From Your Lips to Daikoku's Ears
May. 29th, 2010 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foolish_m0rtalZhuo and I thought Dorota and Kamila were going with us to the Shibaura campus, and we waited for them, but they didn't. So Zhuo was like, let's go by ourselves. I was a bit wary, but we managed pretty well on our own. It's a straight shot to Tamachi on the Keihin-Tohoku line. We even found a map that helped us locate Shibaura- it was actually surprisingly simple.
So we got to the lecture about how foreigners could work in Japan, and it was delivered in Japanese. The staff from the Toyosu campus were there, and Tachibana-san was there to translate for us(yay!) along with Yabe-san, our Japanese instructor, and Sugiyama-san. Minna-san! Sniff sniff. (I swear, every anime has this at least once. There's a touching scene where everybody in the cast is encouraging the shy person, and she's like, "Everyone!" and sheds a few happy tears)
So, to the lecture. Basically, you have to know flawless Japanese both written and spoken as well as perhaps other languages, have spectacular marks, and be able to pass the written examination and interview companies give you. Seems to me that if the Japanese work to death to try and get through school and get through work, it might be nary impossible for a foreigner to come into it. They passed out an example of the exam. It was in kanji. @_@ I...didn't get through it. Guess who's not going to be working in Japan any time soon?
Then we all went bowling, and one of the sensei brought his son (that much of his Japanese I understood) to bowling with him. Yay, Kazuki-kun! I think he was...about nine? Very nice kid. Kind of quiet.
It was disconcerting finding myself in such an American bowling alley in Japan. Even all the equipment was made by the same people. The only distinctively different things were the shoe sizes were in centimeters and the bowling balls were grouped by weight (by colour and the places they were put) and people actually put them back in the right place, even if it meant crossing the length of the room. ^_^ This is like paradise for obsessive-compulsive little me.
What was interesting is that we were assigned a host for the entire thing. He had a mike and announced that we were the group from Shibaura and welcomed us and made some opening remarks. And then the head of the International Relations department (also the Vice-President of the university) threw the first ball and everybody clapped. Then we were told we could start bowling. Before that, everyone was just sitting quietly, and Zhuo whispered over, "Why is everyone just sitting here?" I had no idea either. Now, we do.
Note: Tachibana-san is HI-LAR-ious when he gets a good bowling score. He jumps around and kicks his feet up and dances. Irony, Japnese style.
Then we went up to the 6th floor, where the host made some opening remarks again, and then we had a buffet. There were tables, but no chairs, so we just stood around. It was actually better, I think, because people moved around to different tables to talk with different people. Tachibana-san made the second opening remarks. He said something like, "In sumo, there are three things: the mind, the skill, and the physique. In the lecture, we developed the mind, in bowling, we are developed the skill, and now we are going to develop the physique by eating and drinking, yeah!" We were given bottles of cold Chinese tea, which we toasted with (kampai!).
Then one of the other former students who just got into industry talked about how he'd worked a lot at Shibaura, and then how at work he had to go drinking with his clients every week. (for those of you who don't know, this is true. There is dry negotiations at work and wet negotiations outside of work). He was like, "So here's to being trapped in an endless cycle of alcohol!"
Then we were released for food, so I went to see what they had. THEY. HAD. TAKOYAKI.
With the sauce! I didn't know what I had put on my plate till En-san ran up and said, "No no no, you must ALWAYS use THIS sauce for takoyaki!" I ended up eating like, four of them. And there were some kind of...they looked like samosas and tasted vaguely Indian, but I think they were supposed to be Japanese curry, which tastes like non-spicy Indian curry. They had some really tasty fried dumplings, and REALLY good fresh tofu, and fried rice with umeboshi. And they had MANJU in various shapes and colours! Two of the ones I picked up had anko (red bean) filling and one of them was...I don't know. It was light brown- it might have been sweet potato. I'm pretty sure they had nikuman, put I'd eaten that before, so I didn't get it. They even coloured some of the buns to look like pandas! So cute!
I met some more of the international students working in Omiya in the same building as me. One of them is going to Boston for a conference soon, so he asked me some questions about it, and I told him places he should see. Some foreigners here are really good at Japanese, and then I find out they've been living here for 2+ years. And then I feel kind of better.
They had prizes for bowling scores. They had first, second, third, second from last, tenth, twentieth, thirtieth, so on. I think second place got a water boiler, and first place got some kind of plastic soccer game. You know, like the ones at the arcades with the knobs at the end, but a miniature version. Everyone who didn't get a prize got a sheet with their bowling scores printed on it and a pen from Shibaura. Yes, I got the girly pink one, and I'm proud of it.
I had instinctively picked up the blue pen, but secretly wanted the pink one. (I think being open minded about gender definitions also means being able to pick a stereotypically female thing at the same frequency as a masculine thing. If you're picking one consistently, I feel like this indicates a bit that you're consciously rejecting the other. So I'm trying to be better about this and pick what I really like, not what I think I should pick. Does any of this make sense?) Anyway, I put down the blue pen (the other ones had been taken) to get the pink one. And then someone else picked up the blue pen and was like, "Sweet! I wanted a blue one and didn't think there were any left!" So I felt good.
Apparently, Nishi-Kawaguchi, the place where we get off to go back to Warabi House, is right next to the red-light district. I never realised this- I'm always thinking, "Oh, what a pretty house!' or 'what interesting food in the window of that store!' or 'how the fuck do I get home?' (that one is very popular) so I never noticed the random posters. But the Polish students Dorota and Kamila told us that when they tell people they live near the Nishi-Kawaguchi station, people think it's hilarious. Warabi house is in a very nice quiet suburban part of Warabi, though.
When we got on the train back to Nishi-Kawaguchi, we were warned that the train schedules were a little different because there had been an accident. Dorota explained that this usually means someone has committed suicide by jumping in front of the train, something that happens all too often in Japan apparently. "We have been here for two months. We have been observing," they said and talked about how much Japanese people work and how little free time they have, and how little time they spent with their parents. Apparently Dorota has passed a 24-hour kindergarten. Parents sometimes drop their children off at 8 and come back at like 7PM. So the kids are so tired that they just go home and sleep and barely see their parents. Even students and salarymen who work till late every day and on the weekends. Dorota and Kamila talked about people having class the next day and spending the previous day in the lab and sleeping there.
It makes me realise that no matter how orderly and efficient this place is, people's lives here are difficult and demanding. Speaking of work, work for me starts next week, and I'm going to be there till 7PM officially. Longer if I feel I need to stay to finish work. It's hard. I know I'll feel the need to stay in the lab all the time because the other students are doing it, but I also know I can't do that here because the trains stop and midnight and I can't walk home. I could of course sleep there, but a part of me knows that's ridiculous. But at the same time, I don't want it to seem like I'm slacking off after they did all of this to bring me here. Instead of staying late, I might just come in earlier. I think that would be better, and that way, I could eat dinner. I don't know.
But sometimes I feel like people think the longer you work, the more you must be working rather than looking at actual results. I know this is something my dad said was true in his school in India. People would study all the time, but it wasn't effective studying. It was all memorization and cramming and not necessarily learning- just studying for its own sake. And they didn't know when to stop, because even though they'd learned the material, they felt the need to keep going, because stopping would have been 'slacking off.' And then during the test, they would barely be able to keep their eyes open. I know this was also true in Germany, where they would allegedly weigh someone's research papers to see if it passed acceptable number of pages before actually going into the material. (this is according to my professor, who used to read people's master's thesis, and she had it from one of the German professors)
Anyway, now I'm off to rest while I can with my giant stomach full of octopus and dumplings. But I know I can't sleep, because then I'll turn into a cow. ^_^
So we got to the lecture about how foreigners could work in Japan, and it was delivered in Japanese. The staff from the Toyosu campus were there, and Tachibana-san was there to translate for us(yay!) along with Yabe-san, our Japanese instructor, and Sugiyama-san. Minna-san! Sniff sniff. (I swear, every anime has this at least once. There's a touching scene where everybody in the cast is encouraging the shy person, and she's like, "Everyone!" and sheds a few happy tears)
So, to the lecture. Basically, you have to know flawless Japanese both written and spoken as well as perhaps other languages, have spectacular marks, and be able to pass the written examination and interview companies give you. Seems to me that if the Japanese work to death to try and get through school and get through work, it might be nary impossible for a foreigner to come into it. They passed out an example of the exam. It was in kanji. @_@ I...didn't get through it. Guess who's not going to be working in Japan any time soon?
Then we all went bowling, and one of the sensei brought his son (that much of his Japanese I understood) to bowling with him. Yay, Kazuki-kun! I think he was...about nine? Very nice kid. Kind of quiet.
It was disconcerting finding myself in such an American bowling alley in Japan. Even all the equipment was made by the same people. The only distinctively different things were the shoe sizes were in centimeters and the bowling balls were grouped by weight (by colour and the places they were put) and people actually put them back in the right place, even if it meant crossing the length of the room. ^_^ This is like paradise for obsessive-compulsive little me.
What was interesting is that we were assigned a host for the entire thing. He had a mike and announced that we were the group from Shibaura and welcomed us and made some opening remarks. And then the head of the International Relations department (also the Vice-President of the university) threw the first ball and everybody clapped. Then we were told we could start bowling. Before that, everyone was just sitting quietly, and Zhuo whispered over, "Why is everyone just sitting here?" I had no idea either. Now, we do.
Note: Tachibana-san is HI-LAR-ious when he gets a good bowling score. He jumps around and kicks his feet up and dances. Irony, Japnese style.
Then we went up to the 6th floor, where the host made some opening remarks again, and then we had a buffet. There were tables, but no chairs, so we just stood around. It was actually better, I think, because people moved around to different tables to talk with different people. Tachibana-san made the second opening remarks. He said something like, "In sumo, there are three things: the mind, the skill, and the physique. In the lecture, we developed the mind, in bowling, we are developed the skill, and now we are going to develop the physique by eating and drinking, yeah!" We were given bottles of cold Chinese tea, which we toasted with (kampai!).
Then one of the other former students who just got into industry talked about how he'd worked a lot at Shibaura, and then how at work he had to go drinking with his clients every week. (for those of you who don't know, this is true. There is dry negotiations at work and wet negotiations outside of work). He was like, "So here's to being trapped in an endless cycle of alcohol!"
Then we were released for food, so I went to see what they had. THEY. HAD. TAKOYAKI.
With the sauce! I didn't know what I had put on my plate till En-san ran up and said, "No no no, you must ALWAYS use THIS sauce for takoyaki!" I ended up eating like, four of them. And there were some kind of...they looked like samosas and tasted vaguely Indian, but I think they were supposed to be Japanese curry, which tastes like non-spicy Indian curry. They had some really tasty fried dumplings, and REALLY good fresh tofu, and fried rice with umeboshi. And they had MANJU in various shapes and colours! Two of the ones I picked up had anko (red bean) filling and one of them was...I don't know. It was light brown- it might have been sweet potato. I'm pretty sure they had nikuman, put I'd eaten that before, so I didn't get it. They even coloured some of the buns to look like pandas! So cute!
I met some more of the international students working in Omiya in the same building as me. One of them is going to Boston for a conference soon, so he asked me some questions about it, and I told him places he should see. Some foreigners here are really good at Japanese, and then I find out they've been living here for 2+ years. And then I feel kind of better.
They had prizes for bowling scores. They had first, second, third, second from last, tenth, twentieth, thirtieth, so on. I think second place got a water boiler, and first place got some kind of plastic soccer game. You know, like the ones at the arcades with the knobs at the end, but a miniature version. Everyone who didn't get a prize got a sheet with their bowling scores printed on it and a pen from Shibaura. Yes, I got the girly pink one, and I'm proud of it.
I had instinctively picked up the blue pen, but secretly wanted the pink one. (I think being open minded about gender definitions also means being able to pick a stereotypically female thing at the same frequency as a masculine thing. If you're picking one consistently, I feel like this indicates a bit that you're consciously rejecting the other. So I'm trying to be better about this and pick what I really like, not what I think I should pick. Does any of this make sense?) Anyway, I put down the blue pen (the other ones had been taken) to get the pink one. And then someone else picked up the blue pen and was like, "Sweet! I wanted a blue one and didn't think there were any left!" So I felt good.
Apparently, Nishi-Kawaguchi, the place where we get off to go back to Warabi House, is right next to the red-light district. I never realised this- I'm always thinking, "Oh, what a pretty house!' or 'what interesting food in the window of that store!' or 'how the fuck do I get home?' (that one is very popular) so I never noticed the random posters. But the Polish students Dorota and Kamila told us that when they tell people they live near the Nishi-Kawaguchi station, people think it's hilarious. Warabi house is in a very nice quiet suburban part of Warabi, though.
When we got on the train back to Nishi-Kawaguchi, we were warned that the train schedules were a little different because there had been an accident. Dorota explained that this usually means someone has committed suicide by jumping in front of the train, something that happens all too often in Japan apparently. "We have been here for two months. We have been observing," they said and talked about how much Japanese people work and how little free time they have, and how little time they spent with their parents. Apparently Dorota has passed a 24-hour kindergarten. Parents sometimes drop their children off at 8 and come back at like 7PM. So the kids are so tired that they just go home and sleep and barely see their parents. Even students and salarymen who work till late every day and on the weekends. Dorota and Kamila talked about people having class the next day and spending the previous day in the lab and sleeping there.
It makes me realise that no matter how orderly and efficient this place is, people's lives here are difficult and demanding. Speaking of work, work for me starts next week, and I'm going to be there till 7PM officially. Longer if I feel I need to stay to finish work. It's hard. I know I'll feel the need to stay in the lab all the time because the other students are doing it, but I also know I can't do that here because the trains stop and midnight and I can't walk home. I could of course sleep there, but a part of me knows that's ridiculous. But at the same time, I don't want it to seem like I'm slacking off after they did all of this to bring me here. Instead of staying late, I might just come in earlier. I think that would be better, and that way, I could eat dinner. I don't know.
But sometimes I feel like people think the longer you work, the more you must be working rather than looking at actual results. I know this is something my dad said was true in his school in India. People would study all the time, but it wasn't effective studying. It was all memorization and cramming and not necessarily learning- just studying for its own sake. And they didn't know when to stop, because even though they'd learned the material, they felt the need to keep going, because stopping would have been 'slacking off.' And then during the test, they would barely be able to keep their eyes open. I know this was also true in Germany, where they would allegedly weigh someone's research papers to see if it passed acceptable number of pages before actually going into the material. (this is according to my professor, who used to read people's master's thesis, and she had it from one of the German professors)
Anyway, now I'm off to rest while I can with my giant stomach full of octopus and dumplings. But I know I can't sleep, because then I'll turn into a cow. ^_^
