. If we were in Tokyo, or maybe Kyoto I would have not been so surprised, but it was really amazing to see so many people from different backgrounds in Sapporo Japan. Turns out the only Americans that were there were me and the 2 guys that had brought me.
12:00 rolls around and everyone was singing, laughing, and dancing the night around. I shared a couple versus of feliz navidad with a guy from Panama, that was pretty funny. A Brazilian (brazziolion, how much is that again) was lighting fireworks in the street from his hand....which was rather dangerous, but he was able to not blow his arm off. darn.
Overall it was a pretty fun night. I am not going to lie and say that I didn't miss any of my friends/family/everyone and everything in America, but it was nice to meet some new people from different corners of the world, and share the joy of ringing in the new year.
Oh yeah, and did I mention that the Buckeyes won? WOOHOO!! Finally we weren't beaten by some crap SEC hicks, or crappers from the PAC. I actually got to watch the 3rd quarter via skype and my dad pointing the camera at the tv. Believe it or not the picture was actually pretty good.
Finally, if someone were to ask me what I miss about America the most right now, I would honestly have to say food. Typical American yes I know, but the 5-10 meals that I have cooked for myself the last 3 odd months have begun to lose their taste a bit. I find myself thinking in my head "Gee brain what do you want to eat tonight? The same thing we eat every night pinky, eggs, bacon, and toast!"
However, cooking allows me time to sit back and think. And I've been thinking a lot about how much homework I have. I have 4 final papers, 4 final presentations, and 4 finals. That's really not so bad, but this last week has been absolute murder. Never before in my existence have I had to do work at this time of year. Normally in between xmas and new years, I vegetate like a mushroom, or go skiing, or do anything...besides homework. So it's been really tough to motivate myself recently, but I found out why!!
Yes...I have finally found the answer. People of non-Asian descent are genetically lazier than people of Asian descent. You see, some odd 3-4 thousand years ago (maybe a little more recent I have no idea...) a couple of guys were sitting around a campfire looking at pictures they drew. A couple of the guys had created this cool new system where if you put pictures of stuff together, it means things! Like let's draw a cliff, with a rock in front of it, and that will be the picture for rock! SWEEETTTT!!
Some of the other guys at the campfire weren't so impressed though, they were too busy checking themselves out in the mirror or something, so they didn't really pay attention. When the other guys tried to teach them the language of writing, they said 'screw this' and they decided to use symbols that represented sounds, not ideas, to write with. So today, we have 26 letters, and the Japanese language has....5k Kanji...including this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biang_biang_noodles
That kanji has 57 strokes, and you have to do all that work just to write NOODLE....
And therefore, we have found my ancestry, and why I am lazy...sometimes.
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