Perspectives

It’s interesting how our perspective on things changes as we go through life.

For instance, years before I was interested in Japan, or before it even occurred to me that I might someday live in Japan, I spent my summers on the Calvin College cleaning crew.

The first year was the summer after my sophomore year. Our team leader was at the time was a genuine Japanophile. Ethnically he was Dutch like the rest of us, but he had been studying Japanese, spent a year in Japan as an exchange student, and even had a Japanese girlfriend.

Again, this was long before I had any interest in going to Japan, so at the time we enjoyed making anti-Japanese comments just to try and rile him up. He never failed to take the bait.

One time when we were on the subject of Japan, I stared off into space with what I hoped was a profound look, and said in my best philosophical voice, “You know, it’s difficult to imagine a culture so primitive that they still use chopsticks.”

Without even pausing to consider if I was being ironic, or without asking to see if I was serious, he took the bait and was off running. At first he was so enraged he could hardly speak, and then he sputtered something about how the Japanese were writing haiku poetry while our ancestors were still slaughtering each other in the forests of Europe.

I’ve since lost track of him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if by now I’ve logged in more time in Japan than he has.

Anyway, I a while ago I remembered this incident for no particular reason, and had another little chuckle to myself as the image floated back into my memory. I tried to relate the story to Shoko. As usual, she missed the point.

“But there’s nothing wrong with eating with chopsticks,” Shoko said.

“I know, I know, but that’s not the point of the story. The point is he over reacted to the bait I gave him.”

“You know,” Shoko continued, “In Japan we think the cultures which use chopsticks have more intelligence. Any idiot can use a knife and fork, but chopsticks take skill to use. Japanese children learn to use chopsticks at an early age, and so they develop their brains earlier than Western children. That’s why the Japanese are some of the smartest people in the world.”

And all of a sudden her logic made a lot of sense. I had never considered it that way before. I had always just thought, like many Americans, that the Japanese historical use of chopsticks only meant that no one in their country was smart enough to figure out the idea of a fork and spoon.

It’s interesting how every culture seems to be so convinced of their own superiority. A couple weeks ago I was at a JET party which, as it got late into the night, the conversation turned to the difference between British and American spelling.

One of the British JETs in particular was upsetting a lot of people. “Look,” he said apologetically, “all I’m doing is telling you what the perception is back home. The perception is that Americans are too stupid to handle the concept that a word might be spelled differently than it’s pronounced, so Americans have to spell everything exactly the way it sounds.”

He was, for that night at least, outnumbered by Americans, so he didn’t continue the argument. But again, it showed me a completely different way of looking at the spelling debate.

Link of the Day
Tom from Guam writes a post on turning 27. It reminds me of the post I wrote myself when I turned 27 in April.

27 sneaks up on you a bit. At least with 30 you can see it coming from a long ways away, but with 27, it's a shock to wake up and suddenly realize you are officially in your late 20s. Not only are you an adult, but well into your adult years. And suddenly it's like "Wow, what have I accomplished in my life?" In my case, not too much.