Archive for the ‘Cultural relativism’ Category

As this is my seventh year in a row in East Asia and I’ve never stayed anywhere more than two years before, this is the first time I’ve noticed this effect. I now have the knowledge and ability to sniff rather than blow, slurp my noodles, eat sea urchins, survive on green tea rather than PG Tips, eat sweet garlic bread, accept tomatoes as part of a fruit salad, etc etc, but have recently decided I just will not.

I had a fast forward version of this when I was staying with my in-laws for five weeks and round about week two I just couldn’t force another stone cold and rock hard fried egg down my throat (eggs- the black hole in the centre of the otherwise fabulous Japanese cuisine) and lost all my usual (natural and developed) Japanese politeness as I straightforwardly told my wife I was starting each day feeling nauseous and could stand it no more. Alternatively, maybe I was just tired from midnight feedings then and have lost my new country buzz in East Asia now and so generally tired now. Alternatively alternatively, maybe I’m just getting old and becoming more traditionally British in the same way as I seem to be losing the last vestiges of the results of my teenage rebelliousness and turning into my father.

Anyone else experienced this? Any theories on what the most likely explanation might be?

Will get onto combining grammar mistakes and Xmas lessons in a bit, but first: 

I’ve become a bit of a cultural relativist in my old age, even accepting stuff that drives other people nuts like Japanese English, but this time of year seems to bring out the grumpy old traditionalist in me. The fact that there’s been quite a lot of telling about an English Xmas in my lessons could be just because Japanese students tend to love that kind of stuff (maybe because anything that mentions the rest of the world is an escape from Japanese reality at the same time as being a reinforcement of why Japan is different and special). What seems to reflect something deeper is the fact that I’ve found myself actually correcting them on the “errors”of how Xmas is done in Japan- several times on the same points to different classes! Apparently these are the things that happen in Japan that test my limits of acceptance of difference and stir as much deep discomfort in my soul as female circumcision or animal cruelty: (more…)

The IHT write it, I pass on their wisdom on… Someday I will reach TEFL enlightenment and all that will be in reverse!

First of all, the rather odd and sometimes insulting nicknames that Thais give their kids to keep them away from the attention of jealous demons:

 http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/23/america/name.php

The subtext here is the hatred of foreigners and all things foreign that can sometimes lie behind the Land of Smile. It can be healthy sometimes, like the way the Thais seem to be reclaiming Kao San road in Bangkok from the unwashed backpacker types and are starting to pay more attention to their traditions, but the sudden awareness of this feeling is perhaps the biggest “wait a minute, everything is the opposite of how it seems” shock moment long term residents in Thailand are likely to go through.

Continuing the culture shock theme, even New Yorkers who like the idea of wildlife reclaiming the shores seem less than enamoured of the cormorant’s tendency to vomit at the slightest opportunity:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/23/europe/bird.php

It’s another case of how understanding another culture (human or animal) can only go so far to making you accept it. Sometimes, though, there comes a moment when you realise that something that happens in the country where you are a guest is your business. The Japanese love of cutting down the forest of South East Asia to make disposable chopsticks is one. And for the English, of course, the thing we can’t stand most of all is how people treat their animals. In Japan, that’s whales. And in Spain that’s bulls:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/23/news/spain.php

As I’m not one of those Englishmen who put animals before people (famously the national association for the protection of animals was founded years before the one for children in the UK), I will finish with something a bit more serious. The Turkish government continues to deny any existence of the massacre of Armenians, even though it was carried out under the Ottomans rather than the modern Turkish state:

 http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/23/opinion/edjacoby.php

Not sure why I’m doing a world tour of countries that can’t deal with history like normal adults (Turkey, Spain, Japan), but it does seem to be turning out that way. Should any politicians from those countries be reading, denying massacres is another thing I can’t be bothered talking about (see below).