SCHOOL LIFE: Thursday- Japanese Language and Culture, Civic/Private Law, "Interchanging Societies", Seminar

 Japanese Language and Culture, the first class on last Thursday's muggy morning, continued the outline of the semester. The focal point of the course for me and other students is giving two presentations throughout the semester about one's background and about Japanese culture (at least from what I gathered). The lesson then moved into watching recorded news reports that are designed for Japanese children (a little embarrassing as the sound from the TV blasted incredibly loudly, announcing the program for all other classes in the hall to hear until a teacher from a neighboring class told the language instructor to turn it down). The news stories consisted of the story of Japanese nobel prize winners Eiichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki, the maritime dispute between Japan and China in the Senkaku Islands, Japan's plan for banks to reset interest rates to zero, and another story about a Japanese soccer player that the class didn't get to before the end of the period. Being that the majority of students in the class are Chinese, the story about Japan and China's quarrel could have brought more tension; when the news story discussed the agreement between Japanese and Chinese officials in Brussels, the instructor asked the students what they thought about it, and one particularly smart-aleck student said "It's a lie!" prompting another Chinese student in front of him to turn around with a glaring look of disapproval. Unlike the Chinese students, however, it might be difficult to yield any kind of response about politics from Japanese students. Politics may as well be a totally different universe from a good amount of young Japanese. Coming from the United States where politics is equally redundant but ultimately louder and more polarizing, there's little wonder as to why people would not want to care; little wonder, but numerous consequences.

 The next class was a mental exhaustion. I had decided to ditch "Public Law" on Monday mornings in order to take the 4-credit, twice a week program Private Law. The class runs on a relentless lecture from start to finish. The professor never shows a hint of boredom in his own lecturing- and that's not to say he's incredibly vigorous about it. He simply stands and delivers with the utmost seriousness. While this is by far an impressive feat compared to some of the more disinterested professors, in no less becomes exhausting, even for Japanese students who speak the same native language, to try and understand. At the end of each class I hear the voices of students behind me expressing their absolute cluelessness as to what was taught. This class mainly consisted of introducing various civic and private laws, mainly in regard to corporate entities and their private rights, and how these rights reflect rights held by individual people. It talked about renting and buying rights between companies and banks and I get disinterested even typing that much about it... However, my philosophy on the class is that I can even understand and retain some amount of what is taught, it will increase my Japanese language proficiency. Using an electronic dictionary I purchased (leaving me in a bit of a rut this month financially) I translate the key words and somehow manage to catch the gist of the topics even without knowing the smaller details. After all, I'm not getting credit for the class. I can only get as much as I put into trying to understand a difficult and tedious subject in a foreign language.

 Following lunch period was Ueno-sensei's Interchanging Societies. I must have some kind of bug lately because the fatigue I feel during the daytime makes staying awake and alert a real challenge. It could just be the changing seasons. Nonetheless, I stayed awake to listen to the professor talk about the perils of Japan's ever-decreasing birthrate and the overwhelming size of Japan's senior generation. Thinking about it certainly makes it seem a bit terrifying in the face of a dwindling race of people; at least they aren't reacting like certain white fundamentalist Christian groups are with theories on how all of Europe and North America will become racially Arab in the next twenty years unless white people reproduce in large numbers. Japanese merely blame people for being "too lazy" to have children. The fact of the matter is that in order to succeed in Japan, one must work far harder and focus more on career than raising a family. Now that women have largely entered the work force and stay-at-home moms are becoming a thing of the past, the construction of Japanese families becomes a more and more difficult task; this idea was included in the professor's lecture. However, I think some of the worries might be a bit exaggerated- the work system in Japan is deteriorating, and I think that more Japanese people will reproduce at higher rates within the next twenty years as Japanese society changes into a less of an economic power-house and more of a self-sustaining nation (I base this theory on nothing but my own arrogance of gut reasoning). This was the only real thought-provoking bit from this class, aside from the large amount of students who were asleep on their desks.

 Fourth period was Seminar. Nothing really to say here; students presented books on what they had researched, this time about fair trade and domestic food production. The food production led to some lengthy conversations between the seminar professor, who loves to speak, and the other students. Apparently many foods labelled as domestically raised or grown are actually grown elsewhere through loop-holes and all that. It might be like "Organic" as a tag-line in the United States, a meaningless phrase. Still, I refuse to buy U.S. beef in Japanese grocery stores even when it's relatively much cheaper. Just like the seminar discussion, I don't know where the food in my own country comes from either.