Learning Chinese

I'm only about 20 hours into it, but I like Chinese. It has really useful words, like "or" and "and". Unlike Japanese. And the grammar is easy - "I go home", "You want water", "have/not have money". I've studied Japanese for 6 years now and I'm still not sure of the right way to talk about wanting something.

Chinese also has (and uses!) useful words like "you" "me" "he". They're not unstated, as in Japanese, and there's no implication that someone is your girlfriend if you refer to her as "she".

Tones are a little rough. And I still have my habit (picked up from japanese) of speaking monotonically. Because in japanese you're not supposed stretch out syllables. Chinese is a lot more like English that way.

Best of all is the lack of politeness distinctions. You can go into a store and they'll be like "you want what" and you can just say "I want ~". None of the robotic memorized super polite greetings of Japanese.

Design

Some things about japan are cool. They have a concrete feel, everything is well put together. Things like that are tools, video games, books, young people's style. These things are designed in a way that the mind can get around and become fluent at.

But then other things are terrible, they are hard to understand, added to many times, badly designed, and ugly.

Initially I thought this image was of the first type - the colors are rich, I get what's going on, and it's a pleasure to look at. But the more you look at it the more things you see... if it was just the boy standing there it would be nice. But then there's the title, the author's name, the number, and the english for his name and "big spirit comics special" And even the boy's got a lot going on - dimples, a line across one eye, black stripes on his face, one eye open and the other shut, a bandaid, and goggles.

This is how everything you see there is - underneath somewhere there is something nice, but there's so much added on top distracting you.

I think people in Japan are particularly bad at recognizing these distractions - or else they're so good at ignoring distractions that they don't even register. You know those stickers that come on the car when you get it? Like on the dash, on the sun visor, everywhere? People there don't take them off. They don't tear off the labels and tags of clothes or curtains. Everything you see is encrusted with the output of committee meetings over the years where nobody could say no.



how many things are going on in this picture?

how many stickers on the door? 15?
how many awnings? 5?
how many fonts? 16?

I'm not saying that it should be mass produced and terrible like strip malls in the US. But isn't there some middle ground that's not horrible?

Oh yeah and those bricks are fake. it's a Japanese tradition to put this fake grid layout brick pattern in everything, even if underneath it's solid.

There are these gray cinderblock (I thought) fences everywhere, along roads and around houses. The bricks are laid out in a grid, not in the overlapping pattern used in the US. I remember the first time I looked at the top of one of these walls, and saw that it wasn't actually made out of bricks at all. It was just a solid block of concrete that someone had dug brick outlines into. I was sad then. That realization grew and grew, until now when I just presume everything I see there is fake.

Ha ha

Pictures of Kochi's downtown trolley. While I was there they replaced the old trolley (2nd and 3rd picture) with the new one. It's incredibly ugly. Luckily, no worse than the old ones. It's quieter also. Too bad trolleys only go about 15 miles an hour.

What a mess. The signs in the middle are for a clinc and some "central store". They're not street signs. The one on the telephone pole on the left says "optician, Takahashi Hospical" Below is some of the ubiquitous black and yellow warning tape. Warning tape uses the same color scheme as hornets.

Below that are a couple cool japanese dudes.

On the right, a couple ugly houses.

And in the background and overhead, a huge number of power lines.

Summer dancing festival in Kochi.

When I look at pictures of japan I like to look to count the number of power lines there are between the sky and the ground. Almost anywhere you are in japan there will be power lines between the ground and sky for 360 degrees. In cities it's even worse. Also note the dirty building and rusting signs. There's also a lot of font pollution.

Arguments

I love that in China, if there's an argument in a public place, everyone clusters around and watches. It's totally different than Japan, where I never saw any arguments. Actually now I remember one... about 6 am in Osaka the police took one guy into the police station for drugging some girl in a club. His friends decided to get him back, so they charged the police station. There were about 10 young tough guys fighting and pushing the same number of police. All the club kids stood around and watch. I got the explanation of what was happening from two huge American bouncers who were watching too. About 15 minutes later other cops showed up and it dispersed. Amazingly the guys who'd been fighting were allowed to walk away.

Last week on the overnight train there was an argument between a guy sitting and a guy standing. Everyone woke up and watched. Apparently the guy was sitting in another guy's seat. Pretty soon a conductor came along, looked at standing guy's his ticket, and made the other guy get up and stand the rest of the 9 hours. Why would you ever get into a losing argument like that?

Makeshift Umbrellas

Today I saw the following things used as umbrellas:

A big sheet of transparenct plastic
A plastic bag worn over the head
A backpack
A briefcase

Situations

I teach english to 19-20 year old Chinese students. Sometimes I give them situations and have them try to work out a solution to them with their partner.

A: You see a cute little puppy and buy it and take it home to your roommate
B: You hate animals, and your roommate comes home with a dirty little dog

A: You are a kid and you love to play all day on the weekends
B: Your want your child to take all day piano lessons on saturday and sunday

A: A bleeding man runs by, and then someone else chasing him yelling "I'll get you!". You grab the second man and are going to take him to the police
B: Someone stole your wallet and you are running after him when some other person grabs you and tries to take you to the police

A: Yesterday you met an old friend on the street and talked to him for a few hours.
B: A friend of yours saw your girlfriend talking very close to another man yesterday on the street.

My students do so well with these. They start yelling, punching each other, and arguing. They make up information to fill in the parts I don't explain. It's really fun.

Hot Or Cold

The other day I gave my students this scenario: you work for the UN and one day an alien spaceship comes down. They give all of humanity the choice between one of these powers:

• Never sleep
  
• Never get sick
  
• Turn green, human photosynthesis
  
• Don't feel hot or cold
  
• Fly
  
• Perfect Memory
  

The groups are assigned one and they have to argue why it's the best with other groups. It's pretty fun.

But the strangest thing was that the "never feel hot or cold" group assumed their gife included "never get sick" because after all, you only get sick because you feel hot or cold. I'm glad a few other students disagreed and mentioned things like aids, cancer etc.

I played dumb and say things like "yeah, that's why nobody ever gets colds in the summer" and "that's why everyone is sick all the time in winter".

People attribute colds to going out without a jacket, or sleeping without enough covers. And to not eating right. The american view is more like "if it's hot, take something off, cold put something on, if you're hungry, eat, if you're sleepy, go to bed". I think it comes out of our rejection of the idea that people have an innate human nature. We prefer to see ourselves as above the flesh.

um, testing

hi this is the new zzf. testing etc...