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!!
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
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.
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