Scholarly time

Yesterday in our buisness class our teacher, normally very nice, was apparently having a bad day or something and kept on sort of going off on the exchange students. Mind you this is one of the teachers, like all of them, that are pretty much 10-15 minutes late to every class. He kept on saying it was a shame that exchange students are now "no longer the elite, but think they can be late and not turn in work". All of us just looked at each other because there was only one thing we have ever needed to turn in for this class and we all did. And it's pretty much impossible to be late to classes here since they never start on time. I guess I can write this off because it's the first time a teacher has been rude and we've been here almost 2 months.

Yesterday at work I had some extra kids in my normally 2 kid class. Let's just say they've been better behaved. Much better behaved. As fruturated as I was, I had to laugh because me teaching Japanese kids is a pretty funny situation no matter what happens. The class after it was my class of 5 4th grade girls and they were on their best behavior. I think they like me so it makes life a lot easier.

This morning Rachel and I, the dorks that we are, decided to go to the Anthropology Society of Japanese studies in Japan annual meeting. One of our teachers had told us about it and it looked pretty interesting, plus it was free. We heard from some speakers about physical intimacy in Japan first. Then a speaker talked about social pollution in Japan. Basically it was about how Japanese discimination against lesser classes stems from non-rational thought, whether religious of other. Whereas "modern" discrimination is thought of as a Marxist view of class struggle. I can't really explain it well but it was really interesting. They had question time for these speakers that honestly I think was a time for them to hear themselves talk. One guy said something about America meant to be sort of insulting but was incredibly vague and unnecessary. Yes, we understand, you are European, you don't like America. As much as Im not a fan of American policy in any way, these intellectual types who think they know it all simply because they aren't American really get old. Odds are they've never even been to the continent, much less the country. These types of morons who don't know anything but just America-bash because it's in fashion are going to turn me into some sort of patriot.

After those discussions there was a key speaker who actually just sat there and read his paper outloud. Bring a book. It was about anthropology studies and how it is evolving. Not too terribly exciting. But it was kind of funny to hear scholarly people trying to one-up their colleauges in jargon that we couldn't understand. Four people asked the same question, each in indecipherable scholarly jargon, and then one lady (who looked like she was in grad school) asked the same question in simple terms that made sense. And everyone stared at her like she was a newbie to pulling crap out of nowhere to make you sound smart.

After that we decided that was all the scholarly time we could take for the day. So we went to harajuku to wander down the streets eventually getting to Shibuya. We were going to go to Tokyo Baptist's college group that meets saturday night. It was really interesting. It was mostly in english but there were slides of themajority preacher's speech in japanese. And we sang some of the songs in Japanese. I sat next to a girl from the Phillipines who is studying here and I found out she is going to a university where I knew some people. Because I had met them in the club last weekend. As big as Tokyo is, sometime it's like a small city with us foreigners. After the worhsip thing they had food/social time. When I was leaving they gave me a goody bag with a note inviting me back, which I think I'll do. As long as they don't raise the confederate flag, these baptists seem alright.