Due to various complications in my life, I have decided that it would probably be best for me to stop blogging.
I want to thank all of the really kind and wonderful people who have taken the time to read and comment. I've developed quite an affection for some of you and seeing your names show up next to some comments always brightens my day. I'll still be reading the blogs of the nice folks who I met here so you'll still hear from me where you are doing your writing.
Thank you and all of my best to you.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Monday, March 10, 2008
Friday, March 07, 2008
Rumble
Recently, I've been doing a lot of essay correction work for one of my students. This is relatively unusual as most lessons are spent actually speaking with one another rather than my staring down at a paper scribbling corrections in silence. During these corrections, it's so quiet that I can hear the clock tick.
As of late, my student's stomach has been loudly rumbling during these periods of quiet correction. While she's very embarrassed, I reassure her that it's not a problem at all and it happens to everyone. She feels obliged to tell me it's because she eats lunch just before coming over and I continue to tell her that it neither troubles nor offends me. In fact, I've become adept at ignoring all sorts of bodily noises after years in Japan including the sort which are accompanied by less than rosy odors. The human body doesn't obey the will of its owner, and this is more often so as you get older.
In an effort to hopefully make my student feel more at ease, I told her a story of an incident at my former job about 12 years ago. In addition to making textbooks, my former company made CDs of various types of content to accompany the books. For one of the books devoted to improving TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) scores, my company decided it'd save some money by making a male coworker and I do the voice acting in the recording studio.
On the surface, voice acting may not seem like much of a chore, but it's actually quite difficult. Voice actors in Japan ask for anything between 10,000-25,000 yen an hour ($97-$242) (or at least they did at that time, rates may have changed by now). In fact, I believe the woman they hired for the Japanese voice acting chores may have been on the upper end of that range. Since my coworker and I were both North American (and therefore had the "right" accent for such work in the opinions of the Japanese), had reasonably nice voices, and, most importantly of all, were only being paid 2,000 yen ($19) an hour, we were pressed into service.
The sessions were held in a ramshackle studio in the armpit areas of Shinjuku. We sweat because using the air conditioning in the small, tightly-sealed space caused too much noise and would be picked up by the mics. What's worse, certain heavy traffic nearby would shake the room and the vibrations could be heard. It was hardly the ideal set-up for recording, but I'm guessing it had the same benefit that my coworker and I did. That is, it was cheap.
We would have to record for hours on end and we were not up to the task. Neither of us had any experience and there are certain "tricks of the trade" we weren't aware of like making sure you don't blow air out of your lips too strongly when you pronounce a "f" or a "p" sound as it'll make a strange noise on the recording. It also seemed that we never had enough "acting" skill and were both constantly told we sounded too "flat" and had to infuse our speaking about things like exchanging business cards or buying a pair of pants with more life and energy. They also expected us to time the pauses between dialogs and sentences by counting in our heads rather than offering us a watch, clock or timer, and I was always starting too fast or slow and being chastised for not waiting long enough. It was hard enough to focus on the script and not flubbing up or losing my place, not puffing out too much air on my "f's" and "p's" without having to silently count between each sentence.
After sitting in that small room for hours on end with the oxygen running out and the heat building up and being constantly criticized, it was rather difficult to build up much of an energetic vibe. Some sessions lasted 3-4 hours and we were pretty wrecked by the end of the first one. If all the various inadequacies of the soundproofing of the studio weren't enough to frustrate our progress, my coworker started to have serious empty stomach rumblings. They were so loud that the mics were clearly picking them up and we had to keep stopping and doing things over. Eventually, someone ran out and bought a bunch of bananas at a "Mom and Pop" fruit shop near the studio and he crammed a few down to try and quiet his disruptive digestive system.
After these experiences, I never wanted to set foot in a recording studio again and believe voice actors who are good at what they do deserve every yen of their high fees. Getting back to my student though, I told her this story mainly to let her know that it happens to everyone, and that it's clearly out of one's control. Even when you desperately need to stop it like in the situation we were in, there's nothing you can do.
As of late, my student's stomach has been loudly rumbling during these periods of quiet correction. While she's very embarrassed, I reassure her that it's not a problem at all and it happens to everyone. She feels obliged to tell me it's because she eats lunch just before coming over and I continue to tell her that it neither troubles nor offends me. In fact, I've become adept at ignoring all sorts of bodily noises after years in Japan including the sort which are accompanied by less than rosy odors. The human body doesn't obey the will of its owner, and this is more often so as you get older.
In an effort to hopefully make my student feel more at ease, I told her a story of an incident at my former job about 12 years ago. In addition to making textbooks, my former company made CDs of various types of content to accompany the books. For one of the books devoted to improving TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) scores, my company decided it'd save some money by making a male coworker and I do the voice acting in the recording studio.
On the surface, voice acting may not seem like much of a chore, but it's actually quite difficult. Voice actors in Japan ask for anything between 10,000-25,000 yen an hour ($97-$242) (or at least they did at that time, rates may have changed by now). In fact, I believe the woman they hired for the Japanese voice acting chores may have been on the upper end of that range. Since my coworker and I were both North American (and therefore had the "right" accent for such work in the opinions of the Japanese), had reasonably nice voices, and, most importantly of all, were only being paid 2,000 yen ($19) an hour, we were pressed into service.
The sessions were held in a ramshackle studio in the armpit areas of Shinjuku. We sweat because using the air conditioning in the small, tightly-sealed space caused too much noise and would be picked up by the mics. What's worse, certain heavy traffic nearby would shake the room and the vibrations could be heard. It was hardly the ideal set-up for recording, but I'm guessing it had the same benefit that my coworker and I did. That is, it was cheap.
We would have to record for hours on end and we were not up to the task. Neither of us had any experience and there are certain "tricks of the trade" we weren't aware of like making sure you don't blow air out of your lips too strongly when you pronounce a "f" or a "p" sound as it'll make a strange noise on the recording. It also seemed that we never had enough "acting" skill and were both constantly told we sounded too "flat" and had to infuse our speaking about things like exchanging business cards or buying a pair of pants with more life and energy. They also expected us to time the pauses between dialogs and sentences by counting in our heads rather than offering us a watch, clock or timer, and I was always starting too fast or slow and being chastised for not waiting long enough. It was hard enough to focus on the script and not flubbing up or losing my place, not puffing out too much air on my "f's" and "p's" without having to silently count between each sentence.
After sitting in that small room for hours on end with the oxygen running out and the heat building up and being constantly criticized, it was rather difficult to build up much of an energetic vibe. Some sessions lasted 3-4 hours and we were pretty wrecked by the end of the first one. If all the various inadequacies of the soundproofing of the studio weren't enough to frustrate our progress, my coworker started to have serious empty stomach rumblings. They were so loud that the mics were clearly picking them up and we had to keep stopping and doing things over. Eventually, someone ran out and bought a bunch of bananas at a "Mom and Pop" fruit shop near the studio and he crammed a few down to try and quiet his disruptive digestive system.
After these experiences, I never wanted to set foot in a recording studio again and believe voice actors who are good at what they do deserve every yen of their high fees. Getting back to my student though, I told her this story mainly to let her know that it happens to everyone, and that it's clearly out of one's control. Even when you desperately need to stop it like in the situation we were in, there's nothing you can do.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
(Quite) A Few Words for the Haymakers
For several years, I was part of an on-line (Usenet) community for a particular on-line multiplayer game. I started off as an outsider in an established community of players and gradually became better known. I went from being a little fish in a little pond to being a big fish in a little pond. On the surface, the attention and “status” (irrelevant and meaningless as it may have been) were rewarding. My posts and ideas got plenty of replies, people wanted to give me things in games and play in games with me. I also made a very treasured friend who I regularly keep in touch with to this day (about 7 years after we met in this group).
The flip-side to all of this attention and “celebrity” status was that for every 10 people who were happy to talk to you and liked you, there was a person who decided he or she had a problem with you. In the case of this particular Usenet community, there was a woman who felt that, as the high-ranking female of a group mainly comprised of males, my rising “status” was a threat to her position as queen bee. There was also a man who grew quietly and increasingly offended because I never responded to his particular posts and took to responding to me in a passive aggressive manner at every turn in retaliation for the slight he imagined was at work. The truth was that there were a lot of people I never replied to since the group was very active and not every topic thread interested me or was something about which I felt compelled to comment. And there were some other folks who loved nothing more than to take what I said and pretend I said something else or implied something I did not so that they’d have an excuse to attack me and my position.
The last group of people were the most maddening because they were so persistent in their efforts to argue with distortions of my posts rather than what was actually said. Such folks were expert at taking things out of context and setting up straw men so they could conveniently knock them down. They could argue for weeks if you gave them the attention they wanted. As time went by, I found myself having to killfile (that is, set my reader software so I didn’t even see these people’s posts) more and more to avoid these people. The problem with being a big fish in a little pond was that it made you a juicier target for aspiring little fish.
The problem for me at the time was that I needed this group as a social outlet. I was working in almost complete isolation much of the time in a job which was very repetitive for long stretches of time. I was also at a point where all of my friends had already left Japan and my lack of time and small number of coworkers made it virtually impossible to expand my social network. I was likely addicted to the group and found it very hard to walk away despite the increasing amount of frustration I felt over the drama and personal and unprovoked attacks.
The thing that finally set me free was that I had lost interest in the game and I had an intense aversion to hanging around the group when I had nothing to say about the topic the group was formed around. I had witnessed a lot of people who hung around making pointless (and often witless and boring) contributions because they couldn’t leave and vowed not to become one of them. I walked away and I did it without making any big proclamations about my departure as I didn’t want to invite people to beg me to stay (as it was something I’d seen others do and detested as well). I actually felt withdrawal for awhile, but I got over it and, as time went by, I felt better about not being in a social dynamic full of people with issues that they were acting out on by projecting their fantasies, illusions, aggressions and imagination on me (and other prominent group members).
Why am I writing about this here? If it hasn’t become obvious already, it’s because I’ve discovered that the problems I experienced in the Usenet community are little different from those in blog communities. It seems pandemic in all tendrils of the beast that is the internet that there will be people who can’t help but be competitive, argumentative, or delight in nothing more than arguing with distortions of what you say rather than what you actually say. Apparently, I was at the center of some brouhaha that I missed entirely because I hadn’t been reading various blogs lately (and I never do trackbacks). At the heart of this was a controversy over the Charisma Man post and a lot of people either never read what I said or had a complete inability to read what I said. Somehow, a complex post was distilled down into some distorted conclusions. One big conclusion some people seemed to make was that the post was omindirectional and pasted the "Charisma Man" label on any male who was dating or interested in Japanese women when it certainly was not (and it was made clear in more ways than one in the post but, hey, why read what I said when you can get upset about something I didn't say). Apparently, some felt my writing was an indication that Western women were bitter that Western men in Japan didn’t want them. The irony is, of course, that the whole concept of a “Charisma Man” (which I didn’t invent and predates my post by decades) is that these are men Western women find unappealing. They wouldn’t want them if they offered themselves. It also apparently got simplified into my saying that men who wanted to practice Japanese or date Japanese girls were tagged as “Charisma Men”.
I’m forced to wonder if I’m starting to see a repeat of my past from my Usenet days and it’s not something I’m keen to put up with. If there are bloggers out there who read my blog and have nothing better to do than invent some sort of adversarial drama to draw attention to themselves or to drum up content when they have nothing of their own to say, then I’m not sure that I want to be the focus of their distortion and projections. Perhaps all these folks who have nothing to post about and feel the need to piggyback on my content and make hay by pretending I’m saying something I’m not should reconsider whether they have anything unique and meaningful to offer as bloggers.
The flip-side to all of this attention and “celebrity” status was that for every 10 people who were happy to talk to you and liked you, there was a person who decided he or she had a problem with you. In the case of this particular Usenet community, there was a woman who felt that, as the high-ranking female of a group mainly comprised of males, my rising “status” was a threat to her position as queen bee. There was also a man who grew quietly and increasingly offended because I never responded to his particular posts and took to responding to me in a passive aggressive manner at every turn in retaliation for the slight he imagined was at work. The truth was that there were a lot of people I never replied to since the group was very active and not every topic thread interested me or was something about which I felt compelled to comment. And there were some other folks who loved nothing more than to take what I said and pretend I said something else or implied something I did not so that they’d have an excuse to attack me and my position.
The last group of people were the most maddening because they were so persistent in their efforts to argue with distortions of my posts rather than what was actually said. Such folks were expert at taking things out of context and setting up straw men so they could conveniently knock them down. They could argue for weeks if you gave them the attention they wanted. As time went by, I found myself having to killfile (that is, set my reader software so I didn’t even see these people’s posts) more and more to avoid these people. The problem with being a big fish in a little pond was that it made you a juicier target for aspiring little fish.
The problem for me at the time was that I needed this group as a social outlet. I was working in almost complete isolation much of the time in a job which was very repetitive for long stretches of time. I was also at a point where all of my friends had already left Japan and my lack of time and small number of coworkers made it virtually impossible to expand my social network. I was likely addicted to the group and found it very hard to walk away despite the increasing amount of frustration I felt over the drama and personal and unprovoked attacks.
The thing that finally set me free was that I had lost interest in the game and I had an intense aversion to hanging around the group when I had nothing to say about the topic the group was formed around. I had witnessed a lot of people who hung around making pointless (and often witless and boring) contributions because they couldn’t leave and vowed not to become one of them. I walked away and I did it without making any big proclamations about my departure as I didn’t want to invite people to beg me to stay (as it was something I’d seen others do and detested as well). I actually felt withdrawal for awhile, but I got over it and, as time went by, I felt better about not being in a social dynamic full of people with issues that they were acting out on by projecting their fantasies, illusions, aggressions and imagination on me (and other prominent group members).
Why am I writing about this here? If it hasn’t become obvious already, it’s because I’ve discovered that the problems I experienced in the Usenet community are little different from those in blog communities. It seems pandemic in all tendrils of the beast that is the internet that there will be people who can’t help but be competitive, argumentative, or delight in nothing more than arguing with distortions of what you say rather than what you actually say. Apparently, I was at the center of some brouhaha that I missed entirely because I hadn’t been reading various blogs lately (and I never do trackbacks). At the heart of this was a controversy over the Charisma Man post and a lot of people either never read what I said or had a complete inability to read what I said. Somehow, a complex post was distilled down into some distorted conclusions. One big conclusion some people seemed to make was that the post was omindirectional and pasted the "Charisma Man" label on any male who was dating or interested in Japanese women when it certainly was not (and it was made clear in more ways than one in the post but, hey, why read what I said when you can get upset about something I didn't say). Apparently, some felt my writing was an indication that Western women were bitter that Western men in Japan didn’t want them. The irony is, of course, that the whole concept of a “Charisma Man” (which I didn’t invent and predates my post by decades) is that these are men Western women find unappealing. They wouldn’t want them if they offered themselves. It also apparently got simplified into my saying that men who wanted to practice Japanese or date Japanese girls were tagged as “Charisma Men”.
I’m forced to wonder if I’m starting to see a repeat of my past from my Usenet days and it’s not something I’m keen to put up with. If there are bloggers out there who read my blog and have nothing better to do than invent some sort of adversarial drama to draw attention to themselves or to drum up content when they have nothing of their own to say, then I’m not sure that I want to be the focus of their distortion and projections. Perhaps all these folks who have nothing to post about and feel the need to piggyback on my content and make hay by pretending I’m saying something I’m not should reconsider whether they have anything unique and meaningful to offer as bloggers.
Make the World a Better Place (and you a better person)
Before any of my readers are mislead into thinking this is going to be a list of well-worn "dos" and "don'ts", let me say that that's not the way my mind works. I don't think people need hear more about giving money to the poor, meals to the elderly, or to pick up trash. There are more than enough public service announcements and non-profit agencies encouraging such acts. My suggestions are about improving you and by association, making the world a better one that you will be happier living in.
1. Mind you own business.
When you see that fat guy chowing down on a piece of cake, remember that what he eats has nothing to do with you. When you see that woman wearing lot of makeup and tight dresses, remember that her fashion sense has nothing to do with you. Either as part of "human nature", self-centeredness, or as part of our socialization, we make a myriad of little judgments of strangers everyday. With a glance, we size them up, judge their choices, and reach conclusions. When challenged about how it's our business, we invent an elaborate chain of connections that smugly allow us to conclude that their behavior harms us because it harms society as a whole as a way of justifying our stance.
When we do this, we trivialize people and distill them into mere results of their choices rather than see them as people who, like us and those we love, have multi-faceted characters, feelings, and needs. In doing so, we are attempting to elevate ourselves and diminish them. We're also appointing ourselves the authority on what is right, best, or acceptable. The actions of others don't lead back to you unless they are acting upon you. You wouldn't want someone doing this to you, so try hard not to do it to them. When you catch yourself doing this, try to stop yourself in mid-judge and break this pattern.
2. Don't act out of selfishness (or anger at the selfishness of others).
Most of the acts of discourtesy that one experiences in public spaces are the result of one person acting selfishly in a competitive situation and then the other retaliating. From pushing for a seat on the subway to stealing a parking space to rushing to get in front of someone who is about to get in line before you, these acts are putting your needs before the needs of someone else. It's taking away from them because you've decided you're more entitled. Sometimes, that entitlement is justified by fatigue, frustration, or the idea that 'everyone does it'. If you don't do it, then that's one less 'everyone' who does it.
When someone does one of these things to you, try not to be hostile as it serves no purpose other than to prove that you cannot control your emotions and are taking the low road in a power struggle you feel you have just lost. You're not going to "teach someone a lesson" and have them stop doing it in the future. People who do these things know what they're doing (just as you do when you do it) and it makes them feel smaller inside and they put up an angry defensive posture. Even in a victory of scoring that last parking space in front of the shop, that person feels defensive knowing that their pettiness may invite a confrontation. Remember that not acting on your frustration is a bigger battle won over your temper and worse impulses, than winning some petty one-off competition for a social benefit.
3. Don't consume or talk about entertainment that feeds off the misery of others.
Everyone complains about celebrity gossip and reality T.V. Both of these types of "entertainment" are offered by the bottom feeders of media who hope to draw in an audience of bored people filling their lives with empty information about the lives of famous folks. This type of content takes little creativity to produce, contains no deep, high, or subtle messages or stories, and panders to a need to judge others in order to feel better about someone else. Some of them are the equivalent of bread and circuses. Anything you consume which has a voyeuristic element reflects an emptiness in your life which you're trying to fill with the more exciting or titillating lives of others.
If you want these things to go away, avoid consuming them at all costs and don't complain about them. When you complain about them, you are giving them free publicity and driving interest up for such content. In fact, complaining about the excessive coverage of the celebrity of the moment tends to drive folks to that coverage to see what you're on about.
Similarly, don't get your jollies from reading about the stupidity, misfortune or carelessness of others. Enjoying mean-spirited humor like the Darwin Awards or making fun of others for actions you think are "stupid" reflects your insecurity and anger. You should be feeding your needs to improve your self-esteem in ways which are lasting and positive rather than doing so at the expense of others.
4. Stop justifying your bigotry.
No one believes he or she is a bigot because bigots are "bad" people. People believe their belief that all Americans are rude or all Christians are intolerant fanatics are justified by the behavior they read about. If you read a story by way of Digg about how a little boy was denied access to a Christmas party because he didn't believe in Jesus and smugly shake your head as you reinforce your certainty that Christians are hypocrites, you've entered the bigot club. The very essence of prejudice is using anecdotal or isolated experiences to justify a negative set belief and not allowing other anecdotes or a vast array of contrary information to dissuade you, or worse yet, to form an opinion based on anecdotes without looking deeper into the situation. Thousands of Christians may be doing missionary or charity work and express tolerance, but their behavior is off the radar for those who are determined to justify their prejudices.
What's more, it's not OK to hate a group of people just because they aren't oppressed. Hate is hate and it's bad for you and it's bad for your relationship with the world. It also infects all your interactions with people and warps your digestion of information. You're encouraging yourself to become a person with a highly-distorted world-view just to prop up your bigotry. You won't even know it, but you'll end up being one of those people no one wants to interact with and who makes others uncomfortable. The world could use fewer of these sorts of folks, don't you think? Why not start with not becoming one yourself.
5. Use honesty wisely and kindly.
There are always going to be times when we can't be honest because it could be detrimental to our jobs or our relationships. Honesty isn't a license to be a jerk or to abandon the white lies that smooth over social encounters and being honest all the time doesn't make you "strong" or prove your ego is durable enough to withstand the disapproval of others in the face of your blunt honesty. Honesty which serves your desires and in no way helps the object of your candor makes you insensitive and rude. If you go to dinner and the hostess's cooking isn't to your liking, you don't tell her you didn't like it. Unless you have a close relationship with her where such candor is acceptable, you offer a white lie to spare her feelings. This sort of lie does no damage to you and it protects her from damage. That is not to say you should pretend you loved the food either, but rather that you be gracious for the social opportunity and the effort.
On the other hand, sometimes people lie even when they seriously don't want to do something or like something. They are asked to do tasks they don't want to do, but pretend it's not a problem for them to do it. They fill themselves with anxiety or get mad at having even been asked to do such things and often ultimately build resentment toward the person who put them in that position. Be honest when it means something to you even if it's difficult for you to do so. If you don't, you misshape the relationships around you and mislead others in terms of their expectations of you.
6. Know when to care and when it's best not to.
It's interesting how many people make a big deal out of their latte not having enough foam or too much foam. They get worked up and charge up to the counter to complain. There's this tiny little insignificant thing which they use an excuse to spread negativity to another person. Sometimes they'll even go so far as to get people in trouble with their bosses because some small thing doesn't suit them. This is the life in nations where ordinary citizens live the life of kings and queens in past centuries. Whims must be anticipated and the smallest of expectations must be met, or there is hell to pay.
Getting worked up about such minutiae is not only harmful to the object of your ire as it starts to build up a hostile resentment toward the customer that will be transferred to other customers and sets off a chain reaction of negativity, but is also bad for the angry party. Every time you invest thought and energy into being angry about tiny little things that don't go your way, you reinforce a pathway in your mind to being angry about such small things. It's one thing to get upset by people treating you poorly or very shoddy work when you pay for a service of goods, but it's quite another to get worked up over small things which are accidents or simply not a reflection of the way you personally believe things should be.
Ask yourself what sort of world we'd live in if everyone followed my advice above. While not everyone will, it has to start with someone and, if not you, then who? If you want to live in a world with people who behave in a more civilized fashion, the changes need to start with you.
If anyone thinks I'm elevating myself as being high-minded and above everyone in giving out this advice, please keep in mind that there's not one point on this list that I don't struggle with myself. I'm not perfect, and I know I never will be, but I do believe we can all live in a better world if we try to fight our worst thoughts and impulses. That's really all we can ask of ourselves.
1. Mind you own business.
When you see that fat guy chowing down on a piece of cake, remember that what he eats has nothing to do with you. When you see that woman wearing lot of makeup and tight dresses, remember that her fashion sense has nothing to do with you. Either as part of "human nature", self-centeredness, or as part of our socialization, we make a myriad of little judgments of strangers everyday. With a glance, we size them up, judge their choices, and reach conclusions. When challenged about how it's our business, we invent an elaborate chain of connections that smugly allow us to conclude that their behavior harms us because it harms society as a whole as a way of justifying our stance.
When we do this, we trivialize people and distill them into mere results of their choices rather than see them as people who, like us and those we love, have multi-faceted characters, feelings, and needs. In doing so, we are attempting to elevate ourselves and diminish them. We're also appointing ourselves the authority on what is right, best, or acceptable. The actions of others don't lead back to you unless they are acting upon you. You wouldn't want someone doing this to you, so try hard not to do it to them. When you catch yourself doing this, try to stop yourself in mid-judge and break this pattern.
2. Don't act out of selfishness (or anger at the selfishness of others).
Most of the acts of discourtesy that one experiences in public spaces are the result of one person acting selfishly in a competitive situation and then the other retaliating. From pushing for a seat on the subway to stealing a parking space to rushing to get in front of someone who is about to get in line before you, these acts are putting your needs before the needs of someone else. It's taking away from them because you've decided you're more entitled. Sometimes, that entitlement is justified by fatigue, frustration, or the idea that 'everyone does it'. If you don't do it, then that's one less 'everyone' who does it.
When someone does one of these things to you, try not to be hostile as it serves no purpose other than to prove that you cannot control your emotions and are taking the low road in a power struggle you feel you have just lost. You're not going to "teach someone a lesson" and have them stop doing it in the future. People who do these things know what they're doing (just as you do when you do it) and it makes them feel smaller inside and they put up an angry defensive posture. Even in a victory of scoring that last parking space in front of the shop, that person feels defensive knowing that their pettiness may invite a confrontation. Remember that not acting on your frustration is a bigger battle won over your temper and worse impulses, than winning some petty one-off competition for a social benefit.
3. Don't consume or talk about entertainment that feeds off the misery of others.
Everyone complains about celebrity gossip and reality T.V. Both of these types of "entertainment" are offered by the bottom feeders of media who hope to draw in an audience of bored people filling their lives with empty information about the lives of famous folks. This type of content takes little creativity to produce, contains no deep, high, or subtle messages or stories, and panders to a need to judge others in order to feel better about someone else. Some of them are the equivalent of bread and circuses. Anything you consume which has a voyeuristic element reflects an emptiness in your life which you're trying to fill with the more exciting or titillating lives of others.
If you want these things to go away, avoid consuming them at all costs and don't complain about them. When you complain about them, you are giving them free publicity and driving interest up for such content. In fact, complaining about the excessive coverage of the celebrity of the moment tends to drive folks to that coverage to see what you're on about.
Similarly, don't get your jollies from reading about the stupidity, misfortune or carelessness of others. Enjoying mean-spirited humor like the Darwin Awards or making fun of others for actions you think are "stupid" reflects your insecurity and anger. You should be feeding your needs to improve your self-esteem in ways which are lasting and positive rather than doing so at the expense of others.
4. Stop justifying your bigotry.
No one believes he or she is a bigot because bigots are "bad" people. People believe their belief that all Americans are rude or all Christians are intolerant fanatics are justified by the behavior they read about. If you read a story by way of Digg about how a little boy was denied access to a Christmas party because he didn't believe in Jesus and smugly shake your head as you reinforce your certainty that Christians are hypocrites, you've entered the bigot club. The very essence of prejudice is using anecdotal or isolated experiences to justify a negative set belief and not allowing other anecdotes or a vast array of contrary information to dissuade you, or worse yet, to form an opinion based on anecdotes without looking deeper into the situation. Thousands of Christians may be doing missionary or charity work and express tolerance, but their behavior is off the radar for those who are determined to justify their prejudices.
What's more, it's not OK to hate a group of people just because they aren't oppressed. Hate is hate and it's bad for you and it's bad for your relationship with the world. It also infects all your interactions with people and warps your digestion of information. You're encouraging yourself to become a person with a highly-distorted world-view just to prop up your bigotry. You won't even know it, but you'll end up being one of those people no one wants to interact with and who makes others uncomfortable. The world could use fewer of these sorts of folks, don't you think? Why not start with not becoming one yourself.
5. Use honesty wisely and kindly.
There are always going to be times when we can't be honest because it could be detrimental to our jobs or our relationships. Honesty isn't a license to be a jerk or to abandon the white lies that smooth over social encounters and being honest all the time doesn't make you "strong" or prove your ego is durable enough to withstand the disapproval of others in the face of your blunt honesty. Honesty which serves your desires and in no way helps the object of your candor makes you insensitive and rude. If you go to dinner and the hostess's cooking isn't to your liking, you don't tell her you didn't like it. Unless you have a close relationship with her where such candor is acceptable, you offer a white lie to spare her feelings. This sort of lie does no damage to you and it protects her from damage. That is not to say you should pretend you loved the food either, but rather that you be gracious for the social opportunity and the effort.
On the other hand, sometimes people lie even when they seriously don't want to do something or like something. They are asked to do tasks they don't want to do, but pretend it's not a problem for them to do it. They fill themselves with anxiety or get mad at having even been asked to do such things and often ultimately build resentment toward the person who put them in that position. Be honest when it means something to you even if it's difficult for you to do so. If you don't, you misshape the relationships around you and mislead others in terms of their expectations of you.
6. Know when to care and when it's best not to.
It's interesting how many people make a big deal out of their latte not having enough foam or too much foam. They get worked up and charge up to the counter to complain. There's this tiny little insignificant thing which they use an excuse to spread negativity to another person. Sometimes they'll even go so far as to get people in trouble with their bosses because some small thing doesn't suit them. This is the life in nations where ordinary citizens live the life of kings and queens in past centuries. Whims must be anticipated and the smallest of expectations must be met, or there is hell to pay.
Getting worked up about such minutiae is not only harmful to the object of your ire as it starts to build up a hostile resentment toward the customer that will be transferred to other customers and sets off a chain reaction of negativity, but is also bad for the angry party. Every time you invest thought and energy into being angry about tiny little things that don't go your way, you reinforce a pathway in your mind to being angry about such small things. It's one thing to get upset by people treating you poorly or very shoddy work when you pay for a service of goods, but it's quite another to get worked up over small things which are accidents or simply not a reflection of the way you personally believe things should be.
Ask yourself what sort of world we'd live in if everyone followed my advice above. While not everyone will, it has to start with someone and, if not you, then who? If you want to live in a world with people who behave in a more civilized fashion, the changes need to start with you.
If anyone thinks I'm elevating myself as being high-minded and above everyone in giving out this advice, please keep in mind that there's not one point on this list that I don't struggle with myself. I'm not perfect, and I know I never will be, but I do believe we can all live in a better world if we try to fight our worst thoughts and impulses. That's really all we can ask of ourselves.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Time to File 2008
It's time for U.S. residents residing in Japan to file their income tax forms. If you've filed before, you should have already been mailed a packet with forms. If you haven't gotten those forms, you can find them on-line or contact the U.S. Embassy. Remember, even if you don't have to pay, you have to file. If you don't, it can complicate your tax situation when you return to the United States.
I strongly recommend you keep a copy of each year's completed forms around so you can use them to guide you next year. The forms rarely change or change very little and you can pretty much follow what you did last year to speed up the process of filing greatly.
A few key points to keep in mind this year:
- You must use the average exchange rate when converting your yen earnings to dollars rather than a current daily rate. The average as of January 2008 was 107.82 yen to the dollar according to the U.S. Federal Reserve.
- The amount of money you can earn and still be exempt from paying U.S. taxes was raised to $85,700 (as compared to $82,400 last year).
- It's a good idea to send the I.R.S. copies of your Japanese tax statements rather than the original forms with a Japanese stamp. The I.R.S. does not require the originals and you may need them for filing your income taxes in Japan and for immigration. Japanese authorities often will not accept photocopies of these forms.
- Don't forget to include any taxable interest on savings accounts you may have back in the United States. If you aren't sent the forms, see if you can access them via on-line banking or have someone at home send them to you.
- You must file separate 2555-EZ Foreign Earned Income Exclusion forms for each member of your household who worked in 2007 who earned less than $85,700.
- Though the U.S. deadline for filing this year is April 17, the deadline for those residing abroad is automatically extended to June 15, so you have a bit longer to file.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
So, I'm the Noisy Neighbor?
On a daily basis, I hear my upstairs neighbors going about the business of their daily life. I hear them dropping things, slamming doors, and seemingly tapping on the floor for no particular reason. On a few occasions, I've heard what sounds like someone tripping and falling like a dead weight onto the floor. Strangely though, I never hear any tenant's television, radio or telephone, so clearly only percussive sounds carry through the floor.
Part of living in a less than perfectly sound-proofed apartment is that these things are going to happen. I don't get mad at my neighbors or try to get them to quiet down. I also don't run off and complain to the landlord about it, though I have had to complain about former neighbors who threw dirty water onto their balcony and let it drip down onto my clean laundry that was hanging out to dry. Please note that I live in a 6-unit building (3 on top, 3 on the bottom) and I've only ever had Japanese neighbors. I know they're Japanese because it's the custom for new tenants to introduce themselves to nearby tenants in the same building upon moving in.
At any rate, I put up with daily thumping and banging and I don't moan or whine about it. About a month ago, between 9:00-9:30 pm, I was preparing dinner. On this particular occasion, I was making a chicken dish which required me to pound chicken breasts flat with a mallet. It probably takes about a minute to get each one to the desired thinness. Shortly after I started beating on the third breast, my neighbors started aggressively beating on the floor to let me know how bothersome I was being to them with my noise-making.
The implement of my evil noise-making, a rubber mallet, was actually a gag gift from a former co-worker who told me I could use it to beat some of my coworkers when I was frustrated. Little did he know I had more legal (thought certainly not more pragmatic) applications for his gift.
Not having much of a choice, I continued with dinner preparations and was treated to another round of listening to my annoyed neighbors beating on the floor. While I understand that it was probably no fun for them to endure 4 (separate) minutes of me pounding on something, keep in mind they weren't sitting in my living room (and it wasn't late at night). They are above me so there's a floor and some distance between us. Also, this was the pot calling the kettle black. I don't know what is up with their tapping, but it happens at least once a week for prolonged periods of time. It's like they're hanging hundreds of tiny picture frames on their walls one at a time.
This incident reminded me of something I've mentioned to my husband on more than one occasion while listening to my neighbors do routine things which cause us to hear lots of banging and thumping. I'm glad we're on the first floor. If my using that mallet bunched their tighty-whities, I can only imagine what walking around, dropping stuff accidentally and closing sliding doors would do to them.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
The chicken dish that I made is probably one of which many folks have a version, but I'm going to give my recipe for it nonetheless. It's very good fresh because the bacon gets a bit crispy, but is also good as leftovers. Note that my husband and I make it with American bacon which is saltier and smokier than Japanese bacon. My husband picks up about a four or so 1-lb. packages of Farmer John brand American bacon when he goes to Costco and they last us about 3-4 months. It can probably be made with Japanese bacon, but the taste will be a bit different.
This dish is one of the few things I can make with chicken breast meat which my husband likes. Not only can you never go wrong with anything which is wrapped in bacon, but beating on it to flatten it out makes the chicken nice and tender. I will not be held responsible though if your neighbors complain when you make it. ;-)
Bacon-wrapped Chicken Breasts:
The breast on the upper right was the first one. Notice how nice and smooth it looks. They are placed in counter-clockwise order and you can see that my work got shoddier as I progressed. The last one is a mangled lump.
Grease a baking dish and set aside. Sandwich a chicken breast between two pieces of plastic wrap and pound with a mallet until about 1/4 inch/.6 cm thick. Try not to beat it until it tears. Leave it a little thicker rather than thinner if necessary. Mix the flour and spices together in a large, shallow bowl. Rinse one chicken piece at a time and thoroughly shake off the excess water. Dredge a damp breast on both sides in the flour shaking off the excess. Place a piece of cheese in the center and fold the short side in first then the long side. Try to enclose the cheese entirely in the breast. This should form a ball that is closed on the bottom. If it doesn't hold together, secure the ends with toothpicks though be very careful to remove them before eating. Place each completed breast in the baking dish.
Place the half strips of bacon over the tops of the chicken to cover. Covering it will keep the breasts moist through the baking process. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour (or more). Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F./175 degrees C. Bake the chicken (uncovered) for 50-60 minutes or until juices run clear and chicken is cooked through. This makes 6-8 servings depending on your appetite.
For my husband and I, half of one of these along with about 4 oz. (125 gr.) of rice and a vegetable makes a very nice meal, so it's not quite as evil as it may seem from a fat point of view. Half of one is about 2.5 oz. (70 g.) of chicken, 1 slice of bacon and .5 oz. (14 g.) of cheese. Most of the fat will cook out of the bacon and pool at the bottom of the baking dish so I recommend removing the breasts immediately rather than waiting until they get cold.
Part of living in a less than perfectly sound-proofed apartment is that these things are going to happen. I don't get mad at my neighbors or try to get them to quiet down. I also don't run off and complain to the landlord about it, though I have had to complain about former neighbors who threw dirty water onto their balcony and let it drip down onto my clean laundry that was hanging out to dry. Please note that I live in a 6-unit building (3 on top, 3 on the bottom) and I've only ever had Japanese neighbors. I know they're Japanese because it's the custom for new tenants to introduce themselves to nearby tenants in the same building upon moving in.
At any rate, I put up with daily thumping and banging and I don't moan or whine about it. About a month ago, between 9:00-9:30 pm, I was preparing dinner. On this particular occasion, I was making a chicken dish which required me to pound chicken breasts flat with a mallet. It probably takes about a minute to get each one to the desired thinness. Shortly after I started beating on the third breast, my neighbors started aggressively beating on the floor to let me know how bothersome I was being to them with my noise-making.
The implement of my evil noise-making, a rubber mallet, was actually a gag gift from a former co-worker who told me I could use it to beat some of my coworkers when I was frustrated. Little did he know I had more legal (thought certainly not more pragmatic) applications for his gift.Not having much of a choice, I continued with dinner preparations and was treated to another round of listening to my annoyed neighbors beating on the floor. While I understand that it was probably no fun for them to endure 4 (separate) minutes of me pounding on something, keep in mind they weren't sitting in my living room (and it wasn't late at night). They are above me so there's a floor and some distance between us. Also, this was the pot calling the kettle black. I don't know what is up with their tapping, but it happens at least once a week for prolonged periods of time. It's like they're hanging hundreds of tiny picture frames on their walls one at a time.
This incident reminded me of something I've mentioned to my husband on more than one occasion while listening to my neighbors do routine things which cause us to hear lots of banging and thumping. I'm glad we're on the first floor. If my using that mallet bunched their tighty-whities, I can only imagine what walking around, dropping stuff accidentally and closing sliding doors would do to them.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
The chicken dish that I made is probably one of which many folks have a version, but I'm going to give my recipe for it nonetheless. It's very good fresh because the bacon gets a bit crispy, but is also good as leftovers. Note that my husband and I make it with American bacon which is saltier and smokier than Japanese bacon. My husband picks up about a four or so 1-lb. packages of Farmer John brand American bacon when he goes to Costco and they last us about 3-4 months. It can probably be made with Japanese bacon, but the taste will be a bit different.
This dish is one of the few things I can make with chicken breast meat which my husband likes. Not only can you never go wrong with anything which is wrapped in bacon, but beating on it to flatten it out makes the chicken nice and tender. I will not be held responsible though if your neighbors complain when you make it. ;-)
Bacon-wrapped Chicken Breasts:
- 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
- 1/2 pound/227 grams bacon (about 8 pieces) cut in half
- ~4 oz./113 grams mild cheese (I used Gouda or Mozzarella) cut into small chunks (about 1/2 inch or 1.27 cm)
- 8 tbsp. all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp. garlic powder
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/4 tsp. pepper
The breast on the upper right was the first one. Notice how nice and smooth it looks. They are placed in counter-clockwise order and you can see that my work got shoddier as I progressed. The last one is a mangled lump.Grease a baking dish and set aside. Sandwich a chicken breast between two pieces of plastic wrap and pound with a mallet until about 1/4 inch/.6 cm thick. Try not to beat it until it tears. Leave it a little thicker rather than thinner if necessary. Mix the flour and spices together in a large, shallow bowl. Rinse one chicken piece at a time and thoroughly shake off the excess water. Dredge a damp breast on both sides in the flour shaking off the excess. Place a piece of cheese in the center and fold the short side in first then the long side. Try to enclose the cheese entirely in the breast. This should form a ball that is closed on the bottom. If it doesn't hold together, secure the ends with toothpicks though be very careful to remove them before eating. Place each completed breast in the baking dish.
Place the half strips of bacon over the tops of the chicken to cover. Covering it will keep the breasts moist through the baking process. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour (or more). Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F./175 degrees C. Bake the chicken (uncovered) for 50-60 minutes or until juices run clear and chicken is cooked through. This makes 6-8 servings depending on your appetite.
For my husband and I, half of one of these along with about 4 oz. (125 gr.) of rice and a vegetable makes a very nice meal, so it's not quite as evil as it may seem from a fat point of view. Half of one is about 2.5 oz. (70 g.) of chicken, 1 slice of bacon and .5 oz. (14 g.) of cheese. Most of the fat will cook out of the bacon and pool at the bottom of the baking dish so I recommend removing the breasts immediately rather than waiting until they get cold.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Lights Out
My apartment is pretty small, dark and airless so I have to leave the lights on in nearly every room to keep them lit sufficiently to work in them. It's not that there are no windows, but rather that the surrounding buildings block out a lot of the light most of the time. The only time they don't block out the light is around 4:30-5:30 am when the sun shines brightly just behind my husband's and my sleeping heads. Anyone who doesn't believe in daylight savings time should have to put up with all that candle power shining on them at an ungodly hour. It'll change your mind.
Because my apartment is so dark, my habit up until a month ago had been to leave the lights on in both the living room in which I actually teach and the kitchen which is directly behind me. The students walk through the kitchen to get in and out (floor plan here to clarify) and I felt it might make them uncomfortable if they looked out onto the yawning dark behind me as we spoke. Well, it's not a big space so it's more of a tiny yawn, but you may see my point.
There was also a bit of a logistical problem in terms of smoothly welcoming the student in (with the light on, of course), pouring tea or coffee as the student is seated in the adjacent room, and then having to break eye contact and interrupt preliminary chatting with the student to walk over to the entrance and turn off the light before carrying the tea into the room. Also, when the lesson was over, I'd have to again break eye contact and go turn the light back on before the student entered the kitchen. In order to avoid the feeling of being in a dark apartment and this awkward set-up, I just left the light on all the time and figured this was a sacrifice I'd have to make for doing business in my apartment just like I have to be sure to use heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer to be sure students are comfortable.
About a month ago, I decided that the environmental impact of running a light in my kitchen when no one was in there for between 40-50 hours a month was not worth the dubious benefits and I started to turn it off just after students sat down and on before they left. The situation is still a bit awkward for me, but the need to turn it on actually helps give me and excuse to get up at the end of the lesson time and head for the kitchen (to get the light) ASAP so the student can put her shoes on. This tends to have the highly desirable effect of getting them to pack up and hit the road a bit sooner and not steal quite as many extra minutes from me at the end of the lesson.
This month marked the first contiguous block of time where I could see the measure of my efforts in regards to the lights. Though my kitchen lights are fluorescent and I only use half of the strip (one tube instead of two), my electric bill went down by between 500-600 yen ($4.60-$5.50). This is a relatively insignificant amount of money saved, but it does show rather clearly that there was an appreciable amount of energy wasted in the use of just one fluorescent tube (albeit for quite a lot of total hours). Every time I forget to turn off a light after going to another room, I'll be keeping this little example in mind to motivate myself to go back out and turn it off.
Because my apartment is so dark, my habit up until a month ago had been to leave the lights on in both the living room in which I actually teach and the kitchen which is directly behind me. The students walk through the kitchen to get in and out (floor plan here to clarify) and I felt it might make them uncomfortable if they looked out onto the yawning dark behind me as we spoke. Well, it's not a big space so it's more of a tiny yawn, but you may see my point.
There was also a bit of a logistical problem in terms of smoothly welcoming the student in (with the light on, of course), pouring tea or coffee as the student is seated in the adjacent room, and then having to break eye contact and interrupt preliminary chatting with the student to walk over to the entrance and turn off the light before carrying the tea into the room. Also, when the lesson was over, I'd have to again break eye contact and go turn the light back on before the student entered the kitchen. In order to avoid the feeling of being in a dark apartment and this awkward set-up, I just left the light on all the time and figured this was a sacrifice I'd have to make for doing business in my apartment just like I have to be sure to use heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer to be sure students are comfortable.
About a month ago, I decided that the environmental impact of running a light in my kitchen when no one was in there for between 40-50 hours a month was not worth the dubious benefits and I started to turn it off just after students sat down and on before they left. The situation is still a bit awkward for me, but the need to turn it on actually helps give me and excuse to get up at the end of the lesson time and head for the kitchen (to get the light) ASAP so the student can put her shoes on. This tends to have the highly desirable effect of getting them to pack up and hit the road a bit sooner and not steal quite as many extra minutes from me at the end of the lesson.
This month marked the first contiguous block of time where I could see the measure of my efforts in regards to the lights. Though my kitchen lights are fluorescent and I only use half of the strip (one tube instead of two), my electric bill went down by between 500-600 yen ($4.60-$5.50). This is a relatively insignificant amount of money saved, but it does show rather clearly that there was an appreciable amount of energy wasted in the use of just one fluorescent tube (albeit for quite a lot of total hours). Every time I forget to turn off a light after going to another room, I'll be keeping this little example in mind to motivate myself to go back out and turn it off.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Such Nice, Polite People
This afternoon, I was biking to a local grocery store and riding quite slowly down the street. There was an old (Japanese) man, probably in his 60's, walking down the side along the left. To give him a buffer, I pulled further to the right and slowed down even more, but he started pulling fast toward the center. I moved further to the right and slowed down nearly to the point where I'd lose balance if I went any slower. As the man intercepted me, he angrily grumbled something at me and shoved my left arm so hard he nearly knocked me off my bike (and hurt my arm) before charging on.
Before any of you claim this was an accident, I can tell you his behavior made it crystal clear he was intent on intercepting me so he could carry out an act of physical aggression. Before any of you claim I deserved it, let me say that I absolutely was not the only cyclist on the street and I'm not exaggerating about my speed or care. In fact, in retrospect, I should have sped up when the old bastard headed my way so he would have been intimidated by the possibility of a faster speed collision and perhaps not decided to try and knock me over. No, I stupidly put myself in a position where I would be able to stop to protect the pedestrian should he get in front of me.
No, my friends, this was an act of unadulterated gaijin-selective bashing by some prejudiced old asshole. Mind you, I didn't pursue him to see if he was running around shoving other people good and hard, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that he wasn't as there would likely be consequences if he went around doing so to Japanese people.
Gaijins love to talk about what a great place Japan is and how the people are nice, polite, friendly and non-violent, but clearly, you can't say that of all of them. In fact, the fact that they view foreigners as practically a different species who don't have a right to be here increases the chances that bad impulses will be acted on. It's not like they fear the consequences when they know that their word will be taken over that of a foreigner and they can make up anything they like to weasel out of what they did. In the U.S., if someone did this to a person of another nationality, they could be arrested for assault and battery, but in Japan, well, who do you think the police are going to care about?
Before any of you claim this was an accident, I can tell you his behavior made it crystal clear he was intent on intercepting me so he could carry out an act of physical aggression. Before any of you claim I deserved it, let me say that I absolutely was not the only cyclist on the street and I'm not exaggerating about my speed or care. In fact, in retrospect, I should have sped up when the old bastard headed my way so he would have been intimidated by the possibility of a faster speed collision and perhaps not decided to try and knock me over. No, I stupidly put myself in a position where I would be able to stop to protect the pedestrian should he get in front of me.
No, my friends, this was an act of unadulterated gaijin-selective bashing by some prejudiced old asshole. Mind you, I didn't pursue him to see if he was running around shoving other people good and hard, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that he wasn't as there would likely be consequences if he went around doing so to Japanese people.
Gaijins love to talk about what a great place Japan is and how the people are nice, polite, friendly and non-violent, but clearly, you can't say that of all of them. In fact, the fact that they view foreigners as practically a different species who don't have a right to be here increases the chances that bad impulses will be acted on. It's not like they fear the consequences when they know that their word will be taken over that of a foreigner and they can make up anything they like to weasel out of what they did. In the U.S., if someone did this to a person of another nationality, they could be arrested for assault and battery, but in Japan, well, who do you think the police are going to care about?
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Reflections
A home-style design on the 1959 book.Teaching students privately is a dual-edged sword. On the one hand, you tend to get a better quality of student who is diligent, more personable, and more goal-oriented. Teaching such students is several cuts above the dead-eyed, lifeless experience of teaching in fast food English conversation schools which are quite often catch-alls for people who have to study rather than a large group of people who really want to.
One of the two books my student has (from 1961), with whimsical artwork.On the other hand, there's a lot more time spent in preparation for such students which is off the clock. While you don't have to do extra work for such students, depending on their specific needs, you really should if you want to give them a good lesson. However, there's often something in this extra preparation for the teacher if she approaches it with the attitude that learning for the sake of the student is also a form of learning for the teacher.
As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my students wants to be a journalist and she wants to write about Betty Crocker for a lifestyle magazine. To that end, I've been investigating Betty Crocker cookbooks so that I can help her (hopefully) develop an article that will be accepted at some point. Since she's particularly interested in the '60s books because of their style, I've also been researching what are considered the hallmarks of 1960s style.
A book from 1972 with rather funky text (reflecting '60s psychedelic style).Doing this has actually been more difficult than one might imagine since the focal point of most articles is on the psychedelic and drug-based counterculture of the late '60s and not on more mundane aspects of domestic life among the non-hippie generation. While those elements were certainly a big part of the '60s, there was also a strong thread of transition from the '50s leading into the early '60s that tends not to get any attention, but you can see it reflected in the items targeted at housewives throughout the decade. Also, a lot of what is considered '60s style is actually early '70s style.
A book from 1980 which is starting to see a cleaner look, but still using relative bold text elements. Most interestingly though, by looking at the covers of the cookbooks and the titles, you can actually make a very good guess as to when they were made. The style of the era is reflected not only in the artwork, the photographic style, and types of dishes, but also in the fonts used. You can see a definite trend from somewhat plain with country or home-style designs with a bit of a flourish to overly-stylized to sophisticated in the text styling and layout. There's also a transition from a focus on entertaining and catering to guests in the book's titles to a focus on faster meal preparation for the family that reflects the changing roles of women from the '50s to the '90s.
White tends to be used more in the most modern layout styles as it has been accepted as more of a use of space for design purposes rather than a byproduct of not wanting to do full color printing. This book from 1996 reflects that.I'd like to persuade my student to make the article she's writing about either the way the books reflect their times in terms of food, style, and women's roles, but I believe she's fixated on the two cookbooks she has and the artwork in them. The main problem with this is that I'm not sure there's enough to say in this regard, especially after I had to disabuse her of the notion that those two books represented the entirety of "Betty Crocker" styling throughout the decades of the company's release of cookbooks. If nothing else, I now have a deeper understanding of why her original article was rejected. The suppositions she made and the claims she asserted were simply based on too little research and a lot of erroneous conclusions.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
In the Dark
Back in my former company's former office, we had a tiny little kitchen that barely two people could squeeze into for food-related tasks. It was often the case that foreign staff, who had a set schedule for conducting lessons by phone, would find themselves log-jammed into that small space at about the same time setting up drinks for the upcoming session of telephone speaking.
Since my boss and I are both tea aficionados, we found ourselves, once again, jockeying for positions in that small room as we made our teabag and milk applications and dealt with some lunch-related dish-washing. We went about our business in the kitchen with the light out because there was a single window through which sufficient light was passing for us to take care of such mundane ministrations in a relatively dim setting.
A salesman wandered over to the postage meter that was inconveniently planted in front of the office refrigerator and said, "You're in the dark. Why are you working in the dark?" Both my boss and I said that we could see just fine and didn't need to use the light. The salesman, nonetheless, walked over and turned on the kitchen light. He decided to substitute his assessment of the needs of the situation for ours.*
This experience illustrated something which I've seen time and again in all areas of life. That is, people approach life as if their perspective and judgment are the appropriate ones and that the solution to the problem is the one that suits their sensibilities. It doesn't occur to them that different people may have different needs and there isn't a "one size fits all" solution that oh-so-conveniently just happens to be in their "size" (all the time, no less).
Awhile back, there was a lot of hubbub in the foreign community about instituting a language proficiency "requirement" for people who work in Japan on long term visas. A lot of the fretting about this was misplaced and based on ignorance of the situation and inadequate research into what the details of the proposed change. (Incidentally, I have no interest in debating the merits and demerits of this potential requirement and any comments addressing this point will not be replied to and may in fact be booted by my moderator - it's already been discussed to death everywhere else.) The interesting thing about all the commentary regarding this situation was that, in debating what level of Japanese language proficiency was sufficient, everyone set the bar where they would be most comfortable setting it. People who can read and write Japanese well felt high levels were fair. People who knew little Japanese felt basic communication should be enough. Those who have studied for and taken standardized tests (JLPT) chose whatever level test they'd already passed. Those who could speak but not read and write felt only oral ability should be tested.
Except for a few rare cases (my blog buddy Penguin for one, who is quite proficient in Japanese, but had concerns about the practicality of instituting such a policy at all), most people set the bar right at where their proficiency was settled. Their "size" was the one they felt was just right for everyone when it came to Japanese ability.
My intent with this post is not to assert that I know what solutions are best or what is right and others do not, but simply to encourage people to be be less rigid about what they believe is "right", "sufficient", and "acceptable". Everyone is different and has different needs. The way you live your life and view your world from how good your language skills have to be to cope with your particular job in Japan right down to things as small as how much light you need to see to do a task can be different from person to person and you shouldn't place your judgment above everyone else's.
*I will note that blue eyes allow in more light than brown eyes and both my former boss and I have blue eyes, though clearly the salesman didn't think about what we could see. He only thought about what he could see.
Since my boss and I are both tea aficionados, we found ourselves, once again, jockeying for positions in that small room as we made our teabag and milk applications and dealt with some lunch-related dish-washing. We went about our business in the kitchen with the light out because there was a single window through which sufficient light was passing for us to take care of such mundane ministrations in a relatively dim setting.
A salesman wandered over to the postage meter that was inconveniently planted in front of the office refrigerator and said, "You're in the dark. Why are you working in the dark?" Both my boss and I said that we could see just fine and didn't need to use the light. The salesman, nonetheless, walked over and turned on the kitchen light. He decided to substitute his assessment of the needs of the situation for ours.*
This experience illustrated something which I've seen time and again in all areas of life. That is, people approach life as if their perspective and judgment are the appropriate ones and that the solution to the problem is the one that suits their sensibilities. It doesn't occur to them that different people may have different needs and there isn't a "one size fits all" solution that oh-so-conveniently just happens to be in their "size" (all the time, no less).
Awhile back, there was a lot of hubbub in the foreign community about instituting a language proficiency "requirement" for people who work in Japan on long term visas. A lot of the fretting about this was misplaced and based on ignorance of the situation and inadequate research into what the details of the proposed change. (Incidentally, I have no interest in debating the merits and demerits of this potential requirement and any comments addressing this point will not be replied to and may in fact be booted by my moderator - it's already been discussed to death everywhere else.) The interesting thing about all the commentary regarding this situation was that, in debating what level of Japanese language proficiency was sufficient, everyone set the bar where they would be most comfortable setting it. People who can read and write Japanese well felt high levels were fair. People who knew little Japanese felt basic communication should be enough. Those who have studied for and taken standardized tests (JLPT) chose whatever level test they'd already passed. Those who could speak but not read and write felt only oral ability should be tested.
Except for a few rare cases (my blog buddy Penguin for one, who is quite proficient in Japanese, but had concerns about the practicality of instituting such a policy at all), most people set the bar right at where their proficiency was settled. Their "size" was the one they felt was just right for everyone when it came to Japanese ability.
My intent with this post is not to assert that I know what solutions are best or what is right and others do not, but simply to encourage people to be be less rigid about what they believe is "right", "sufficient", and "acceptable". Everyone is different and has different needs. The way you live your life and view your world from how good your language skills have to be to cope with your particular job in Japan right down to things as small as how much light you need to see to do a task can be different from person to person and you shouldn't place your judgment above everyone else's.
*I will note that blue eyes allow in more light than brown eyes and both my former boss and I have blue eyes, though clearly the salesman didn't think about what we could see. He only thought about what he could see.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Showing Off
Some of you may have noticed that I rarely type Japanese characters in my blog posts. Some of you may assume that I can't enter Japanese text and that's why I don't include it. That assumption would be incorrect. I have copious amounts of experience entering Japanese text into the computer from my years of working laying out and writing (English) textbooks (with Japanese sections and translations) for the Japanese market.
I just don't use Japanese here for several reasons. The primary one is that my readers are obviously going to be English speakers. A lot of them are family and friends who don't have the ability to display foreign language special characters installed on their machines. Using Japanese in my posts results in gibberish for them. Beyond that though, I don't believe any useful purpose is really served in writing things like "食パン" instead of"shukupan" "shokupan" (white bread) aside from showing off my ability to type in Japanese. Any person who can read Japanese and wants to practice can go elsewhere for far better practice than my blog (which isn't intended to be a study page, a news page, or an authority on Japan and is just a record of my thoughts and experiences). And white bread isn't the sort of thing you need to reference the kanji of in order to recognize it in a store so you don't need to match the characters to the product to successfully purchase it.
I have a confession to make. I don't like it when people who are primary English speakers and who write content for a primarily English audience unnecessarily use Japanese words or writing in their blogs. I don't mind if they use the Japanese to explain something or make something clear so that folks know what the Japanese writing looks like. In such cases, it serves as a reference point for those who want to be able to pick out a particular item and need to match characters to objects in real life. I also don't mind if their blog is clearly directed at a bi-lingual or multi-lingual audience or if the blog is about their efforts to learn Japanese and including that content facilitates their learning. Before anyone gets their hackles up, I'm not referring to any specific person and certainly not to any of my regular commenters, but just to some overall trends I've noticed when perusing a great variety of web sites and forums.
It gets to me when people use Japanese just to look or sound cool or appear authoritative. A grand example of this was on a forum I was perusing about cooking. The site is all in English and all about food. The topic at hand was whether or not people prefer light or dark chocolate. Not one person in the thread was Japanese but someone replied to a post with "(original poster's name)-san" and ended it with "yoroshiku." The poster was clearly a native speaker of English (this was clear from content in other posts he made) and the usage of Japanese terms was an attempt to show off a modicum of Japanese knowledge. It's incredibly pretentious to do this in such a forum and almost certainly was done to attract attention.
I don't have many pet peeves but people who go out of their way to show off is definitely one of them. There's a difference between offering esoteric knowledge or specific terms in an appropriate context and shoehorning them in just to impress people and the latter is an immature way of trying to demonstrate superiority.
I just don't use Japanese here for several reasons. The primary one is that my readers are obviously going to be English speakers. A lot of them are family and friends who don't have the ability to display foreign language special characters installed on their machines. Using Japanese in my posts results in gibberish for them. Beyond that though, I don't believe any useful purpose is really served in writing things like "食パン" instead of
I have a confession to make. I don't like it when people who are primary English speakers and who write content for a primarily English audience unnecessarily use Japanese words or writing in their blogs. I don't mind if they use the Japanese to explain something or make something clear so that folks know what the Japanese writing looks like. In such cases, it serves as a reference point for those who want to be able to pick out a particular item and need to match characters to objects in real life. I also don't mind if their blog is clearly directed at a bi-lingual or multi-lingual audience or if the blog is about their efforts to learn Japanese and including that content facilitates their learning. Before anyone gets their hackles up, I'm not referring to any specific person and certainly not to any of my regular commenters, but just to some overall trends I've noticed when perusing a great variety of web sites and forums.
It gets to me when people use Japanese just to look or sound cool or appear authoritative. A grand example of this was on a forum I was perusing about cooking. The site is all in English and all about food. The topic at hand was whether or not people prefer light or dark chocolate. Not one person in the thread was Japanese but someone replied to a post with "(original poster's name)-san" and ended it with "yoroshiku." The poster was clearly a native speaker of English (this was clear from content in other posts he made) and the usage of Japanese terms was an attempt to show off a modicum of Japanese knowledge. It's incredibly pretentious to do this in such a forum and almost certainly was done to attract attention.
I don't have many pet peeves but people who go out of their way to show off is definitely one of them. There's a difference between offering esoteric knowledge or specific terms in an appropriate context and shoehorning them in just to impress people and the latter is an immature way of trying to demonstrate superiority.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Few Are the Choices We Make - part 2
Part 1 is here.
The way in which our lives are shaped by environment is something which happens not only on an individual level, but on a cultural level as well. People place the choices one culture makes on a pedestal and deride the proclivities of another, but it's very often the case that the "good" in a great culture or the "bad" in a less refined one have nothing to do with any sensibility of the members of that culture. The choices the culture makes are shaped by factors beyond personal aesthetic taste or sophistication and the individuals involved are neither to be praised nor "blamed".
As an example, we can look at food culture. Food culture is shaped by a variety of factors. Primary among them is available food sources, agricultural options and techniques, and food preservation technology. The first item is often recognized but the last one is probably one of the much bigger shapers of what people grow accustomed to and enjoy eating. Why does Japan have a culture with a lot of raw, super fresh food, dried food and pickled food? It's because refrigeration and newer forms of food preservation technology have not been around for a lot of their long history. Their tastes have ridden the tide of history to the present with small adjustments as each generation passed on the tastes of the former one to its children. There's a solid base of food culture though in what history and environment have yielded which will likely echo for centuries to come.
Conversely, why do Americans favor mushy, overcooked, overly salty or sweet food? It's because a lot of America's short history of food culture includes canning as a food preservation technology and the country is sprawling. There was a need for food that could go the distance during expansion and growth as well as keep it free of spoiling as it is carried from areas it is grown in to areas where it is consumed as a non-indigenous food. The first canning factory in America appeared in the early 1800's and canned food saw America through the Civil War through two world wars and into the present. Canned food meant a great deal to American troops in the past. It is also notorious for being overcooked, preserved in sugary liquids, or preserved in salty brine.
The favored cuisine of most people is built around what they grew up with. We like what we ate as kids for the most part and tend mainly to embrace variations on what we already like. While some people diversify their tastes, they are many people for whom food is not important enough to be worth the investment in time, effort, money and research to sample other more adventurous dishes.
On a massive scale, it's unrealistic to expect an entire culture to transcend its roots in a historically-speaking brief period of time. It's also absurd to go around judging any culture for such choices as they are mired in their culture and aren't responsible for either its general negative or positive aspects. Food, of course, is only one example of this. And there are exceptions, but they tend to be based on large scale disruptions to a culture from wars, occupation, major technological or economic breakthroughs, etc. You don't tend to see wholesale replacement of basic cultural elements such as language, religion, or food.
That is not to say that individuals can't break free (as many do), but the overall shape of a culture as mirrored in overall trends and options is molded by what came before and what is around its people, not by any innate superiority or inferiority of the people who populate a culture. To believe otherwise is to place unwarranted faith in the ability and energy of great numbers of individuals to actively seek and accept change en masse. It's unrealistic to expect people to chase down the best elements of other cultures and seek to actively adopt them as replacements for the "lesser" elements of their cultures. That doesn't make them narrow-minded or unsophisticated as it's natural to live in the environment in which you are surviving comfortably and to enjoy the things which bring easy satisfaction. It just makes them human.
The way in which our lives are shaped by environment is something which happens not only on an individual level, but on a cultural level as well. People place the choices one culture makes on a pedestal and deride the proclivities of another, but it's very often the case that the "good" in a great culture or the "bad" in a less refined one have nothing to do with any sensibility of the members of that culture. The choices the culture makes are shaped by factors beyond personal aesthetic taste or sophistication and the individuals involved are neither to be praised nor "blamed".
As an example, we can look at food culture. Food culture is shaped by a variety of factors. Primary among them is available food sources, agricultural options and techniques, and food preservation technology. The first item is often recognized but the last one is probably one of the much bigger shapers of what people grow accustomed to and enjoy eating. Why does Japan have a culture with a lot of raw, super fresh food, dried food and pickled food? It's because refrigeration and newer forms of food preservation technology have not been around for a lot of their long history. Their tastes have ridden the tide of history to the present with small adjustments as each generation passed on the tastes of the former one to its children. There's a solid base of food culture though in what history and environment have yielded which will likely echo for centuries to come.
Conversely, why do Americans favor mushy, overcooked, overly salty or sweet food? It's because a lot of America's short history of food culture includes canning as a food preservation technology and the country is sprawling. There was a need for food that could go the distance during expansion and growth as well as keep it free of spoiling as it is carried from areas it is grown in to areas where it is consumed as a non-indigenous food. The first canning factory in America appeared in the early 1800's and canned food saw America through the Civil War through two world wars and into the present. Canned food meant a great deal to American troops in the past. It is also notorious for being overcooked, preserved in sugary liquids, or preserved in salty brine.
The favored cuisine of most people is built around what they grew up with. We like what we ate as kids for the most part and tend mainly to embrace variations on what we already like. While some people diversify their tastes, they are many people for whom food is not important enough to be worth the investment in time, effort, money and research to sample other more adventurous dishes.
On a massive scale, it's unrealistic to expect an entire culture to transcend its roots in a historically-speaking brief period of time. It's also absurd to go around judging any culture for such choices as they are mired in their culture and aren't responsible for either its general negative or positive aspects. Food, of course, is only one example of this. And there are exceptions, but they tend to be based on large scale disruptions to a culture from wars, occupation, major technological or economic breakthroughs, etc. You don't tend to see wholesale replacement of basic cultural elements such as language, religion, or food.
That is not to say that individuals can't break free (as many do), but the overall shape of a culture as mirrored in overall trends and options is molded by what came before and what is around its people, not by any innate superiority or inferiority of the people who populate a culture. To believe otherwise is to place unwarranted faith in the ability and energy of great numbers of individuals to actively seek and accept change en masse. It's unrealistic to expect people to chase down the best elements of other cultures and seek to actively adopt them as replacements for the "lesser" elements of their cultures. That doesn't make them narrow-minded or unsophisticated as it's natural to live in the environment in which you are surviving comfortably and to enjoy the things which bring easy satisfaction. It just makes them human.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Few Are the Choices We Make - part 1
I remember the day the nail went in the coffin of my Christian beliefs. I was sitting in a history class with one of the most boring teachers in our high school and there was excited talk amongst the students about that date being the day that the world was supposed to end according to one prognosticator or another. Back in the 70's in rural neighborhoods, it seemed like everyone was a great fan of predicting the end of the world. My grandmother liked to talk about it more and more as she aged, and all the parents who were frightened by the infiltration of heavy metal music into youth culture that they burned records were sure this was a sign that Satan was about to take over. As an unsophisticated kid who grew up indoctrinated in a particular belief system, such talk really scared me.
On this particular day, my class was supposed to be reading silently and one of the students decided to say something to the teacher about this end of the world prediction. This particular teacher was all business most of the time. He never shared his personal life or joked or showed any sign of being anything but a date-writing, history-talking drone. I recall how odd his response was because he showed more emotion than I'd ever seen before or after. With great earnestness and conviction, he said that we'd know it wasn't the end of the world if we had read the bible as the signs of the apocalypse had not unfolded as had been foretold.
Besides being very surprised by the way in which this teacher showed he was a human being in his response, I also felt relieved. End of the world talk genuinely scared me when I was in my early to mid teens. Though my memory may be hazy on this point, I believe I was 14 or 15 at the time of this experience. This experience set off a thought process which concluded with my considering that people who grew up elsewhere and didn't have experience with the bible would have no idea about such theories or signs regarding the end of the world. How was it that we were so blessed with knowledge that would "save" us while they were damned because of random factors?
This thought pretty much severed whatever tenuous hold Christian doctrine and dogma had on me. I don't wish to be misunderstood in what I'm saying though. I have no problems with Christianity or Christians. I believe all spiritual philosophies from Paganism to Christianity to Atheism have good points and bad points and I'm not about knocking any of them. However, I understood at that point with great clarity that who you are, what you like and dislike and what you believe is shaped far more by where you are born and how you are raised than by the conscious choices you make.
I'm sure that a lot of folks will take issue with that final statement because we have a strong desire to believe we make the lives we live through our choices. While that is true to some extent, the breadth and composition of the palette of choices we're offered is shaped by factors beyond our control. For instance, if you grow up in a culture which is dominated by one particular faith and you grow up only educated in the principles of that faith the chances that you'll adopt another one which is practiced only by people on the other side of the planet is pretty slim. There are some options that you simply aren't going to be presented with or even find through active searches. And let's say you do find some of those options. Their roots may be so esoteric that you can't understand or relate to them sufficiently to embrace them.
(To be continued in part 2)
On this particular day, my class was supposed to be reading silently and one of the students decided to say something to the teacher about this end of the world prediction. This particular teacher was all business most of the time. He never shared his personal life or joked or showed any sign of being anything but a date-writing, history-talking drone. I recall how odd his response was because he showed more emotion than I'd ever seen before or after. With great earnestness and conviction, he said that we'd know it wasn't the end of the world if we had read the bible as the signs of the apocalypse had not unfolded as had been foretold.
Besides being very surprised by the way in which this teacher showed he was a human being in his response, I also felt relieved. End of the world talk genuinely scared me when I was in my early to mid teens. Though my memory may be hazy on this point, I believe I was 14 or 15 at the time of this experience. This experience set off a thought process which concluded with my considering that people who grew up elsewhere and didn't have experience with the bible would have no idea about such theories or signs regarding the end of the world. How was it that we were so blessed with knowledge that would "save" us while they were damned because of random factors?
This thought pretty much severed whatever tenuous hold Christian doctrine and dogma had on me. I don't wish to be misunderstood in what I'm saying though. I have no problems with Christianity or Christians. I believe all spiritual philosophies from Paganism to Christianity to Atheism have good points and bad points and I'm not about knocking any of them. However, I understood at that point with great clarity that who you are, what you like and dislike and what you believe is shaped far more by where you are born and how you are raised than by the conscious choices you make.
I'm sure that a lot of folks will take issue with that final statement because we have a strong desire to believe we make the lives we live through our choices. While that is true to some extent, the breadth and composition of the palette of choices we're offered is shaped by factors beyond our control. For instance, if you grow up in a culture which is dominated by one particular faith and you grow up only educated in the principles of that faith the chances that you'll adopt another one which is practiced only by people on the other side of the planet is pretty slim. There are some options that you simply aren't going to be presented with or even find through active searches. And let's say you do find some of those options. Their roots may be so esoteric that you can't understand or relate to them sufficiently to embrace them.
(To be continued in part 2)
Monday, February 04, 2008
Making Dreams Come True
About a month ago, I got a new student who is looking to increase her skill base in order to make a career change from a pharmaceutical industry office job to a job in journalism. This is her dream job and she's currently got her toe in the water transcribing taped interviews for a lifestyle magazine as a freelancer.
I've spoken to her a few times about why she hasn't been able to get the writing job she wants and she said that the piece she submitted to the publication she wants to work for was "evaluated" and she was told she doesn't have enough "skill". When I asked her what about her skill was lacking, she told me that she couldn't offer the ability to speak English, work with Adobe Illustrator, etc. When I asked her what specifically was wrong with her writing since she didn't need any extra skills beyond a proper writing style to submit articles, she just went back to saying the company said she didn't have sufficient skills.
Since I worked at a job for over a decade where I worked in authoring, copy editing, laying out, and doing graphics work for publishing books, I can see where a company might want someone who could deliver a broad package of abilities. However, my company was a small one which operated on a tight budget and not all publishers do everything in house. In fact, my student told me that (she believed) the magazine she was hoping to work for had separate divisions for things like design so she didn't think she'd have to deal with much beyond writing.
In the end, I talked to her about some of the steps that lead from content creation to final product and noticed that she was relatively ignorant of the process. She had a vague notion that there was content in Microsoft Word document files which got put into Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator and, voila, instant magazine. Despite the fact that she wanted to work in the publishing industry, she was unaware of what went into making a magazine and was utterly unaware of desktop publishing software of any kind and the role it plays in 99.9% of publishing. (I don't say 100% because some people do short-length publication layout in Adobe Illustrator only.) In the end, I rather wondered if her ignorance of the industry was part of what was preventing her from getting the job. Perhaps the company wanted people working for them who at least had some idea of what was involved even if they didn't personally need to perform those tasks. After all, knowing the process helps you understand the limits and specific needs of jobs that are interconnected in producing a final product.
This situation reminded me of the fact that, when we're young, we all have dreams of things we'd like to do but we often have little understanding of what it takes to achieve those dreams. We look at the final result or the aura of success or glamor surrounding a job and say, "I want that," but don't think about or know the hurdles we have to jump through to get there. Sometimes I wonder if part of what kills dreams is that you find out that the path between forming the dream and realizing it require a lot more effort and is a lot more tedious than imagined. By the time you do what it takes to make a dream come true, it's made the transition from something lofty and exciting to the mundane status of "job".
I've spoken to her a few times about why she hasn't been able to get the writing job she wants and she said that the piece she submitted to the publication she wants to work for was "evaluated" and she was told she doesn't have enough "skill". When I asked her what about her skill was lacking, she told me that she couldn't offer the ability to speak English, work with Adobe Illustrator, etc. When I asked her what specifically was wrong with her writing since she didn't need any extra skills beyond a proper writing style to submit articles, she just went back to saying the company said she didn't have sufficient skills.
Since I worked at a job for over a decade where I worked in authoring, copy editing, laying out, and doing graphics work for publishing books, I can see where a company might want someone who could deliver a broad package of abilities. However, my company was a small one which operated on a tight budget and not all publishers do everything in house. In fact, my student told me that (she believed) the magazine she was hoping to work for had separate divisions for things like design so she didn't think she'd have to deal with much beyond writing.
In the end, I talked to her about some of the steps that lead from content creation to final product and noticed that she was relatively ignorant of the process. She had a vague notion that there was content in Microsoft Word document files which got put into Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator and, voila, instant magazine. Despite the fact that she wanted to work in the publishing industry, she was unaware of what went into making a magazine and was utterly unaware of desktop publishing software of any kind and the role it plays in 99.9% of publishing. (I don't say 100% because some people do short-length publication layout in Adobe Illustrator only.) In the end, I rather wondered if her ignorance of the industry was part of what was preventing her from getting the job. Perhaps the company wanted people working for them who at least had some idea of what was involved even if they didn't personally need to perform those tasks. After all, knowing the process helps you understand the limits and specific needs of jobs that are interconnected in producing a final product.
This situation reminded me of the fact that, when we're young, we all have dreams of things we'd like to do but we often have little understanding of what it takes to achieve those dreams. We look at the final result or the aura of success or glamor surrounding a job and say, "I want that," but don't think about or know the hurdles we have to jump through to get there. Sometimes I wonder if part of what kills dreams is that you find out that the path between forming the dream and realizing it require a lot more effort and is a lot more tedious than imagined. By the time you do what it takes to make a dream come true, it's made the transition from something lofty and exciting to the mundane status of "job".
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Products of Rampant Individualism
Lately, I've been seeing various ads and articles leading up to the commercialism storm that is Valentine's Day. Some of the articles I see are aimed not at people who are romantically inclined and considering what to do to celebrate the holiday, but toward people who hate Valentine's Day. There are a lot of people who see it as a sadistic attempt to make single and lonely people feel bad about themselves or put them in a position to defend their solitary state.
Though I am married, and probably am one of the most deliriously happy married people on the planet (and yes, I know you are tired of reading it and I'm so incredibly obnoxious for saying it again, in my defense, this time I actually have a point in tossing this bit of information out there again), I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. The main reason for this is that my husband tells me he loves me everyday, several times a day and brings me little gifts all the time. In a good relationship, you don't need an artificial reason to show your affection for one another. So, I don't think that even happily coupled people necessarily feel Valentine's Day is a day for them. It seems to me that the holiday is really for shy people to find a framework through which to express the feelings they have trouble saying. Mind you, I'm not saying that's how it's dealt with commercially, but just rather perhaps the purist intent of it all. Every holiday has been and always will be commercially exploited and you can choose to be put off by it or do things your own way and enjoy any given holiday for the opportunities it offers you (or not).
However, I'm digressing to some extent in explaining that I think Valentine's Day has nothing to do with making single people feel bad, and that's the point to which I want to get back. A lot of the focus of the vitriol single folks have is aimed squarely at couples and deriding partnered life as a festival of petty and bitterly accepted compromises. Among the many benefits of single life that I've read are things like being able to rent the movie you want, being able to eat the last cookie in the box, and not having to ask for "permission" to go somewhere, do something, or buy something.
I mentioned these types of articles to one of my students and had a very hard time getting her to comprehend the objections being mentioned. The notion that anyone would worry about who drank the last beer in the refrigerator or what was being watched on T.V. as a drawback to being in a committed relationship was completely off the radar for her. She just couldn't fathom why anyone would care so much about such small things that they'd prefer being alone to companionship. She sees family on one side and last piece of pie on the other and thinks there's no question which is more important. In the end, she concluded that these things were of value to Western folks because they grew up in a culture which focuses on individualism.
While I believe that my student definitely is hitting at the core of why people come to value having every little thing their way, I think that for many people there's also an element of dissatisfaction in general with a relationship (or all relationships) which starts to get attached to any sort of compromise. Even though I grew up in a culture centered on individualism, I could care less who eats the last treat and my husband and I use headphones when we want to listen or watch something that the other person isn't interested in. There's no problem for us with these little issues because we've worked out the larger issues and aren't looking to power play on a micro level. One of the things I realized early on in our relationship was that there are two ways to deal with problems. One way is to hold onto the conflict and insist on standing your ground and the other is to focus your energy on the shortest path to a solution. You'd be surprised how many people will take the path of most resistance rather than a straightforward solution which requires minimal sacrifice and compromise. This way of dealing with relationships isn't one that I learned from the Japanese, but I think it's one they perhaps come by more naturally than many Western folks because theirs is not a culture which endorses willfulness as an indication of personal strength. Of course, often in Japan, this sort of compromising results in one person caving in to the other based on whoever is perceived to have the higher status so it's not exactly a healthy compromise.
Getting back to Valentines Day, one of the interesting things about opposition to this holiday is how personally people take it. Rather than get angry about it, one wonders why people don't just ignore it or any other holiday which annoys them. Most of the backlash seems to be in response to the overall trend in society toward pressuring people to couple. Apparently, busybodies who keep asking folks when they'll marry or if they've found a significant other grate on the nerves of single folks such that they are pretty much ready to explode by the time February 14 rolls around. It's ironic that Western culture supposedly embraces a variety of roles and lifestyles as having relatively equal value (within limits - they still don't exactly think househusbands are acceptable) yet some single people still feel so oppressed that they turn into snarling, defensive beasts around this time of year.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Coping With the Cold
At this time of year, every kind-hearted Japanese person who I speak with (which is pretty much every one that I actually speak with), tells me to be careful now that it's colder outside so I don't catch cold. While I always appreciate the concern, I have to suppress the urge to say that cold weather isn't what makes you catch a cold. It's actually rapid changes in temperature, stress, lack of sleep, and poor nutrition that tend to cause people to get sick coupled with, of course, exposure to viruses. The onset of cold weather makes people believe cold weather makes them catch colds because so many problems develop at the changing point, but it's the extreme fluctuations between over-heated interiors and frigid exteriors which increase the frequency of adjustments our bodies have to make that are the main culprit.
When I was studying physiological psychology, I was taught the term "homeostasis". This term has several applications, both human and otherwise, but in my studies it was used to indicate that our bodies and minds like things to stay the same and the introduction of change, particularly a rapid and extreme one, stresses a person. When your body is stressed, your immune system has more difficulty coping with the bombardment of nasty things it encounters and is more likely to fail in its mission of keeping you healthy.
A very good way to avoid catching a cold is to minimize powerful fluctuations in temperature. Given that there is no central heating in most Japanese domiciles, this would seem to be pretty easy, but the truth is that the use of space heaters and kotatsu tend to increase the chances a person will overheat himself or herself by sitting close to the source of heat in a cold room rather than sit in a spot distant from the heating source in a lightly heated room which is being warmed by central heating.
Before anyone gets the wrong idea and believes that I'm suggesting that central heating is somehow superior in any way (because there are some people who love nothing more than inferring something so they can take me to task for what I didn't say), that's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that most people who live in cold weather set the thermostat low (65-68 degrees F./19-20 degrees C) and wear a sweater so the rooms they are sitting in aren't really hot. When your room is really cold, there's nothing more satisfying than practically sitting on top of the only heat source (space heater/kotatsu) and getting nice and toasty. Unfortunately, this is usually followed by getting up and walking into a much cooler area of the apartment or going outside into the frigid air. This is forcing your body to adjust pretty frequently to rapid changes and increases the chances you'll get sick.
Keeping the aforementioned and other points in mind, I've got some tips for keeping well at this time of year for those of us in Tokyo (though these can apply to other folks as well):
Another problem is the fact that most offices are kept at inferno-level temperatures during the winter so there is the inevitable shock to the system when going from indoors to outside. The former president of my former company used to justify roasting us to death in summer by saying it was unhealthy to be too cold then go out into the summer heat, but didn't believe there was anything wrong with setting the heat such that it was 85 degrees F. (29 degrees C.) inside in the winter when it was 40 degrees F. (4 degrees C.) outside. If at all possible, do the best you can to spare your body these types of extreme transitions.
For many foreigners, not getting sick is more important than it is for a Japanese person. Part of the reason for this is that some of us work under conditions where we are not paid for sick leave (this is the case for both my husband and I). Also, the truth is that a lot of the time a foreign person is "blamed" for being sick or disbelieved. Every time my boss or I became ill (which wasn't all that often), the president would say that it was our responsibility to take care of ourselves and that we were failing in our jobs if we allowed ourselves to take ill. While the Japanese staff took days off for sniffles and low fevers, we soldiered on with raging colds and the flu (which is when we inevitably were lectured about how getting sick was our own fault). Of course, this was the same president who used to take a half day off whenever he got a headache. :-p
While I'm not offering myself up as an authority on maintaining health, I can say that I haven't caught a cold in about a year and a half, and, at the very least, I doubt my advice will make you less healthy.
When I was studying physiological psychology, I was taught the term "homeostasis". This term has several applications, both human and otherwise, but in my studies it was used to indicate that our bodies and minds like things to stay the same and the introduction of change, particularly a rapid and extreme one, stresses a person. When your body is stressed, your immune system has more difficulty coping with the bombardment of nasty things it encounters and is more likely to fail in its mission of keeping you healthy.
A very good way to avoid catching a cold is to minimize powerful fluctuations in temperature. Given that there is no central heating in most Japanese domiciles, this would seem to be pretty easy, but the truth is that the use of space heaters and kotatsu tend to increase the chances a person will overheat himself or herself by sitting close to the source of heat in a cold room rather than sit in a spot distant from the heating source in a lightly heated room which is being warmed by central heating.
Before anyone gets the wrong idea and believes that I'm suggesting that central heating is somehow superior in any way (because there are some people who love nothing more than inferring something so they can take me to task for what I didn't say), that's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that most people who live in cold weather set the thermostat low (65-68 degrees F./19-20 degrees C) and wear a sweater so the rooms they are sitting in aren't really hot. When your room is really cold, there's nothing more satisfying than practically sitting on top of the only heat source (space heater/kotatsu) and getting nice and toasty. Unfortunately, this is usually followed by getting up and walking into a much cooler area of the apartment or going outside into the frigid air. This is forcing your body to adjust pretty frequently to rapid changes and increases the chances you'll get sick.
Keeping the aforementioned and other points in mind, I've got some tips for keeping well at this time of year for those of us in Tokyo (though these can apply to other folks as well):
- Use your space heater (or kotatsu) at a lower temperature setting if you tend to sit close to the source and try not to warm up too quickly. Wear several layers of clothing to keep your body heat in rather than rely so heavily on being externally warmed. Maintaining your body temperature with clothes will minimize the frequency and intensity of temperature fluctuations.
- Avail yourself of the cheap and plentiful Japanese oranges (mikan) at this time of year and eat one or two every day and try to incorporate more vegetables into your diet, especially tomatoes and leafy green vegetables.
- Sleep with a knitted cap and socks on. Most of the heat leaves your body through your head and feet. Wearing a cap in particular is something people don't tend to do, but it will seriously help you stay warm in bed, especially if you tend not to use your space heater at all through the night for safety reasons.
- Invest in a good comforter or blanket. A down comforter is light and warm (though some people are allergic) and can serve your very well. A lot of the blankets in Japan are pretty thin or not well insulated.
- Make it a priority to exercise regularly. You will find that you're less likely to get sick if you are stronger overall and that your circulation will be better if you are getting some aerobic exercise.
- Drink as much water as you can to help cope with the dry winter air (and dry air from heating). This is something you have to make a priority, not just wait until you feel thirsty or dry. If you suffer from sore throats in the morning, it may also be a good idea to invest in a humidifier for your bedroom though be careful if you buy the kind which puts out hot steam. I still have a scar on my wrist from getting it too close to a hot humidifier positioned on my nightstand.
- Get yourself a pair of fleece-lined slippers for winter which are warmer than the average Japanese house slippers.
- Wash your hands every time you come inside after being outdoors and be mindful of touching your eyes, nose, or mouth while you are out so you don't transfer any germs you get on your hands to your mucous membranes. If you can't wash your hands easily, carry the sort of hand wipes which are treated with alcohol to clean your hands.
- While drinking hot beverages would seem to logically make you feel warmer, it actually causes your body to try and adjust to the internal heat by making your body colder. It's better not to drink very hot beverages and try for something that is warm or room temperature.
- If you can get your hands on them, wear high quality long underwear as part of your layers of clothing. Land's End has mail order that ships to Japan and is reasonably priced, has western sizes, and is good quality. They carry silk weave long underwear which should keep you from being too hot in heated rooms and warmer in cold weather.
Another problem is the fact that most offices are kept at inferno-level temperatures during the winter so there is the inevitable shock to the system when going from indoors to outside. The former president of my former company used to justify roasting us to death in summer by saying it was unhealthy to be too cold then go out into the summer heat, but didn't believe there was anything wrong with setting the heat such that it was 85 degrees F. (29 degrees C.) inside in the winter when it was 40 degrees F. (4 degrees C.) outside. If at all possible, do the best you can to spare your body these types of extreme transitions.
For many foreigners, not getting sick is more important than it is for a Japanese person. Part of the reason for this is that some of us work under conditions where we are not paid for sick leave (this is the case for both my husband and I). Also, the truth is that a lot of the time a foreign person is "blamed" for being sick or disbelieved. Every time my boss or I became ill (which wasn't all that often), the president would say that it was our responsibility to take care of ourselves and that we were failing in our jobs if we allowed ourselves to take ill. While the Japanese staff took days off for sniffles and low fevers, we soldiered on with raging colds and the flu (which is when we inevitably were lectured about how getting sick was our own fault). Of course, this was the same president who used to take a half day off whenever he got a headache. :-p
While I'm not offering myself up as an authority on maintaining health, I can say that I haven't caught a cold in about a year and a half, and, at the very least, I doubt my advice will make you less healthy.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Room Without a View
One of the few trees outside our apartment on one of the few days that it snows. It's snowing today in Tokyo. I know what you're thinking... 'snow, big deal.' Actually, I agree. Having grown up in the northeast, where it wasn't uncommon for us to experience copious amounts of snow, the few centimeters Tokyo sees every few years doesn't fill me with delight.
Nonetheless, I have to admit that, after living here for nearly 18 years, some of the shine of seeing snow falling has been revived. In fact, I might even be compelled to go out and walk around for a few minutes in it, take a few pictures, and attempt to wax poetic about the clean, quiet beauty of snow. Actually, that last part is a lie. I don't think I ever do anything poetic.
As some of my more astute readers may have noticed, my posting has become more erratic over the last several days after having been fairly steady for well over a month. This isn't because I have nothing to say but rather because I have no time or energy to say anything. This week, I'm working the equivalent of a full-time schedule (about 36 hours) between telephone testing and teaching privately. This requires me to remain tethered to the phone and remain in the apartment from about 10:00-8:00 for the better part of the work week to either answer the incessantly ringing phone or speak with the students who show up at the door. I spend the time between calls dashing around trying to clean and tidy up the apartment in preparation for the private lessons. It's pretty hectic.
There's no going "over the wall".Working from home is largely a blessing because I save about an hour and a half a day in commuting time compared to when I worked in an office (though I make a fraction of my former income), but, on days like today, where something atypical is happening and I'm shackled to my living room, it can feel a bit confining. It doesn't help that the view from my living room is relatively bleak and uninteresting. In fact, the wall that separates our apartment building from the house next door gives one a bit of a felling of being incarcerated. I'm sure though that it's a pretty typical view for anyone living in Tokyo on the first or second floor of buildings.
Getting back to the snow though, if you ask Japanese folks who were born and raised in Tokyo if it snows in winter, they always say that it does. Technically, this is correct, but only in that every few years, there appear to be a few days in which a bit of snow falls.
Memories of how often and how much falls appear to be embellished at times. One of my students is 20 years old. That means that I have lived here for all but the first 2 or 3 years of her life and she has lived in an area not too far from me. She told me that it used to snow in Tokyo more when she was a child and she remembers being able to make snowmen. I was here "when (she) was a child" and I can't recall more than one year in which the conditions she mentions occurred and I'm pretty sure that she couldn't have been more than 5 years old at that time. I figure one of us has an altered memory of the way things have been, though I can't say with any certainty that it isn't me. ;-)
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Mistakes We Make
One of my students attends a U.S. college on a military base. The people she meets in her classes are mostly from poor areas of the southern part of the United States or urban centers. The class is made up of (by an overwhelming majority) African American men as is the teacher who conducts most of her core courses. Though it may seem irrelevant, this fact is actually an important one in mulling over the point I'm about to make.
No one would deny that the experiences of black folks in America differs from that of white folks, Hispanics, or Asians and it would seem that a lot of the fellows who end up in her class come from areas with a lot of crime and poverty. Their world is one where plenty of people grow up surrounded by violence, gang activity, and prejudice which shuts them out of opportunities to improve their lot in life. They paint this picture of a "usual life in America" for her on a regular basis. To her, America is a place riddled by violence where everyone has a gun, many people have done time in jail, and minorities are routinely and overtly mistreated.
The mistake my student makes is that she believes that the experiences and perceptions of a handful of people who she shares classes with on a regular basis are accurate representations of life in the U.S. While I would not argue at all that the world her classmates describe is a real part of life in America, it's certainly not the entire experience or even necessarily a representative, generalized picture. Somewhere between bucolic, crime-free rural life where there is little or no racial strife and urban lives of squalor and violence is a more average picture of life. I'm not saying I can even paint that picture, but rather that it's a mistake to believe everything an individual or small group of individuals tell you about their culture is an accurate picture of that culture.
One of the main reasons you can't believe everything you're told about cultures which you don't grow up in is that people color their observations with their emotional reactions. Their bitterness or anger can skew their views just as an affluent person who grew up with a silver spoon can be skewed into thinking life is a pie-in-the-sky lark where life is a choice of amusements on a playground. Another reason you can't believe what you're told about other cultures is that people simply do not know everything about their own culture and are generally inclined not to admit it, particularly if they think they know the answer and figure you won't know if they fudge it.
The latter was a fact I was reminded of when I re-read "Dave Barry Does Japan." While the book is a humor book, and does not represent itself in any way as an authoritative guide to Japan, it is a good example of a foreign person coming to Japan and accepting answers given by individual Japanese people at face value. When Dave doesn't understand, it's a joke, but he earnestly quotes the Japanese about what things are really like and sometimes, the information he's given is misleading, incomplete, or incorrect for people living in urban (or rural areas). Additionally, some of the information you get from Japanese people has to be considered in light of the fact that they wish to present Japanese culture in the most positive light. Conversely, some of the information you get from Americans reflects the fact that, in an effort not to look like flag-waving zealots or to illustrate how bad their life there was, they often portray American in a more negative light.
A lot of foreign people make the same type of mistake that Dave Barry did. That is, they feel that whatever Japanese people tell them is factually accurate. After all, who knows Japan better than a Japanese person? The problem is that, just as the Americans who tell my student America is a modern Wild West full of prejudice, any particular person's perceptions are the reflection of selective experiences and subjective editing. It's not enough to believe one person or even 10 people who tell you something, particularly if those 10 people grew up in the same sort of circumstances and similar locales.
The main problem is that after they've asked a question and gotten an answer, most people tend to move on and ask different questions rather than proffering the same one again and again to test the overall validity of the information they've been given. This is understandable considering the wealth of new information to be gathered when faced with a wide, fresh world of culture to learn and understand, but it also leads to a lot of "authorities" on a culture which propagate skewed views.
The gaijin living in Japan tend to be one of the most combative and territorial groups when it comes to accepting any sort of perspective which doesn't mesh with the one they currently hold. Often, there is no "right" or "wrong" but a variety of situations, experiences and facts which vary based on geography, economic level, and social status, but the authoritative foreigner will challenge you to a verbal dual to the death to prove he knows better than you.While none of us can be totally versed in any culture (including our own), the important thing is to keep an open mind and egos in check when presented with opposing experiences and information.
The "truth" about a given culture is a bit like infinity. You can approach it, but you're incapable of actually reaching it.
No one would deny that the experiences of black folks in America differs from that of white folks, Hispanics, or Asians and it would seem that a lot of the fellows who end up in her class come from areas with a lot of crime and poverty. Their world is one where plenty of people grow up surrounded by violence, gang activity, and prejudice which shuts them out of opportunities to improve their lot in life. They paint this picture of a "usual life in America" for her on a regular basis. To her, America is a place riddled by violence where everyone has a gun, many people have done time in jail, and minorities are routinely and overtly mistreated.
The mistake my student makes is that she believes that the experiences and perceptions of a handful of people who she shares classes with on a regular basis are accurate representations of life in the U.S. While I would not argue at all that the world her classmates describe is a real part of life in America, it's certainly not the entire experience or even necessarily a representative, generalized picture. Somewhere between bucolic, crime-free rural life where there is little or no racial strife and urban lives of squalor and violence is a more average picture of life. I'm not saying I can even paint that picture, but rather that it's a mistake to believe everything an individual or small group of individuals tell you about their culture is an accurate picture of that culture.
One of the main reasons you can't believe everything you're told about cultures which you don't grow up in is that people color their observations with their emotional reactions. Their bitterness or anger can skew their views just as an affluent person who grew up with a silver spoon can be skewed into thinking life is a pie-in-the-sky lark where life is a choice of amusements on a playground. Another reason you can't believe what you're told about other cultures is that people simply do not know everything about their own culture and are generally inclined not to admit it, particularly if they think they know the answer and figure you won't know if they fudge it.
The latter was a fact I was reminded of when I re-read "Dave Barry Does Japan." While the book is a humor book, and does not represent itself in any way as an authoritative guide to Japan, it is a good example of a foreign person coming to Japan and accepting answers given by individual Japanese people at face value. When Dave doesn't understand, it's a joke, but he earnestly quotes the Japanese about what things are really like and sometimes, the information he's given is misleading, incomplete, or incorrect for people living in urban (or rural areas). Additionally, some of the information you get from Japanese people has to be considered in light of the fact that they wish to present Japanese culture in the most positive light. Conversely, some of the information you get from Americans reflects the fact that, in an effort not to look like flag-waving zealots or to illustrate how bad their life there was, they often portray American in a more negative light.
A lot of foreign people make the same type of mistake that Dave Barry did. That is, they feel that whatever Japanese people tell them is factually accurate. After all, who knows Japan better than a Japanese person? The problem is that, just as the Americans who tell my student America is a modern Wild West full of prejudice, any particular person's perceptions are the reflection of selective experiences and subjective editing. It's not enough to believe one person or even 10 people who tell you something, particularly if those 10 people grew up in the same sort of circumstances and similar locales.
The main problem is that after they've asked a question and gotten an answer, most people tend to move on and ask different questions rather than proffering the same one again and again to test the overall validity of the information they've been given. This is understandable considering the wealth of new information to be gathered when faced with a wide, fresh world of culture to learn and understand, but it also leads to a lot of "authorities" on a culture which propagate skewed views.
The gaijin living in Japan tend to be one of the most combative and territorial groups when it comes to accepting any sort of perspective which doesn't mesh with the one they currently hold. Often, there is no "right" or "wrong" but a variety of situations, experiences and facts which vary based on geography, economic level, and social status, but the authoritative foreigner will challenge you to a verbal dual to the death to prove he knows better than you.While none of us can be totally versed in any culture (including our own), the important thing is to keep an open mind and egos in check when presented with opposing experiences and information.
The "truth" about a given culture is a bit like infinity. You can approach it, but you're incapable of actually reaching it.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Run, Forrest(san), Run!
Yesterday evening while I was doing some late evening shopping at a local 99 yen shop, I saw a fellow do something which I've always felt was an "only in Japan" experience. First, it's important to set the scene. The shop is essentially a shoebox. It's probably no more than 15 feet wide (~4.5 m.) and 20 feet long (~6 m.) in terms of the longest stretch of space in each direction one can actually tread upon. Traveling from end to end of the store on the longest side at a normal stride would take less than 7 seconds.
As I was approaching the check-out, another customer walked up and stood in front of the unmanned cash register. An employee who was "at the back" of the store (that's about 4 seconds, to you and me) upon seeing the customer approach sprinted into action and attempted to "run" to the register to assist the customer. In mid-sprint, he knocked over a bunch of sundry goods piled on the end of the aisle. For those who haven't had the pleasure, many small Japanese stores have aisles capped and semi-blocked by half open boxes serving as ad hoc displays. They also serve as a challenging obstacle course for customers who grow rapidly bored spending time looking at products they might like to purchase. It gives the experience a festive "rat in a maze" feel and you can really feel like you've accomplished something if you manage to traverse the entire place without knocking something over. They also provide social interaction opportunities for employees and customers when items are invariably pushed over. Within seconds, helpful assistants usually rush over to pick them up and embarrassed customers apologize. It's all part of the colorful fabric of Japanese society which encourages all to be friendly and get to know one another through collisions with random objects.
The extraordinarily diligent employee in the 99 yen shop likely saved a total of half a second by running rather than walking, though he lost that gain because he had to pick up the items that toppled. Before anyone gets the idea that this is a stellar example of an attempt to provide the best service to the customer, let me say that I've gone to the same shop with different staff there and stood in the empty store and waited for a cashier for a minute before one decided to surface. This isn't about this superior service in this shop as 99 yen shops are hardly making the sort of cash that allows them to pay the sorts of salaries that allow them to train people in all the corporate niceties. There was, however, an older fellow in the shop at the same time who may have been a supervisor and it could be the young man was new and wanted to impress. I don't blame him. We all would likely do the same thing in his shoes.
When this fellow pointlessly and clumsily ran from one end of the shop to the other, it reminded me that the office ladies (often called "O.L.s") at my former office used to do the same thing. Well, it wasn't quite the same thing. The man in the 99 yen shop tried to actually run and the office ladies rarely knocked things over. He literally leaped from where he was to rush to the register. The office ladies did what can be called "the office girl trot". The trot seemed designed to provide the illusion of running by pumping legs and arms in an animated fashion while not actually increasing one's velocity more than what a quick stride would accomplish. Nonetheless, this sort of trotting and running across short distances in the office occurred daily, even when there was absolutely no reason to hurry.
I asked different office ladies on several occasions why they bothered to do this and they always said that it was to get there faster. When I pointed out that the office was sufficiently small that they were likely shaving no more than seconds off their time by trotting, they tended to shrug and smile. I'm not sure even they knew why they did it, though I had my guesses.
I figured the main reason was that they saw other people do it and they felt they should as well. It wasn't that they believed that it had much practical value. In fact, I'd wager that, if they sprinted from point to point every time they traversed the office in this fashion, they might save the company a whole half minute a day at the very most. In the end, I concluded that this running was more about the illusion of looking like one was extremely diligent or applying as much energy as possible to doing their work rather than actually saving time.
There may be people who sprint around the office back home, but I never worked in one where people did so. I think that a lot of folks in the U.S. would perceive such behavior as inappropriate, like running in the halls at school. The main problem with it is that running can be much nosier and more distracting as feet pound on the floor and footsteps while walking are more muted. I always knew when an office lady was "rushing" to give me a reschedule or some paperwork because it was clearly preceded by the pitter-patter of little feet trotting my way. At any rate, if anyone else has experience with this and has a better explanation for why employees run, I'd be very curious to hear it.
As I was approaching the check-out, another customer walked up and stood in front of the unmanned cash register. An employee who was "at the back" of the store (that's about 4 seconds, to you and me) upon seeing the customer approach sprinted into action and attempted to "run" to the register to assist the customer. In mid-sprint, he knocked over a bunch of sundry goods piled on the end of the aisle. For those who haven't had the pleasure, many small Japanese stores have aisles capped and semi-blocked by half open boxes serving as ad hoc displays. They also serve as a challenging obstacle course for customers who grow rapidly bored spending time looking at products they might like to purchase. It gives the experience a festive "rat in a maze" feel and you can really feel like you've accomplished something if you manage to traverse the entire place without knocking something over. They also provide social interaction opportunities for employees and customers when items are invariably pushed over. Within seconds, helpful assistants usually rush over to pick them up and embarrassed customers apologize. It's all part of the colorful fabric of Japanese society which encourages all to be friendly and get to know one another through collisions with random objects.
The extraordinarily diligent employee in the 99 yen shop likely saved a total of half a second by running rather than walking, though he lost that gain because he had to pick up the items that toppled. Before anyone gets the idea that this is a stellar example of an attempt to provide the best service to the customer, let me say that I've gone to the same shop with different staff there and stood in the empty store and waited for a cashier for a minute before one decided to surface. This isn't about this superior service in this shop as 99 yen shops are hardly making the sort of cash that allows them to pay the sorts of salaries that allow them to train people in all the corporate niceties. There was, however, an older fellow in the shop at the same time who may have been a supervisor and it could be the young man was new and wanted to impress. I don't blame him. We all would likely do the same thing in his shoes.
When this fellow pointlessly and clumsily ran from one end of the shop to the other, it reminded me that the office ladies (often called "O.L.s") at my former office used to do the same thing. Well, it wasn't quite the same thing. The man in the 99 yen shop tried to actually run and the office ladies rarely knocked things over. He literally leaped from where he was to rush to the register. The office ladies did what can be called "the office girl trot". The trot seemed designed to provide the illusion of running by pumping legs and arms in an animated fashion while not actually increasing one's velocity more than what a quick stride would accomplish. Nonetheless, this sort of trotting and running across short distances in the office occurred daily, even when there was absolutely no reason to hurry.
I asked different office ladies on several occasions why they bothered to do this and they always said that it was to get there faster. When I pointed out that the office was sufficiently small that they were likely shaving no more than seconds off their time by trotting, they tended to shrug and smile. I'm not sure even they knew why they did it, though I had my guesses.
I figured the main reason was that they saw other people do it and they felt they should as well. It wasn't that they believed that it had much practical value. In fact, I'd wager that, if they sprinted from point to point every time they traversed the office in this fashion, they might save the company a whole half minute a day at the very most. In the end, I concluded that this running was more about the illusion of looking like one was extremely diligent or applying as much energy as possible to doing their work rather than actually saving time.
There may be people who sprint around the office back home, but I never worked in one where people did so. I think that a lot of folks in the U.S. would perceive such behavior as inappropriate, like running in the halls at school. The main problem with it is that running can be much nosier and more distracting as feet pound on the floor and footsteps while walking are more muted. I always knew when an office lady was "rushing" to give me a reschedule or some paperwork because it was clearly preceded by the pitter-patter of little feet trotting my way. At any rate, if anyone else has experience with this and has a better explanation for why employees run, I'd be very curious to hear it.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Headed North
A sign from the Communist party expressing the notion that the consumption tax (sales tax) should not be increased.Last year, I kept reading news about how prices would be going up in Japan "next year", and just 16 days into the new year, they are indeed showing serious signs of doing so. Today when I was at the local drug store buying the same cheapest possible brand of toilet paper that I've been purchasing for two years now, I saw a pretty sizable boost. The price was 198 yen ($1.85) per 12 rolls for the two years I had been purchasing it, but then rose to ¥228 ($2.14) in the last few months of 2007. Now, it is at ¥248 ($2.32). Given the long-term price stability of this particular product, I think it's a good example of the boosts we're going to see and I don't think this was a one-time increase. I think this is where it'll stay (unless it goes up further).
Of course, this isn't the only thing I've noticed which has gone up in price. Butter used to be occasionally on sale for 248 yen ($2.32) per 200 grams (that's about 2 sticks in the U.S. or one cup) and it has not dropped lower than ¥288 ($2.70) for the last 4 months or so and is more frequently over ¥300 ($2.80). Additionally, milk has gone up an average of 10 yen per liter.
If these weren't basic items (and in some cases necessities), price increases wouldn't be a big deal, but the prices of daily goods is clearly headed north while salaries aren't rising much (if at all) for most folks. They certainly aren't going up for my husband or I. I'm guessing that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of various food and sundry necessities going up in price, but that isn't all that we have to consider in regards to increases in the cost of living in the near future.
A wall with political posters (including the one pictured at the top).There has been much talk as of late about raising the consumption tax in Japan from 5% to between 8-15% in order to collect more money for the Japanese pension system. Since the number of young, tax-paying folks is constantly (though slowly) falling and the percentage of people collecting pensions is ballooning, there aren't enough people paying into the system to keep it alive from taxes alone.
Back home in Pennsylvania, sales tax didn't apply to food so that less of a burden was placed on people when it came to buying what they absolutely needed (though it did apply to paper goods like toilet paper so, go figure). In Japan, consumption tax applies to all purchases so it looks like we're headed into 2008 not only paying more for goods we can't avoid buying and facing the prospect of paying a higher tax on those higher prices.
Personally, I think that this is going to reduce purchasing overall and cause the Japanese to re-think or avoid "luxury" goods like new cell phones, televisions, cars, etc. and have an overall negative impact on the economy. I'm guessing the government is hoping people will choose to freeze up less of their yen in savings accounts and maintain their current standard of living, but given that most Japanese people are fiscally conservative, I'd wager on them scaling back and maintaining their level of savings at the cost of their lifestyle.
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