Sidewalks

One thing that I find really amazing about Japan is the ease that you can walk around. Back in American it is very hard (at least where I live because I have never moved from my neighborhood) to actually to walk to places such as the store or to a place where you want to meet your friends because there are almost no sidewalks next to roads and if you tired to walk on the side your most likely to get run over. However here in Japan this is not true, you can find sidewalks or places next to the road where you can walk almost everywhere (except I'm guessing on the freeways). I have walked a lot around the Makino area and there have been several times when walking that I have thought that people can not walk, however only to find that there is a specially walkway for people or that you can in fact that there is a place for people to walk.

Cars sizes

Ever since I have arrived in Japan Japanese cars have fascinated me. They just come in so many different sizes!! When I went to Australia a few years ago I remember just how small and compact they were, they were so worried about conserving space. So when I came to Japan (which is much much smaller then Australia ) I'd imaged the cars would be very very small like they were there. However that is not the case, I have seen several large SUV types of cars around. In the picture of the Avail parking lot you can see that there are cars of several different sizes or a fairly large size. I do wounder if the cars in Tokyo are small because there are so many people and so little space?

Naked Sign Language

Our post this week is supposed to be an article posted on our professors blog. so here it is:


After reading both my professor posting and this article it seems that the main point of this program is to give the news to deaf people. However, my question is why do they feel the need to have the newscaster strip naked in front of the camera? To me it seems more likely a strategy that cares more about the ratings then if deaf people get the news or not.

My professor mentioned that this could be a good way to get people interested in Japanese sign language or deaf cultural in general, however I wounder if this is true. I think that it would attract a large number of people, however I don't think any of them are paying attention to her hands or even the Japanese writing that sometimes accompanies the hand signs (in case someone might actually try to learn something). At the end of the day most viewers are only there for their daily does of free porn and most likely go away without learning anything. Or maybe the next day it will be the joke around the water cooler, "hey did you see the Japanese sign language news last night?" "Yea, I sure did learn something."

The whole of idea of a naked sign language programme to me seems to cheapen and even in some ways insulting to deaf people. It me it almost seems to say, "here is the only way to make deaf people interesting." I find that disappointing.

Conserving space

One aspect of Japan that I am constantly amazed at is how they fit everything in to such tiny spaces. This is a photograph of my dorm room. Before coming here I wandered how I was going to fit myself (and share) into an eight tatami mat sized room. Not that I really knew how big that was, but 8 did not sound like a very large number to me. Back in my old room, it was so messy and crowed because we had a mini-refrigerator, a t.v and so on that it really took up a lot of space. But because those things are not allowed in our dorm rooms even thought these rooms are a lot smaller then my dorm rooms back at Witt in many ways my dorm room now seems a lot bigger.

Seeing this aspect makes me wish that I had chosen a host family to see how a Japanese family uses that small amount of space they have in effective ways. While out this weekend I will try to find accepts of Japanese cultural that reflect this idea.

Questions....

Every day I come to Kansai Gaidai I find myself very surprised at the interactions between both international students and Japanese students. Almost every day when I am at school I am approached by someone who just wants to have a conversation. The friendliness and the willingness to try to understand someone from a different cultural amazing me everyday, because back in the States almost no one makes an attempt to do such things.

In my Japan in Western Film and Lit class we have been talking about a point in in western history known as the Yellow Peril. Talking about how America and other western nations reacted to Japan rising power made me start to wander what the residences of Hirakata-shi think about every year so many new foreigners come to their city? Also, what do people who live outside of Hirakata-shi think about those Japanese who live in Hirakata-shi and interact daily with many foreigners?