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fencer_xFriday...has come again! For those of you brave enough to step into the rantings and ravings of a fangirl such as I who has to contain her excitement at being able to speak to a ZOMG REEL JAPUNEEZE guy, please step forward behind the cut!
This week was JUST as much fun as last week, even if it didn't really start off that way. Takashi is the conversation partner liason thingee for the MODL 489 class, the upper-level Japanese class, which means he meets with other students besides me outside of class. He was a LITTLE late (say...2 minutes), which is really no problem for me at all, since I come early because I'm fricking scared of being late and embarrassing myself--if I embarrass myself with him, I want it to be for something he can help me with, like speaking the language, yanno? So I was waiting at most three or four minutes, which was fine--I had no problem.
But he's Japanese, and the Japanese culture is REALLY big on punctuality. I'm certain they keep their population under control on those islands by committing seppuku (ritual suicide) every time they're late for an event. So he was vehemently apologizing to me for being two minutes late--a gap most people wouldn't even give a passing thought to. I assured him it was fine, and he proceeded to tell me how glad he was that I'd kept my promise and shown up. I was a little confused, and we started walking to where we sat and talked the previous week in the MSC. Apparently, the two students he was supposed to meet with on Monday didn't show up. Like, AT ALL. Didn't email, didn't call, just DIDN'T COME.
I kinda looked at him like, "...You're kidding," and sitting there thinking, "WHAT THE HELL?" The person he was to meet with on Wednesday also didn't come, but at least they'd emailed him, he said. He was REALLY nice about it, though, just laughing it off and saying, "I guess it's really different here from Japan, huh?" and wondered if all Americans were as flippant about keeping meeting times, and I proceeded to vehemently assure him that NO, Americans were NOT all like that usually--that it was very, very rude of those two students to just not show up without even letting him know somehow, and he felt a bit better.
SO EMBARRASSING. THANKS A LOT YOU IDIOTS. *headdesk*
Anyway, after that, Takashi proceeded to tell me that I'd do JUST fine in Japan with my timing--you're never too early. He wondered where I'd learned it from (wtf), and I said my parents--that being on time was something important to them, and so I try and be on time always, or early even. Insert more of him saying how wonderful my parents are (!!!), and me being way embarrassed. He was still really interested in what I wanted to do after college (grad school--vet medicine and the like), and wondered if I was ever planning to go to Japan.
I admitted here that I was thinking of the JET program (Japanese-English Teaching), which, for those of you unfamiliar with it, takes applicants from English-speaking countries (Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and USA that I can remember) and sends them to Japan to help a Japanese teacher of English. Apparently the English program in schools when Takashi was in it was REALLY bad. It was mostly grammar, and almost NO pronunciation practice, but it's getting much better. He was SO HAPPY to hear this XD and started going on about how everyone would be so happy to have me as a teacher--and even asked which program I'd do (you can be a teacher, which requires almost no Japanese experience, or work in a government office, which requires near-fluency) because he was sure by the time I went I'd know enough of the language and be comfortable with it to be fine in that environment. I said I'd like to be a teacher more because I'd get to interact with the kids in more of a worldly environment.
Since you can kinda choose where you wanna be stationed, we started talking about which city I'd like to contract to--a big city, rural area, what. I said it didn't really matter to me, as longa s I got to go; I mentioned that I did want to visit places like Tokyo and Osaka and the like if I actually went, even if I wasn't stationed there. At the mention of Osaka, he started talking about how RUDE the people in Osaka are o_O After I asked him to elaborate, he painted a portrait of...well, it reminded me of New York, truthfully XD
They have their traffic lights and all, like here, he said, but whereas yellow means 'caution' or 'slow down' here (yeah RIGHT), NO ONE stops in Osaka, and even run red-lights too--I kinda hinted that that's not REALLY different from America too :P Then he talked about people always parking in no-parking zones, and the police doing nothing about it, because EVERYONE does it and they're not gonna give that many tickets out. I compared it to New York--and he laughed, because he'd actually been to NY once and knew what I was talking about. But he said the Osaka people weren't as snobby as New Yorkers, that it was more comparable to Chicagoites. They only act that way because that's how they were raised, they're not really RUDE about it.
Then we talked about the differences between big cities and rural areas in Japan, how they each had their good and bad points. Rural areas were open and cheaper, and the people, because they aren't used to foreigners, are SO NICE and welcoming to foreigners when they meet them, "WE'RE SO HAPPY YOU'RE HERE. HERE, HAVE SOME MORE FOOD! EAT EAT!" <---ADORABLE. He acted it out XD
Bigger cities are more expensive to live in, but it's easier to get around--you can bike to the train station, and from there make it anywhere in the city, so it's really convenient, and doesn't matter if you have a car, which is needed more if you live far from the school in a rural area.
That was about the end of the convo--and I felt a lot more comfortable this week! XD I guess cause it felt like bonding almost to try and let him see that all Americans weren't these rude idiots with no respect for others' time.
Oh yeah! Earlier in the convo, we'd also kinda talked about how weird Japanese is sometimes XD He'd mentioned something and said, "Tondemo gozaimasen!" and turned to me and asked if I understood that phrase; I nodded that I did--that I'd heard it lots before, mostly as "Tondemo nai!", but I understood the differences in politeness level between 'nai' and 'gozaimasen.' This led to wondering where the phrase came from--he made puns on it like, "Tonde inai? Nani ga?" ('Tonde inai' is "It's not flying", and then 'nani ga?' is "What's not?", like a rhetorical question; the pun came in with the idiom 'tondemo nai' being based on the same verb, "fly"). But even he didn't know the source. OH WELL.
I'm even more excited about next week--cause the person he talks with before me can't make it, so he said we can do an hour's talk next time (we usually only go for 30 minutes). SO UNTIL NEXT WEEK--!
This week was JUST as much fun as last week, even if it didn't really start off that way. Takashi is the conversation partner liason thingee for the MODL 489 class, the upper-level Japanese class, which means he meets with other students besides me outside of class. He was a LITTLE late (say...2 minutes), which is really no problem for me at all, since I come early because I'm fricking scared of being late and embarrassing myself--if I embarrass myself with him, I want it to be for something he can help me with, like speaking the language, yanno? So I was waiting at most three or four minutes, which was fine--I had no problem.
But he's Japanese, and the Japanese culture is REALLY big on punctuality. I'm certain they keep their population under control on those islands by committing seppuku (ritual suicide) every time they're late for an event. So he was vehemently apologizing to me for being two minutes late--a gap most people wouldn't even give a passing thought to. I assured him it was fine, and he proceeded to tell me how glad he was that I'd kept my promise and shown up. I was a little confused, and we started walking to where we sat and talked the previous week in the MSC. Apparently, the two students he was supposed to meet with on Monday didn't show up. Like, AT ALL. Didn't email, didn't call, just DIDN'T COME.
I kinda looked at him like, "...You're kidding," and sitting there thinking, "WHAT THE HELL?" The person he was to meet with on Wednesday also didn't come, but at least they'd emailed him, he said. He was REALLY nice about it, though, just laughing it off and saying, "I guess it's really different here from Japan, huh?" and wondered if all Americans were as flippant about keeping meeting times, and I proceeded to vehemently assure him that NO, Americans were NOT all like that usually--that it was very, very rude of those two students to just not show up without even letting him know somehow, and he felt a bit better.
SO EMBARRASSING. THANKS A LOT YOU IDIOTS. *headdesk*
Anyway, after that, Takashi proceeded to tell me that I'd do JUST fine in Japan with my timing--you're never too early. He wondered where I'd learned it from (wtf), and I said my parents--that being on time was something important to them, and so I try and be on time always, or early even. Insert more of him saying how wonderful my parents are (!!!), and me being way embarrassed. He was still really interested in what I wanted to do after college (grad school--vet medicine and the like), and wondered if I was ever planning to go to Japan.
I admitted here that I was thinking of the JET program (Japanese-English Teaching), which, for those of you unfamiliar with it, takes applicants from English-speaking countries (Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and USA that I can remember) and sends them to Japan to help a Japanese teacher of English. Apparently the English program in schools when Takashi was in it was REALLY bad. It was mostly grammar, and almost NO pronunciation practice, but it's getting much better. He was SO HAPPY to hear this XD and started going on about how everyone would be so happy to have me as a teacher--and even asked which program I'd do (you can be a teacher, which requires almost no Japanese experience, or work in a government office, which requires near-fluency) because he was sure by the time I went I'd know enough of the language and be comfortable with it to be fine in that environment. I said I'd like to be a teacher more because I'd get to interact with the kids in more of a worldly environment.
Since you can kinda choose where you wanna be stationed, we started talking about which city I'd like to contract to--a big city, rural area, what. I said it didn't really matter to me, as longa s I got to go; I mentioned that I did want to visit places like Tokyo and Osaka and the like if I actually went, even if I wasn't stationed there. At the mention of Osaka, he started talking about how RUDE the people in Osaka are o_O After I asked him to elaborate, he painted a portrait of...well, it reminded me of New York, truthfully XD
They have their traffic lights and all, like here, he said, but whereas yellow means 'caution' or 'slow down' here (yeah RIGHT), NO ONE stops in Osaka, and even run red-lights too--I kinda hinted that that's not REALLY different from America too :P Then he talked about people always parking in no-parking zones, and the police doing nothing about it, because EVERYONE does it and they're not gonna give that many tickets out. I compared it to New York--and he laughed, because he'd actually been to NY once and knew what I was talking about. But he said the Osaka people weren't as snobby as New Yorkers, that it was more comparable to Chicagoites. They only act that way because that's how they were raised, they're not really RUDE about it.
Then we talked about the differences between big cities and rural areas in Japan, how they each had their good and bad points. Rural areas were open and cheaper, and the people, because they aren't used to foreigners, are SO NICE and welcoming to foreigners when they meet them, "WE'RE SO HAPPY YOU'RE HERE. HERE, HAVE SOME MORE FOOD! EAT EAT!" <---ADORABLE. He acted it out XD
Bigger cities are more expensive to live in, but it's easier to get around--you can bike to the train station, and from there make it anywhere in the city, so it's really convenient, and doesn't matter if you have a car, which is needed more if you live far from the school in a rural area.
That was about the end of the convo--and I felt a lot more comfortable this week! XD I guess cause it felt like bonding almost to try and let him see that all Americans weren't these rude idiots with no respect for others' time.
Oh yeah! Earlier in the convo, we'd also kinda talked about how weird Japanese is sometimes XD He'd mentioned something and said, "Tondemo gozaimasen!" and turned to me and asked if I understood that phrase; I nodded that I did--that I'd heard it lots before, mostly as "Tondemo nai!", but I understood the differences in politeness level between 'nai' and 'gozaimasen.' This led to wondering where the phrase came from--he made puns on it like, "Tonde inai? Nani ga?" ('Tonde inai' is "It's not flying", and then 'nani ga?' is "What's not?", like a rhetorical question; the pun came in with the idiom 'tondemo nai' being based on the same verb, "fly"). But even he didn't know the source. OH WELL.
I'm even more excited about next week--cause the person he talks with before me can't make it, so he said we can do an hour's talk next time (we usually only go for 30 minutes). SO UNTIL NEXT WEEK--!
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-14 07:11 pm (UTC)Anyway, Takashi's such a sweetheart. He'd hate me because I'm late to EVERYTHING; unlike your parents, mine run on CP (Colored People) time. Basically, if something STARTS at 9:00am, getting there by 9:30am is good enough. Course, I'm not THAT bad...I'd be there at like...9:05am or something.
Even at work I'm a little late, though that isn't my fault. I blame it all on the damn slow Atlanta public transportation system (which also runs on CP time). I've gotten to work super late because of that...
In Japan, however, I'll just have to trick myself into thinking that my classes start ten minutes earlier. THEN I'd make it on time. I still don't know whether I'm going to Toyo Uni in Tokyo or Kinjo Gakuin in Nagoya (my advisor's pushing me toward the smaller Kinjo, but I wanna enjoy Tokyo!).
Takashi's been around, eh? How'd he come from New York down to Texas? That's a BIG change in culture right there. I'd love to have a convo with him, though I'd mostly be stuttering and making half sentences.
I hope you get that hour with your boy toy! Then your fangirling post will be TWICE as long!
no subject
Date: 2005-10-14 07:53 pm (UTC)And I'm usually right on time, or a little late, but Takashi's SPESHUL. Though he dun need to know that, ne?
I have NO idea where I'd go if I went to Uni in Japan anywhere--you'll have to tell me the + and - points of the unis, OKAY??
And he said he just went to NY to visit (dunno if it was to meet someone or just as a vacation thing--thought about asking, but didn't wanna seem nosy XD), but he's at A&M now getting his Master's, so I'm guessing he was only in NY and Chicago for a short time.
AND WHERE'S MY PIXX0RZ OF SOUICHI WHORE?
ZOMG get on AIMno subject
Date: 2005-10-14 08:20 pm (UTC)And I do love reading these updates every week. Sort of like getting to listen in on the great conversations you two have without actually having the embarrassment of being there XD
P.s. I agree too, reppu's icon rocks :D