Charles and Christy’s Weblog

I had so much fun writing in our blog while I was in Japan that I’ve decided to use blogs in both courses I’m teaching this fall (instead of a web page or portal). If you are interested in looking at my course blogs - the one for the graduate level “Analytical Spectroscopy” course can be found at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/chaynes/8152/ and the one for my Vonnegut freshman seminar titled “The End of the World as We Know It” is at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/chaynes/vonnegut/. The latter is more likely to be interesting for non-Chemists. You can even post if you want to… though I’ll have to approve your comments if you’re not registered in my class!

I posted my pictures in our gallery at www.cburdick.net/gallery. If you click on a picture, I have written short captions in many cases.

I arrived back in Minneapolis at 6 pm on Wednesday night… for me, August 30th was 38 hours long this year. My flight back went smoothly. I had a layover in LA that immediately provided contrast for the 10 days I spent in Japan.

Right away, I noticed litter all over the airport where everything in Japan was so clean. Instead of fresh fruit and fish in the food court, there were greasy fast food chains. The airline employees could not tell me from which gate my LAX to MSP flight would leave while in Japan, I could get reserved seats on any train from any train station. When trying to go from one terminal to another in LAX, the bus driver only grunted at me when I asked about the bus route. In contrast, everyone in service positions in Japan seemed so nice and helpful. While travelling in Japan without speaking Japanese was challenging for me, I imagine that travelling in the U.S. without speaking English is horrendous. At the customs station, I even witnessed a customs agent harassing a non-English speaking U.S. citizen by saying, “Don’t you think you should speak English if you live in the United States?” in a quite aggressive manner. There are lots of things that Japanese society seems to do better than we do.

On the other hand, there seems to be a major disadvantage to living in Japanese society that I could not tolerate - pervasive gender-based discrimination. Nearly every service person I met (in hotels, restaurants, and shops) was a woman. There seems to be a national obsession with weddings. Out on the streets, nearly everyone traveled in man-woman pairs - I didn’t see groups of girlfriends or guys hanging out. Based on my conversations with my Mt. Fuji tour guide, I got the impression that Japan society treats women very traditionally with strict expectations about marriage, kids, and appropriate jobs. She also told me that many women move abroad because the expectations do not match their life goals.

So, while I enjoyed me time in Japan, I also missed some of the freedoms that I take for granted in the U.S. The trip was a great experience, the conference was productive, and I am sure I will visit again (next time, with Charles).

I will post my pictures this weekend in an album on our gallery (www.cburdick.net/gallery)… back to work!