I arrived while the sakura started to bloom.
Surely a welcoming scene as Japan is famous for their sakura. It's like a privilege that the sakura lasted for 2 weeks, a rather unusually long period as normally the sakuras would last just a week plus.
It's a welcoming sight that we have such wonderful flowers around while to get our new life started here.
I came here to study Japanese language, aim is to reach at least JLPT Level 2. At the same time I would also be applying for Japanese universities for my degree course. Still undecided but I will be starting to collect more info about it.
Also, I came here to absorb the Japanese' culture, their ways of life, how it differs than what I observed in Malaysia, and compared to those of China & Taiwan which I've been to before. From my observation,there're goods and bads about each of the cultures.
Just like other East-Asian countries, Japan's culture do have similarities than those around, say like China or Korea. Yet, there's something unique about the Japanese.
Like what others would usual comment about Japanese, they are indeed very polite & soft-spoken. So far almost every Japanese I've encountered do live up the name though.
Talk about this I'd like to briefly introduce you to a little basics of Japanese language.
There are 3 different levels when it comes to the language. The first is the common form 普通形, formal form 丁寧形 and lastly the respect form 尊敬語.
Common form is used in daily conversations between the folks.
Formal form is used when engaging in works or some official
Respect form is used when you're having a conversation in a very formal dialog especially to someone who stands higher than you (eg: boss).
In school the lessons are conducted in formal form, but we're also exposed to the use of the common form and respect form.
I had this trouble of calling the Dell Japan's tech support line earlier weeks ago to fix a matter on my laptop. I can't really understand what they're speaking because I'm not used to listen to the form of language they're speaking.
Funny on how it turns out to be, at least at the end of the day someone who can speak English contacted me and got all the troubles solved.
And this leads to another important observations I've made. The Japanese's working ethique and service is no doubt, possibly one of the best in the whole world.
The Japanese seems to be enthusiastic with what they're working as, you can easily spot it by observing them while they're at work. They seems to be satisfied with the job and will present the best of themselves to the customers/clients.
I'm quite shock to see that the Dell technician who came over to fix the laptop came in full suit the other day.
One can safely take a deep breath on the streets of Tokyo. Well believe it or not, the air is so fresh to breath in, even if you're beside the main road! I spotted almost nil smoke produced by the cars on the street.
One of the reason perhaps is because the cars no longer runs on petrol only, the hybrid technologies kicked-in contributed to this achievement.
Is like you can find 1 or 2 hybrid cars out of 10 cars on the street. Toyota's the winner in the hybrid car-making with their popular Toyota Prius and Lexus's hybrid cars.
If only all the cars on this planet are replaced by hybrid cars, then the Earth won't be as sick as it is right now.
I'm still getting myself more established here and discovering something that I didn't know before. Japan is a land of discoveries....
No comments:
Post a Comment