It’s Culture Day tomorrow And I should be here preparing But instead I look out the window And looking becomes staring
Then I drift in my own thoughts With no fear of what tomorrow brings Until I catch a look at the clock And reality bites and stings
I have to stop my procrastination Need to rewrite my speech about my nation I have things that I want to impart But have trouble thinking where to start
So instead of just putting pen to pad I stop and gaze outside instead And whilst caught up with The thoughts in my own head I lose an hour and gain some dread
Looking Good
I find if I suck in my cheeks And turn my head to the side The man in the mirror Looks back at me with pride
Oh, sometimes in a certain light And if I suck my stomach in With my abs tensed nice and tight I actually look quite thin
Then there are times I don’t groom my hair But leave it wild and rough I find it adds some character But wonder if it adds enough
During my last year of university I worked pretty much flat out, Monday to Sunday. Ok, that’s not true, I worked semi hard around a schedule that included Lost, Property Ladder, Easteneders and masturbation (never together).
At LUL I also worked many a weekend and reaped the reward of overtime. Overtime at LUL was often a lonely affair, other staff were far too busy recovering from coke binges to get work done on a Sunday.
Now, at Saito Shogyo I work 5 days strictly separated by a weekend, which in all truth may be harder than the week days combined. Not only do I drink in excess, but I also have no transport and must rely on other people or public transport, sometimes this lack of freedom or indepdence is easier, sometimes its just a pain. But this is not the point of this blog.
My point is that I just worked an 8 day week, oh yes it is possible. I worked Monday to Monday with no break in between. In that time I produced a display about the U.K. a speech about the U.K, a U.K. playlist and a video about U.K culture.
It was challenging, it was fun and unlike overtime at university or LUL it actually involved working 7 whole days (plus one).
And now, high ho, high ho. It's back to work I go and I'm not prepared... I have a lesson plan to scribble out, I have to wake the fuck up after a monster weekend in the big smoke (more on that later) and... I can't think for shit.
The kids are going to tear me a new asshole today... must stop cursing!
JETs love to harp on about what they call culture shock. Culture shock is when you find out that your formal and informal education can not help you in another culture because things are so different, that's me paraphrasing poorly by the way.
In reality culture shock is where you expectations of a place, of its people and their behaviour does not match the reality of that place.
I thought that I came over with no expectation, and in fact I came here with very few. But it’s difficult to forget how people act or to let go of your social norms. For example, where I’m from, pointing at someone in the street and gasping like you’ve just seen a plane hit a building would be considered rude, let alone embarrassing and extremely shameful behaviour. Here however it is common practice to laugh, or gasp out loud at strangers, tap a friend on the shoulder and then encourage them to do the same.
One time in Nottingham after seeing The Streets at Rock City I saw Mike Skinner on his mobile phone and stopped and pointed, he turned his back on me and carried on with his conversation. I felt like a prick, I was so star-struck that I lost all semblance of cool and just acted like a goofy twit.
Well there was a lot of pointing, tapping of shoulders and outbursts of laughter during my very first experience of Culture Festival (over a whole weekend).
The Culture Festival is held at schools around the time of Culture Day, a national holiday in Japan where the Emperor awards people for contributions to art, culture and science.
For the students it's a chance to show off their acting, comedy and singing talents and to show off on stage. And boy, do they love to show off. Funny voices, funny skits, songs sung poorly, songs sung well, dancing, skipping and jumping. They do it all and it’s tremendous fun, and totally unexpected.
Culture shock for me was finding that I was totally at a loss whilst the kids went mental around me, it was like they had sugar pumped into them through an intravenous drip, it was crazy.
Anyway, I’ve taken some photo’s and some video, I hope you enjoy them.
And finally the video I made for my presentation. This should be available soon on Youtube Just follow this link.
Oh and as an aside, did any of you ever take part in a school play? And the nativity doesn’t count.
Links:
A great article on how to spot and deal with the stress of culture shock here.
My presentation and a link to the presentation slides are here.
My name is Stephen Walrond and I would like to talk about my home country, the United Kingdom.
SLIDE 2
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a group of islands northwest of the coast of Europe. I’m from the largest of those islands. It is called Great Britain; it is made up of three countries England, Wales and Scotland. These countries are mainly ruled by a central government in London, yet some of the duties of government have been assigned to separate governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
SLIDE 3
I’m from England and I live very close to its capital city, London. London can be described as a metropolitan city. England is one of the most successful capitalist countries in the world. Japan is the also one of the most successful economic countries in the world and Japan has the worlds second largest economy.
SLIDE 4
Today I would like to talk about similarities and difference between my country, England, and your country Japan. Some of these similarities and differences are my own observation and some are commonly regarded as fact. England and Japan are both islands with successful capitalist and industrial economies. Both of our economies grew from textile industries, silk here in Japan and Cotton in England. Both of our countries went through periods of feudalism also.
SLIDE 5
We also have societies which both value education, literacy, etiquette, politeness and reservation.
SLIDE 7
Both England and Japan have a love of nature, poetry and writing as well as crafts and a deep appreciation of practical skills. So, the pupils in Japanese schools and English schools are very fortunate. They have the opportunity to express their selves through arts, sports and other challenges.
SLIDE 8
Many people in the United Kingdom are bilingual; they speak Cornish, Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Irish. England has a large immigrant population also who speak languages such as Gujarat, Hindi, Urdu and Cantonese. English is known as the Global Language. It is taught world wide as a second language more than any other language. SLIDE 9 I feel this is a good thing as it means that I can have friends from all over the world and I’ve been able to visit and be understood in many countries. It also means that many different races can find a home in England. This is something the government has encouraged over the years. My dad came to England from Barbados and my mother’s parents came from Guyana in South America. I think that it is important to have a mixture of authentic cultures in one place. It makes people aware of our cultural differences but also makes people aware of the things that link us all together. Because of all the different cultures, the United Kingdom has many different styles of art that I would like to show you some of my favourites now.
