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.