Shaving

 Most men in Japan shave their faces. I think that has been the custom for some time. Probably as an influence of Western culture, some men grew facial hair during the early part of the 20th Century.

I shave, not every day, but on days that I have to look presentable. I also shave my head as well as my face.

I started to shave when I was in high school. I used an old double-edged, safety razor that my grandfather used. Then I used an injector razor that happened to be in a drawer in the house.

I used my father's electric shaver for a while, but that didn't cut it. (Yes, a shaving joke.) I don't think they made them that shape anymore. It had a cord and was squarish, like a bar of soap.

Electric razors have always been my second choice for shaving. They are just another electric device that requires attention.

I prefer blade razors and soap, shaving soap if I can get it. They seem to give me a closer shave.

I have tried all kinds of bladed razors. First, I just used what was cheapest. Single bladed razors work best for me, though. As the razors went from one blade to two and more, I found that the small space between the blades gets clogged up with whiskers and soap. I use a metal-handled, single-bladed razor made by the Kai company. It does the trick, and they last.

Shaving soap is my favorite. I prefer it to shaving foam from a can, because the can is a total waste of resources. My fist experience with a shaving brush and soap sealed it for me. Warm suds on my face rather than cold, smelly stuff from a can anytime!

As I said, I shave my whole head. While I started losing my hair in middle age, I struggled to find barbers and hair styles that would work. None of them did, so I just cut it off. I messed around with an electric hair cutter, but again, just another electric device to maintain. Now I just lather up my head and shave it off.

Shaving my head as well as my face saves on a variety of concerns. I don't worry about going gray, having hair that's too long, hair gels or sprays, shampoo, rinse, conditioner, or about bald spots. I just shave a little move.

One thing I think Japan misses out on is men's shaving experience. There isn't enough attention paid to comfort, luxury. If there's an advertisement for men's shaving products, it's all about the product, a clean shave. Any shaver should be able to do that.

What I want is a focus on the warm, satisfying experience of shaving. Doing the job is only half of it. Warm, nice smelling foam, and the feeling of completion, being ready for the day, that should come along with it.

I'll write move about shaving in Japan, because I think it is part of the Japanese hair fetish. 

  

Homeless Animals

 Every weekday, I wake up at 5:00 to go to a shelter that houses homeless dogs and cats. I walk two dogs every morning, four on the rare occasion.

The animals are there for various reasons, mostly because they have been discarded by a human. Some were born without a home. Each one has a different story.

There are many animals that end up in a shelter like ours, but there are many more that end up in pounds that kill unclaimed animals. There are even more that live their brief lives on the brink of starvation, pregnant, injured, sick, and unloved. 

There is a mountain nearby where people go to dispose of unwanted animals. They take them there, dump them out of their cars, and drive away. The animals have to fend for themselves, but most eventually succumb to hunger, disease, or injury.

Our group goes there to try to rescue some of the animals. We take the ones we can catch, clean them up, get them medical attention, and work to find them permanent homes.

There are so  many stories, so many animals. Most of them find good homes. Some of them are not fit to be with humans. They are not mean, on the contrary, they are too afraid of people to ever want contact with humans. We take care of those dogs and cats through out their lives.

Many of the dogs recently have come to us from breeders, where they used the female dogs to make puppies to sell at pet shops. The females are tired out by ten years old. In the past, those dogs would just have been killed, but now they come to us. 

We don't need any more dogs or cats to be sold at pet shops. There are so many animals that want to have a forever home.

I don't own any of the dogs I walk, and I think that is a great relationship. They own themselves, and I help to give them the life they were denied at some point. My guess is that
they would like nothing better than to live in a home where they could give and get care and love.

Use a Utility Bicycle in Japan

 Utility bicycles are the best bicycles for commuting in Japan. They are sturdy, safe, and secure. 

Utility bicycles are sturdy to a fault. This also makes them quite heavy unless you get an aluminum frame. I have a steel frame, and it is heavy. If I want to load it into my truck, I have to either use a ramp and push it, or lift it up over the side. I can lift it, but it is hefty. On the other hand, I never have to worry about the integrity of the frame.

Every thing about these bikes is meant to last. Many high school students park them out in the elements in front of train stations, because they use them as part of their commute to school. They either ride from home to the station or from the station to school. Bikes are left exposed to the elements. They are often blown over in windy weather, and aside from a mix-up with a car, I have never seen any part of a utility bicycle dented or bent. 

In the past it was common to hear a bicycle making a clunk-clunk sound  as it rolled by. The chain requires regular lubrication, but if neglected the chain would rust. This was especially true of the type in the photo below where the chain is completely encased in a metal covering. The chain would rust into a bent position, and make a noise every time it made a revolution, striking against the inside of the cover. 

Current models have replaced chains with a belt drive. Belt drives are cleaner, lighter, cheaper, smoother, quieter and require less maintenance or adjustment than chains. My bicycle is an older model with a chain. I don't mind that, because I enjoy tinkering with mine, but for people who would otherwise neglect their chains or who do not enjoy getting their hands dirty, belt drive is the answer.

Utility bicycles come equipped with a light in front and reflectors on the spokes, on the frame at the rear of the bicycle, and on each of the pedals. Modern lights turn themselves on when it becomes dark enough, and they are charged by a generator in the front hub. That eliminates the need to reach down to the front tire and flip the switch that puts the generator in contact with the rim or tire. If it is dark, the light comes on. 

Japan has a reputation for being a crime-free country, and that is true, except for bicycles and umbrellas. If it is unlocked and unattended, someone is going to snatch it, take it where they want to go, and ditch it. Any utility bicycle you might buy these days comes with a locking system where, when you lock the rear wheel, the front wheel is also locked. This effectively gives you two locks for the effort of one. You can also register and insure your bicycle when you buy it, which puts it into a system that records bikes that are stolen. This makes it easier for the authorities to return stolen property, or for the owner to use insurance to replace one. 

Bicycles are great transportation, and for the daily commute they cannot be bested. Most of them come with a rear rack and a handlebar basket. They are built with the busy rider in mind, who does not have the time or will to maintain a bicycle that is coated in road grime. My stur
dy, safe and secure ride has never let me down.

Dreams

Dreams

There was only one thing I wanted to do when I started college. I wanted to do more of what I was already doing. I was going to school and getting good grades, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do. As it turned out, I started down the wrong road to the right place.

College was a way to get the work I thought I wanted. I paid for my own schooling, so I had to work a lot. I have friends, and we played a lot. During a couple of summer vacations, I got the chance to work, as a part timer, in the career that I had in mind.

That career was in Forestry. I loved being outdoors. I worked some summers as a staff member at a camp for young people, but what I really enjoyed was working outdoors. Getting ready for the campers, cutting trees that had fallen down over the winter, breaking beaver dams that would flood roads, and hiking around the area were my favorite activities.

My summer job working in a forest was the best. My job was to walk through random parts of the forest and make a record of the kinds of trees and plants that were there, how fast the trees were growing, and the direction of the slope. It was in some very steep mountains.

I did not walk on roads. I found my way through the mountains by looking at photos that were taken from an airplane. Since I was so far into the forest, away from other people and cars, I saw lots of animals. I saw deer, a couple of bears. I also found some stone tools made by Native Americans a very long time ago.

That job was terrific, and it gave me an opportunity to see what real, college-educated Foresters did at work. They spent a lot of time in offices, working at desks. Working at desks was not what I wanted to do.

I decided to change my major to English Literature, and my dreams changed. I wanted to travel, just travel around the world. I didn’t know how yet, but that was my dream.

After college, I decided to study foreign languages. I thought it would be good to find out more about them, because language is something everyone has in common. If we could learn more about languages, we could learn more about people. 

I still wanted to travel, but one of my teachers, my Japanese teacher, was very good. She suggested that I should go to Japan. Japanese is an interesting language, so that is where I went.

Flash forward nearly four decades, and I’m still in Japan. Now my dreams are different, but only slightly. I spend my free time in the woods and in the garden. I started down one path with one set of dreams, and the path has changed ever-so-many times. Had I told my 18-year-old self where I would be in 2020, he would never have believed it. But had he thought a while, he would have to admit that the dreams have not changed that much.  

Why Do We Like (or Dislike) Things?

People's likes and dislikes are pretty interesting. What do you like? What do you dislike? That's pretty easy to answer. Certain items might not be that easy to answer for, but when we talk about why we like or dislike something, that is where it gets interesting.

I get asked about food that I like or dislike a lot. When I first came to Japan, I was asked if I like sushi, natto, or sake. I'm still asked those questions regularly. There is some entertainment value in the questions. For example, "Do you like bitter gourd"? Some people like it, like me. Some people don't. There is some excitement attached to those kinds of questions. I think it is linked to the asker's likes or dislikes.

If the asker likes bitter gourd, and I answer, "Yes," then there is something to talk about. If I answer, "No," then there is something to talk about, too, but it's very different. That is a fun way to have a conversation.

Preferences might not be as strong as likes and dislikes, but they are powerful forces on our behaviors. I prefer coffee to tea. I prefer green tea to black tea. I prefer dogs to cats. I enjoy all of those things from time to time. I certainly enjoy cats, but if I had the choice of which one I'd rather live with, I'd choose a dog. Likewise, if offered tea or coffee, I'd choose coffee, but I drink both.

But why do we have those likes, dislikes, or preferences? Are likes and preferences cultural? Biological? Both? It seems that they are a little of both. Babies prefer sweet tastes, and often reject bitter flavors. There is a gene that affects how people taste bitterness. When that gene changes, there will be a change in how children and adults taste bitterness. This also affects how sweetness is tasted in children. This gene stops affecting how adults taste sweetness, though in this case, genes do affect the way people taste foods and drinks.

That may be why adults develop a taste for coffee or beer as they grow older. Of course some people never develop a taste for coffee or beer. Those genes can be tricky, can't they!

People also have cultural preferences for food. In an experiment done in Spain, researchers found that people choose food that symbolically links them with their own culture. They said that it is because the food gives the person a sense of belonging.

This is not only about food choices, though. Food is just one example. There is a lot of information on food preferences. There is even more information on why a person prefers one kind of person over another as a mate.

Some universal preferences are based on where we live. One study showed that people who live in bigger cities preferred manly men and more feminine women. It may also have something to do with the harshness of the environment where they live.

Likes and dislikes are partially determined by genetics, but also by culture. It seems that preferences in mates is similar. Answering what we like or dislike might be easy, but answering why we like it might be more complicated.

People Will Be Interested In Your Name

Understanding who others are and telling them about who you are important tasks when learning your language. But the basics are not that hard. After I had lived in Japan for a short while, I was thinking about making cards with answers to the most frequently asked Japanese questions. Those weren’t even fun to answer any more, because they were always the same questions and the same answers.

The questions people asked me in Japanese included, “Where are you from”? “How long have you lived in Japan”? “How old are you”? There was a list of others that people asked depending on the asker and the setting we were in, but those were the main ones.

Who are you, and what do you think people from other cultures will ask you? One friend who studied in America said she was often asked a variety of questions similar to the kinds I was asked. For example, “Is Japanese difficult”? “Are there a lot of earthquakes”? “How many hours a day do Japanese people work”?

Since people often start by telling each other their names, let’s start there, too. People who are not familiar with the sound of Japanese names will probably not understand yours the first time you tell them. Though your name and Japanese names in general may be normal to you, they are not familiar to many other people. They may have to ask you to repeat yours several times.

One way you can make it easier for them is to shorten your name. For example, if your name is Yukiko, ask them to please call you Yuki for short.

Westerners are curious about kanji, or Chinese characters. They might want to know how you write your name in kanji. They will be interested to see you write your name on a piece of paper.

They will also be interested in how you would write their names. You will have to explain how kanji work. They don’t understand that one character has several different pronunciations. Just try your best, and try to write a kanji even just for a shortened version of their name. For example, if their first name is Amy, try 笑美, and explain that it means beautiful smile. If their name is too difficult to figure out, write it in katakana or hiragana for them.

People you meet will likely ask about the order of your name. Which comes first, your family name, or your given name? Family names will be a curiosity for them, too. They may ask what yours means, if you got it from your father’s side of the family, and if it is a common name in Japan.

Names are fascinating. Yours is, too. People will be curious about yours and what it means to you.

Making Learning Groups, 3 Reasons

Groups are essential for learning. Look around and you will find all kinds of groups dedicated to learning. The easiest one is a school. Children attend school for a bunch of reasons, but one reason is that people learn better in groups than by themselves. Churches, temples, synagogues are all devoted to spiritual learning in groups. Classes at the community center are all about collecting people together to learn something, yoga, cooking, dance. Groups are essential.

Yes, individual learning and practice is essential. Learning to play an instrument, learning how to hook yarn efficiently when crocheting. Those are things we have to do by ourselves, because in the end, those skills won't get learned by a group. I get it, but practicing to perform in a group or getting together with your group of knitters bolsters everyone's individual practice.

There are three reasons to make a group for language study. First, no on learns languages alone. Small children learn from their elders, and even as adults we learn languages best when surrounded by others who depend on them for routine, meaningful communication. The second reason is that alone we are only one, with the input and bandwidth of an individual. In a group we are many with combined powers. Thirdly, it is just more fun to learn together.

Watch children soak up language. From everyone around them, and without fear or prejudice, they mimic what they hear, and cobble together utterances, learning new language all through their lives. On the contrary, are there children who don't learn in a group? There is a rather special, and very unfortunate case, of Genie, a child who was abused by her father. He kept her isolated until she was rescued by local authorities when she was 13 years and 7 months old. Though she received excellent care for a few years afterward, she never acquired a first language. We need groups of people to communicate with.

Have you ever been engaged in a project by yourself, and then had someone else come in to cooperate? I have. Work went much smoother, and in directions that I had never dreamed. When learning a language the same is true. One is one. Two is four. The effect of a team is geometric, not + but x. When others come, they bring their ideas, influences, and web of relationships with them. That is far more powerful than going it alone.

Finally, learning with others is just more fun. There will be chances for sharing ups and downs, good food and experiences that none of you would have been able to experience alone. When I have taught small groups of people, we have always benefited from the dynamics of the group. There are cases where conflict happens, some disagreement about how the group should proceed or how one person dominates the group or something. Those conflicts should be times when the group negotiates solutions. After all, language is useful in fun, happy situations, as well as serious, sometimes painful ones.

I just gave three reasons for making a group for learning English together. Now it's up to you do get the job done. It can be a group with virtual meet ups, or one in meat space. Either way, they are essential. You don't need to pay anyone, and there are loads of spaces that you can use for free or for the price of a cup of coffee.