German Elections

Recently there were problems with the German elections. The vote was (almost) too close to call. Schroeder, who narrowly lost, refused to step aside. After weeks of arguing he finally did, after his party made the other side agree to a grand coalition in which his party keeps several important cabinet posts.

I do a class on current events, which to the students usually means "Anything stupid George Bush did this week." I just want ot point out that I didn't vote for the guy in either election.

So when it's my turn to choose a topic I like to broaden the subject matter a little. So I brought in an article about the German elections and another about Europe's reluctance to allow Turkey to join the EU.

All of my students had no idea about any of these events. This is a class whose English is near fluent, educated, ho9ld good jobs, travel and so on. Fair enough, it's not the most fascinating topic, even if it was a big news item at the time.

One reason I brought the topic to class was because I thought there were a lot of parellels for japan. Japan too faces economic problems similar to germany's. Japan too is wondering what to do about immigration and a declining birthrate.Many international newspapers were comparing the recent elections in both japan and Germany and concluding that japan was making progress while Germany was stuck in a deadlock.

What did I get from this lesson?

- When a transfer of power in a close election happens in the States, it is a disgrace and the system is broken. When it happens in continental Western Europe (Austria, Germany) it means they care about thier democracy.

-Many students' reaction was "How are we supposed to klnow this? We can't know about these things. Our news is only America." Which is kind of true, but the way people said it was as if Japan was at a disadvantage due to geography or something that prevented it from getting news. I put this in the "Japan is a poor small country" myth/excuse that people often cite to explain why certain things are the way they are.

My students are often shocked to learn that there is high unemployment in Europe, or that taxes are high or if there is some violence of something.

I'm not trying to bag Europe but just point out that most japanese think it's a kind of fairytale place where people put on gowns, go to balls and discus art all the time.

They don't have fish

Here's one for the "only in Japan" file. This one happens allllllllll the time and it happened today, twice.

Someone was telling me about the fish that they had eaten. They told me the Japanese name, which is 'maguro.' Immediately everyone started asking each other "How do you say maguro in English?"

Well the Japan reflexes kicked in and a few people, with written-in-stone certainty pointed out "Ha, ha. Oh don't be silly. There's no English word for that. They dont have it over there." ie: only in Japan.

Okay a few problems with this for a variety of reasons, both factual and logical.

1. You don't need a thing within your national borders to have a name for it. Seen a dragon lately? Giant Squid? How about the fact that there's a word for Elephant in Japanese , "Zoh" even though there were never Elephants in Japan (or England for that matter.)

2. We do have a word for that fish, it's called a tuna, and what do you know, Japanese supermarkets are filled with little white cans of things called "canned tuna." Yeah, the Japanese word for tuna is "tuna." Actually it sounds like "tsuna"

3. Most of the fish. shrimp, whales, dolphins etc that are sold here don't come from Japanese territorial waters. This is not some trivia that I discovered at the library. Where I live in Japan is a fishing community and it's common knowledge that the fishing boats go all over the globe for 6 months at a time. I mean, duh, where do you think they go? They're just really slow? So but by that logic, who knows, one could argue that people from my country may even have more of a sense of what the name for that fish is.

It someone asks me "Do you eat ABC fish in your country?" I think it's a fine question. A fine, fine question. But I get irked by the knee jerk need to say "Oh, that's unique to Japan."

Sorry it sounds like I'm ranting but reall, really I'm still keeping true to my original aim: to point out the way Japanese see themselves and the rest of the world.

Copying CDs

Hey, it's been a while.

Today's topic: the myth that Japanese are extremely law abiding, even to a fault. But first a preface.

I don't think that the Japanese are bad people. It's just that I don't like and don't understand the need for the myth-building that goes on in and outside of the country that they are somehow unique. That, for example, unlike humans anyplace else on earth, Japanese people have this harmonious society where everybody gets along and never breaks a rule, like they're from another planet or something.

Here's an example.
A guy in my office, a Japanese guy, had an idea. I work in a language school and we have some texts that we made ourselves. His idea was to make up listening comprehension CDs and sell them to students. I actually think it's a decent idea. But I had my own take on things. These days it's very easy to copy CDs, and yes, like the rest of the planet, people in japan copy CDs and even download pirated music for free from the internet! Again, I'm not condemming them, just pointing out that the practice is widespread.) In fact, it is so widespread that any video rental shop in Japan usually also rents music CDs, and at the register are blank CD-Rs (marked "audio") used for all sorts of things like saving word processing files, pictures of family, and oh yeah, music. Everybody knows this. Most car stereos now advertise that they play copied CDs. (Old ones had trouble reading them.)

Ok, so the guy in my office said we should sell CDs to the students. I thought it was an ok idea, but wanted to point out that we should TAKE INTO ACCOUNT the fact that students will probably make their own copies for thier friends. I wasn't saying that we shouldn't do it, just that we might need to either charge more to recoup the loss, or charge less so there's no point in copying, or make it mandatory to buy them and so on. In short, we should factor in the ease of copying CDs when planning our own.

The guy went ballistic, like I went to an Irish^-American wake and said John Wayne was gay.

"What are you talkning about? Japanese people won't copy the CDs!"
"Well, I think there's a good chance they will."
"No, no, we'll just ask people to buy them and because we are the school everyone will do what we say."
"Yeah, but we've made things in the past and students copied them."
"No, no, no, maybe in America, sure, but Japanese people are law abiding and no one will do it." (see blogs about "America is lawless.")

In these kind of conversations I don't kow what to say because the other person has such a different reality than me. Maybe Japan itself is an alternate universe? It's like talking to your grandma who's convinced that you're dead uncle is coming to dinner tomorrow. So I said

"You know, a lot of people make copies of things. Music, movies, you know, it's common."
"No, no, we'll just tell the students that our CD is protected by international copyright laws and everybody will understand and obey it. There's no problem. If we have to we'll point out that if they make a copy they're breaking the law and will get arrested!"

Now if you're reading this in 2066 it may be hard to understand how funny what he said was but trust me, people don't get arrested for copying a homemade English conversation listening comprehension CD in the year 2005.

So I went to the nearby bookshelf.
"Look, here are CDs WE have that are copies.These are for professional texts." (We're just holding on to them for a friend, yeah...) heck lots of schools (not us) make photocopies of the texts which is technically a copyright violation. Schools and restaurants play background music, which even if it's from a purchased CD is technically a public broadcast and therefore illegal. But my point is that everyone, everywhere in japan -- JUST LIKE THE REST OF THE PLANET -- does it.

But my own example only furthered to strengthen his opinion. "Oh, no, " he said "You guys must have copied those CDs. Japanese people would never do it."

So there you go. Japan is a harmonious place that always follows rules.

To reiterate (re from the latin "to cover" and iteras "one's ass") I'm not saying that Japanese people are bad just that **they do the same things as the rest of us** but people refuse to believe it because they've got so much invested in keeping the mythology of uniqueness alive. Why I don't know. I think it wouild solve a lot of problems if we could just get over that.