SCHOOL LIFE, SPECIAL INTEREST, CULTURE: Gakuensai

 A huge college tradition in Japan is Gakuensai, (学園祭, or School Festival) an annual event most colleges take part in, not only for the enjoyment of students but to show their appeal to outsiders by trying to display an exciting campus environment. There entails a great deal of preparation and planning for the festival, often weeks beforehand. The fact that it requires students to involve themselves with the festival in the middle of an academic semester says a lot to its importance. While these type of events occur in Japanese high school as well (culture and sports festivals that are carried out with vigorous preparation all while classes are carried out as usual), college festivals attract a much broader range of people from outside the school and undoubtedly entail a much larger amount of money. In short, it's a big deal.

 The most prominent of features at Gakuensai is the involvement of school clubs in being vendors of food, drink and other novelty items, as well as providing festival entertainment. The food is standard Japanese festival faire: yakitori, okonomiyaki, takoyaki, fried chicken, croquette etc. The drinks can either be soda or alcoholic beverages, if the school allows it. The University of Hyogo certainly did allow it.  As for entertainment, there are contests and events held on stages, and the music-oriented clubs perform concerts.

 The first Gakuensai festival I went to was at the arts college that neighbors the University of Hyogo campus. This festival had the fewest attendees between the other festivals I went to, and most of the people there were college-age or older. Because it was an art school, student creations were prominently displayed in exhibits and galleries, along with in vendor stands outside. One stand, which was mainly an alcohol vendor for shots priced at about 200 yen (around $2, although sadly more with the exchange rate, but still a cheap price for a shot), featured products made with hemp and some Japanese students who were very enthusiastic about studying cannabis. There were also performance art pieces featured inside the auditoriums. The amount of people I knew at the school was next to no one, and I had gone alone, so I did not know too much about what was going on.  I had fun, however, and left the festival somewhat inebriated on to other adventures with no academic value whatsoever.

 My second time at a Gakuensai was at the Kobe School for Foreign Language (神戸外国語大学). A friend from the school had invited me there and so I went for around three hours or so. Rain was steadily falling (ironically, they had delayed the festival from the day before when the forecast predicted rain but ended up not raining at all) and so it was hard to be enthused about experiencing anything at the festival. As the school focuses on foreign studies, there were plenty of other foreign students there. There were exhibits at the festival that displayed photos from students' travels overseas. I mainly focused on the music-oriented clubs, their "Keion" (generally the same as what the Folk Song Club does, as I had explained originally, but with a more serious focus on music) and their Folk Song Club. I paid more attention to the Keion club and their performances, which were generally well played but lacked any real sense of passion or vigor, something that mirrors the Keion club at the University of Hyogo. And after that, I left.

 While visiting the Gakuensai festivals at other campuses with as much thought as what I put into this blog entry, I was more focused on experiencing the festival at my school. Last Saturday through Monday brought the experience and left a clear impression of what Gakuensai is all about.

SCHOOL LIFE: Last Tuesday and Thursday, preparing for school festival

 So, last Tuesday and Thursday were pretty sparse in anything memorable from classes. It was business as usual, but due to other business that has been particularly pressing this last week, I could not devote my full attention to classes. The other business happens to be the school festival, and due to the involvement of students, particularly those in club activities, it's incredible that it takes place during the regular academic semester and undoubtedly preoccupies students' time. So, as a member of the Folk Song Club, I have been busy with some of these arrangements. Just like a truly culturally immersed exchange student. As for the details of school festivals, as well as the festival for the University of Hyogo itself, I will get to those in other entries.

 Tuesday in "Comparative Cultures", we discussed projects that will be due in a couple weeks that focus on comparing distances between people in different situations. This involves "Man-Watching", a stalker-esque practice of observing and even taking pictures of people and studying their behavior without them being aware. The idea feels a bit creepy to me, but it also lets people indulge in that feeling for academic gain. Students were asked to give their ideas on what they would do for projects. I had no idea at the time but after class I decided to observe people in the setting of nightclubs, and how they dance. If possible I'll go to 2 or 3 night clubs, some mainly for Japanese, some mainly for foreigners, and observe the distance between people dancing and those dancing together, and how it changes between Japanese and foreigners to Japan. Whether or not I'll actually muster the will to go and watch people dance for a period of time, or if they'll even allow pictures is up in the air.

 The next class, "Intercultural Communication" was mainly about presenting information from a handout in English. It actually contains a lot of information similar to what's being taught in "Comparative Cultures". I'm supposed to present a section on "Touch" next week. The biggest discussion during class came when a Japanese student, paired with a Chinese student, read from the text to the class, while the Chinese student gave her personal thoughts and opinions on the information. The professor chastised the Japanese student for simply reading the text, but I brought up very bluntly that it can be help because "Japanese colleges are worthless for developing critical thought". While the professor agreed with the sentiment, although a little taken back at the deliberate bluntness of it, I said it to illustrate a cultural difference between Americans and Japanese, which was later discussed in the aspect of confidence in speaking, and how Japanese tend to prefer to sound unsure and vague when they state their opinions. Americans, on the other hand, are forward and appreciate confident, concrete statements. And I'm sure that the professor knew that this was the case, so I'm not worried if it caused offense or not. The issue of not developing critical thought in a large amount of Japanese colleges makes the graduation theses they are requires to write even more difficult, which is something I have taken note of in my seminar class.

 Third period was the last chance to practice with the band I'm playing with in the Folk Song Club, so I did not attend class. Even though it was the last practice, we are going to book studio time because none of the freshmen students I'm playing with are really confident enough to perform on Monday.

 Thursday I made it in late for Japanese Language and Culture, which was yet another analyzation of news articles from children's news programming. The stresses of the upcoming school festival made it hard to focus on stories about recovered Japanese cultural artifacts (swords of the emperor dating before 1000AD that had been lost a hundred years ago), a near collision of a plane and a mountain and also a nearly derailed train, and some baseball story, followed by a conclusion to the COP10 summit in Nagoya about protecting wildlife and nature.

 Second period, which should have been "Private/Civic Law" was also missed so I could get my guitar for a practice session that day. I probably missed as much as I would actually sitting in the class.

 Third period was "Interchanging Societies" which still focused on population movements to more dense, urban areas, throwing chart and graph on top one another regarding the percentages of populations during the last ten years throughout the Kobe area. The point has been that since population is trending toward being more dense around train stations and other centers of transportation and commerce, more people from rural areas will come to these densely populated places in order to have better access to services. This is largely due to the major percentage of elderly Japanese citizens who will be unable to take care of themselves in more sparsely populated areas. The lecture was informative, but mainly of forgettable facts rather than actual insight. This relates to the style of lecturing in Japan which presents a broad topic and feeds relevant information, with a much more minor focus on the interpretation of that information.

 Forth period the seminar professor was out sick.

 I'll be glad once the festival is out of the way, but do my best to enjoy it.

CULTURE: Japanese police

 As I am privileged (in an ironic sense) to live by a police station here in Kobe, I am able to witness various incidents throughout the night with a clear, over-watching view from my balcony. Throughout my exchange thus far I have come to view the Japanese police, at least in this area of Kobe, as relatively spineless, or failing that, lazy, but the view comes with an understanding of cultural influences that contrast to the way police in the United States behave. Recently, however, there have been many violent and startling incidents in the Kobe area that makes the behavior of the police around here a bit troubling. Recently, near my area here in Tarumi, there were two young men nearly beaten to death (one man later died: read article here: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20101030p2a00m0na005000c.html) by a group of other young men. A month or so ago, a high school student was randomly stabbed to death in Kobe's northern ward as he was walking with his girlfriend. On top of that, there was an explosion in front of a mob group's office building today. While the police surely handle these matters in some way I'm not giving them credit for here, the way they act from what I've seen in the neighborhood does not inspire confidence in their ability to maintain public order.

 Some examples of what I've seen outside my apartment:

 As I had once posted back in June, about right-wing Japanese propagandists, they often make their way through this neighborhood blasting the most cheerful of Japanese nationalist anthems (by cheerful I mean dreary and creepy) out of loud speakers. They're prone to disturbing the peace in many ways; they believe their message needs to be heard so much that they drive right down the middle of the street, effectively blocking both incoming and oncoming traffic due to the relatively timid nature of Japanese motorists. The rightists drive very slowly so that they make their presence known within a large radius. Occasionally they even drive around the smaller neighborhood streets so that they can be heard in every home. While this occurs maybe once a week at most, and I've only seen them deliberately impede traffic once, the reaction by the police was next to nothing. I watched the rightists go down the street and then watched the police station doors until about three officers walked out and stood there, watching the car go by slowly. After the car was relatively far away they simply walked back in, not bothered to pursue the vehicle.

 While the issue with rightists does not evoke any real sense of public danger, the police reaction to motorcycle gangs, or "bousouzoku" (暴走族) yields the same lack of enthusiasm for swiftly enforcing the law. Lately, around 3AM, motor cycle gangs will drive around in circles in the middle of the street, blocking all traffic, and incessantly honking their horns until the police come out of the station. I heard the biker gang members shout "He's coming!" as they proceeded to make a slow and teasing getaway. I saw the officer who came out shake his fist like an annoyed old man. Some officers ran up the street in the direction the bikers were going. The bikers than proceed to drive around the nearby cross-streets, honking their horns to provoke the police into chasing them. The fact that these kids get away with bullying the police like this says a lot about how the police around here operate. They would be clubbed, tasered, and maybe even shot by the almost cocaine-induced-like aggression of many American police officers.

 Culture obviously plays a huge factor in the police behavior. One night I saw an entire group of officers outside station trying to hold back a disgruntled, clearly intoxicated older man who appeared to be in a fight with another man nearby. The man was screaming and kicking and trying to move away from the officers from the sidewalk onto the street. The officers kept telling him "It's dangerous in the street, come on!", as if trying to convince him to follow their orders rather than carry those orders out. There was no firmness in their treatment of the man, and at one point he even took off down the street and the officers kept making their effort to subdue the man in the same, almost pleading way. It more resembled a group of friends trying to calm down the one that got carried away (and for all I know, maybe the man worked at the department; I've seen police go head to head with each other during previous times in Japan). While this kind of event might be normal for people around here, it's a sharp contrast to how police behave in the United States.

 From the treatment of biker gangs, which is similarly lax when they show police chases on Japanese television programs (the police simply follow the biker gangs until a certain point, trying to get down information to go nab them later, satisfying the thrill of being chased by the police for the young gang members) to their general attitude about other disturbances and unrest, the image of the police in Japan doesn't conjure the fear that many people feel in the United States. I cannot call it any better or worse just because of the way they handle certain incidences, and there is undoubtedly a lot more credit deserved for Japanese police and what they can and have accomplished. The fact that most officers don't regularly carry firearms too creates a different image, and it can't be said that the accidental shootings in the United States by police officers is a good case for a more aggressive police force in Japan. It's also important to note that in spite of what I've said about public disturbances, the neighborhood and area, like most places in Japan, is a safe and peaceful environment even with what's going on in the local news, and this is mainly due to the fact that the fundamentals of social and public order in Japanese culture are still intact. Nonetheless, when the biker gangs get bored in the dead of night and start their masturbatory rituals in street outside my apartment, I can't help but somewhat wish (likely to the chagrin of any so-called anarchists at Evergreen) that the officers would go out and crack some heads.

SCHOOL LIFE: Monday- Civic/Private Law, Chinese Communication, Technical Japanese

 First period was uneventful. Arriving a bit too late to pretend like I was trying to understand the lecture, and sitting in the back, which always seems to distract me with what other students are doing (the room has raised levels of seats like a traditional lecture hall). While jotting down some notes of unknown vocabulary words I worked on a paper for third period about what system of work you would prefer best- long-term employment with a secure increase in payment as you build seniority, or employment that rewards the most talented and successful employees, regardless of when they entered the company. I did a completely cynical take on wanting life-long employment, in saying that with company's that reward individual prowess are for people people who want to prove their skills and thereby rise through company ranks are self-serving and will either be exploited by higher-positioned company members or reach those higher-level positions and become coke-addled hedonistic materialists. In conclusion I said I'd rather not have to think about getting anywhere in the company and just work and let the years go by and carry me to death. Writing about it here makes it seem a little bit too over-the-top, but I think in a way it had some value in criticizing both systems of work. Although I did not get to actually doing it, I wanted to explain my take on the issue with the decline of the traditional Japanese system of long-term to life-long employment. I believe the traditional system has started to decline due to the consumerism that has become deeply rooted in modern Japan. Consumerism inevitably puts value on individuals as customers, in order to appeal to individual senses so that they will but products. In doing so, the importance of "self" is inflated. Japanese educational systems, however, have not adapted to these changes in a sufficient way. Because Japanese education attempts to create a sense of uniformity, it does not effectively develop the intellectual qualities of individuals. The culture of consumerism therefore clashes with the uniformity of becoming a life-long employee to a corporation upon graduating college. Since a consumerist culture promises personal enjoyment and fulfillment, it seems less and less appealing to commit oneself to a corporation, and in a more vague sense, one's country, when you could be shopping, going to Karaoke, going to expensive clubs where you pay women to talk to you, playing music in the Folk Song Club, and so on. If Japan wants to create a work structure that utilizes individual talents rather than a samurai-like pledge of life-long commitment to a corporation, it will need to rethink it's social values in a changing world. While the overall economic recession is by far more complicated than painting Japanese society with wide brush-strokes, the overall state of Japanese society holds plenty to worry about- a crumbling financial system and a massive decline in national birthrate, on top of a generation of younger Japanese that largely couldn't care less.

 Second period was Chinese Communication. I had to order the required textbook from the campus store as they were all out, which also meant I wouldn't have the necessary study materials for class.

 Third period, Technical Japanese, involved studying a worksheet about job outsourcing and its merits and demerits. Many of the Chinese students favored outsourcing, which I suppose makes sense, as China became wealthy off of countries like the United States relying on cheap labor in China to manufacture products and largely depleting domestic labor; I guess in the current climate it's inherent that I as an American view outsourcing negatively, while the Chinese might not have a feeling of victimization from it. None of this has to do with Japanese culture, of course, and other than standard reading practice there wasn't anything else noteworthy for the class aside from what I discussed at the beginning of this post with my essay.

SCHOOL LIFE: Tuesday, October 26 and Thursday October 28.

 Tuesday morning brought a sudden drop in the temperature- nearly ten degrees, celsius. And thus began the Japanese tradition of remarking on the cold every ten seconds. Being as adjusted as I am to Japanese culture I shared in reminding myself and everyone else how cold it was. Adding to the harshness of the complete lapse in time from early Autumn mugginess to Winter frigidness was that I arrived at school for first period's "Comparative Culture" to find that the class was off for the day. I sat outside practicing Japanese kanji until second period.

 In Intercultural Communication, students were asked to name daily cultural traits in Japanese culture (or if they weren't Japanese, their own culture). The answers were pretty standard, but the most interesting response was from a girl who had no example prepared and said nothing spare a few noises of puzzlement, and the professor remarked that this was a typical response for Japanese students, to remain silent instead of giving a definitive answer or simply saying "I don't know". This has been something I noticed as well, and it can be a test of patience. The reluctancy of Japanese students to give any response in the fear of looking stupid makes it hard for professors to engage in any real discussion in class. Questions by professors in larger lecture-hall classes often go unanswered even when it's a simple matter of raising hands. I suggested that be the girl's answer for an every-day Japanese cultural behavior. Other than that, it was just more studies of culture shock and cultural adaptation.

 I didn't see a lot of the third period class, "Interchanging Societies", due to having to wrap up some practice with member so the Folk Song Club in preparation for the school festival. The lecture continued to discuss the focus on urban and residential planning around train stations in Japan. Because of the projected decrease in overall population in Japan, the way that cities and areas are planned will have to be revamped. This was delved into deeper for Thursday's class.

 That was it for Tuesday.

 Thursday morning was Japanese language and culture, and the practice of studying news articles was carried on, this time with the accompanying children's news segments being shown. The stories included discussing China's next new leader and the anti-Japan demonstrations, harnessing volcanic activity for energy, and massive rainfall in Kagoshima that caused flooding earlier this year. An extensive story was shown on Tokyo's Haneda Airport and the transformation of its international hub. The language-learning was the same as before, focusing on listening comprehension and reading skills.

 In second period, Civil/Private Law was actually somewhat understandable for me. The lecture was about inheritance rights and how certain situations of deaths can lead to different rulings on the matter. While I could not pick up all the details, it was a case of feeling like I could understand the lecture even while not remembering much of what was said. This happens quite frequently for me when listening to complicated conversations in Japanese, but shows a general basis for comprehension that leaves room for growth. There will be a small exam based on some study points which I will attempt to do.

 "Interchanging Societies" built more on the urban planning lecture and how a decrease in population will lead to more densely populated areas around train stations. The layout of Japanese neighborhoods compared to American city clocks was also brought up, and the professor, Ueno-sensei, made a remark on how the grid-like layout of American areas makes it very boring to walk through them. He might be missing the point that much of the land used in the United States for residential areas is flat compared to the Japanese layout of areas contours to the largely mountainous landscapes. The lecture continued to describe the challenges of changing planning as populations decrease and increase in other nations. Many Americans find the thought of higher population density as undesirable, preferring to live in wider, more secluded areas. There was a graph displayed that in both Japan and the United States more people are satisfied living in rural areas than the amount of people satisfied in urban zones. The challenge described in the lecture is how societies will transform in the face of population changes, and how Japan's expected drop in population due to low birth-rate, another subject of lecture that has risen in the class, will effect the nation's future.

 In seminar, students presented their research subjects and the seminar professor certainly dragged out each presentation with his cynical and somewhat intelligent elaborations on subjects presented with bare-bone minimalism. One presentation on recycling and other ecological conservation practices led the professor into a rant about "being kind to the earth", which is a popular turn-of-phrase in Japanese (世界に優しい, kind to the earth) and stated that the only real way for humans to be kind to the earth is if everyone died, or something to that effect. He then went on about how milk is delivered to his house in glass bottles and how he reuses the bottles and hates the smell of plastic or something. His remarks, while long-winded and tiring, often draw laughter from his seminar students who exclaim how funny he is. His cynicism is something rare in Japanese colleges, and as a professor of French studies and language he carries the air of snootiness as well. The seminar students showed that they hadn't really though their research subjects through; the purpose of these presentations is to prepare students for writing their college graduation thesis papers, and many students put little effort into interpreting the information they learned and instead repeated the obvious points of research information as they researched it. Later in a meeting with the seminar professor he told another student who was present that college is not about learning new things but how to interpret and understand learning new things. I told him that Japanese colleges don't teach students how to do that, and he responded "but I do". His influence alone, however, cannot remove the classic style of Japanese education where students memorize information from lectures more than they intellectualize it. At least American college students can pretend like they know how to interpret their studies given their overly-inflated sense of worth in their thoughts and opinions.  In terms of my presentation next week, the professor suggested I rehash previous studies that I did at Evergreen regarding Japanese culture. I couldn't argue with his reasoning on college education.

 That closes the last week of classes. Things are going relatively well, even though I'm hitting a bit of a slump in how much effort I want to put into learning things here. Nonetheless, I am motivated by the work I have done so far and will continue to try and improve my language and cultural studies within and outside of classes.

 

SCHOOL LIFE: Thursday, October 21 and Monday, October 25

 On Thursday, I'm ashamed to say (but proud to be honest) that I left out two of the classes I regularly attend. The first period was a struggle, as I operated on little sleep, no coffee and a hang-over from the night before. The drinking from the night before, however, was not a totally selfish endeavor, and even had relevance in my studies (though it's a bit of a stretch to let it excuse being unprepared for classes) but I'll get to this in a long over-due post. Regardless, I was racking my brain to get through the lesson, made even more taxing by the fact that the lesson was supposed to focus on a video and instead was changed to the same study material but through reading comprehension. The class read news articles on the Japanese workers who were imprisoned in China for entering a restricted area and their delayed release, the COP-10 global summit being held in Nagoya in order to discuss ways to preserve ecosystems, a Japanese shogi (Japanese chess) player who lost to a computer making it the first instance of a human player losing to a computer program, and lastly, a bear who wandered into into a populous area in the Yamagata prefecture and injured several people before being shot. Aside from the instructor's pitiful reaction to the death of the bear, there wasn't really anything relevant outside of the standard language practice.

 The second period was a no-go, in what normally is Private/Civil Law. I do not have the 5000 yen ($60) law text book for the class, so I am often lost as to what the professor lectures on about. The main purpose of the class, for me, is to practice Japanese listening and try to retain vocabulary through text translation. So while I may not understand what the lecture details, it does provide a good opportunity for language learning. In addition, observing Japanese students and how they study in these kinds of classes, and how the professor treats the students, has been the most insightful look into the Japanese college experience in the exchange thus far. The lack of coffee, however, could not sustain this.

 After wandering about with a member of the Folk Song Club, also unwilling to bother with trying to understand his second period class (Micro-Economics or something like that), and a bit of an extended lunch period, I made my way to "Interchanging Societies". The lecture of the day focused on population density in relation to train stations in Japan. The density of the population seemed to correspond to the train stations, as well as affecting the behavior of people in those areas. Japan's rail system was compared to other nations, and although the vast United States topped the charts in overall railway length, its use utterly paled in comparison to Japan in usage. The use of railways certainly appeared to be Japan's greatest triumph in terms of infrastructure, used both for people and freight. The lecture mainly reminded me how much better things could be, regardless of the relative size of the US, if trains were more well utilized.

 To top the day off, I missed seminar. I'm sure I'll have something to do in that class before too long, so I can't make a habit of it.

 Moving on to today, Monday's classes:

 First period was the aforementioned Private/Civil Law class. I repeated what I usually do and only managed to catch a little of what was going on in the professor's lecture. Mainly it concerned the rights of women involving pregnancy, as well as the rights of the father in such cases. I wish I could have understood a bit more about what was lectured but will have to read up on the subject on my own time.

 Second period was Chinese Communication II. I can't really say, without stretching the limits of my imagination, anything was educationally relevant in this class. The instructor requested me to repeat Chinese phrases in English for the benefit of her and the students in the class. The manner in which I translated the phrases out loud drew laughter out of the students in its deliberate resemblance to English language-learning sound bites. That's as far as my imagination can go on this one.

 Third period was Technical Japanese II. This class was interesting in that the relativity of salary to seniority in the traditional Japanese work system was discussed. In modern times, the concept of rewarding the most talented with higher salaries regardless of when they enter a corporation is a relatively recent concept. The the system in Japan before has been to employ people at a lower level and retain them as they grow in seniority as part of the corporation. This fosters a system of loyalty and makes it relatively rare for corporations to lay off employees in comparison to other countries, particularly the US, which may offer salaries based on skill rather than seniority. The drawback, however, is that corporations become less flexible during economic recessions due to the other sacrifices they make while retaining employees. The professor asked the students what they thought the best system was: skill or experience. Typically, the students chose skill as a better decider of salary, citing its obvious benefits for corporations. When asked my opinion, I gave a somewhat cynical response in that I didn't think of either system as more favorable and rather offered that the systems work better for certain cultures than others. The issue of Confucianist roots in Japanese culture, and by the association of the predominantly Chinese class body, Chinese culture, was brought up by the professor as a reason that salaries based on seniority are better-suited for cultures like Japan. I also joked that due to the overwhelming majority of senior citizens in Japan compared to young adults and below, it's only natural for Japan to continue a system of seniority. The Japanese business system nonetheless contains both systems, but the traditional way still continues its prominence. And while unemployment in Japan may be low due to less company lay-offs compared to other countries, the recession has made it more difficult for Japanese college graduates to find full employment within corporations. Regardless of systems that emphasize talents or seniority, either case seems to be struggling in the recession.

 And that was the make-up of last Thursday and today's classes. On a side-note about these entries: if they seem lazy or forced, it's the best I can do when describing one goes on during a day, something I've never been skilled at doing, especially on a regular basis. These blog entries are simply to give an idea of what's going on, and the utilization of this blog for other aspects of the contract has been long-delayed. Along with the special interest study of music, which is by no means a lost cause and will be detailed with this week. In terms of cultural studies, I have some ideas for blog entries that will be put into work. Visiting different areas is another thing I want to revive from last quarter, which was made interesting in regard to the photos I took. I have no real functioning camera at the moment, a situation I hope fix in the near future.

 In any case, I'll continue the pace I've been add while adding more into November. Until then, stay tuned.

 

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.