Yesterday one of my students attended a lesson with me after attending a funeral. She had a largish shopping bag with her which contained the gift she was given at the funeral (towels) and I took the occasion to quiz her on various aspects of money gifts in regards to the two big non-family occasions where money is frequently given. For the record, the other big money giving occasions is New Year's when kids are given cash as a gift (called "otoshidama"). However, non-family members don't tend to give kids cash at that time.
My relatively simplistic understanding of cash gifts in Japan was rather mixed up with my Western notions of why we give money. In fact, even when I know otherwise, it's difficult to separate the idea that we give money as a gift in the West to offer future security or assets to a person in the future. In Japan, money is given to cover costs of an event to which guests are invited, not as a personal bonus in celebration of an event.
At funerals, my student told me somewhat token amounts of money are given (about 5,000 yen ($46) for coworkers, 10,000 yen ($93) for closer friends or those who are older and have a higher status job) because the guest is not being treated to a lavishly catered experience. At weddings, however, she told me that the standard amount is 30,000 yen ($280) for any guest who isn't too young or underemployed to pay it. When I told her that this would be a bountiful financial gift by western standards and that even immediate family members (other than parents) would not give such an amount of money in most cases, she told me that family members don't pay this money at all. This came as a shock to me, but the way she explained it made sense. She said that the obligatory 30,000 yen is only paid by guests and family members are not considered "guests". She went on to explain that family members (again, aside from parents) will often give a real gift to celebrate a marriage, but not cash. According to my student, an exception to this "rule" is the case where a sibling is very much older than a younger sibling and the relationship is more parental as a result of the large age gap. In such cases, a sibling might give cash much as a parent would.
From a Western perspective, this seems a bit strange as it appears to require people who are less close to a couple to offer up more than family members. However, in Japan, the money is being used to pay for the facility where the reception (often called a "wedding party" by the Japanese) is held (often a hotel), the catering, and gift bags given to the guests. In other words, the 30,000 yen is the guest paying for his or her own "good time" at the party and not really a "gift" to the couple. The guests shoulder the burden of the cost of the celebration and not much more than that when the excessive cost of the hotel, which is sometimes between 1,000,000 ($9,315) and 2,000,000 yen ($18,630), is factored into the equation. Considering that family members won't be receiving souvenirs and sometimes don't partake of the catered food the same way as other guests, it makes a bit of sense that they don't pay what amounts to an "entrance fee" to the event.
From my perspective, this situation seems to have both advantages and disadvantages over the Western approach to wedding gifts. If you follow any trends in weddings back home these days, you'll notice that couples often treat their wedding as an opportunity to get as much cash from friends and family as possible. Many of them have already lived together for awhile and don't need much for their households so they try to coerce guests into giving them cash only or to choose from a small pool of very pricey high profile gifts. Rather than the wedding being an opportunity for people to offer their good wishes and a gift that will help the couple start their lives, they're being treated as a chance to milk their friends and family like cash cows so some lavish spending can be done by the couple on a vacation, car, etc. at everyone else's expense.
The Japanese approach to wedding gifts doesn't allow for this sort of crass exploitation of the event. In fact, the Japanese method is aimed at using the money to give guests a memorable experience though the drawback is that it's an experience the guest is footing the tab for. In fact, the worst point of this is that guests have no flexibility about what or how much they give in many cases and the "gift" is given most times out of obligation rather than good cheer and wishing the couple well. In the West, even if a couple asks you to give cash only (which is actually bad manners but people do it anyway), you can disregard their opportunism and do whatever you want. One could say that the money given at weddings in Japan supports the wedding industry and could be better spent on providing things the new couple may need.
My student said she had attended about 10 wedding recptions so far and each time had forked over the princely sum of 30,000 yen. When I asked her if her experiences made her consider what she'd like to do for her reception should she decide to marry in the future, she said she'd like to have a small "restaurant party" which is far less expensive, smaller, and only invites close friends. However, she said that, in the end, she's forked over a ton of dough to her friends and feels like she'd like to get some of it back so she'll likely have a lavish reception of her own some day to balance the scales.
Monday, February 11, 2008
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)
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Pumpkin Bread
Back when I was working in an office, I used to make goodies for the entire office around Christmas time. Two particular items were a huge hit. One was my peanut butter cookies and the other was this recipe for pumpkin bread. The bread this recipe makes is very sweet, tender on the inside, and has a crispy outer shell when fresh. It's also quite moist. The surprise to me was that, despite how sweet this is, the Japanese adored it.
I hadn't turned to this recipe for quite some time because I'd forgotten about it and because it's a bit decadent with all the sugar. However, I've been noticing that the higher prices of butter in Japan are really starting to increase the cost of my home-made baked goods. While it's still cheaper to make my own than to buy things at bakeries (and for cakes, muffins, and cookies, my stuff is better), it's starting to approach a point where the money saved versus the effort invested make it not necessarily worth it from a financial viewpoint.
The advantage of this recipe over my old standby, banana bread, is that this uses Canola oil as the fat and it's rather significantly cheaper than butter. I make it with a 50/50 sugar/Splenda mixture, but I think you could safely reduce the sugar by a bit and it'd still be pretty good. However, I've never tried reducing the sugar. If you do so, I'd recommend a slow reduction starting with eliminating 1/4 cup and carefully testing the texture.
Pumpkin Bread:
- 1/2 cup Canola oil
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup (American) pureed pumpkin
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 2 C. sugar (or a mix of 1 C. sugar and 1 C. granular Splenda)
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp. ginger
- 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp. cloves
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2 1/2 cups flour
- 1 tbsp. baking powder
This freezes extremely well and makes a really nice breakfast if you want something sweet.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Competition
While sitting on my bike at a pedestrian crosswalk, waiting for the little man to go from red man standing patiently at attention to change to the happy green man in mid-stride, I had an experience I have had many times in the past. A pedestrian came up behind me and paused at the light. He made sure to stand in front of my bicycle wheel and just to the right of me. He watched the opposite traffic light and jumped off the mark just before the green man made his appearance. He strode quickly for a grand total of 5 seconds then slowed down to a turtle's pace and blocked the sidewalk by standing in as central a position as possible.
Common sense tells everyone that a bicycle rider is going to go faster than a pedestrian yet I constantly find that male pedestrians, particularly middle-aged and older ones, will position themselves such that my moving at all soon after the light changes will guarantee I collide with them as they cross, or have to half shortly after moving to prevent doing so. What is more, it's almost always the case that the fast pace which they start off with dies a rapid death once they get out ahead of me by about 10 yards.
After years (literally) and hundreds of experiences (again, literally) with this phenomenon, I've concluded that this is a pointless act of competition. It's not important that these men get going as they always slow down. It's only important that they get ahead of me and block me so that they get across first.
As of late, male competitive urges have been a topic which has been on my mind lately as I've noticed that I tend to prefer female bloggers over male ones, by and large. There are some very notable exceptions (you know who you are - many of your regularly comment here), but I've noticed that male bloggers tend to be far more aggressive and competitive in how they handle themselves. For one thing, they are far more likely to boast about site traffic statistics. For another, they are much more likely to post reactive and argumentative content. That is, they don't tend write about their lives, thoughts or experiences but go find something someone else wrote or said and take issue with it. On occasions when they do address something original, the posture is often one of "informing" people of the accurate way of seeing or understanding something. They're also far more likely to leave nasty, condescending, or snotty comments when they disagree rather than to simply present another explanation or viewpoint.
It's well-known in psychological circles that males are generally more competitive than females, though I think it's a tendency that women experience far less in the real world than in anonymous Internet-based forums. Personally, I'm growing pretty tired of this competitive nature in some males. It's irksome to deal with other folk's negative energy over petty little things because they have an ego issue and need to "win" at a non-existent competition just like it's tiresome to have to wait for or navigate around those guys who feel they have to stop me from getting across the street first. I guess that it's a little harder for a man to be aggressively competitive to a female in person and still feel like a big, puffed-up "winner" than it is to do it through the ether.
Nonetheless, just like the men who cut off my bike and stride ahead, it's all pointless and proves nothing about a man's superiority. I'm just going to go sailing by them either way and go about my business.
Common sense tells everyone that a bicycle rider is going to go faster than a pedestrian yet I constantly find that male pedestrians, particularly middle-aged and older ones, will position themselves such that my moving at all soon after the light changes will guarantee I collide with them as they cross, or have to half shortly after moving to prevent doing so. What is more, it's almost always the case that the fast pace which they start off with dies a rapid death once they get out ahead of me by about 10 yards.
After years (literally) and hundreds of experiences (again, literally) with this phenomenon, I've concluded that this is a pointless act of competition. It's not important that these men get going as they always slow down. It's only important that they get ahead of me and block me so that they get across first.
As of late, male competitive urges have been a topic which has been on my mind lately as I've noticed that I tend to prefer female bloggers over male ones, by and large. There are some very notable exceptions (you know who you are - many of your regularly comment here), but I've noticed that male bloggers tend to be far more aggressive and competitive in how they handle themselves. For one thing, they are far more likely to boast about site traffic statistics. For another, they are much more likely to post reactive and argumentative content. That is, they don't tend write about their lives, thoughts or experiences but go find something someone else wrote or said and take issue with it. On occasions when they do address something original, the posture is often one of "informing" people of the accurate way of seeing or understanding something. They're also far more likely to leave nasty, condescending, or snotty comments when they disagree rather than to simply present another explanation or viewpoint.
It's well-known in psychological circles that males are generally more competitive than females, though I think it's a tendency that women experience far less in the real world than in anonymous Internet-based forums. Personally, I'm growing pretty tired of this competitive nature in some males. It's irksome to deal with other folk's negative energy over petty little things because they have an ego issue and need to "win" at a non-existent competition just like it's tiresome to have to wait for or navigate around those guys who feel they have to stop me from getting across the street first. I guess that it's a little harder for a man to be aggressively competitive to a female in person and still feel like a big, puffed-up "winner" than it is to do it through the ether.
Nonetheless, just like the men who cut off my bike and stride ahead, it's all pointless and proves nothing about a man's superiority. I'm just going to go sailing by them either way and go about my business.
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