One more midterm

Hi folks,

I'm writing to you today because I decided to take a break from studying again.

I haven't studied much.

I have one more midterm tomorrow--my reading and writing class--and a paper due, and then I am (mostly) free. One of my teachers decided to have the midterm next week, so there you go. But I am mostly free.

This student stuff is exhausting. Midterms just seem too intense, at least for language, anyway. I appreciate unit tests, as I think they accurately show what you understood from the lessons. I imagine that midterms are conducted to gauge how much a student has retained from the class so far, but I don't think that's what it ends up showing. I think it shows that the student is able to study a lot in order to remember some information for a test, but I'm not sure it's anything more than cramming, which the student then immediately forgets again after the test. As long as the student understood the information well, they have the tools to continue their study and make an effort to accurately retain the information if they so choose. But at least at the university level, we're old enough to decide if we want to retain the information or not.

This turned into a big rant, but what do you think? Do you think tests have any purpose? Do you like the system you're in? What would you change?

Let me know in the comments!

Morgan

My adventure with tonsillitis in Japan!

This has been an interesting week. I think I’m allergic to MSG, based on some incidents I’ve had in the past with Chinese food (that, or some other chemical in Asian food). Regardless, I got a dish from the cafeteria a week ago Thursday and felt pretty bad afterword. I lost my appetite and just felt cruddy. Well, it was then that my immune system said, “NOW’S OUR CHANCE,” and decided to force me to take a break. By contracting tonsillitis.

I really didn’t feel tired, but was coughing quite a lot, and then finally, about a week after the cafeteria incident, my voice started to sound like it was coming out of a gramophone. And then it disappeared completely. This has been fun, considering that there are already communication issues. Before you get alarmed, I did go to a doctor, but hold on.

Through this experience, I have learned that Japanese people (well, I’m basing this on the five-year-old, really) are terrible at guessing charades. Let me tell you, I can do some charades. I can do them all day and I will win. And this girl just cannot guess what I’m trying to say. One fatal flaw in this communication farce is that they don’t understand that one finger up means, “wait a minute,” or, “just a second,” a gesture I reckon we’ve all taken for granted. But after a meal, I smiled and rubbed my tummy to say, “The food was good,” and she goes, “Your stomach hurts?” I mean, I ask you.

I have to say, though: people here are just so nice and unbelievably thoughtful that I can’t even stand it sometimes. The older host sister, made me little packets of cards that have essential phrases on them since I can’t talk. I am proud to say that “nan de ya nen,” an essential Osaka phrase, made it on the list. I’ll have to explain this another time. Part of what’s so overwhelming about this kind treatment is that they make little pomp or circumstance of it. The Japanese don’t tend to like drawing attention to themselves, so they just do things quietly, silently. My host sister didn’t say, “I made these for you,” she just said, “Here,” and when I tried to give them back (didn’t want to assume), she just said, “I’m giving them to you.”

The Japanese version of “I love you,” is known as something that only the rarest of couples say to each other (in strict moderation), or something you finally say at someone’s death bed. They think it’s weird how much we use the verb, and instead show their love through these kinds of gestures. It may not read so warm and fuzzy on paper, but I can say from experience that ya feel it!!!!! The people here are so welcoming to and nurturing of foreigners.

Switching back to tonsillitis here (which I’m just delighted to facilitate for you), it means that I had my first Japanese doctor experience. My host mom has really taken the “mom away from home” thing to heart, and bless her for it. She has been a rock star. She took me to a nearby doctor’s office with the five-year-old before kindergarten the other day. We signed up at 8:30 for an appointment and were seen shortly after they officially opened at 9. Apparently, the doctor doesn’t come to see you in your own room here (at least, at this office)—you go to see him. He asks if I understand Japanese, and the mom cautions him to maybe speak slowly. We go through the, “What hurts,” “Can you eat,” song and dance, and then he takes one look at my throat and it was all over. I think I’m understanding everything he’s saying as he goes on about giving me medicine and so forth, and then he asks if I have any questions. I go, “So it’s just a normal cold?”

And then, in perfect English, he goes, “You have tonsillitis. I’m going to give you some antibiotics.”

This would be the point where I do this Osaka reaction to something surprising or ridiculous where you just fall over.

I don't know what I was more shocked at--that I had tonsillitis or that he was patient enough to speak to me in English, despite being fluent in Japanese! What's up, Doc! This was not exactly the most metropolitan area.

So, I guess there's hope for those of you who don't speak much Japanese. English-speaking doctors might not be so uncommon!

Have you had an experience getting medical attention as a foreigner? Please share your story in the comments.

Another voiceless escapade:

The doorbell rings on Saturday evening while my family was out of the house, and I go down, thinking it’s them—the kids often ring the bell instead of waiting for the ‘rents to come unlock it. Well, it turns out it’s a delivery person. I open the door as he’s grabbing a box from the van, and when he turns back, he sees me. His eyes widen, his mouth becomes a perfect O—you would not believe the look of unmasked shock on this guy’s face (Japanese can be pretty good at concealing this sort of stuff—unless under extreme circumstances). Though not to his level, I was also pretty surprised that I was able to get out the words, “I’ve got a cold so… (I can’t really talk).” And then, despite my perfect Japanese sentence, he does this big mime with the pen and goes, “Sign…?” I swear, sometimes I think if a badger went around speaking Japanese here, no one would notice.

Well, till next time!
Morgan

My Big Debut in Japan!

Some of you know I’m pretty excited about this traditional form of storytelling here called rakugo (and it looks like I get to do an independent study on it next semester!). It came up around the same time as Shakespeare, so the language can be pretty hard to understand, even for native speakers. It’s performed by one person who plays all the characters, differentiating them through subtle physical and vocal changes. I was first exposed to it at the language school I went to last year. If you’re interested in watching a very excited British woman explain it more in detail, please click here. 

Anyway, I went by myself this past Saturday to a 10 AM performance. As expected, I was called out for being the only foreigner in the audience. As someone who enjoys clowning and performing for people, I think I take this “foreigner as zoo animal” phenomenon better than some of my fellows here, but it really can get exhausting always getting called out for being different when I’m just trying to blend in. Japan lives on blending in.

Anyway, it turns out this performance was more like a “Rakugo 101” sort of thing, so they explained how the performer, who’s allotted a folding fan and a small towel as his/her only props, can use the props as different objects. We all wrote down our names and ideas of how else to use them, and handed them in. They call a couple young boys up to the stage, who act out the different uses they came up with then go back to their seats, then they call up an adult. And then what do you know, they call me up to the stage.

Learn from me, people: when you come to Japan, I don’t care how cool you think your shoes are. Think very hard before you bring shoes here that will take you longer than immediately to take off. You will have issues.

I was wearing some Converse-style high-tops. I got down to the little staircase up to the stage and one of the knots just would not come undone. I was using the bottom stair to try and pry it off, and I RIPPED A BOARD OUT.

Most people in the audience, I think, didn’t see it happen, but the rakugo guy standing there was, despite comedy permeating every situation here in Osaka, was so stunned he couldn’t make a joke.

So I apologized about five times (which is like once in English, so maybe I’m rude) and just went up the stairs because I didn’t exactly have my tool belt on me.

These two rakugo guys are up there, and I plop down on the cushion in between them. They, of course, remark on my being able to sit seiza style because who’da thunk it—a  foreigner can sit with her legs folded! They are, of course, shocked that I’m even there, let alone have seen rakugo before, and, as it turns out, one of the three guys who came to my language school last year is actually quite famous, so that was even more surprising. Then, they ask how long I’ve been in Japan, and I say a month. That’s a reaction I never get tired of!

Well, it was then that I made the mistake of saying that I’ve done rakugo before. There was a rakugo club at the language school I went to last year, and I performed a short story at the talent show. In Japan, when you say something like that, there is just no way of getting out of displaying your talents, so I ended up murdering my way through this one-minute story I haven’t recited in over a year, but they all clapped and were very nice. They handed me this little envelope, and I very dazedly stumbled back to my seat with my shoes half on, as the rakugo guy at the stairs deliberately cacophonously “hammered” the stairs back together. It wasn’t until the next day that I even opened the envelope—there was 100 yen in it! That’s about 88 cents in American sense, but I earned money, which means I’m a PRO now!

That’s not even half my weekend, but certainly the most “write home about” news there was!