Formailites and the End of Orientation

Hi again everyone!

So this past week I was super busy with attending orientation at Ritsumeikan. Orientation consisted of taking a placement test, touring Ritsumeikan's campus, a welcome party, opening a bank account, and various other things. The study abroad students even had the opportunity to experience a 7.0 earthquake in an earthquake simulator that was brought to campus. Very amusing and helpful. Seeing and participating in it reminded me of when my dad, sister, and I were in Japan together and that earthquake in Niigata occurred, the one that my dad claimed to feel the tremors from.

To celebrate the end of orientation and the beginning of the new semester we had a party on Sunday. There was so much food! Everyone was required to make something and bring it to the party. I ended up making mac-and-cheese from scratch which actually didn't turn out so bad. I was quite pleased with myself.

Though it turned out ok, I had a really hard time thinking what to make. One of my friends suggested to me to make something that was from Pittsburgh. Obviously, I wasn't able to do that because most of Pittsburgh's famous dishes use lunch meat and that is few and far in between here in Japan. However realizing all of this made me see how much of a Pittsburgher I really am. For example, I realize how much things like lunch meat are a staple to my diet, almost like how rice is to a Japanese person. It is really interesting how food can say endless things about a culture.

Moving away from food and my own cultural realizations, I wanted to bring up something I have noticed about the way Japanese is spoken here at the I-House. Now, I don't know if this is because formality in Japanese has been beaten into my head by my sensei at Pitt, but I have come to realize that when people don't speak formally at first it bothers me. For example, there are people in this dorm who I have just met and already they start using informal speech. For example saying sentences like "Kore taberu?" rather than "Kore tabemasu ka?" Which both mean "will you eat this?" but the latter is more polite. Even the SKP buddies, who are Japanese, speak to me this way. Because I am not yet close with many of the people here, I expect them to speak politely to me and then I doing so in return. Until I become closer with them, this is how it should be.

Perhaps I am being too serious. But what can I say? This is how people at Pitt are trained when it comes to Japanese; you have to be polite and use polite speech often. Also, many Japanese people I have talked with told me that they like the formal language used by Pitt's Japanese students (as compared to students at CMU or another university that teaches Japanese) and how culturally appropriate it is.

Anyways, that is the end of my rant about formalities in Japanese. Next entry will be about the first day of school!!

オリビア
9/27/2010