Dismay and Delight

Though I was officially briefed about it before embarking on my visit (in June '09), but it did little to alleviate my astonishment during my stay. The way they look at life, reactions and behavior, mannerisms (with specific ways to sit/stand/talk/wait), honesty, discipline and ultra-politeness (at times, artificial), ultra-cleanliness, addiction to work as well as video-games and cell phones, pervasiveness of electronics in daily life, with folks in trains either engrossed in their mobile phone or reading something or just with eyes closed and ears plugged to media players, the variety of food (preparation and eating manners, thanking everyone from the farmer to the fish being eaten), their handling of extreme stress  and their lovely music - it was a series of observations. My stay in the US was not that shocking even though the culture is very different from India. Also, it was not just differences but even similarities in culture that surprised me in the land of Fuji-san. My parents, my spouse, and myself have been brought up in different states in India and I am not new to culture diversity, but in Japan, I was impressed, awed, and fascinated at things - made me think deep about the global evolution of humans and how  values of a society reflect in the norms of the land. I discussed these with my spouse staying in the UK and compared this with my previous experiences with US, Indonesian and Burmese friends. My daily interactions with my Japanese teachers only strengthen my awe for a culture built on philosophies and thoughts of the highest good. And after all, there is so much similarity between the Indian aspect of higher thoughts and the Japanese aspect.
How thin is the line between dismay and delight!?
Life is a beautiful amalgamation of everything nature can provide us and the notion of right/wrong, and culture dismay/delight looks so relative to our thoughts!!

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Japanese and Deutsch

Since January this year, I have had some intellectual transformation of the kind that happens to you when you are in Kingergarten - only that, this time, I was painfully aware of some changes occurring to my brain. Over the year, I have been associated with learning two new languages, (at different times of the year), Japanese and Deutsch - the need primarily came from dealing with customers from both these nations, on a daily basis. I did Deutsch A1 and A2 (from the Goethe Institut, Bangalore), and Japanese (JLPT Level 4) from Navis Nihongo.

One of the most important attributes I (re)developed was my ability to attend classes. I was facing teachers who were trained to teach alphabets to adults. I was made to do homework (which I avoided in the initial stages but found to be a useful tool for my brain - wish they named it something better). My patterm recognition abilities have improved manifold (well, for the uninitiated, the Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji scripts in the Japanese language are worth learning from this aspect). While learning two different set of rules of grammar, I could understand the commonalities in very varied human behaviour.

We had various session on inter-cultural business etiquette (with certifications).

Not being afraid of the unknown is seen more in my classes than even in my corporate life. One I translated a sentence from English to Japanese as 'Please sleep well' and it got translated as 'Let us sleep together' - you can imagine the expression on the face of the young teacher. By the way, not falling asleep in class (and to get to sleep well when unable to doze) are two other attributes of this training.

During the last few weeks of the Japanese class, I used to attend Deutsch classes as well and my brain got mixed signals varying from insanity to amusement while mastering the vocabulary - add to this the fact that my wife speaks a different language from me (the common languages between us are Hindi and English and her mother-tongue is Marathi, mine being Odia) - it has been an amazing cocktail of experiences for my brain.

Overall, the result has come out quite positive and I am able to speak the fundamental parts of speech in both the languages. In both languages, they taught us how to shop in the mall, buy train tickets, talk formally/informally and so on. In both classes, we had hilarious sessions of mistaken language and terrible sessions of taking 'achievement tests' (I passed!).

While talking to the encryption expert in my firm, we both observed the necessity of tickling our brain with such experiences. It really sharpens you up! :-)

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