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This is Yoko Ohta. She is 19 years old. She
belongs to the Faculty of Law and she is
interested in the politics of Asia. She was
born in Ebetsu. The members of her family
are her father, her mother and her sister.
Her hobby is cooking.
by
Shunsuke Miura |
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Barefoot in Japan |
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| I didn’t know there were people who live
their lives barefoot. They’re
free to do
what they want to do, but personally
I wouldn’t
want to live barefoot. First,
I feel sorry
for people who go barefoot because
it looks
dirty. I don’t want them
to enter
my room. As we have special habit
of entering
house, which is when we
enter a house,
we should take off our shoes.
That is because
we keep the floor clean, no dust,
no dirt,
and so on, so I don’t want people
to put
dirt on my floor. I can’t ask
them to wash
their foot before entering my
room. Second, walking around barefoot is very dangerous.
There are a lot of sharp things
on the road,
such as stones, glass, plastic,
and so on.
If I step on them, my sole can
be hurt. And
also there are many bacteria
on the road,
so I may be infected with some
disease from
a wound. I’m afraid of that.Third, I’d be anxious about what other people
think of me. If I walk around
barefoot, everyone
may look at me very strangely.
Because this
is Japan, almost all people put
on shoes.
I hate people looking at me oddly.
If I lived in place where everyone is barefoot,
I wouldn’t hesitate to go barefoot.
But
I live in Japan, and its culture
makes me
hesitate to live barefoot. |
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Understanding |
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| Debito says he can understand Japanese, but
I think he doesn't understand Japanese mind
and history.
In the view of Japanese history, in Japan,
there were few foreign people. So we don’t
get used to foreign people, especially old
people. And almost European people is taller
than Japanese. So it’s natural for Japanese
to fear foreign people at first. He doesn’t
understand it. And once we saw foreign people
drinking and shouting in the bath, most of
Japanese got fear.
And most of users of hot spring are old people.
As I said, old people don’t get used to
foreign people and they are weaker than young
people. I want him to understand their mind.
I’m O.K. to take a bath with foreign people,
but some old people aren’t O.K. because
of fear. I heard about England people who
came to Japan to see world cup. Before they
came to Japan, they learned Japanese mind!
For example, “Many Japanese tend to get
fear to see you, so you mustn’t shout around
the soccer stadium…” There were a lot of
attention points. So there weren’t big problem
during world cup. Even supporter of England
knows that, it’s strange for me that Debito
doesn’t know that.
Recently, it’s hard to run hot spring. Japan
is in the depression and diversification
of our hobby, owner of hot spring is hard
to manage it. If they lose their client,
that is to say old people, they lost their
job. They don’t want to prohibit foreign
people, but if they so, they can’t live
their lives any more.
So I think I want Debito to wait until we
get used to foreign people as
other countries.
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