Oh no!

It has finally happened. My vacation has finally gotten in the way of my blogging. Well, I guess I will take a break this week and write two next week! I going to do some "Best of 2011" blogs so look forward to that!

An Appreciation

For the first time in a while, I have had several days around Christmas to spend with my friends and family. This has not always been the case. There is something odd about working on Christmas. Well, actually, for some people, working on holidays is just a regular part of their job, but I guess what made it weird for me is where I am working, no one actually really cares that they are working on Christmas. In Japan, Christmas is more about cake, party's, and maybe a date than anything involving three wise men, a drummer boy, or a really quiet baby. I don’t really mind working on Christmas as long as I am at least around people. The only bad Christmas for me would be a Christmas alone.

Which is why I want to send an appreciation to all those people working on these holidays. I know how it can feel like to have to work while everybody at home is celebrating. It is the type of loneliness that is easy to make a person bitter, but if it is any consolation, I think it is those people who can’t take a break this holiday which allow people who really need to touch base with their friends and families in order to touch base with themselves. When people and go out to buy their loved ones a present or go out with their friends to a restaurant during the holiday break, people have to work those hours instead of doing the same things for their  loved ones. It is that sacrifice that I want to thank people for.

Thank you to all the people setting up the lights at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, and the people working at Lake Theatre, and the servers at Burger Boss, and the countless other people working this holiday season to bring sparks of happiness and provide services that serve as the conduit for memories for years to come.

And with that, happy holidays to all and to all a good night!

Portability

So in about 14 hours, I am going to go on a flight to the US. Because of that, I won't be doing a very thought out blog today, but I did want to do a little ode to portable devices. As someone who moves around a lot and is currently in a long-distant relationship, being able to play my favorite music, listen to the news, and maybe just play a game on the go is such a boon. It is those little things that make living in the middle of the inaka Japanese country, with only a fraction of the conveniences that I came to expect being a boy of the suburbs, so much easier. There are many critics and people who seem to dislike their whole collections of music, or libraries of books, and what-not available on small devices. I agree that it does contribute to a society that seems to value convenience over value, but in the end, with out these conveniences people like me just wouldn't experience or learn about many things outside of my bubble. Being able to download and read books has made reading so much better and i find myself challenging myself more and learning more as a result. Without devices such as the kindle, I don't think I would have ever read books like the ones done by Oliver Sacks, which I will stand by as necessary reading for anyone who likes to think themselves as "educated." Being able to listen to new music and play new games on the go brings my spirits up when I am away from my loved ones, and makes exercising everyday not only possible, but a joy. I will be always be very thankful of the free podcasts done by NPR, Marc Maron, Radiolab, and many others for making things to listen to that are both entertaining and mind expanding. It has made all the time where I am going somewhere or walking somewhere so much better.

Now with about 13 more hours to go, I find myself confident that I will be able to keep sane on that 15 hour flight to my friends and family back home. Heck, maybe I will even learn something on the way! I am hoping to finish my book (on the kindle of course) in order to write a review on my blog during my vacation. I will try my best to keep my blog going! If not though, I hope everyone has a great holiday and I'll blog at ya' in the new year!

Vacation!

In about a week and a day, I will be going back to the United States of America. I am really excited to see family, friends, and to eat some good old fashion American cuisine, but I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. It is something I often feel when I return to the states, but this time it feels a bit stronger. It is probably because I usually wait only a year to go back, and this time the wait was about 6 months longer. I also feel like since I have changed so much in the past year and a half, that perhaps those familiar people and places will have changed as well.

Who am I kidding though? Once I come back, I will probably go back to the person that everybody knows back home, and then the people will say that one phrase, “Wow, you haven’t really changed that much at all!” or some variation of that. For most people, how a person acts and defines themselves actually starts at a very young age. Any changes after that usually just fit the base that a person built in their childhood. This is not to say that how a person is raised determines their future (or should I say fate?), but it certainly can effect it. But does that mean I haven’t changed at all? I don’t think so. It is just that what has changed is just not all that apparent sometimes.

Maybe a part of that is also a part of confirmation bias. People are more willing to see things that confirm their hypotheses than to see anything that defies it. Or maybe it goes deeper than that. Maybe，in my heart of hearts, I really want to be seen as the same person I was a year ago because I value the familiar and respect the years of memories I have had with all those people. Perhaps it is that familiarity that allows old friends and family the ability to talk to each other as if nothing had changed that allows them to be intimate enough to be able to see what indeed has changed.

It is that mix of old and new I am hoping when I come back. It will probably be harder this year to get with friends and family due to everybody living so far apart, but I’ll try my best to see people. Hopefully my peeps have not been turned into pod people or some other science fiction metaphor for communists, but even then I hope that I would gain some knowledge about how our friendship could have possibly affected this new direction in life. I just hope I can live up to people’s expectations while possibly jet-lagged, possibly sick, and possibly have the worst back pain (those airplane seats for 14 hours can be a killer), but hey, the best way to see who your true friends are is to see how they act when you aren’t 100%. Or is that just the best way to find out which one of your friends has the best medical and/or psychological training? I guess there is only one way to find out! See you on the other side of the Atlantic!

A Linguistic Fate

Every time someone asks the question, “does fate exist?” the follow up question I always want to ask is what really is the difference between “fate” and “cause and effect?” Fate would imply that there is this grand tapestry that if only we were to glimpse at it, the future of humankind would be clear. While I have no proof that this tapestry doesn’t exist, I implore people to actually observe the things around them before jumping to such conclusions. I sometimes wonder if people really look around them and think of all the different little things and forces around them that are effecting their everyday lives.  For example take, oh I dunno, Linguistic Relativity.

Linguistic Relativity is the theory that the language people speak can influence their thought. Then, following that thinking, all the different languages can potentially lead to many different influences on thinking. For example, take the word “amaeru” from the Japanese language. It means to passively love someone or something. Seeing that there is no real single word equivalent in the English language, it is hard not to think that people speaking Japanese perhaps find the idea of passive love more important than the typical English speaker.

Which is interesting because it is not to say that “amae” or “passive love” doesn’t exist in English speaking countries. Old American newspaper comics such as Family Circus, Dennis the Menace appeal come directly from people’s need to passively love something. These comics most of the time fore-go attempting to be funny like their other newspaper brethren and opt to be more “cute.” Not cute just in appearance, but the type of cute that comes with the inexperience and helplessness of children. By reading the foibles of the Keane family from family circus, the comic strip attempts to appeal to the audiences love of taking care of children and relate to the needs and worries that their own children have (for if people want to “passively love” it is not too much to say that there are also people who desire to fulfill that passive love actively).

So then, if there is a need for “passive love” in America, how come there is not a single word for it like in Japanese? There are many theories I could relay, but my personal opinion is that, starting from kindergarten, Japanese education emphasizes on more emotional realization than intellectual pursuits. From my own experience in Japanese kindergartens and from reading Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited (by Joseph Tobin, Yeh Hsueh, and Mayumi Karasawa) it is not hard to see that the very base of Japanese schools is for the students to have a strong emotional base to work from and have empathy for all things, big and small. American kindergartens (again, from my own experience and the book) tend to shy away from anything too emotional. It is then a process of connecting the dots of having that strong emphasis on emotional health in Japanese education can easily lead to the recognition of “amae” while American schools surely deal with children’s emotion, but it is not nearly as explicit.

Then I suppose the question is: What came first, the chicken or the egg? Is this emphasis on emotion influenced by the language, or is the language influenced by the culture? Well, a little of both I suppose. I am not personally sure which came first (and it would take an expert historical linguist to even have an idea), but what I think is that no matter what came first, the cultural emphasis and the language propel each other. They both seem to reinforce each other in order to attain their goal. It is this “reinforcing” that I believe people need to be more aware of. There are so many cultural things that people take for granted and assign to “fate” instead of analyzing themselves and realizing that their very language can trap people sometimes. Perhaps fate exists somehow in this universe, but until people recognize all the things affecting them, I think it is best to leave “fate” to the philosophers.