SCHOOL LIFE: Tuesday- Comparative Culture, Intercultural Communication II, Interchanging Societies

 In Comparative Culture, distance and body contact was discussed in depth. The distance between couples, friends, strangers, work superiors, etc were given on average through various studies, and the professor paired these research sources with photos that he had taken in various countries, from Japan to Canada to Taiwan and so forth. In terms of how Japanese people need personal space, boundaries seem to be crucial according to the lecture; tables outside of a Starbucks usually contain some kind of enclosing handrail so that people need not worry about coming into contact with people passing by where they sit. The professor used photographs to show the research he had done himself, almost to the level of stalking, as he showed pictures he had taken of a couple crossing a street in Tokyo, and how they didn't hold hands while crossing the street but showed a picture of them reaching the other side where they resumed body contact. There was another photo report on how Japanese people posture while reading magazines at convenience stores. This is something I never really thought about in Japanese culture, as at nearly every convenience store on a busy day there will be a row of men and fewer women who are standing and reading magazines and comic serials. Some of them squat down to read, some flip through real quick and put the magazine back, some shoe facial reactions to what they read and some no reaction at all. The fact that convenience stores allow this, along with large number of publications, particularly in terms of comics, has given birth to this type of activity that can be found anywhere in Japan.

 The next class kicked off with a discussion about eating dolphins. The movie "The Cove" or whatever it's called was brought up in reference to dolphin consumption. While not at all a common Japanese food, there are places that consume dolphin meat. While I asserted my opinion that conservation of animal species should be based on preserving animal species in a sensible way to prevent their extinction and maintain ecological balance, and that the moral argument of killing dolphins doesn't hold logical weight, there were a few good number of Japanese students who raised their hands when the instructor asked if they think killing whales and dolphins should be stopped. The professor went on with the conversation before concluding with the inevitable safe-route statement that the issues are complicated and could be debated for hours. The class moved into some other activities that took up a good deal of the class time. People were paired into groups and discussed their regular daily activities in order to establish what aspects of daily life were cultural or universal. At the end of the discussion the only real cultural differences evident were that Japanese students brush their teeth after eating breakfast (as I do) and the Chinese students of the class do it right after waking up, before eating. All in all a standard lesson in intercultural communication.

 Arriving a bit late to Interchanging Societies, I caught the end of a lecture about marriage services in Japan. Apparently Japanese people pay a decent amount of money to find marriage partners through various match-making services. Changing social dynamics in Japanese society make finding a marriage partner alone more and more difficult, leading to a rise in match-making services. The lecture then moved into an odd territory, particularly in how Ueno-sensei had worded the English in his lecture. It described the trend of "herbivores", a coin-word for young Japanese men who show no interest in succeeding in romance or a career and would rather, as the professor generally put it, act like spoiled little girls. I couldn't help but laugh out loud when the presentation compared the television shows and movies that these so-called "herbivores" enjoy and how it's similar to women liking "Sex and the City", along with how they enjoy to eat sweets (like cakes and puddings) instead of finding a girlfriend. I was not in Ueno-sensei's Winter quarter class at Evergreen but it seems like a presentation such as this would be deemed sexist or homophobic or whatever. The thing is though, there are many Japanese young men who fit this category and it's a wide-spread concern. While inevitably being just another countering trend to the Japanese mainstream, it indulges in a hedonism that discourages constructive success. These men, while not homosexual, show no interest in dating women simply because they view the process as a bother, and would rather focus on their own looks and leisurely activities. Though the lecture ended prematurely, this was the biggest cultural insight of the day, as awkwardly and politically incorrect as its presentation was.