Rainy all day.
I woke up a little early this morning. I got up, watched the news and drank my coffee. It was nice.
At a bit after 10 am there was a wonderful documentary on the making of Band-Aid. It was so interesting. It was also a little sad to see all of my favourite rockers looking much older.
I had a quiet rest of day at home. I watched the end of Ashes to Ashes and enjoyed it, but was left with some questions afterwards. I watched The Whistleblowers after that. I haven't made up my mind about it yet. I also did a spot of housework. I swept the apartment and even did the foyer outside our apartment. It looked rather good!
I left for work a little early because I wanted to go to the drugstore. It was raining, but not as much as yesterday. I got to the drugstore and had a good poke around. I did get something for a relative there. Yay me.
My class was okay today. It wasn't great. The student loses interest quickly and would rather play games. Too bad I don't teach that way. After he left, I worked on my classes for tomorrow. I was scheduled for 4 classes (but one has since cancelled.) It took a few minutes. Around 7 I sent Fumihiko a message to see if he was ready to come, but he didn't get the message. About 30 minutes later he called me, just as I was getting ready to leave.
He came to get me and we came home. I cooked dinner and it was really nice. We had coro-coro steak, gnocchi with gorgonzola cheese sauce and caesar salad. It was yummy. I've never cooked gnocchi before and it was quite easy.
Fumihiko needed to get kerosene for us, so I volunteered to do the dishes while he did that. After I finished I cleaned the sink. Yay me.
The rest of the evening was fairly quiet. It did get a bit weird though. I was talking to Fumihiko about some of the presentations I saw on Sunday, and talked about an introductions one I saw. In that, you had to give adjectives to describe yourself, one for each poker chip that you took. At the presentation, I took five chips, so I had to use five words to describe myself. I asked Fumihiko to think of three words to describe himself. His second one was "yellow". I was quite shocked. Huh? He said that's how some people describe Japanese people. I said that it was pretty much stupid people or people with prejudices nowadays. Then he asked if he could use two words. His next word for himself was "short nose". He didn't seem to understand why I was upset with that one either. I said that if he describes himself as "short-nosed" then he would describe me as "long-nose" and that was equally racist. He was in a very odd mood tonight.
Had a bit of a spat again as he went to bed, but hopefully he won't ruin the entire weekend for me again. I've had enough of that nonsense.
Anyway, I'm off to bed. I need a bit of sleep. Night night.
4 comments:
My students sometimes say their skin is yellow. I tell them it's not, but they don't perceive it as a racist thing. I think we're much more sensitive to it than they are.
The way I see it, they can refer to themselves any way they like, we just can't say it because it has some historical overtones in our culture which reflect badly on our use of it.
I think English needs some better adjectives for skin color, perhaps. Also, I wonder if Japanese people describe their skin color as "kiiro" when they speak Japanese.
Interesting point. Thanks. I'll ask him about it later. I tend to think he was just trying to push my buttons, but you could be right!
You know i asked my husband yasu that before and the first word he said was "yellow", then i asked him to describe me he said "hakujin" which is "white". I don't think it's a racist thing either, it's just the way they perceive themselves in relation to the world.
The other words my husband uses to describe himself are "fat" (he's not), "hairy" (he is).
If you asked someone here to describe themselves they would say aspects of their personality.
But in Japan when you ask a question about someone you say "donna hito desuka?" so i think that's why they say tall, short, fat, yellow, etc, because it's not really asking about personality, more what do they look like.
Just my two cents. :)
Thanks Kelly. You're probably right. I was meaning "personality" description words, but I think I didn't actually SAY that. That was one of the reasons I was upset with him.
The old cultural differences thing. Sigh. I thought I was past most of that already!
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