Learning Japanese is hard...

The t-shirts I ordered off of J-list came in today, here they are:




The first one is fashioned after the logo of a popular noodle chain, but with different wording. “Yokozuna” is what the top-level sumo wrestlers are called. Given my size in comparison to the average Japanese person, I felt this shirt was made for me.








The second one gives a warning against “chikan” or gropers. Japan has a large problem with men groping women on crowded subway cars. Women have complained to the point that some subway lines off women-only cars during their busiest times. I have never seen one, but apparently they are always full of women seeking to escape the grasp of salarymen. Women's lib has not made its way to Japan.








The third says “stupid foreigner” in kanji and is something you will hear eventually if you are gaijin and live in Japan long enough. Hopefully my attempts at learning Japanese will allow me to recognize when I’m being addressed as such and respond accordingly by laughing loudly.




Japanese class is quite a lot of work, so much so that many people seem to have dropped down to the lower level. I’d estimate that it is going to involve about three hours of homework on a daily basis at a minimum. This makes me very glad I took the management game class and was able to bank a full credit before the semester truly started.

I am certainly wishing that I took the time this summer to memorize hiragana and katakana. I didn’t, and now I’m paying for it. Such is life.

I think I have a different attitude towards the class than others who might drop it. I need so few credits to graduate that I do not need to get credit from my Japanese classes in order to graduate from Brandeis in the spring. I can just transfer back my three business classes and still take a minimal class load in the spring.

I think that even if I’m not absorbing as much from the class as my fellow students, being in an environment when I’m forced to speak Japanese for three hours a day will vastly improve my chances of gaining the solid grasp of the language that I’m hoping for.

I am sitting in one of my free elective classes right now entitled Japan in the 20th Century. It is essentially a history of the country from 1900 to present. I think it will be very interesting to hear what the Japanese students feel about the Japanese army’s conduct during WWII. One person I spoke to in my Management Game class seemed to not believe that Japan had done anything wrong, that reports that they had were not accurate or written by the victors. Much of the class is going to focus around the Pacific War, which for Japan ran from 1931 until 1945.

While I’m certain that the victors do indeed write the history, Japan’s recent admission that they forced Korean women to become sex slaves for the Japanese army would seem to indicate it is the Japanese who are not coming clean about their past. We are scheduled to discuss Japanese pre-war aggression and “The Manchuria Incident” which the rest of the world would know as the Rape of Nanking where the army slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians by some estimates.

As I said, it will be interesting!

Next week I will start my other class, Corporate Strategy. I was going to take a class on the Japanese economy, but I feel like I need to take a class that will force me to continue to use the analytical and strategic skills I gained through last year’s coursework.

Excuse me, now. It's Friday night and I need to study some more Japanese :)