Little to report.

I may do a presentation next week about America. I'm glad they kept the topic narrow so I knew what they wanted me to talk about. And I'm glad it's only a few minutes long and it's in my native language. Oh crap. It's actually 40 minutes long and it's in Japanese. Whatever. I'm looking on the bright side and viewing it as a wonderful opportunity for learning. Woooo!

And besides, I'm more than willing to make long presentations in Japanese if it means I get to go out with my coworkers on the weekends and watch them get plastered and try to sing karaoke songs in English. I'm pretty sure that's the reason I study Japanese. People say that the Japanese get drunk really fast, which I suppose is true in part, by Western standards, but after this weekend, I must beg to differ. To be sure, they acted totally bombed after half a beer, but I daresay that a tolerance that bad is impossible. I think it's more like the consumption of any amount of alcohol at all gives them permission to act how they would like, instead of by the strict code of etiquette to which they are restrained in their day to day work. For example, all of my coworkers, when speaking to the supervisor of our department, use a very polite, honorific way of speaking. But after a single beer, they stop using such language when they talk to him, and treat him more as an equal. That, I think, is not the work of the alcohol, but of the culture.

And now you've had your daily Japanese anthropology lesson.