still Criterion does not want to get me through....

Anyways, the last Friday class was flooded with all the links to websites where you can get a little less biased information. I wondered why I did not know a single of their sorts. Sentenceworks was quite interesting and I personally found it useful though it makes some funny mistakes. It still gave me good suggestions for correction and better vocabulary choices.

ahhhh I actually confused myself typing the previous post..... Does what I'm saying make sense?

Chapter 7

I think Nisbett should not state that East Asian education especially in areas like mathmatics and science is better than those in the West. He does not consider other aspects of possible reasons for such gaps but only cultural matter or difference of perception. In China the government presents the literacy rate as 90%. This apparent figure seems to be no problem when comparing Chinese students and Europeans where the literacy rate is about a bit higher. But the Chinese literacy rate excludes those who are not even able to place themselves as Chinese because of the one-child policy, which means they can not go to school to get enough education. If those people were to be counted as Chinese citizens it is said that the literacy rates would fall to 75-80%. So the students who get higher education in China are the smaller portion of the whole than that of Europe.

The most obvious fact or belief should be examined

When the argument is about what my interest is engaged in I hold my position firmly and at the same time I try to remain flexible. I could even challenge my teacher if his opinion contradicts mine and could alter my belief if teacher's opinion is found correct and reasonable, for I try my hardest to look at things from various aspects. You might think I have not acted so but it's simply because I have not encountered such situation in which my position is opposed to teacher's or because no topic that stimulates me has come up in class yet. And that is the skill a student is required in college; have open mind, examine one's belief, and know an argument is not conflict.


I do not really understand why students say I'm the best student in CB. But since Rab wanted me to consider it myself, I uncertainly squeezed the statement described above.









psh

New essay

I 'carefully' decided my essay topic and its gonna be about culture, roughly. What I mainly am going to be discuss is the characteristic of Japanese way of communication which might be considered to be vague and confusing by foreigners who are not familiar with it. I still have to figure out how I put it as an academic and argumentative issue. But at least it will be easier this time to find books on this type of topic than the previous one!

The chapter 6 was pretty interesting because it had many examples that made it easy to understand the context. The weird thing, however, is that we, or at least I, never learned categorizing animals or any objects in terms of relationships at school. Textbooks instead showed if an animal is mammal, amphibian, or reptile. That is the rule-based categorization. Moreover, I myself categorized cow and chicken together unlike most of participants in Nisbett's research.

In the last Friday class we wandered around the stereograms. My eyes are still tired from it. Anyways, it was one example that one thing could look different depending on the way you see it. That was my conclusion.... At the end of the class we quickly look through some paper for our essay. I can not believe how quickly we must work. We just finished the previous essay last week!!!!!!!! It's even funny how my college years and most of my friends' college years can differ. I prefer mine though:PPP psh

NO, he's never met a nice South African and it's not bloodhy surprising man!

It was made sure in today's class that Rab would get me a heart attack someday.

The psychological test we did today looked very familiar to me. Then I remembered doing the same thing in the selection test of Rotary Exchange Student. We were ordered to draw house, greens, the sun, human beings, path, and so on. Now I have some idea what they wanted to know from it. That is, the independency, maturity, flexibility, and things like that. We took a look at all the other students and had a good laugh. Some people had one huge house in the centre of the paper. Some had the massive sun taking half the paper, and.....snake. Ey no mention on that.

Language was one of the biggest problem I had when being abroad, especially jokes. Sometimes, or most of the times actually, it was not even funny to me when people say things like that I will not live so long in South Africa because Japan has the great number of people who commit suicide.

Whenever I speak a ward of English it was responded with a pouring rain of laugh because I kept swapping the pronunciation of R and L, which I cannot help due to the absence of R sound in the Japanese. I did not dare say that I bet they can never pronounce biyoin and byoin correctly apart when they cannot even pronounce my name. Instead they called me Saki, Sahyka, or Sake. They thought Sake （酒）represents Japan so well. That is much better than being called Sushi so I did not complain.

More, they do not talk,or like to talk, about blood types but racism. Just like some people do not understand why not many Japanese have valid religious belief, I do not understand why they always describe people in colour. Let's say I told a friend of mine 'I met this one girl who talks a lot and is loud' she/he would reply 'Is she black?'. Once there was a time my host brother asked me 'which group of people will you be with, black or white' then I said 'Why must I choose just one side?' he looked shocked while I was pretty much shocked with his question.

It might be the inheritance of Apartheid. It is still fresh in people's memory that there was distinctive ditch among races in South Africa. They used to make jokes on other races that they thought were really funny at that time but that is not considered so at present.

I was even scared to speak English at least the first 6 months so I would list language as one biggest issue I encountered during my exchange year.

this is terrible.......my essay just ended up being not so impressive after all!


ppshhhhh

Ah-huh!!!!!!!! I just have got way too better idea!!!! I'm so excited except for that my tummy is sick because I ate real hot spicy meal for dinner. Wait for me!! It's one of those どんでん返し.

The psychological test we had in class today was very interesting. My test results are:

1. How I really wanna be; relaxing, soothing, emotional, beautiful, clear.....which is already done,
2. Quality I am looking for in my partner; free, open, friendly, quiet, neutral, gentle, tender....which is even scarily accurate,
3. What I think about sex and love; enjoyable, relaxing, sleepy, free, kind, natural.....good laugh,
4. What I think about death; empty, lonely, relaxing, safe, nervous, weak, helpless, weird, strange....so true.

It was a fun class but it made it sure that I lack a great deal of vocabulary, and that I need to work quite hard to fix this problem myself after finishing essay. The essay....is the greatest trouble I have at the time. I'm actually thinking about giving up on this after fixing the obvious issues because as Rab pointed out I found myself not too into this topic. It was interesting at the first stage but afterwards I realized that this topic can not possibly be put as an academic matter. May someone could but I can not. Oh by the essay is about 'notebook and loose-leaf'. I am really looking forward to constructing an essay on cultural issue since I to some extent am proud of the experience that I had in South Africa with people from all over the world with such a wide range of backgrounds. So for this essay I'm just going to do my best to fix technological and vocabulary problems.

Sorry Rab I know I'm disappointing you.

Chapter4

sorry for the delay of my post on Nisbett. I'm actually almost done with chapter6....

This chapter 4 reminded me the art class I had in South Africa. In the class we were told to choose one object from things placed at random order such as table, clothes on it, sawing machine on them, scissors next to it, and so on. Let's say the teacher picked scissors for us to draw. So we start. But soon after starting I realized I was not doing it as I was told. I drew things around scissors unintentionally. Other students, on the other hand, drew exactly one object out of some others and there was nothing else but the chosen object on the paper. It was a huge problem I faced. However many times I tried I could not help but drawing an object 'from outside'. To be specific, I drew the outline of the scissors by drawing the shadow appeared around it and the table that the shadow appeared on. One thing's outline can be seen because there are other objects around it. Troubled look came out on my and the teacher's face. He knew I was serious and not trying to make fool of him or anything.

I must say, however, that the connection between this experience of mine and the statement Nisbett makes, such that Asians see the world of continuous masses of matter and that Westerners of unconnected things since I was the only Japanese or Asian in that class and Nisbett does not talk about originally European people living in Africa. But as I said at the top, this chapter really reminded me this peculiar event.

12 May

*cough* well, it's not that i was too lazy to post on my blog yesterday i was too busy studying for the test i had today and then....eventually.....forgot about this.

we had an easy class today addressing assumptions in various statements. it was actually fun. I did not get many right so i still need more practice myself. maybe i will do the same paper when all my memories are gone, which might be coming soon since I'm super forgetful.


about today's class. it seems that there are so many things that we should memorize for the coming exam. I'm not that bad with memorizing in JAPANESE but English.....is a different story. I'm pretty much amazed that we were supposed to pay attentions to so many things as we read like assumptions and evidence and things like that. I never thought i was a bad reader but now i am afraid i am to some extent. if i care...? Ek weet nie!!


I really do not know what possibly i should do. at least i can do some interview on students in ICU. I am not against Rab's plan of essay due, like making it earlier than it actually is at the first stage and have some break and so on... but personally this time, if i had known that that due was the next monday i would have changed my topic. eish i'm tired...;((((

みょんみょんみょん

I must apologize first that I will not be even trying to make good comment on today's class because I'm having really awful headache and sick stomach.

Assumptions are not necessarily always hard to find but the problem is whether the ones found are significant and core of the point the writer makes. Today in class I only managed to spot ones that were too obvious or that did not meet the core. It is a sort of imagination you use not guessing right and you must analyze your answer. It can be too obvious and merely a fact.

Little Brown Handbook is quite useful when writing essays or reviewing them. It provides me with good logical points except for that it is not either little or brown.

Sorry I'm making really little poor mention on LBH but the headache terribly is piercing right through my head.... I'll try my hardest not to be late for the ELP after E.P. class since we will be welcoming some guests tomorrow....

The Seattle Protest at the end of November, 1999 was numerous and had great impact through the whole world. Protests broke out in big cities like London and Geneva but not in Japan.

When I was walking down the street in Ginza last week I came across a demonstration on American base in Okinawa. They were marching slowly in straight line. It was quite easy to note that few people were looking confident and determined with the rest reluctant and tired. Only those who were leading the mass in front was exclaiming aloud against the base through amplifiers. But then I feel something weird about what I'm seeing. It's not about an old man talking on the phone laughing in the demo nor the right wings yelling at the poor feeble protesters 'Get out of Japan you betrayers!!!!'. It is that, I eventually figure out, there is not a single young man.

Do young people in Japan not protest because the major medias hide the true factor of things and we do not know anything about it? I do not think so because in many countries governments control information but people still go and get under-covered stories and protest if needed. Not having information for the control of the media is not always directly related to ignorance. Suppose the case in South Korea in 2008 when president Lee, newly elected, declared his policy concerning the free trade agreement, privatization, and the ownership of Dok-do. People including mothers with children, students and their friends, and old people started none-violence protest with candle light. It was responded by government with violence and by media with distortion of the truth. Only those who were actually in the protest know that the protesters were physically assaulted and there were 50,000 of them instead of 500. In spite of the distortion and concealment of the fact, voices of people spread and more and more people gathered in the protest. This indicates that media control can be defeated if we try ourselves to get to know what really is happening around us. Then what is the difference?

I remembered the words I frequently hear 'I'll do if you do.' People wait for someone to start it but do not be the one who starts. Even when someone starts something they will watch it from distance if many people are gathering around it. There was a TV program questioning why young people can not eat lunch by themselves. The answer from students from some university was that they do not want to be regarded to be a lonely person or not to have friends. They do not want to be alone not because they themselves do not like it but because they are too sensitive to people's eyes that might not even be looking at them. I call this kind of attitude passive attitude.

With this attitude how can a protest of 50,000 be possible but only one of old people marching in long but narrow line? The main difference is the attitude of people, especially the young ones, caring what seemingly other people do and not caring what seemingly other people do not.

commit

When thinking about why Japanese people do not protest or demonstrate, I came up with some ideas, that many Japanese

• do not have a clear idea of what is really needed for the country,
  
• so that are not sure who should be the one to control and govern,
• or simply too shy
• or do not act when they are not sure if their action will benefit them or it's gonna be successful

There actually are more in my mind but it is quite hard for me to explain everything here especially in English.

People say Hatoyama and his Cabinet members are not doing their duty or that their policy did not come out effective and trustworthy. I do not think they are wrong or right but I do when they come to chose ones to blame. It is not only Hatoyama or the Cabinet. It's those who voted for them because people take part in the governance through votes. If the representatives end up with undesirable consequences, the responsibility for the failure is brought down to them and to the voters. In my point of view the reason why people do not think feel so alarmed and motivated for a protest or demos is that they, unintended or not, neglect to consider 'what I want the government to do' or 'what should be done to make Japan a better place to live in' but instead read what is written on manifests. I see people on TV asked what they think about the crisis Japan is encountering and answer 'Hatoyama should leave and be replaced' but no mention to why and what they expect from the one replacing the position. This reflects the way the Japanese deal with the government and its policy. That is, they vote, see what happens, and when the result is to be seen, they either complain or feel content. The actual commitment is not about looking at policies on the list but deciding what kind of policies are in need.

back on the right way.....

So Rab asked us if we will be demonstrating if the government were to change the Article Nine. I said yes. But I must admit I'm greatly biased on this issue, which I cannot really help. He also said that this article is already broken. This, I could not agree or disagree with because I do not have much information about this to start with and I felt embarrassed about it. Here I recalled the sentence in "Geography of Thoughts" that says the ancient Chinese lacked the sense of curiosity and interest....

Chapter 3

I do not agree with the author's idea of East Asians not thanking people for doing obligations like Americans do. Top of all he should not generalize just one person's comment. And, in fact, I quite frequently hear customers thanking waiters at restaurant in Japan for the good service such as bringing food, which obviously is their obligation.

On the other hand there is something that I do agree with in his statement. That is, Japanese people tend to anticipate people's feelings, and to pick up what's meant behind the conversations rather than just accepting right away what the speaker says. To enforce this idea let me tell you about a lecture I took at one open campus event. The professor doing research on cultural differences amongst countries or races showed an example of American using verbal method when arguing something and, in contrast, of Japanese adopting anticipation and implication at such situations. First she played on a screen 'Shall we dance?' of Hollywood version and then of Japanese. At one part of the movie a man, the main character, and his wife has a serious dispute over his going to dance lesson secretly from his wife. In American version the wife gets mad and starts shouting at him and the husband argues back. In Japanese one the wife keeps quiet and successfully express her disappointment and sadness through atmosphere.

In my own life when I was still in South Africa I often felt amazed with people's attitude and even the way they talk which sometimes sounded too demanding and pushy, more or less and got me somewhat frightened. When people described me those words like 'polite', 'hard-working', 'modest' or something like that. I achieved this compliment merely by being quiet and I was so due to the lack of ability of speaking English.

You can see in these comparison how Americans and Japanese, of course not always, think and express their feelings and how his argument makes sense.