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Broadcasting to an audience of three (and a goldfish)...
Comment, ramblings and musings... life through the eyes of a Japanologist...
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Monday, March 18, 2002 |
 In fact, I reckon the amount of cleaning I'm doing each week is a little too much- after all, I'd hate to drag up the average!
I shall therefore be limiting the time I spend on household chores, as from next Monday.
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An interesting story from the BBC website, from last Wednesday.
According to the article, Japanese men are among the laziest in the world when it comes to household chores, spending only four hours on cooking and cleaning, etc., a week. In contrast, the time spent on these jobs by Japanese women is 29 hours.
This makes me feel happier about my aversion to cleaning. After all, when in Rome...
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Writing the previous post, it strikes me that, while the Japanese Government places great emphasis on internationalisation, what really needs to change is something that no amount of Government initiatives can affect. It's fundamental and personal: the absolute precursor to internationalisation worthy of the name has to be a change of mindset. Whileever even a small proportion of the populace continue to assume that non-Japanese people are somehow different (in their supposed inability to learn Japanese, their usage of chopsticks, and so on) internationalisation- for the most part- will not, cannot, progress past mere posturing.
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Japanese people, I'm sure, cannot realise just how incredibly irritating it is to walk into a restaurant or somewhere and to be pointed at. If they did, then, believe me, the small proportion of Japanese who persist in doing this, wouldn't. At least not so often. Anyway, didn't anybody tell these people that pointing is rude? I realise that foreigners in Japan are still relatively rare, especially outside big cities, but even so, there's no reason to point and stare as if at a zoo animal.
'What occasioned this rant, then?' you may ask. Well, it came about because Wendy and I went out for yakiniku after work; it wasn't that I didn't have food, rather that I didn't feel like cooking. There's a Japanese phrase dokushin-kizoku- 'unmarried aristocrat'- sums this up well; it's great to be able to do what I want.
Anyway, the second we walked into the yakiniku restaurant, some guy (God, I sound like Tony Blair!) with more colour on his teeth than in his hair waved his chopsticks in our direction and- just in case this hadn't made things obvious enough- pointed out our arrival at the top of his voice.
Anyway, I told him just what I thought about him and his lack of manners, but he ignored me completely and turned back to the crone sitting next to him and the two young ladies sitting opposite. My interest (curiosity/nosiness) piqued, I listened in with one ear to the ensuing conversation, and I can say with every certainty that the two young ladies, while calling him otosan- 'Daddy'- were never in a month of Sundays his daughters. (Narrows eyes suspiciously) Mmm...
It's not that uncommon at all to be pointed out like this. Indeed, this is the second time it's happened to me in two days. At the udon shop yesterday, two old hags were taking great pleasure in watching- with commentary- how I was using chopsticks. Watching, that is, until I made it obvious that I was watching them watching me.
So anyway, the question is why do Japanese people feel at liberty to act so rudely towards non-Japanese people when they would never do so towards a one of their own race? And, what makes it natural to assume that all foreigners are incapable of understanding Japanese?
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© Copyright 2003 Nathan Duckworth.
Updated: 8/1/03; 7:44:46 pm.
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