In bed together...

The reading for my Japanese Way of Life class today was about an American girl who lives with a Japanese family and is shocked to find that the parents have their two-year-old son sleep with them. Our book, "Japanese Cultural Episodes for Speed Reading" is somewhat interesting but also annoying, in that the Americans are pretty much universally ignorant and represent some kind of extreme of American culture. Apparently my classmates are different from her - imagine that! - since only one or two of them were surprised or shocked to find out that Japanese children generally sleep with their parents (up until grade school age - about five or six years old), and more than half the class thought it was fairly normal and had slept with their parents when they were small. I either slept with my parents or in the same room with them until my brother was born, I believe, and my younger brother slept with them until my sisters were born (he was three and a half). I think it contributed to his resentment of them, though probably any child suddenly displaced as the baby of the family would likely have felt resentful.

I particularly enjoyed having the opportunity to discuss ideas about child-rearing practices with my classmates. That the discussion took place in Japanese was bonus. The other girls in my group mostly shared my own feelings, and even expressed some better arguments than I had for why children should sleep with their parents.

It was all very interesting.

My brother downloaded some Kuroyume (Black Dream) samples for me which I'm listening to right now. It has kind of a goth rock sound which reminds me of some of the earlier Buck Tick stuff, though I still prefer Buck Tick. Which is fortunate, because Kuroyume has broken up but Buck Tick is still around. I hope I can see them in concert some day if I ever go to Japan.

Speaking of Japan, I was talking to my sisters today about how I'd been feeling lately like I didn't really want to do the study abroad thing any more, partly because I have more ties here than I did before, and they pointed out that I had been feeling like I didn't want to go before that. Which is true, I had just forgotten it. I'm feeling more than ever that I really just want to get done with school, even though I have no clue what I'll do once I'm done. Find a job, presumably, but I'm not really sure what I'm qualified for. Part of the reason I went back to school in the first place is because I wanted to be more qualified, so I could do something a little bit more interesting and with better pay than retail. I think I'd really like to do translation work, but I'm not sure if a BA is enough for that. More to the point, I'm not sure that my Japanese is quite good enough for that. I can carry on a conversation somewhat brokenly at this point. Last December, I took a Japanese proficiency test, one which has 4 levels, 1 being the highest (I took level 2) and I got the results back earlier this month and I didn't pass. I only passed the listening comprehension part. I knew it was a long shot that I would pass and probably I should have taken level 3 but I really wanted to try for level 2. I was really disappointed about my results, though probably next time I could probably pass the level 2 - as long as I study for it, which I didn't do last time.

I'd eventually like to go to graduate school, probably at SFSU again, since I know and like the department there, but I think that I'm ready for a break from school, too. I'm starting to get senioritis, bleah. I'm hearing "one more semester, one more semester, one more semester" over and over again in my head.