Life and Movies

11 Umbrellas...

I've got a few classes up in D-building of the Intercultural Studies Faculty this term. No-one has been able to provide me with an adequate explanation of why this building starts on the 3rd floor...

Perhaps it was because the Intercultural Studies faculty was more used to dealing with and to an extent simplifying their content for international students, or maybe it's just because I understand the lectures more this time around, but the science lectures in particular have felt more like "real" university than my classes did last semester.

Also, in something of a reversal of the norm when it comes onto the topic of Japanese language classes, they've actually been rather good lately. They're mostly focused towards preparation for the JLPT level 2 and 1 tests, (level 2 isn't actually as hard as I expected. Level 1 is frikkin insanely difficult...). A nice up-shot of this is that we're actually treated as intelligent human-beings at this level, as opposed to the ones last year which could often be... not so fun.

Also, a bunch of us international students went to see a Japanese movie "ダーリンは外国人" (My Darling is a Foreigner) at the cinema the other day, partly out of curiosity, partly out of wanting to see what the Japanese were saying about us behind our backs hehehe. Basically it was about inter-racial relationships in Japan, though we were all a bit disappointed that it was about what I call "The boring kind" (Western guy and Japanese woman, as opposed to vice-versa which is much less common). While the whole story was basically one cliche after another (cultural differences, parents disapprove but later come around and they get married and live happily ever after), it was interesting to watch for us in a way that I suspect the Japanese didn't really get, in terms of the portrayals of the foreign characters. The main character was an American guy, who, in order to play-up the "Foreigners are a bit odd" concept in Japan, was at one point skipping down the road waving flowers in the air... It would have been nice to see at the very least one foreign character who was normal, well adjusted, competent and spoke reasonable Japanese (I was rather amused to see that they've imported the "Evil Brit" stereotype, complete with horrendous Japanglish lines such as; "You know, Japanese girls are so 簡単(easy). They just fawn over me because I can speak 英語(English)"). Though, to be fair, there are foreigners who are exactly like that in Japan (pretty much the only thing I don't like about Kyoto really; it's full of foreign tourists who can't be bothered to learn Japanese).

On the other hand, there were a few moments where they got the foreigner-in-Japan experience spot on, with the "日本語はお上手ですね" (You're good at Japanese) and "いいえ、いいえ、英語ダメです"(Sorry sorry, I can't speak English) lines in particular (We hear these like, every other day.).

Also, I'm guessing this was entirely accidental, but the way the story went resulted in some rather hilarious anti-Japanese-ness. After he meets her family in the middle of the story, where the mother tells her daughter "He'll cheat on you because HE'S A FOREIGNER!" and the father says he's against the relationship and will absolutely never recognise it, the couple make up again and go to New York for his sister's wedding and the happy ending, where his family welcome her enthusiastically and without hesitation.

That said, her mother did at one point say "It's got nothing to do with being Japanese and not-being-Japanese, it's about the differences between two people.". To reference tv tropes, some anvils like these need to be dropped in Japan, where dating a foreigner sometimes seems like A REALLY BIG THING for them.

Oh, and on a total side note, it was nice to see from the trailers that the Japanese make exactly the same throw-away pop-corn movies we make, just in Japanese :-) I do think it's a bit unfair that the only bits of Japanese cinema that makes it to the UK are Studio Ghibli (New movie coming out!), violent psychopath movies and freaky pre-teenage-girl ghost movies.

Oh, and after 5 1/2 months I have bought a fork. I got tired of eating pasta with chopsticks.