Moved

Apparently there are still 22 subscribers to this blog. Go visit sociallensing.com!

Now Moved!

Next Places has now moved to Social Lensing at sociallensing.com and is ready to start taking advantage of the blog's new direction outlined in the previous Next Places post and on the first post at Social Lensing. The title of the blog has changed to reflect a new, more focused direction and now I've got my own domain. I hope you all follow me there!

NextPlaces Direction and Website Move

The further along I get in my studies, the more I learn about myself and my areas of expertise. Maintaining a blog of value is my priority for Next Places. It started as an online journal, but who wants to read that? What value does that serve, unless my life is a model for all humans of this Earth (which it is not)? I shall establish myself as an authority on cultural analysis and trending, drawing on my education in the Social Sciences department at Michigan State University. Most of my posts have covered this area, but have been loosely defined. Now it is defined. Topics will be defined in areas of language and literature, social hierarchies, cultural identification, cultural comparison, technological application in society, culture and the environment, education, science and society (evolution in particular), the cultural lens, among other topics. I will include sources.

Secondly, Next Places is moving. I have decided to use WordPress. It offers services for bloggers and will allow me to bring my blog to a level of professionalism. I will do one final post on Blogspot detailing the new blog location.

I am thoroughly excited about reining Next Places towards a greater degree of focus. I hope you, dear reader, are as well.

Podcaster, Tim Burgess, Resumes Kyoto Podcast

Remember when podcasts first became popularized by iTunes and their library of feeds in their online store? There were some great pioneers in the podcasting world including Tim Burgess, the host of Kyoto Podcast. Tim was one of the first podcasters to take advantage of "enhanced podcasting," whereby audio and images could be combined to give a more vivid user experience and "chapters" could be created within an episode. He had a great show about Kyoto and Japanese culture and had two shows within each episode that brought in other voices and experiences. It was informational and entertaining and then Tim returned to Australia and a great show faded out of existence. Well, Tim's back and he's on YouTube. Once again, he takes advantage of some new features and hosts his show in widescreen format. Go check it out and subscribe! I'll embed one of his episodes below.
Kyoto Podcast
Kyoto Podcast YouTube page

Reflection in Parts IV. Becoming Japanese - Wind Ensemble

A couple of weeks into my stay in Japan my host mother and I felt I needed to find my place among Japanese college students. I was spending a lot of time with my family, which was wonderful, but my host mother thought I would only truly understand Japanese culture and language if I hung out with Japanese in my same age group. I had mentioned to her earlier that I played French horn and piano in high school and we knew that there was a brass band on campus. So my host mother suggested I join their group. I was hesitant at first; I had not played in almost two years and the semester was already under way. To make a long story short, I joined the band and played in two concerts, the autumn concert and the end-of-the-year concert.

    What was most powerful for me was how much I became a part of the band and integrated into my peer group. The night after the first concert, a friend of mine came up to me and said (in Japanese), "Garrek, we've had other students join the band, but they never talked very much and only stayed a couple of days. We're really happy that you've stuck with us so far as to participate in our autumn concert." I know why most students quit the band. The fact that joining a club that practices 35 hours a week in a language and culture that they do not yet completely comprehend is completely out of most student's comfort zones. Yes, it was incredibly frustrating at times. I was working with a people that places the group high above the individual. One's individual performance means nothing if the group does not perform well. Being an outlier, either positive or negative, is hard to deal with simply because of the extreme pressures to conform. Now, I am not an exceptional French horn player, but I had been playing and studying music for much longer and more rigorously than my Japanese friends. This, in addition to the fact that I am a loud, individualistic American, caused me to stick out quite a bit. This was not my goal. I felt as though I wanted to become a better player, but within their confines. If one player screwed up a particular section, it was never that musician's fault; it was the fault of the entire instrument group. "Why is that one player creating a disturbance? You should all be getting better together."

    Here is a perfect example of what I mean. About a week before the final concert our director had become particularly irritated and lost his temper because a couple of players had quit the band earlier. They had left because they did not agree with the director's "style of motivation" (which consisted of getting angry at everyone who did not do as he wished). A friend of mine became enraged and yelled back at the director and started moving towards him. Someone caught him and pulled him down. What was significant about this event was the fact that the director did not just get angry at my friend, but he blamed the band for his behavior. It was all of our faults that those two students had quit and that my friend had acted out of line. We all apologized. I stood agitated while all of this happened. In America, this would not have been allowed to escalate to such a level. It seems that in Japan feelings are held inside until it they are unbearable. It seems like if there is a disturbance, it is more emotionally charged. I talked with the students who quit the band and my friend after the incident. None of them could perform in the last concert of the year. Not because anyone had told them they could not, but because they had banished themselves. They had "betrayed the group" and it would be shameful if they were to return. Again, this was never said to them explicitly.

    I learned to embrace this new way of thinking collectively and not individualistically. I tore out my American brain and began to think the way that they did. I became a part of the collective. I followed their rules and they expected me to follow them. I was no longer a visitor as we approached the final concert of the year. I was "Japanese." I had found a niche with a group of people, some of whom are my best friends. Interesting things began to happen. I became afraid to speak too much or to be too different. Every action that I did had to be very calculated and meaningful, because everyone was watching. Every move was purposeful and represented what I was feeling at the moment. I once heard someone say that the Chinese always talk and never listen and that the Japanese always listen, yet never speak. I found some truth to this while I integrated into Japanese society. I used my sales skills from Southwestern to listen and observe. I found them to be the most useful skill-set I could have used while accomplishing my goals in Japan.

The writer/reader within

I totally purchased a Moleskine notebook today with the intention of recording my thoughts and ideas. I usually try putting things down into my iPhone or in the "Notes" section of Apple's Mail program. This very blog is an extension of my thoughts. I've never really had something convenient to write down very personal ideas or had a dream journal or anything. Today starts an adventure into Garrek's inner writer! Put Things Off has a nice description of Moleskine Notebooks along with an "addiction ranking." Very interesting. I did not realize that I was entering into an entire community of people who use this kind of literary recording device.

On another note, I also purchased this thing called a Floating Book Shelf. It's pretty cool. It looks like my books are floating on the wall. I'm using it to place book that I'm currently reading so it's easier to access them. Usually I just have them laying around my room and they hide and I forget to read them for quite a while.

Red Cedar in February

This is a video I took in early February. I think it's cool.

Reflection in Parts III. Becoming Japanese - Family

My primary objective while in Japan was to become as Japanese as my blue eyes would allow me, and a large part of that would come from my relationship with my host family. I could not have been paired more perfectly. My host family is a young couple with a four-year-old son. Their youth meant that they would be more open-minded and active in helping me with my experiments in their country. First I had to break the ice and show them that I was worth their trust. At first we interacted much like I was a guest in their house. Every day I offered to help with household chores. My host mother refused at first, saying I should relax and let her take care of the house.

After a couple of days she let me help her do the dishes. Sometimes I vaccuumed the house while she was at work before I left for school. She was always very pleased by that! After about a week I made a bigger leap of trust. I told my host mother that I cook in America a lot (in actuality, I rarely cook, nor did I really know how). Anyway, she let me help her with simple things at first, like chopping vegetables and measuring liquids. After a couple of days of that I was making parts of meals and the following week, she let me cook entire meals for the family. It was fantastic! So now I know how to cook a couple of Japanese dishes, yet do not not know a great deal about how to cook American food at all. Her husband was a little wary of my cooking at first, but he enjoyed it.

This was a mile-stone for my relationship with my host family, especially my host mother. From here, she and I became very close friends. Cooking together gave us an opportunity to talk with one another. She would unload her day at work on me and I would tell her about what I was learning in school. Sometimes we would sip tea or coffee and chat until the wee hours of the morning. She was a wonderful source of counsel for me when I was having difficulties. In early October my girlfriend from back home broke up with me. My host mother offered her advice and her sympathy. Later on in the semester I had learned the hard way that I had taken on too many activities and my grades were suffering dramatically. She took all of my activities into a list and helped me to organize them. She helped me find more time in my day to do all the things I wanted to do and still have time to spend with the family. She is what I like to call a super trooper! She answered all of my questions and corrected all of my cultural and linguistic blunders. We had placed a ban on English in the house (my host mother speaks very good English and they send my host brother to a all-English school), and as a result my Japanese speaking abilities increased dramatically.

My host brother was an endless source of entertainment. I think he liked having an older brother around. It took a couple of days for him to get used to me, but we ended up becoming best friends. He liked riding on my shoulders and winning at board games. I would always do my homework downstairs while everyone else in the family did their evening activities so that I could play with my host brother. My mother was concerned that I could never concentrate on my studies, but I thoroughly enjoyed being in the middle of the most active part of the day when everyone was home at the same time. Sometimes my host father and brother and I would play games while my host mother cooked and made commentary on whatever game we were playing.

It was difficult leaving my host family when I finally had to return to the United States. At the terminal, my host mother told me that I had achieved my goal beyond what I had hoped for. She told me that she will always consider me a part of their family. Through waves of tears I told her that my brother was welcome at my home when she decided to send him abroad. I almost could not board the plane. I had grown to love them as my own family and my host family learned to love me as well. Japanese people do not express emotions all that often, but my host mother did not hesitate in telling me that she loved me. That moment was incredibly overpowering and represented the culmination of all of my efforts in Japan.