The hard drive needs to be replaced. Fortunately, Dell is going to send a tech support man out to install a new one...in about a week...
Oh well, at least my insurance covers it.......
Anyway, now on to the meat of the blog. I guess that since this is my first entry in a while, I will take part in one of the great pleasures associated with college life: making sweeping philosophical statements concerning the human condition.
Mmmmmmmmm...
Sweet, sweet human condition.....
Anyhow, the topic of the day is: Globalization!!
Warning, globalization may not be as peaceful as depicted above.
Globalization has always been a somewhat detached subject for me as an American. Usually, I am the globalizer, and not the globalizie...er...globalized....
Whatever...
Anyway, upon arrival in Japan, a brand new perspective of globalization became apparent. It first started when I first arrived in Japan with Saumya and Megan. We arrived a day before the national elections, and so we were awash in campaign fliers and stump speeches. The next day, one of the biggest peaceful political power shifts in modern history occurred. The 自由民主党, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had been in power since 1955, had been defeated by the 民主党, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). The DPJ gained control of a staggering 308 of 480 available parliamentary seats.
And despite all of this, not once did I hear anybody mention the election, the candidates, or even historical gravity of the situation. The few times that I did get a Japanese person to talk politics, they would just nod their head and talk about.....
Wait. I want to see if you can guess who they talked about.
Seriously, he was on the news, in the papers, and even the President of ICU quoted him in his Matriculation Ceremony Speech. I do not think that my friends were being polite to me when they talked about Obama when I wanted to talk politics, I think that they honestly were indifferent about their own government.
Anyway, the adventure continued after I checked in to 2nd Men`s Dormitory. It has students from Japan, China, Korea, America, Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa. In short, it puts Ursinus`s claim for an international student body to shame.
Anyway, things kept getting stranger when I discovered that my roommate Hiroshi, was an avid Star Wars fan. We talked about the movies for a while, but we soon had to go our separate ways for our various orientations.
One of the things that Mizenko-sensei told me before I left for Japan was that I needed to join a club in order to get the full Japanese experience. Well, wanting to be a good sport, I went to the club orientation where I was treated to two very unusual displays. First, the Musical Club performed the song One Short Day from the musical Wicked.
No matter how hard I tried to be open minded, my inner demons could not help laughing when I heard about the `dress sarons and ribraries.` However, it is worth remembering that the people involved in the musical did so because they honestly loved and cared about the material. So, despite all of the `emerard cities` they deserve great praise for their performance.
The second strange show was the World Music Club who played a jazz number from Count Basie. I was amazed at how good they were. The strangest moment was when a short Korean girl timidly approached the microphone for a saxophone solo. Without moving so much as an eyelid, she unleashed one of the most aggressive solos that I have ever heard. I was so impressed that I immediately left and inquired as to how I could join.
More on that in a later post.
My final testimony concerns probably the most startling moment that I have experienced while in Japan. After about a week in Japan, my fingers began to get itchy. They did not itch for scratching. No, they itched for playing. They itched for a guitar.
The barbed wire strings are for professionals ONLY!
Well, I managed to borrow a guitar from Joey Stockermans. I felt a little like playing some blues, so I began to pluck out the opening to Leadbelly`s "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" It is an old blues song from the early 20th Century. It is such an old and obscure song that I did not expect anybody to recognize it. And yet, lo and behold, as I was walking through the hallway, my friend Julien, from BELGIUM no less, bursts out of his room and starts singing the lyrics in English.
After the initial shock, my fingers quickly regained their senses and played the rest of the song as Julien sang the rest of the lyrics. After we finished and bowed to the onlookers who had gathered while we played, I turned to Julien and breathlessly asked him how he knew that song. He shrugged and replied, "I sang it at my school last year. It was cool that you knew how to play the blues version."
I quickly replied, "You mean the correct version, right?"
With a toothy grin, he quipped with a delightful accent, "But of course."
Maybe it is presumptuous to declare that globalization is okay. I am not familiar with the plight of the disenfranchised farmer or unemployed worker, but as a regular college student, I feel that it is a positive force. It can bridge cultural gaps, help people of different nations find common ground, and even lead to impromptu duets between two people who are both strangers in a strange land.
This is Nate in Mitaka signing off as just another gaijin.
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