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Issue 17 - Friday, 1st December 2000
Today's Contents:
Editorial
THINGS JAPANESE:
Kaiten Zushi - Fish that rotates. by Josh Wilbur (USA, Acceleration
Program)
1. Editorial
Thought for the day is that ignorance breeds misunderstanding and outrageous assumptions. Or maybe I'm exaggerating again. Anyway, I read on an email news service that I receive that:
"Volcanic eruptions on an island off Tokyo have caused such serious damage that officials are still unable to gauge its extent, Japan's top government spokesman said Friday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said a government mission that visited Miyake Island on Thursday reported that it will take time to make a complete assessment. All 3,800 Miyake residents have been evacuated and most are living in rent-free city housing in Tokyo. But with the volcano still spewing volcanic gas, evacuees don't know when they can go home. " (Newsbeat Email News Service, story by AP)
Events like this are at least illuminating. People take a story about something they know little about and then inflate it to a national panic on the basis of half the facts (much as I am leading to a conclusion based on a rather dubious interpretation of the above article). No one in Japan has really noticed the disturbance at all recently other than that it was in the news 6 months ago (excepting of course those evacuated whose lives have been intimately affected by the disaster), and until the press conference stating that nothing had changed, it hadn't been in the national news for some time. An example of a foreign news service making slightly exaggerated claims.
Similarly, people in Japan who know little about the outside world (and there are plenty, as in any country) often have the wierdest ideas about other societies. They often make fantastic generalisations about other countries on the basis of Japanese cultural assumptions. Often these lead to disbelief or hilarity in foreigners. Around the world it is the same, but Japan seems somehow more extreme than a few others. Perhaps the basic cultural difference, the concepts that are different in some fundamental way that it is hard to see at first, makes one misinterpret intentions and incorrectly give meaning to events. Your own misconception is always the hardest to see, and the one people least like seeing. Mainly because it is so difficult to reinvent or reconsider your basic concepts, from things such as "table" and "bed" to more abstract ideas such as "dinner", "aggressive", which differ not only between languages but also between users.
Which is why it is sometimes good to get out of your shell and see something of the world. Even if you don't find Nirvana, it might make you question things a little more which would be a good start to breaking down a lot of prejudice and misunderstanding. And learning a language as different as Japanese is from almost any other, is one of the fastest ways to get yourself a new perspective.
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