Today’s blog is maybe the last blog of Oral English. yesterday I learned a news that ex Nissan Motor’s CEO, Carlos Ghosn run away to Lebanon fabricated hangouts that every company should make without any fabrication. He have been arrested already 4 times at the moment, and where’s court should he be attend for trial is now become controversial in my class.
In my class, we did role playing wo I have to insist that Ghosn should attend a trial in Lebanon’s court, where he now lives. But now Lebanon is becoming anarchy because of Ghosn.
I think I’ll enter one of many interesting company after I graduate university. Almost all company have some role such as boss, superior authorities, and lowly employee. Last Monday, I learned the word ‘power distance’. What does high or low power distance mean, and what’s the merit and demerit of its high and low? I’ll discovery and introduce that in this blog with my own opinion and analyze of my partner country, Greenland.
First, the word ‘power distance’ means that the psychological and authority distance between high-salary, important position and low-salary position, according to my Oral English’s class. So if there is high power distance, staff or clerk have to be courteous to their boss and usually have to follow their boss’s command and ideas, but they can be helped by their boss. In contrast, low power distance company’s staff can say their ideas and thoughts even if it’s contrary to boss’s, and boss can ask some helping hands to his subordinate easily and help each other.
Now I’ll talk about my opinion. I prefer high power distance, because its rewarding to promote if there is high power distance, so I can keep my motivation to raise my status. The upper position in company of high power distance will take more responsibility than that of the company of low power distance, but maybe the salary of the company of high power distance’s boss will maybe higher than that of low power distance’s one.
By the way, how about my partner country, Greenland? ‘Hofstade Insights’ was recommended in my class but there was no information about Greenland in Hofstade Insights. But I found the world map of power distance in ‘Geert Hofstade’ attached below.
According to this map, Greenland’s society tends to be low power distance, with Hofstade index 23~40. I think this results came from Greenland’s harsh environment. They have to support each other because of its weather, becoming -70℃ in winter. I think its rational for Greenland.
Questions
Which do you prefer, high power distance or low power distance?
Do you want to express your ideas to your boss, if you were a low employee?
If you were a boss, what types of your subordinate do you want?
In today’s society, we usually don’t think that one particular gender is superior than others. But women were despised in previous times for a long time. Besides, there are many situation that only women have to take some important responsibilities. Today I’ll analyze why women were despised with my opinions.
When I think about this topic, abortion came up first among my ideas. If a couple that they can’t raise their baby or simply don’t want to have a children will took a choice of abortion, but what if a girlfriend and a boyfriend had different opinions? If a girlfriend wants to give birth to her baby and a boyfriend don’t want to, a boyfriend can just leave with his girlfriend, there is still a baby and decisions left to girl. So, there’s said that abortion only suffers women. I wonder if there is any solution to share responsibilities to babies in women’s body, because it includes some physical problems. As it is no wonder, we can’t move baby from women’s body to men’s body. But here I’ll share some opinions and facts about abortion with the story that I learned in my Oral English’s class, ‘Nadeshiko”s myth.
First, I’d like to introduce the myth of Nadeshiko.
Nadeshiko was a beautiful woman who have a fiancee, and she had to went to fiancee’s town by herself for her wedding. But on her way to his town, she encountered a stream and had to across it. There are many giant salamanders and a boat was must needed to cross the river. Nadeshiko was in a trouble because she didn’t have any boats, so she visit her acquaintance to take her with his boat, but he said, ‘Sure, but spend the night with me.’ She even had a fiancee so she visited another stranger man’s house, but he said that is not his business. And what she did was, spent one night with her acquaintance and cross the river with his boat. Finally she could reunion with her fiancee, but when she talked how she could cross the river her fiancee got angry so bad, and he banished his fiancee from his country. That’s the myth of Nadeshiko.
Back to abortion, in the first place, what’s the reasons of abortion? There are mainly two reasons, First, they chose abortion because they didn’t think that they had a baby without any expectation. They didn’t think that woman can be pregnant so easily , or forgot or failed to sterilization. In this case, there are so many women that be abandoned by their boyfriend . Besides some countries ban abortion so they have to kill baby by themselves.
Second case is that even if girlfriend wants to give birth to baby, they have no choice but take abortion if her boyfriend disagreement, because usually raising baby takes a lot of money that only a woman can’t afford. So, even if woman who wanted child sometimes can’t give birth to her children because of financial problems.
As a summary of these two reasons of abortion and why woman have to take responsibility, I think that we should carry out more solution to financial problem for women who wants to raise baby but their boyfriend don’t want to, or their boyfriend simply disappeared. We should give more childcare allowance and reduce cost of entering their child to kindergarten.
Questions
Is the number of men who are doing household and stay in house?
Is there any jobs that women can play an active part?
Do you want to change family name when you married?
What is GQ? I’ve been learning the meaning of this word since last April.
First, I couldn’t find the clear definition of GQ, but it is an abbreviation of “Global Intelligence”. So today I’d like to explain GQ with comparison with Japan and my new partner country, Greenland.
I think that GQ is ‘ the skill to understand other country or region’s culture, the way of thoughts, not only accept but also agree and absorb it positively if you think it gives new experience and extended way of looking something’. Intelligence means “the ability to learn, understand, and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reason” according to dictionary. So, if I add ‘global’ to this definition of ‘intelligence’, it will be: ” the ability to learn, understand, and have opinions with global point of view”.
Then, what’s the difference between those who attain higher GQ and those who doesn’t? Japan is said that has cooperative society because of its history of agriculture, but how about ‘global cooperation’? In geographic point of view, Japan is surrounded by sea, so Japanese had to travel for a long distance, so Japan has said to be late for global communication. Then, how about Greenland, my partner country?
First, I would like to introduce some history roughly. The people in Greenland now’s ancestor is immigrated in about 9 century. And from the initial of 18 century to the middle of 20 century, Greenland was a colony of Denmark. It was not until 2009 that Greenland gained autonomy and become autonomous territory. So, Greenland must had some communication with foreigner. It surprised me because I thought Greenland of the country of ice and closed society. So Greenland had been cooperated with Denmark in harsh environment, gaining GQ. Greenland left EU, but still have close relationship in educate/fishery.
Relationship in our own country is important, but I think communicating with other country ‘s people, trying to understand different culture is essential for gaining GQ and even understanding our own culture.
I heard the word GQ for the first time in Oral English’s class, and it has so many definition so I will keep finding its meaning, and what this word really want to tell us.
Hello, everyone. I had my longest summer vacation ever this year. Today, I want to share what I did this summer.
First, I went to night pool in Seibu pleasure land with my high school’s friend. I went to there for the first time in 4 years, so I was very excited. My friend is so sensitive to heat, so that’s why we went to pool at night. It opens from 5PM, so there were still so hot at first, but soon there became dark and cool. What’s my favourite thing in night pool is water slider. There were so vacant, so we enjoyed it about 10 times! There are several course to slide, and I chose the most dangerous course every time. Then we’re become empty, so we got long fried potato and fried chicken.I think that foods tastes so much more delicious then we eat it in some special places. I have a good time in there.
Next, I went to Koedo in Kawagoe, Saitama. My friend likes Japan’s classic culture so much, so we were planned to go there since we’re highschool student. So I was very glad to go there finally. At first we were hungry, so we got bubble tea in ‘Pearl Lady’. Since I had lived in Taiwan, where is the birthplace of bubble or tapioca milk tea, so I’m so glad that it became so much popular now in Japan. I ordered chocolate milk tea with chocolate pearl because I have a soft spot for sweet things. After that, we came across to cat cafe, and both of us are so attracted so we entered to there. There are various cats, and various toy for free to play with cats. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t so loved from cats and my friend was loved from cats so much that she could gather some cats using toy called ‘猫じゃらし’ in English. We stayed there for 20 minutes, we’re so happy to play with and stroke cats.
After that, we arrived Kashiya Yokocho, where is the most popular place in Kawagoe. We planned to eat sweet potato chips and big Fugashi, but we’re too late to buy it, stores are closed at that moment. So we bought cute lemonade and stick jelly instead. Stick jelly is Japan’s popular cheap sweets, and I used to eat it in my childhood. My favorite color is pink, so I bought 2 pink jelly for me and my friend. Although we couldn’t eat sweet potato chips, we could went to Hikawa temple, which is planned to go. I bought ‘Utukushi Mamori’ in there, which is a charm for being beautiful and an amulet for love. A charm is so pretty in pink and sky blue color, which is rare in Japan’s traditional charm I think. I become bring it to everywhere now, so I hope to become beautiful someday.
So, I enjoyed this summer so much. I want to go more various Japan’s tourist site next summer because I realized that although I’ve been living in Japan for about 6years, I haven’t go resort or sight seeing so much.
China has been one of the most economically richest country since few decades ago. Indeed, China’s GDP increased about 33 times compared to those of 1980, even the influence of price fluctuation is eliminated from calculation. Today I’ll talk about China’s GDP and its influence to ethnocentrism of Chinese.
China has said to been grew so much in economy because of three reasons. First China has shifted its diplomacy to export-prefered trading. It’s also the cause of trade friction, but it is definitely one of the main reason why China’s economically growth and why the products made in China are now so familiar to many countries.
Second, China attached importance to manufacturing industry, using China’s ample and cheap labor. For example, 2019’s first quarter’s GDP is estimated to be 6.3%, but it was 6.4% so it exceeded it mainly because of prosperity in not only retail sales but also mining and manufacturing industries. So some investor expect China to its economically stability.
Last reason, the most important in ethnocentric point of view, is that China corporates so much with foreign-owned enterprise, that is, make foreign owned company to come to China and make things to export. In conclusion, China made economically growth thanks to foreigners. But are Chineses really appreciate for that? Are foreigners treated a same to Chinese people in China? In short, is there any ethnocentric thought in China?
Have you heard about ‘sinocentrism‘? It is a thought that China is the center of culture and politics in the world. This thought started from about A.D11 century and it had great effect on China’s history. In China’s history, China’s government has torelant and frank philanthropy unless the priority of Han race maintained, but once it broke, Chinese people used to turn to be chauvinist. I think it’s not good, but this is also have something to do with Chinese people’s thought tendency, ‘individualism’.
China’s Individualism is showed in Hofstade’s graph.Hofstade searched which the people in the country he researched think themselves as ‘We’ or “Me and showed in the graph below.
As it is clear, China’s Individualism’s index is very high. As I said in my blog “Stereotype in China“, China was started agriculture with no group work and they worked in just their family in early era. Besides China had the system that one village’s young girls must marry with other village’s young men so young married woman often think their husband as “outsider”so China’s history has a few savage wives such as ‘則天武后’. So they already used to independent mentally each other from early era.
Summarizing the above, China has grown up economically so much not only because of its manufacturing industry but also because of the partnership with other country, in other words, foreigner. And Chinese are tend to have thoughts of ‘Individualism’ and ‘sinocentrism’ so I think the equality between Chinese and foreigners lifestyle and treatment in China is future tasks.
Three questions
1,Do you think China as one of the most economically richest country?
2,Have you ever heard about “sinocentrism”?
3,What do you think about relationship between each country’s history and its individualism and collectivism?
China’s currency unit is called Yuen or Renminbi, one yuen deserves about 16yen, which is Japanese currency. It has 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 yuen’s bill, and all kind of bills are pronted Mao Zedong, who are called the father of China’s independent.
Three questions
1, Have you ever used Chinese Yuen?
2,Do you think Chinese people are rich on the average?
3,Do you know Mao Zedong?If you do, what do you know about him?
What is AIMS? usually it means ‘point or direct to target’, but that word also means the abbreviation for Assimilation, Integration, Marginalization, Separation. Today, I’ll write about relationship between Japan&China from AIMS’s point of view.
First, Chinese is the most popular tourist visit Japan. They are tend to buy so many medicines and daily necessities so Japanese create a new word ‘爆買い中国人’ which means the Chinese tourist who buy crazy amount of Japanese stuffs in about 2014, and the word ‘中国人観光客’ which means ‘Chinese tourist’ is used much more than few years ago.
Japan medias often report their bad manners and Chinese government also caution to some typical behavior that many Japanese think as bad manner but Chinese thinks as usual, such as price cutting and smoking while walking in ｢今日头条」.
Japanese are used to see bad manner’s Chinese tourist everyday throughout year, especially in inner city. As I wrote in my blog ‘Stereotype in China‘, Chinese who are rude and have bad manners are even be a stereotype. But have you ever thought about why Chinese tourists buy such many stuffs in Japan? Is that only because Japan is near China physically?
There are some reason why they buy Japanese stuffs especially in drugstores.
First of all, 12 household medicines such as ’熱さまシート’, a cooling gel patch from Kobayashi pharmaceutical company and ‘龍角散’, which is a cough drop effective for moth and dead voice in Chinese famous portal site, linked below.
That site refer those medicines as ’12 miraculous medicine’. So, the case is because Chinese are respecting Japanese medicine’s high quality and safety. Besides, they gradually become to shift tour plan shopping to culture experiences recently and they reported that their manners have improved a lot. I think this means that Chinese have an interest to not only about ‘made in Japan’, but also Japanese culture.
On the other hand, Japanese people are used to see Chinese people so “Marginalization” in AIMS is done, but don’t they unintentionally “integrate” Chinese? For example, Japanese people think they should pick up waste in restaurant if they dropped, but in China, that is same to take away cleaning staff’s job. I know there is Japanese proverb ‘卿に入っては卿に従え’, which stands for English proverb ‘ When in Rome do as the Romans do.’, but I think they had better learn the other person’s culture and background before just tell them to ‘Do as the Japanese do’, otherwise we’ll integrate them before we knew it.
In the AIMS’s point of view, the tourism about Chinese tourist to Japan tells so many things to me. I hope both Chinese and Japanese will accepting each other and don’t integrate or separate each other’s residence or lifestyle, just I said as my blog ‘Barnga‘.
Three questions
1,What do you think about Chinese tourists in Japan?
2,Have you ever heard about ‘爆買い中国人’？
3,Do you think the cultural difference affects its country’s people’s manner deeply?
In my class, all of the students could speak Japanese well but teacher suggested us to play it with no verbal conversations. It was strange and funny experience. When teacher added some rules like ‘heart is the strongest’ or ‘ace wins king’, we have to explain it to guest with gesture and facial expressions. I was so frustrating when I had to tell rules but couldn’t use language, but I felt more anxious than frustrated like ‘Did I make myself clear?’ and ‘Do I play this game correctly in this group’s rules?’.
I thought about how difficult to tell something without any verbal communications or pictures or smartphone translation functions which is so popular to us, and maybe that is very important in cross-cultural understanding.
The anxiety felt while playing Barnga is said to the same feeling of the foreigner in Japan. In relation to my country, China, there is the system that rank foreigners to A~C according to age, educational background, annual salary, and so on. The foreigners who ranked C are tightly restricted about residence.
There are only about 3~4% foreigners in China, but I think respecting minority is the most important thing in cross-cultural understanding, and it’s unfair to dominate or deny other culture. Actually, this system is so criticized especially from Japan.
Through playing Barnga, I learned the importance of respecting each culture regardless of majority or minority. I’ll take more attention to how foreigners are accepted and respected in my country from now on.
Three questions
1,Have you ever played Barnga?Do you like it?
2.Have you ever experienced the anxiety living in foreign country?
3.What do you think about China’s immmigration rank system?
Have you ever heard about that Chinese people’s etiquette for travel are so bad so Japan in which many Chinese people travel had problems and Japanese people had bad images to Chinese travelers?
Actually,some Chinese may have bad manners, but there are some reasons why Japanese peopler tend to think of Chinese people had bad manners.First,China has approximately 11 times Japan’s population.So the number of the people who have bad manners is also 11 times larger than that of Japan.
Second,some Chinese people say that Japanese people’s are so polite that Chinese people may seem rude to them.This opinion isn’t quite wrong.In the Jomon period,Japanese people had to do group work and communal life because of poor irrigation system.They read others face s so they not to be ignored or banished by hamlet.
In comparison to this,China had no periods of group work,so they didn’t need to read others faces. I think this history affects modern society so Chinese people’s common behavior seem to rude or impolite to Japanese.
I think both Japanese and Chinese people should accept snd respect each other’s culture, and they’ll become able to build better relationship.
3question
1,Do other foreigners think that Chinese people have bad manners?
2, Do you think Japanese pople are too polite?
3,Do other foreigner think Chinese travelers behavior as common?
Have you heard about that China is the most gastronomic country after Japan in Asia?
Today I’d like to introduce what Chinese people usually eat in a day,including my memory in China.
Chinese people tend to eat breakfast in stalls.Chinese deep-fried bread,called you tiao and porridge are the classic. I remember that I used to go to stall to eat fish porridge and get soy milk in plastic bag to go everyday with my grandmother,so I was surprised when I heard that many Japanese people have habit to eat breakfast with all of their family in their house.
Moving onto lunch,Chinese elementary schools have shool lunch same as Japan.But compares to Japan,Chinese shool lunche is cooked not by registered dietitian,but by members of the general public.So it’s cafeteria rathar than shool lunch.
Dinners are eaten with their family members,same as Japan.Canton area’s local foods have little taste than Sichuan’s,but both Chinese people in there usually eat simple dish like pan-fry vegetables and broiled fish.
3 questions
Is there any historical influence of seasoning in each China’s areas?
Oral English 
