遊ぶのは大学のうち – You can only play while you’re still in university.

These are all various sayings which I have heard the Japanese use to describe their college lives. In my last article I mentioned how academics are really not Japanese universities’ strong points and this article aims to flesh this point out.

If you buy into the stereotype of Japanese people being hardworking you would be very very wrong when it comes to college students. As said before, if you’re looking for deep probing academic vigor and intellectual stimulation Japanese universities really aren’t for you.

What certainly is true is that barring certain exceptions such as med school, the majority of Japanese students don’t (and often don’t need to) take their college life seriously. But four years is a long time to just be slacking off and enjoying freedom – the question therefore is why go to college at all?

And what do I mean by “Spring Break”?

Not that rare a sight in the typical Japanese college student’s life

Perhaps to illustrate the point better, let’s use the example of an imaginary Japanese youth – let’s say his name is Takashi. Assume that he’s a current student in a mid-to-high tier university.

He doesn’t really study during college. But then he’s really not the only one. The statistics are clear – Japanese students do not study. An earlier Japan Times article quoted some University of Tokyo research which stated that Japanese students study far less than American college students. Takashi skips a few classes a week, and for the lessons that he goes to, even if his classmates are physically present a large number are having a mental vacation in dreamland while the lecturer drones on.

What do Takashi and his schoolmates do then? Some of his classmates spend their time on partying and doing gõkon and playing computer games etc. He occasionally joins his classmates for all-night mahjong games at his friend’s house. Some of his friends spend their time on part-time jobs. Heck, being from a relatively high-end university many of his friends who do not go to school spend all their time earning an income teaching high school students on how to work hard for their exams. Then there are those, especially sportsmen, who pour all their time into sports clubs or other student activities.

Basically, anything but their books.

Before and after

Congratulations on you getting accepted into a high ranking university – otherwise known as a four year “study break”!

Takashi was miserable in high school, as many Japanese students are – though this is very true for East Asia as a whole. Starting from the second year of high school Takashi started gearing up for the all important university entrance examinations. So, depending on his subject combination, he may have to slog through calculus and memorize a history curriculum that almost seems to aim to make students into mini-Wikipedias. Looking at his notes on classical Japanese, he tries to figure out the language of his great ancestors about 20 generations ago but all that comes to his head is a big maji de?! (like really?!).

Say he screws up an examination. If his family can afford it then he’s most likely off to extra classes at a cram school (juku). Actually, he’d likely end up going to those extra classes anyway even if he didn’t do so bad. If you fail to make it into your target university you become a ronin, which basically means you have to wait another year, study hard, and then take the entrance examinations again. It’s not something that most high schoolers want to experience once, let alone twice.

So after a possibly delayed year and after puzzling through both classical Japanese as well as English grammar, he finally enrolls in college. He moves from one of the more rural parts of Japan to Tokyo, the big city, for university. The first day he takes the train to school at around 8:30AM and gets squashed by the morning crowd of half-asleep suits and stifling neckties. In the morning Tokyo train, almost nobody smiles.

He goes to school and finishes all his classes the first day – dutifully attending all of them. He finishes near 6PM and is just on time to be hit by the evening rush of people who actually don’t have overtime. Some other day within the first week he goes to an introduction session by one of the student clubs – maybe a sports club, maybe a band circle – and tries to board the train around nine. Even at this time the trains are still full, now from those who worked overtime. Another time he stays back for a shinkan(welcome) party and boards the train at 11PM. The crowds have thinned a bit but the number of people still in suits is obvious. Some of them are reeking of alcohol from a company nomikai (drinking party) and are entirely red in the face.

On the train rides home looking at the drunk salarymen on the train he realizes that he’s looking at a reflection of what he will be four years down the road. But then that’s what he came to college for anyway. Get a degree, a nice university’s name to your resume and start work, and work and work and work and work (and work).

The day after the shinkan party he had a class at 9AM. But he misses it because he can’t wake up. After all, since he’s going to work and work and work anyway, what’s the point of working so hard right now? It can wait.

Not getting up becomes a habit because work can wait and sleep can’t. Especially because his parents are not around to parent him, his attendance, especially for morning classes, slumps.

There’s other stuff too

Job applicants heading for an interview at Nissan

The above is the “conventional” explanation for why students like Takashi don’t take their college life seriously, but if you think about it, if not studying actually had an impact on Takashi’s future career, he surely wouldn’t take things so easily.

Luckily, it does not. Japanese companies – based on anecdotal evidence – do not really look at an applicants’ grades when they apply for jobs. What they do instead is look at the university name and after document screening subject job applicants to a barrage of interviews, internal tests, discussions and the like right in the middle of the school term – which in itself indicates how much companies value the education that the universities provide for their students.

Takashi may have joined a sports club which requires him to wake up for morning practices in addition to afternoon practices which coincide with lessons. It is obvious which he will prioritize. If the club is vigorous enough it is likely that he will have to repeat a year in university.

But this to him is indirectly investment in the future – in exchange for holding up the reputation and achievements of the club, the alumni of the sports club are very likely to pull some strings such that the club members will get a foot up during their job searches. One friend of mine in a judo club even says that members have their names on the name-list highlighted in yellow during job interviews for companies where alumni are already working.

And more other stuff

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar

But in the first place, why should Takashi come to class?

After all, for some classes he is packed into a lecture hall with 400 other people for a lecture – in such a case obviously no attendance is taken. Even if attendance is taken in other classes he can just ask his friends to sign on his behalf. In any case he can just study for the exams – someone in the class is attending the lecture and he can just ask that person for his notes later.

And about the exams, well they’re not that hard. After all, 80% of sociology papers involves multiple choice and filling in the blanks (note: true story, it happened to me). And since there are so many lectures with big class sizes – and because the lecturers do not want to commit suicide – the only form of grading occurs from that one end-of-term examination. After all, which lecturer would want to read 400 students’ assignments?

And even the workload for small classes isn’t that high. Many exchange students comment on how outside the Japanese courses (which can be intense), the amount of readings they have to do per class is really low compared to their home universities. In my university it is also not uncommon for students to take around 16 different courses in their first semester. That’s right, sixteen different courses. This does not mean that they pull all-nighters every day to do their work (they’re more likely to pull all-nighters drinking or at mahjong). It means that the courses themselves aren’t very intensive.

So in conclusion…

The view outside Hitotsubashi University in full spring

In Japan college isn’t that intensive at all. But this does depend on the subject (medicine is an exception), the university (there is a gradient) and of course the individual student. Takashi is just an example for one of the many Japanese students who really take their college “educations” as spring breaks – there are certainly many who do not.

However, that being said, not paying that much attention to school is not in itself a bad thing. After all, instead of trying to pay attention to a sleep-inducing lecture, some people do take their time out to do volunteering, activism or exploring the world outside the confines of their university.

But this is not the majority – so do not come to Japan expecting that you’ll be adding that much to your formal academic education. To be frank, Takashi is not, so neither should you.

Things are supposedly changing though. Employment prospects in Japan have supposedly been worsening over the past few years and companies are taking a closer look nowadays at what people do during their university days before hiring them. But the situation has remained largely unchanged in the everyday lives of Japanese college students.

This article may seem to conflict with the earlier article I posted about why you should come to Japan and to some extent it may. However, the point of coming to Japan is not the education per se but other reasons.

I’m therefore thinking about writing an article about not “why” you should come to Japan (like the previous one), nor about “what” actually happens here, but “how” to approach university in Japan, as well as what I think are the main types of approaches which people employ when they are here. Let me know what you think in the comments!

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Bonus Wallpapers!

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Zen And The Art Of Making Ramen

Tampopo is about food. But besides food (if you’re into plots, and things like that), it’s also about a pair of truck drivers that stop at a small local ramen shop to get some grub. After getting into a fight with one of the other patrons, Goro (the main truck driver) wakes up in Tampopo’s house (the owner of the Ramen shop). She asks him what he thinks of her noodles (I swear, not sexual innuendo… okay, maybe), and he says they were pretty terrible. Eventually, this leads him to agree to help her to make a better ramen shop (and better ramen too). The story is about all the things they do to make her ramen better. Think of Rocky, but instead of Sylvester Stallone you have someone training to make ramen.

Like many good films, it has comedy, it has romance, and it even has some action… but most importantly, it has food. Delicious, tasty, food (and Ken Watanabe). But, it’s not just about food… it’s about being human. And what does every human relate to, more than almost anything else? You guessed it – the tasty stuff you put into your mouth. Not everyone can relate to Vin Diesel flipping cars and jumping off things… but food? Heck yeah. Everyone’s eaten food before.

Tampopo Psychology & Philosophy

Before we even get to the clips, let’s look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Have you heard of it before? The idea is that you have to fulfill the bottom rung before you can move up to the next rung, and so on and so forth. If you don’t have your “Belonging Needs,” for example, you can’t start filling your “Esteem Needs.”

Tampopo is about the “Physiological Needs.” That’s like the need to breathe, or the need to eat and drink. Food, I’d say, is the most interesting of all the physiological needs, but it goes much further than that. Tampopo’s story is based on the physiological (fooooood!), but it stems out to show how food also gets involved in everything else, more so than other physiological needs. The message is that food is everything and food is everywhere. Even if you have everything, food still shows up. Food is what ties us all together as humans.

Despite there being humans throughout the movie, I wouldn’t say that the real characters were people at all. I’d be more prone to say that the main characters were food. Specifically, Ramen.

If The Main Character Is Ramen…

Normally main characters in movies are folks like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. In Tampopo, I’d say the main character is just Ramen. Like any movie, though, there’s a supporting cast of all sorts of other foods too, all somehow relating to humanity as a whole. Food is the thing that binds us and food is the thing that makes us people.

While the main storyline is about Tampopo progressing through life via ramen and the making of it, the movie is broken up with little short-films that pop up inbetween scenes. All of these short films can probably stand alone, but together they have a bigger message. Despite the fact that they’re all about food, they’re all about how food is an important part of life. No matter who you are, what culture you are, or how you live… food is still there, and is also the key to happiness.

It’s like a sort of Tampopo Philosophy, if you will. A way of life and a way to live. I for one am ready to welcome my new Ramen overlords.

Living Your Life By Tampopo

While the overarching main storyline is an important part of the puzzle, it’s only one piece. Live your life well, improve, spend time with other people, work hard… these are good lessons. But, we mustn’t forget about the littler things in life. These things are shown in the short films within the film. I’d like to go through each one by one, going over the lesson it teaches about life.

The Little Things

This is one of the first scenes in the film. The amount of love and emotion that the master puts into the ramen seems absurd (and kind of is). But I think that it’s just bringing to the surface a love for food that everyone has (but have just forgotten about). When you have something a lot, you start taking it for granted. If you see a view too many times, if you hang out with the same person too much, if you eat every day (I bet you do)… you’ll lose the passion and love that the Ramen master clearly has for the ramen, even though he’s eaten the ramen hundreds, probably thousands of times. It reminds us to enjoy the little things – to see the beauty, so to speak. So, look around you. What have you taken for granted. What have you forgotten is truly beautiful in your life? You should try to see things for what they really are: Amazing.

Humanity

The Spaghetti Scene is one of the funnier ones. The group of Japanese women are learning how to eat like “proper” Western diners, but when it comes down to it, they all find out that it really doesn’t matter (it’s the food that matters). Food isn’t so much a “national” thing, or something like that. It’s something that spans across all peoples and all culture. It’s something that reminds us that we’re all just people, and we’re all the same. There’s no one culture or person who’s better than the other. We all do things differently, sure, but those differences are just skin deep. When it comes to being human, and when it comes to eating (which is what all humans share), we all eat exactly the same. If you remember that, you’ll realize that people aren’t all that scary. They’re the same, like you and I. We’re all just *gasp* humans!

Sex

Okay, so things get pretty weird right about here. You start getting the erotic-food stuff here (happens a couple times in the movie, actually). But you know what? Food is as important as sex, if not more important. So, why not mix the two? Actually, I think I know why… this is weird.

Living

Food isn’t just about taste, though. It’s about texture as well. You know that crunch you get when you bite a crispy potato chip? It wouldn’t be the same without the crunch, even if the taste was exactly the same. This lady might be crazy, but she shows how important texture on food is. There’s something kind of admirable about the crazy lady, though. She’s bold. She goes out and feels everything, even when she isn’t really supposed to. In the end, I think we all kind of want to be like this lady. I want to be able to go out and talk to strangers. I don’t want to feel like I need to do what society demands of me all the time. I want to be free – and this woman embodies that. Sure, she’s breaking some rules, but you gotta break some rules to feel some peaches, ammirite?

Living sometimes also involves risks, though. This old man is told that he can’t eat this, that, and all sorts of other things. As soon as his daughter leaves, he orders all the things he’s not supposed to. Why? Because you gotta live. I think sometimes we’re too cautious in life. But in the end, you still become an old man (aka you probably won’t die if you take a risk, but you won’t live if you don’t). So, you have to make sure you take risks. Taking risks is as important as eating, I think this scene is saying. What risks have you put off just because you’re scare of a worst-case-scenario that probably won’t happen?

Giving

I also feel sorry for these kinds of kids. Their parents tell them what they can and can’t eat. To a certain point, that’s probably a good idea… but to never have ice cream? Crazzzy! This scene is about learning to give to those who don’t have what you have. Do you have the ice cream? What about that poor kid in some third world who doesn’t? Being giving not because you want to get something back is important. Give just for the sake of the happiness of the other person… that’s what this scene is saying. What can you give to someone less fortunate? What can you do to make someone happier who doesn’t have what you have?

Hierarchy

There’s a hierarchy in life that most of us follow, at least to a certain degree. I remember watching this scene in some Japanese Society class. The highest ranking person gets to order what they want. Everyone else has to pretend like they’re ordering what they want too, but they have to actually just order the same thing as the top dog. The very last subordinate in this scene, however, doesn’t know this (or forgot), so he takes his time ordering what he wants. I think this scene begs a question… why do you do what everyone else does when it makes you unhappy? Surely this person would not get the full enjoyment out of the meal if he had to order the same thing as everything else. It doesn’t actually hurt anyone if he orders what makes him happy, so why shouldn’t he? Why should we do what society asks us to do when it doesn’t make sense (sometimes it does make sense, though, that’s the distinguisher you have to figure out). As is often the case, food represents happiness – why not choose to take it?

Happiness Via Simplicity

Speaking of happiness, this isn’t one of the “short film” bits in Tampopo, but it is a main storyline scene I liked a lot. They meet up with some homeless folks who help share some ramen secrets with Tampopo. But, the thing I noticed most was their happiness. They don’t have homes and they’re on the street… despite this, they’re so happy. While this isn’t necessarily an accurate depiction of homeless people, it does paint an ideal picture. This group of homeless people latch onto food as their source of happiness. Despite their conditions, they strive to make and eat good food out of what they have, and through all of that they’re so happy, too. It just shows that we can be happy if we have basic things as well. We don’t have to have a Playstation or iPad or whatever to be happy. In fact, people with nothing are happier than you. Why is that? Because they have the basics. They don’t need these other things. The message here is that things don’t make you happy – food, companionship, and happiness make you happy.

On Dying

Now, it wouldn’t be a full story if there wasn’t some death in there, too. Death is a part of life, unfortunately, and in Tampopo food permeates this death more than anything else.

This is definitely the saddest scene in Tampopo, but also one of the most touching. Despite being nearly dead, the only thing that gets her up is being able to cook a last meal for her family. As soon as she sees that her family is enjoying her food and taken care of, she promptly dies right there, while the food is still warm. When she does, it’s the food they pay attention to, though. It’s her last meal, and you have to eat it while it’s hot. There’s something about food that brings people together, no? There’s always talk about how family’s should eat at the dinner table together, without television and whatnot. Spend some quality time together around food.

Food is also something that’s very memorable. If you have a relative that’s passed away, you often remember them for the food they made for you. Why? First, because food utilizes several senses (touch, sight, smell, and taste), which makes it more memorable. Second, food is a way to take care of others. To provide and care for them. When you make food for someone else, you feel good about yourself and they feel good about you. Food binds people, and food creates friendships and families (there’s a reason why people say “the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”).

And then there’s this death scene. As he’s laying there, dying, he pretty much only talks about food. Not only that, he talks about sharing the food with his lady. Even in his last breaths, all he’s talking about is food. Why? Because food is the thing that brings us together. Food is just as much about life as it is about death. Hopefully, though, there’s no regrets about your life when you die. So, make sure you go out and hunt those boars and take their Yam guts out and grill them now before it’s too late, right?

Or, Maybe It’s Just A Movie…

Maybe… but I don’t think so. There’s too many messages about life and about happiness, and food is the thing that brings all those life lessons together. If you haven’t seen Tampopo, I’d highly recommend it. I’m sure there’s places to get a DVD, though I didn’t see it on Netflix. You’re also able to watch the entire film on YouTube… though, you know, you’re probably not supposed to, or something. But it’s there, nonetheless, and in decent quality considering the age of the film.

No matter how you watch it, though, it’s still one of the greatest movies ever made (in my opinion). If you like food and you like people, it’s hard not to like this film as well… and I think most people like food and people, so what are you waiting for?

P.S. Let us know in the comments what you think about this movie. What life lessons have you gotten from all these food-filled scenes?

That’s it. Blogging. Live the American dream, right there.

I’m hoping I can bring Tofugu back to the 4-5 posts a week blog it once was, and without cutting quality. In fact, I’m hoping to increase the quality. I really like this website, and I want it to be better than it is right now. I plan on doing more videos and coming up with more original articles (stuff you won’t find anywhere else, yeah?). I’m really excited to be able to dedicate time to blogging before reality comes to knock on my door (probably in August or September, when my savings runs out). I’ll even be writing in a couple more blogs…but more on that later.

New Theme: In case you didn’t notice, Tofugu got itself a big face lift. I’ve finally decided to give up on Interneet Explorer 6…so, if you are using it, it’s really time to upgrade to something better. As long as you’re using something newer than IE6, you should be fine. Other than that, I’m really happy with the new layout, and I hope you enjoy it. Let me know of any problems you run across. I wasn’t able to test every nook and cranny, so if you can send an email my way if something breaks, that would be wonderful.

New Site: So, I’m starting two new sites. One of them will officially start going today, and the other will start up in a couple of weeks. The first one is “Vlogly.” It’s all about learning about vlogging, and ultimately, how to make a living doing it (impossible, right?). I’ve had the honor of writing Tofugu and Koichiben for a while now, and I’ve learned a lot of stuff about blogging and vlogging. Although I’m no Youtube superstar or anything, I’m really interested in sharing what I’ve learned with anyone who might be interested in starting a vlog or improving the vlog that they already have.

The other site that I’m starting is kind of an old site: “BoxedTofu.com.”

This, basically, is a personal blog. I’ve really enjoyed writing Tofugu and Koichiben, but I’ve also always wished for a place to write about “other” stuff. Tofugu, Koichiben, and now Vlogly, all have very specific topics, so I’m excited to use BoxedTofu as my off-topic blog. I’ll probably start writing in this one a couple weeks from now.

*One thing you should know about both of my new sites (Vlogly & BoxedTofu) is that I use my first name in them (so don’t get confused). Koichi, the name I use here, is my middle name. Just an FYI so you don’t think I’m making up names here.

Thank You Cards: So, I owe a lot of you thank you cards. I’ll begin writing those next week at the pace of ten a day. That means I’ll be done with all of them in a month. Sorry about the long delay on them, but drawing and writing 300 thank you cards is a big task, no matter who you are.

So that does it for Tofugu news. I’ll start getting on track sometime next week. Thanks for reading, and thanks for watching. I really appreciate all the support thus far!