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!!

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.

Yosakoi video

Heres the video:

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.

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

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.

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.