Today's Quote of the Day at Japan Today is the following:
Japanese students are unbelievable. Hardly anyone listens in class. They talk on their cell phones, sleep or chat, and the professors don't say a word.
That's strange: I've been saying the exact same thing about the Chinese students in my classes. They sleep. They talk on their phones. They chat with each other.
But let's take another look at today's issue of JT:
Marubeni Corp has decided to sell 1,500 personal computers (PCs) at 90% off after it posted the wrong price on its online site, company officials said Tuesday. Marubeni listed a new PC on the site on Oct 31 for only 19,800 yen, instead of the intended price of 198,000 yen.
I was in bed at 10am, contemplating whether I should get up and do things on this rainy day here in Kyoto. I plan on going to Gion, the old part of the city in the East where those gals in kimonos run around and look pretty. Despite the weather, I'll still go.
Anyhow, I'm in bed, and then my doorbell rings. "That's funny, I'm not expecting any guests." I pick up the intercom, and some guy starts spewing out keigo (polite, rather incomprehensible speech) left and right. I let out my best "etto... yoku wakarimasen" (that is, I don't know what the fuck you're saying, but a little more polite than that). He ends up saying something about giving me an explanation, and then he says some more gibberish that I can't understand, and eventually says with a thick accent, "Preazu o-pen ze doa." I open it up, wait for him to come up to my room (or not, hoping it was all a mistake on his part), and eventually hear the knocking on the door.
"Doh!" I think, crawl out of bed, put on a pair of pants and a shirt, and open the door. Turns out, this man in a suit, who I thought was some kind of psycho lunatic trying to steal all my ramen, is from NHK, and he's here to collect the dues for me watching TV. That's funny, last I checked, I wasn't in Great Britty eatin' fish and chips and watching the BBC and paying a licensing fee for my telly. Apparently, there's the same wonderful thing in Japan too. Wait, wait, hold up... why are there still commercials on the NHK channels? Hmm.
So, I pay my obligatory fee for owning my tube, get a free NY Met's keychain (joy and rapture!), and decide that I need to recalculate my expenses for each month.
Nonetheless, I've recently acquired a tutoring gig, meeting once a month to have a conversation in English. I'm thrilled. I love to teach! (Ho-ho!) And money is good too, especially now that I know that Uncle Saamu is gonna be gafflin' more of my yen.
More observational notes from your favorite dude making his way in Japan.
Japanese television is bright. I watch TV, and it just ain't the same: color contrast is much sharper, and everything just glares at me from the screen. I noticed this when flipping channels and stopping at some American movie (I'm not exactly sure what it was; there was some genius boy being rescued by Bruce Willis, and something having to do with cracking codes and the NSA). Granted, movies shown on TV typically have a darker feel to them, the contrast between the two was greater than I'm typically used to.
Also, I haven't found that much in terms of normal TV shows. You know, that good golly stuff like (OMG, what am I saying?) "Friends," or "Ally McBeal," or "C.S.I."... Y'know, the kind of stuff where you've got characters you can love, hate, ridicule, and make lewd remarks about. Everything is some sort of reality show (I'm not even sure if that's what they are?) or a game show. The most I've seen is a show about a single mother working as a news anchor and who has a small daughter. Sort of reminds me of a Japanese version of Murphy Brown, except this Murphy isn't the strong character like her American counterpart.
And here's something for my favorite pederast, Thierry: I forget the name of the show, but there's something here that spits in the face of Cheaters. Let's say there's a guy, and he wants to play a dirty trick on his girlfriend. He hires this TV show, and they find some other guy to try to hook-up with his girlfriend. This new guy's got an earpiece, and the boyfriend's feeding him lines to say. Basically, the gal's cheating on the boyfriend with the guy that's been hired. I haven't seen the show myself, and I've heard that these peeps do horrible things to these folks. I'll catch it next week!
Do you like food? Watch Japanese television. The media has a fascination with showing food on the tube. There was a game show I saw where people guess the calorie count of foods--kind of like "Price is Right" for food. Another show presents various restaurants around the city. And another discusses the concerns a chef has about his competition and how he wants to keep his food safe for his customers. There are shows that I can't yet understand where stuff is just shown, and guests on the show watch along and make comments, facial expressions, and screams and squeals (well, the girls do most of the squealing when they see the food). More than once, I've seen them being shown food being prepared and served. Then there's another program where I saw some dietician explaining about foods. Food. Food. Food. "Oishiiii!"
I just got back from watching Matrix: Revolutions. I will speak nothing of it at such an early stage. However, I will say that I waited through the credits for my buddy's name and clapped, causing Japanese folks to look at me funny in the theater.
The particular theater I went to has assigned seating, which is pretty damned cool. No need to wait in lines and go hours before-hand to get good seats: I already had reserved seats in the center-middle of the house, ho-ho!
Now, speaking of revolutions and change, there's recently been a new presidential candidate guest-blogging down over at Professor Lessig's digs. Senator John Edwards'
latest entry says:
We need to get kids when they are young, and excite them about science. I will double funding for K-12 teacher training, and increase resources for science education. If we don't get the next generation interested in technology, we risk becoming technology followers, rather than leaders.
You can preach to me all you want about the hygiene of fruit flies, but that doesn't mean I'll ever develop an interest in the kind of dung fruit flies feed on. Just because someone's exposed to science and engineering doesn't mean that person will fly (ho-ho) head over heels to learn more. People can't be motivated so easily. A good reason to "increase resources for science education" would be a case where there's a high demand for these resources but with short supply. Instead, his reasoning is that there's not enough demand, which, to me, sounds like backwards logic. Sure, we could teach teachers to use nifty mind control tricks (hey, it's possible), but why bother? Perhaps we can find out where the demand is and support those fields instead? People wanna do the things they wanna do, so just use that inertia and flow with it.