Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The microbrewery in the center of Takayama city felt a bit out of the place.  Despite being surrounded by wooden buildings from more than century ago, the clientele of the little bar and restaurant is distinctly un-Japanese.  When I visited the location for dinner at 8pm on a Saturday, none of the people inside were Japanese.  Perhaps attracted by the reputation of their brews, white couples in the fifties and sixties occupied most of the tables and the counter, trying more than half a dozen unique beers the microbrewery had on tap.

It is a brilliant message on the part of business English-teaching schools in Japan everywhere.  In a bid to target regular people who are nervous about the prospect of using English in their jobs, despite having zero experiences with the language in their daily lives, the schools strive to lower the hurdle for English learning.  They do so with the uniform message about how English is simply a tool for business communication, and learning to speak better English does not necessarily mean one has to give up some part of Japanese identity and acquire foreign values .

A professor at the prestigious Duke University in the US found herself in hot water last week after social media broke the story of her telling Chinese students in her department to not speak Chinese while in the department building.  While the professor merely emailed the students of the department after receiving complaints from other professors, the subsequent outrage to the email focused solely on her wording in the emails, eventually with the professor issuing an apology and the school getting involved in the investigations.

It is often quite amusing to see online (and real-life) comments about foreigners living in Japan.  For the wide-eyed newbies a couple of years into their residence in Japan, the full-hearted embrace of Japanese society is still quite palpable.  They speak of how clean the streets are, how good the services are , and how convenient the public transit can be.  But when one checks in forums full of old-time Japan residents a decade or more into the country, a whole new different picture emerges.  In comments laced with open cynicism, the old-timers criticize the lack of change of a country that treats them as exotic animals to be gawked at endlessly.

About five years after she became a sensation in her native Japan, professional house organizer Mair Kondo found fame in the West through her new show on Netflix.  By helping both common people and celebrities clean out their cluttered homes in a show watched by millions, KonMari, as she is otherwise known, almost single-handed created a platform that redefines what it means to be happy.  In a rather simple and straightforward manner, she argued that to achieve true happiness, people must limit themselves in terms of physical possessions.  But throwing away unwanted items, the resulting cleanliness brings joy.

Once in a while, one gets to meet one of those people who take upon themselves to learn as many languages as possible.  After conquering one language, they practice the language through conversations with native speakers and equally minded language learners, all the while moving to study another new language.  They call such behavior "a hobby" based on a fascination with cultures.  Others, already having a hard time learning one foreign language , not to mention one after another, simply describe those with the language learning hobby as "naturally talented at learning languages."