robbieinjapan.com

My break from class due to the measles outbreak is coming to an end. I go back to class on Saturday, however, this will only be for one period due to the fact that the rest of the day’s classes are cancelled thanks to the Keio-Waseda baseball game.

Mostly, I’ve been spending my time relaxing, reading, downloading movies and watching them. So far, I’ve watched A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Anchorman, Nacho Libre and Crank.

Tomorrow I think I’ll watch Apocalypto which I’ve been looking forward to because in high school, I studied Spanish literature for two years in my Spanish class so I read quite a few stories involving Mayan and Aztecan elements including one of my favorite short stories, Chac Mool by Carlos Fuentes (who is also one of my favorite authors…) I actually just did a quick search on Google and found the story translated into English here: http://web.mit.edu/jikatz/www/ChacMool.pdf – I’d suggest taking a look if you have the time, it’s not too long. Or, if you are more ambitious, you can read the original Spanish version here: http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/cuentos/esp/fuentes/chac.htm.

Anyway, in addition to that, I was also fortunate enough to be able to travel to Mexico and see the Mayan pyramind ruins twice recently. Once was with my family about two years ago during the summer. Then a little bit later, I was able to go there with my friend Katie from Middlebury College. Instead of taking a month long January term class last year, we decided to take off and go to an island called Isla Mujeres and teach English there at an English school. I mean, hey, lying on the beach in the sun beats being in sub-zero Vermont temperatures with feet of snow on the ground, right? My parents provided me with the money to go so I thank them very much!

Both times I went to Mexico, I visited Chichén Itzá and other Mayan pyramid sites. I really enjoyed going there maybe because it reminded me of one of my favorite Counter Strike (a computer game) maps, De Aztec, lol. In any case, I hope to go back there one day and visit again. So, for these reasons when I saw the previews for Apocalypto back in the States, I was interested. Also, perhaps the fact that the movie is supposedly in the native languages piqued my linguistic interest.

Anyway, there was a thunderstorm today which doesn’t seem to occur here often. It often rains but I rarely see lightning and thunder. At one point the thunder was so loud that I could not hear the audio from my computer for the movie I was watching.

Unfortunately though, I got caught in the rain a bit later. Since the rain stopped around dinner time, I thought I would be alright since I would just be going out quickly to get something to eat and bring it back to my room. So I didn’t take an umbrella. Well, after I went to the bakery to get some bread products and then to the sushi take out place, it began to rain pretty heavily so I had to endure the rain on my way back.

Luckily here in Japan, they wrap everything. So not only were the pastries I had bought in a large bag, but they were each individually wrapped. Also, the bag which my sushi was placed in was taped at the top so as to prevent rain from coming in. When I returned to the dorm, although the outsides of the bags were soaked, all of the food was perfectly fine. It was a good dinner since it consisted of two of my favorite foods… bread and sushi. Looks like I was able to bring the best of the West and the East into one meal

I came across a news article in Japanese the other day about smoking in Japan. Before I came to Japan, I always had the image that more people in Japan smoke than people do in America and I think this is fairly true. I always see salarymen smoking in the designated areas in the train stations or salarymen are smoking next to me at the counter in restaurants. While it is annoying, I have noticed that cigarette smoke in Japan does not seem to smell as bad or as toxic as it does in the United States. I’m unsure but perhaps they have different regulations, use different tobacco or have a different composition for their cigarettes here in Japan which results in a better smell.

In any case, what I found interesting about this article, (which can be found here: http://news.mixi.jp/view_news.pl?id=219620&media_id=4, it’s in Japanese and it’s on mixi, so you’ll need an account to see it), was that of people entering the workforce now (aged 20-25), about 88% do not smoke at all.

75.8% had never smoked. 12.2% had smoked but quit. 12% smoke. I think this is a much lower rate of smoking than in previous generations. I’d be interested to see what percentage of Americans in this age group smoke. 12% smoking for Japanese 20-25 year olds seems pretty low to begin with. I wonder if the American percentage is even lower?

As far as Americans around my age that I know, very few of them smoke. Of the ones who smoke, I’d say more than 75% of them are trying to quit or have tried to quit in the past. Back at my college in America, Middlebury College, although European students make up a small percentage of the students, I’d say there are more European smokers than American smokers! Since all buildings are non-smoking, I often see the Europeans after dinner huddling together outside of the dining hall in the harsh Vermont cold smoking their cigarettes. Different culture, I suppose.

Other interesting facts from the article were that of those people who did not smoke, 65.2% did not smoke for the reason that it was bad for one’s health. Other reasons were that it costs money and dislike of the smell that gets into one’s hair and clothes.

As for people who did smoke, 46.2% smoked because it relieved stress. 24.6% smoked because it was relaxing. Interestingly enough, 94.2% of the smokers agreed with the statement, “Smoking is harmful to my health” and 89.8% agreed with the statement, “Smoking is harmful to the health of the people around me.”

Probably some day, cigarettes will become non-existent. Although today we are used to people smoking and have had marketing campaigns and other such things to make the image of smoking a cigarette cool, when the day comes that cigarettes become non-existent, people will probably look back at photographs of people today smoking and think how silly they look.

Before Keio University cancelled all classes due to the measle outbreak. My teacher said something interesting during class. She said that according to some survey done recently, the longer foreigners stay in Japan, the unhappier they become with their lives in Japan.

This is not particularly surprising to me. When I learned Japanese under Eleanor Harz Jorden (author of Japanese: The Spoken Language (JSL)), she told me and the other student many stories of Americans eager to live in Japan only to go and find out that it wasn’t quite what they expected. Not only was it not what they quite expected, it was actually unpleasant.

This is interesting to me because I haven’t seen any other country besides Japan that is loved so intensely by a particular group of people in America. Namely, those people who love computers, computer games, video games, anime (Japanese animation), manga (Japanese comic books), etc. These people in America even go as far as calling themselves “otaku” which is a derogatory term in Japan to describe socially inept nerds who are interested in computers, comic books, etc.

But the fascination with Japan is not limited to these “nerd” types. I’ve seen people interested in Japan to an unhealthy sense just because they like “the culture” or some other vague aspect of it.

I’ve seen many of these people in my Japanese classes back in America. I’ve seen many more of them on Internet forums and in other computer related places.

Now, I’ve studied other languages besides Japanese. I’ve studied Spanish, French, German and have come in contact with plenty of other language learners simply because it’s a hobby of mine. The truth is, I’ve never seen people who learn Spanish yearning for Spain like Japanese learners yearn for Japan.

There is something about Japan, Japanese culture or the Japanese language that seems to attract these people in America. My theory for why this is goes something like this… Japan is often placed culturally at the opposite end of the spectrum from American culture. From an American’s perspective, Japan is exotic and strange. Additionally, Japan is a huge producer of video games and popular cultural items including anime, manga, etc.

For this reason, Japan is very appealing to Americans who are very interested in computers, video games, cartoons, comic books, etc. As it turns out, these types of people usually aren’t the coolest ones in high school. Since they cannot fit well into mainstream society in America, they turn to something which seems like the exact opposite to them, namely, Japan. Due to Japan’s appeal through popular cultural items, this type of attachment is intensified.

Unfortunately, what these people don’t realize is that Japan is not what they see in its cartoons or video games. As a result, when they move to Japan and get over the initial enamoredness of being in a new place, they realize it is not quite the place that welcomes them with open arms like they expected. Just because Japan produces a lot of anime, games, etc. does not mean that all Japanese people are interested in that sort of thing.

Although perhaps changing a little now, foreigners are usually never accepted at the same level as native Japanese people are within Japanese society. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived in Japan or how well you speak Japanese. Again, I remember one story told to me by my teacher Eleanor Jorden which consisted of a women she knew who studied Japanese intensely in university and was full set on moving to Japan permanently. She finally got to Japan, took a job at a Japanese company and even married a Japanese man through an arranged marriage company. However, after 5-10 years of this, things started to fall apart and she eventually left Japan permanently, saying, “I am no more accepted by Japanese society now than I was when I first got here 10 years ago,” attesting to the difficultly foreigners face within Japanese society.

Japanese people themselves are somewhat aware of the strange foreigners that come to their country. A couple of weeks ago, a television program featured these foreigners who are enamored with video games, anime, manga, etc. In a way, the show ridiculed them and showed them in perhaps their natural Japanese habitat, Akihabara, a place where otaku of all likes gather.

I’m lucky to have been aware enough so as not to have this sort of disillusionment before coming to Japan. Perhaps as a result of this, I don’t really feel any more of a foreigner than I do in my own country but maybe that’s just my particular situation. So, as I go about my normal web browsing here, I often come across those Americans who don’t know the truth championing Japan and its culture. And, of course, I also see the other Americans who are greatly annoyed at this type of people. There are quite a few articles already written on the Internet concerning these Americans who love Japanese culture so perhaps in the future, I’ll post some links to them and revisit this topic. 

According to Measles forces Keio to shut down, Keio University closed because 34 students became infected with measles. It seems that the outbreak is continuing to spread. I think the outbreak began sometime mid-april or possibly even before then. It’s only been now though that it’s really starting to hit universities in Tokyo. It will be interesting to see if the outbreak continues to grow or slows down due to all of the university closings. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

It was one of those nights that when I stepped out of the air conditioned bounds of my room, I felt a certain humid heat sweep over me. The sort of heat I imagined Borges’ characters felt in his world of magic realism.

I had just returned from a class party. Shortly after stepping into my room and settling down in front of my computer to idly check my e-mail and various sites which hadn’t changed since the last time I visited them, I heard the thumping again. Recently, this noise has become somewhat of a daily occurence. I have the sense that it is coming from above my room and that it sounds like someone stomping around. Most likely, they are not stomping around but rather just walking. It’s that all of the other frequencies of the sound waves are cut out save the bass which transmits through the thick ceiling that separates my room from the rooms above me resulting in the banging sound that I hear.

That’s it, I thought, I’m going to find out who this is once and for all.

I had, of course, tried to figure out the source of this noise before but to no avail. It always seemed to stop right before I left my room to go find it. Tonight however was different. The stomping seemed to continue on and on. Tonight, I left the comfortable coolness of my room to seek out the perpetrator above me on the third floor. Yet, it was impossible to pinpoint the noise. When I went up the stairs directly outside my room’s door, the noise seemed to reverberate around the halls coming from no direction in particular. In fact, when I was on the third floor, the noise appeared to come from the floor above that one.

But I still looked around the third floor. First, I sought out the room directly above mine. Although it was late, light shone out beneath it. I heard a girl coughing on the other side. Was she the source of the noise? The noise seemed to be coming from a different place. If I confronted her and she wasn’t the source, it would be a poor mistake.

How could someone be making this noise anyway? Our rooms were small enough so that even if someone were walking around, they’d reach the other end of the room in not too many steps. It was impossible for one to keep up this sort of noise for minutes and minutes at a time. Was someone doing calisthenics at 1am in their room?

In the heat, I walked around the halls to see if I could hear the noise emanating from any one particular room. Someone was singing to music from their computer. I found other doors with light shining through the crack at the bottom. Again, there was no clear source of the incessant sound. It seemed to come from the building itself.

I opened the door of my room and returned to the air conditioned coolness. The noise continued somewhere above me. I’ll have to figure this out some other time, I thought, for now I just hope it’ll stop.

I woke up today to a message on my cell phone from a friend suggesting that my university was possibly closed. So I quickly turned on my computer and went to the university’s website. I found this message…

“Cancellation of all lectures due to the measles out break

Update: 26  May 2007

Due to the measles outbreak, all lectures of Undergraduate, Graduate, and Bekka(Japanese Language Program) held at Mita, Hiyoshi, Yagami, SFC campus will be cancelled for the following period.

MAY 26 (Sat.) 3rd period to JUNE 1(Fri.) whole day

NOTE:
Students must stay home for your study.

Use of Library, study room and ITC facilities are restricted for all students during this period.

All club activities are restricted. Students are not permitted to use class rooms and club activity rooms during this period.

If you have never had measles or have never been vaccinated against measles, it is advisable you receive proper vaccination. Consult with the nearest hospital.

If you have been diagnosed with measles, contact the Health Center of Keio University (045-566-1055) or the International Center (03-5427-1614) as soon as possible.”

Looks like my prayers were answered! No class for all of next week! Also, interestingly enough, the day we’re supposed to return, Saturday, I only have class for one period. This is because Saturday is Keio’s baseball game against our rival Waseda University, so all classes are cancelled after the first period for that.

Looks like I have a bit of free time now

There seems to be a pattern lately of it raining here in Tokyo one day every week. Well, this week, it was today that it rained. Unfortunately, today is also the day I had to be out the most since I have class from 9:00 to 6:00. I actually have four umbrellas since my family bought them when they visited over my break. Unfortunately though, they are all small umbrellas so when I use them, they don’t fully protect me from the rain.

There are also other times that the rain is troublesome that one doesn’t normally think about. For example, in the morning on the crowded rains. Everyone’s umbrellas are still wet since everyone was just outside rushing to the station, so in the train when everyone is pressed up against everyone else, the wet umbrellas are also pressed up against everyone getting everyone’s clothes wet.

Though there is one good thing here. Every store has a place where you can put your umbrella and they also offer disposable plastic bags made for umbrellas so that your umbrella doesn’t get you or the floor wet. I’m not sure if they do this sort of thing in the United States. If they do, it’s not nearly as widely done as it is in Tokyo. They even had these bags in the buildings at Keio University!

Well, today in my economic class, we watched a video produced by the BBC in the 1990s about the Japanese salaryman and life in large corporations. Although things have changed a bit since that time, there are some policies still in place today. For example, in America, you usually apply for a position within a company. This is not so in Japan. In Japan, you apply to the company and then the company places you in a position. As a result, situations often occur where people are placed in positions that they did not study for at all in university.

For example, my teacher in class today mentioned something about a past student who was an economics major at Keio University who applied to a private train company. His position chosen by the company is to be the train driver. So, now he drives trains which is apparently a high stress job that he is not too happy with. Other cases include people getting placed into accounting positions despite never having taken an accounting course or people getting placed into computing positions despite having little experience in computers.

Since one cannot choose one’s position, people are often initially unhappy with their chosen spot. In the video, they followed one university graduate who studied English extensively and wanted to work in the export department of Fuji Film. He even put this as his top choice for desired department on his form but ultimately, the company decided to put him in sales, a position he wasn’t too happy about. The video followed up with him a few months later and learned that he was working from roughly before 9am to past 12 midnight everyday. Because he had to work so late, he had to take a taxi home every night because he worked past the last train, lol. Also, in Japan, the work week often includes Saturday, so the newly made salaryman in the video had to work six days per week and occasionally had to work Sunday, as well.

According to the video, most Japanese salarymen, on average, spent only 5 waking hours with their families every week. I know from Japanese friends I’ve talked to that this is fairly true because they tell me that they don’t really know their fathers since they were never around when they were growing up. In any case, I think this fact is changing in Japan and workers are being encouraged to go home earlier from work or take more vacations. Apparently in the 1990s, Japanese salarymen received only national holidays for vacation and even then, they were only encouraged to take off from work for half of those days. Since there are 15 national holiday vacation days, salarymen would often take only 8 days off per year.

The video suggested that this amount of time spent at work was the result of work being considered one’s life in Japanese culture. Interestingly enough, when mangagers initially tried to get employees to go home earlier, they would often not go, assumedly because they didn’t know what to do with the extra time with their families. Large companies actually provided courses for its workers as they approached retirement that helped them reconnect with their wives and families. The video showed one class where the company actually contacted the wives of each of the workers and asked them to write a letter to their husbands about the future and life after retirement. One letter they showed the worker reading had the wife saying that it was somewhat embarrassing to talk about these things because despite being married for many years, they had never actually talked about the future or life together.

While I think practices are changing these days due to American business influence after the collapse of the bubble and stagnation of the economy, I think many of these old practices still exist in some form. I often see large numbers of salarymen coming home late at night and when I board the train on Saturdays to go to class, I still see many salarymen going to work. I’ll discuss the old system of companies in relation to the newer American system in a later post.

In addition to yesterday’s post, I found out today that the university nearby my dorm, Showa University, has closed until June 1st because of the measles outbreak. My university, Keio, on the other hand, is still open     Although, from what my friend tells me, they will most likely add an extra week of school on at the end of the semester. So perhaps it’s not really a “free” vacation, after all.

Whatever the case, no matter when the semester ends, the summer seems to be a bad time to fly between the United States and Japan. It seems like the prices for a one way plane ticket are about $800 to $1000 more expensive than they were during the fall and winter. This is a pretty amazing change.

It also means that the price of Japanese airlines is now above $2000 for a one way ticket. For some reason, the Japanese airlines, JAL and ANA, always seem to be $500 or more dollars expensive than the cheapest american airline’s flight. We actually talked about this price discrepancy briefly in one of my economic classes. I think the airlines receive some sort of protection or benefits from the Japanese government.

In addition to this high price, the one time I was placed on a Japanese airline’s flight (ANA, because when I travelled back to Tokyo with my family, we missed a connection and apparently ANA is partners with United Airlines), the plane was full of people. Admittedly, there weren’t many foreigners, mostly Japanese people. Also, the plane’s composition seemed to be different. There were fewer coach class seats and many more business and first class seats.

In any case, I’m unsure why people are willing to spend $500 or $600 more for a plane ticket when the same flight covered by a different airline is just as readily available. It could be because Japanese people are more comfortable flying on a Japanese airline since everyone will of course speak Japanese. I think that another reason might be that arranged trips by travel companies are very popular here in Japan, and of course, these companies always use Japanese airlines for their trips.

In any case, I’ll have to continue my hunt for a cheap flight back home to the United States.

I think writing in this blog everyday is improving my ability to write material quickly. Often before I write an entry, I really have no idea what I’m going to write about so I just grab whatever idea comes to me first, go with it and try to write something long enough to qualify as an entry (while also trying to say something significant lol).

Today, I did a homework assignment from my Japanese Economy class which was to read a report about the current state of the Japanese economy and then write one’s thoughts about it. I spent about half an hour reading the report and then wrote 3-4 pages expressing my opinion on the Japanese economy and where it should go in under an hour. I was pretty surprised since usually it takes me forever to write these things because it’s always such a slow, painful process.

Not this time, though. When I was writing it, it sort of felt like I was just writing another entry for my blog. So, perhaps writing in this blog has secret added benefits. I’m glad because I was worried that I would lose some of my ability to write material for school since I haven’t been required to write anything academic since a year or more ago.

So, because I finished the assignment so quickly and the weather is still not too hot, I went for a walk around Sangenjaya while studying my kanji (Japanese character) cards in preparation for my kanji test tomorrow. There are actually quite a few parks in the area when I walk in the opposite direction of the station and the large road. There’s actually a very, very small park hidden in between some houses and buildings right across the street from my dorm. I had no idea it was there because you really have to get in between the close buildings to see it. I discovered it when I was walking back from a walk with a friend some weeks ago and didn’t really know how to get back to the dorm.

I’ll have to enjoy the weather now while it’s not too hot because from what I hear, it will soon get so hot and humid that one won’t even want to leave one’s house. Or so say my friends.

Today in class, one of my classmates asked the teacher if it seemed like Keio University was going to close. My teacher responded that she didn’t know. I thought maybe my classmate was talking about the upcoming baseball game since in many cases, classes at Keio University are cancelled when we play our rival, Waseda University. In any case, I wasn’t really sure what she was talking about so I promptly forgot it as we moved on into class.

This evening, after eating chuuka soba and gyoza for dinner at a place near my dorm that I eat at often, one of the guys who works there asked me if I still had classes. I said, yes, and he went on to explain that a lot of universities were closing down due to some word that I didn’t understand. As he continued his explanation, I realized he must be talking about some sort of disease. He advised me to check out the news.

So, of course, when I returned to my room, I searched on google for “japan university outbreak” and came across this article: Measles outbreak forces Japanese university to cancel classes. Apparently, a couple days ago, Keio University’s rival, Waseda University, decided to close all campuses for nine days because 30 students have contracted measles. Additionally, five other universities in Tokyo: Chuo, Komazawa, Nihon, Seikei and Sophia have also closed because of this.

I wish Keio University had decided to shut down, too. It would have been nice to have been greeted with an unexpected nine day vacation! I suppose if the “outbreak” continues, Keio may decide to shut down but I have the feeling that if it hasn’t at this point, it’s not going to.

I wasn’t sure if I had gotten the measles vaccine or not, so I called home and asked my Dad. Luckily, I did get it so I suppose I don’t have to worry as much. I think the measles vaccine is reported to be 99% effective in people who receive it.

Some interesting facts about measles that I didn’t know until I read the article I linked to above are:

“Measles was the world’s single most lethal infectious disease before an effective vaccine emerged in 1963.

In the early 1960s, as many as 135 million cases of measles occurred each year around the world, six million of them fatal.”

Six million fatal cases of measles every year is a pretty significant number! I had no idea that it was this high and it wasn’t even that long ago, either.

For now, I guess I’ll just have to see what happens here in Tokyo and hope I don’t contract measles!

One of the things that struck me when I first came to Japan was that portion size of food and drinks is much, much smaller than that in America. At first I didn’t like this so much, especially at set course meals since the food would often not be enough for a full meal. Now though, I’ve grown an appreciation for the small portions.

What made me aware of this difference again was when I went to see Spiderman 3 at the theater and my friend and I got a large popcorn and drink. She, being Japanese, kept remarking about how she couldn’t believe how large the popcorn was. This was humorous to me since the same size popcorn would probably amount to a “small” size in America. The “large” drink would have also probably only amounted to a “small” size in America.

It’s interesting how perceptions about size vary so much. In a way though, I’m glad that Japan is limited in this manner. Because, to be honest, if I go to a movie theater in America, do I really need to get that super large bucket of popcorn and eat it all? Of course, you might say, I could just buy the smallest size and deal with it that way. But, this is where  psychology comes in, I think.

For one, if the largest size is small to begin with, then even if I wanted more, I wouldn’t be able to get it. This is very important in eating since if the options are scaled so that there are many more larger sizes than what you are able to eat, there’s a strong possibility that you’ll err on the side of eating too much. In Japan, since the sizes are all small, I’ll most likely err on the side of eating too little.

In addition, what is eating “just the right amount”? I’ve read studies that show that what we consider to be eating “just the right amount” of food is often affected by factors like size of plate, amount of food given preliminarily, etc. They’ve shown quite a few times that we base our appetite on how much food is actually put in front of us. So, if a large amount is put in front of us, like at an American restaurant, we’ll work to finish it all, even if we would have been perfectly satisfied having a smaller portion placed before us.

Other simple things like smaller plates trick us into thinking we’re eating more food and makes us feel “full” when in fact, it’s simply a matter of visual perception. For this reason, having a smaller box of popcorn is fine by me because it means I’ll eat a smaller amount of food and still feel the same amount of fullness as I do when I am presented with a large box at an American theater.

Additionally, American price schemes seem to be oriented towards the largest size available. For example, you’ll notice that the largest drink has the cheapest price per ounce of all the drinks or that the largest pizza has the cheapest price per square inch out of all the pizzas.

This is not true in Japan. Many months ago when I was looking at a Pizza Hut menu that was put in my mailbox, I calculated the price per square inch for the different sizes of pizza they had, mainly between “medium” and “large”. In America, the large is always, without question, much cheaper per square inch than any of the other sizes. For this reason, when I’m in America, I always order a large, even if I don’t intend to eat it all, I can either eat the rest the next day or offer it to someone else.

However, I was quite surprised when I calculated the price per square inch of the different pizza sizes for this Japanese Pizza Hut and discovered that price per square inch was basically the same across all sizes. This means that the only factor in deciding which size to get is really how much you want to eat since buying a larger size will not make the price per square inch cheaper as it does in America. Why this difference in pricing schemes exists, I’m unsure.

The last thing that impacts me regularly are drinks in vending machines, etc. In Japan, they have a size that is about 8-9 ounces in a can. I actually like this a lot since most of the time, I don’t want a 20 ounce drink which is what is usually the only size available in America. Now, again, you could say that I could just drink half of the 20 ounce drink and save it for later, but again, this never happens. I just continue to drink it until it runs out since my mind usually goes on autopilot. I don’t want to have to watch every drink I take to see how much I’ve drunk and whether I’ve hit the limit yet or not.

For this reason, it’s very convenient to just buy that small size drink and not worry about it. Often, the small size is the only size available in the vending machines. I’ve noticed in the United States that more and more vending machines that dispense cans are being replaced with vending machines that vend only 20 ounce bottles. Again, America is skewed towards consuming more.

Considering the fact that Japan offers smaller portion sizes, has equal economic incentive for each size and offers smaller drink sizes, it’s no wonder that Japanese people consume fewer calories than Americans. To be honest, I’m not complaining about these differences in Japan either because in America, I really don’t need those extra ounces of drink or those extra grams of meat.