Today was my first day of Japanese class and after all of the tests and essay writing was complete, I was placed in the 中級 (Intermediate Level) class. The morning began with introductions of the teaching staff, an intensive course overview and some detailed explanation of the different levels of classes and procedure for determining which classes each student belongs in. We are told by Ono Sensei, the teacher who was conducting this part of the orientation, that we will all have to take a placement test. He continues to explain to us where each of the testing rooms are located. These are his words in English verbatim: (I wrote it down so I wouldn't mess it up)
"Room B and D are on the first floor. I'd like you to know that there, they are doing a memorial service for experimented animals. The mood there is very sad.
It was all I could do to hold in my laughter. I was thinking WHAT?! So anyway, I go downstairs to the first floor and just as he stated, there is a memorial service taking place. There is a registration table and about 7 Japanese women wearing black are standing behind it. To the right of that was a sea of Japanese people all dressed in black as if they were going to a funeral. Some large groups were coming and some were going. Some were wearing large yellow chrysanthemum flowers as corsages (Shirley Franklin-esque, for my Atlanta readers) and some were not. And all the while, I'm thinking to myself "Are all these people really here to pay homage to some dead experimented on animals?"
Once I arrived at my testing room, I asked Sugiura Sensei if she could explain to me what was really going on. It turns out that it was a memorial service for people who's families have donated their bodies as cadavers for medical research! The doctors and medical students host a memorial/gratitude ceremony in honor of the deceased to show respect and thank them for donating the bodies. My Sensei asked me if we have this practice in the US and I told her that to my knowledge we don't....This practice is just another thing that makes Japanese culture so unique!
That and the fact that Ono Sensei's intended message was completely lost in translation.
Below is a picture of my test taking station. You can see that the monitor is below the table and each station fitted with a digital camera that can photograph you at will during the test for security purposes. They don't play when it comes to cheating!
1 comments:
A guy I went to graduate school with was from Taiwan. He set up his computer in our office like this one. He said it enabled humans to read faster because of the angle of the screen. I always thought it was BS (but I was actually just jealous I hadn't thought of that idea). Any idea if its true?
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