As Jeff's class is nearly coming to a close, most of the time in class is being spent wrapping up what has been explored. The class teaches about national parks in the United States and how the system was created, along with teaching Japanese students about Japan's national parks. The class has been very educational for me, personally, in learning about how important national parks are in the United States. The Japanese students who attend the class also seem to have been moved by the lessons, and were often unaware of the existence of national parks in their own country. As the class is all in English, some students struggle through the lectures and videos, but seem to get the overall idea. As with a lot of Japanese students, there is a tendency to withhold questions even when they are totally lost on the lesson material. Talking to students in private, they often say "I don't understand what's going on at all!" but they nonetheless sit there during class with a glazed look over their eyes. The idea of a class entirely in English seems intimidating to some students, as there are few students who came to the class regularly. Next week has the final class for Jeff, and then he will soon return to Evergreen. His impression on the students has been immense in his (sometimes overly-) kind approach to teaching students in another language. In class today we finished the video about American national parks and did a general wrap-up of the program before the final classes.
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In Intercultural Communication I started the class by singing a rendition of "Ashita No Joe", a theme song to an old Japanese animation by the same name, which is sung in dramatic enka-style Japanese singing. I was singing a random song when the teacher asked me to sing for the class. That was my method of intercultural communication!
Usually the class entails me shouting out comments about what's being taught and the occasional assertion from the Chinese girls that sit up with my in the front (it's like we divide ourself into race- foreigners in the front Japanese in the back- unwittingly of course), and the silence of the Japanese students behind us. Whether the subject is boring to the Japanese students or they just don't want to put their thoughts out when it comes to examining their own culture, or it's just the typical way of passive Japanese education, I don't know... but I do know there are a lot of good looking girls in the class, which enthuses me to assert myself even more in the pursuit of intercultural communication!
Throughout the class today we did an exercise in pairs, where one took the role of a foreigner employed in a Japanese company who is not good at team work, and the role of a Japanese section manager who wants the foreign employee to be moved to another empty position. The point of the exercise was the foreigner wanted to work where he/she wanted and the Japanese manager wanted the foreigner moved, because that is how Japanese companies manage. Instead of strictly clear-cut designations of employment for workers, Japanese companies function as groups that are made up of a group rather than cooperative individuals, meaning that in Japan people all share each other's burdens, meaning that if one cog in the machine stops turning than the machine as a whole surely can't function. This is where I became clear on the Japanese expression when they finish a job: "Osaki ni shitsurei shimasu!" (お先に失礼します, or "Excuse me for leaving before [everyone else leaves]"). In America or other Western countries, they don't have such an expression for finishing the end of a work day. Everyone has their job and they finish it. Both the Japanese and Western working methods have their strengths and weaknesses- in the Japanese system, harmony is key to a functioning work group, so if someone has a problem, they might not bring it up in fear of disrupting the group harmony. The Western system, however, has one fundamental flaw in my mind: because businesses are built into separate lower and higher divisions, the clear-cut jobs for workers can create a sense of inequality between top and bottom, such as when cost-cutting leads to removals of unnecessary job positions. In the Japanese system, if a job position loses its value often times the workers will be relocated rather than laid off. Also, in the Western business system, there can be a tendency to climb-the-latter rather than value a lower position- people will want to be on the level of CEOs rather than taking responsibility and pride in a lower position. Listen to Elvis Costello's song "Senior Service" about how businesses in Western society can become self-devouring and self-destructive. The Japanese system might share some of these cut-throat tendencies, but in accordance to Japanese society, Japan's structure acts as a whole group instead of a group of individuals. The exercise in class was meant to show how these cultural differences can create problems, and the conclusion to how to work on such culture conflicts was, regardless of a resolution, to create a mutual understanding through intercultural communication!
That was it for Tuesday's classes. Final exams before Summer break start next week. I don't know what that means for me but I'll give it the old college try.
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