Culture and Analogies

Ok, you caught me. I was going to try and eke by this week without a post, but, well, you didn't get one last week, and I would hate to deprive you of your second air.

I haven't had any schools to go to yet. They are dividing the schedule a different way this term. The head English teacher from all the schools will get together and choose when they want the 9 of us ALTs, as opposed to randomly getting what the Board of Education threw at them. We'll see how it works. I think, until then, I'll be at my office, probably until the end of next week. I have no problem with this though, I get to study, study, study.

On Wednesday I had piano, and I spoke with my teacher after class because she wanted to know what was different in America. I told her the truth: everything. Then I tried to describe heating, air conditioning, and not ever bowing(she was all "bikurishita! bikurishita!" [surprised!]). It was cool because it's like the same thing that happens when I try to explain Japan to people back home. I don't think you really understand how different places can be until you are there. Things you assume remain constant worldwide(ex. stopping at a red light), are by no means constant. It was funny to think of my classmates in Middle School bowing in perfect unison when Mr. Dixon entered the room. "What do you do?" my piano teacher asked. "Nothing," was the reply. This seemed to confuse her even more.

What else has gone on? I went boxing on Wednesday night, good times. Good stress relief (if you can call what we do here stressful). I also plan on buying Matt's scooter when he leaves Japan. He let me try it out after boxing. Wicked Awesome. It goes about 60 km max, and filling up the tank is only about 4-5 dollars. It's pretty fun to drive, I can't wait to get it.

I've finally gotten into studying kanji. The 2000 characters I need to memorize to become in Japanese reading. Well, after the 2000 on their own, I need to memorize the different combinations. And the different pronunciations when a kanji is next to a different word. It's definitely a big task, but it's time to stop putting it off. I also finished the Minna no Nihongo Book II, so I need something to do at work, lol.

Tonight there is a "congratulations for getting into graduate school" party. Dinner at the Brazilian Restaurant, then karaoke. Lookin' forward to that.

Today, there occurred something that I think is a good analogy of Japanese Culture and thought process. So, we were taking old papers downstairs to be recycled from our office. They tied these up in twine, which is a requirement for recycled papers, though we didn't use them in the past in this office. That part is important. Now, this time, with the strings tied around stacks of paper, each of my coworkers took one stack in each hand, since it was easily liftable by the strings. In the past, they would always take a huge stack and balance it in two hands in front of them, holding a lot more. Now that there were strings, they were taking much less per trip downstairs. For some reason, everyone but me did this. I'm not sure why. It seems natural that they would realize they can hold more, like they have in the past, if they hold the papers the same way they did in the past. But, now that there were strings, did they feel compelled to use them? Am I looking too much into this? Perhaps I'm so confused at all of the random standing up and bowing that occurs during the day I'm just going haywire.

I swear, I don't have anything else to say. My life this week is just going to the office and studying. We could compare study notes? Funny to think that, I leave an institution of study, and now I'm spending so much time studying. It's like a bad habit I can't get rid of. Well, now that you've gotten your meager post, I'll go back to the studying, thank you very much.

Have a good day.