Not so welcoming orientations

Here in Japan many don't recognize the importance of an international language. It makes the life really complicated for the foreigners who come to Japan. Japanese isn't an easy language to master as English due to the 3 alphabets with thousands of letters and the different forms of language that's used such as formal, informal and much more.
I was truly disappointed at the orientation program of University of Tokyo, where none of the speakers cared to speak in English or at least to prepare the slideshows in English. There were many international students at the orientation program. I'm sure it was quite difficult for most of them to understand the content of it.  How could an institute like University of Tokyo ranked among the top ten Universities in the world could be that irresponsible towards a portion of their students.
Japan is a country where differently-abled people are treated with utmost respect and the infrastructure is specifically designed to make the life easy for disabled. How could a country like that could discriminate foreigners in this manner.May be it's a question about the ego. But I must say that ego can cost Japan in many different ways.
Well I usually don't sleep in lectures even when I'm sleepy for I believe it's a sign of disrespect for the one who conducts it. But I did sleep in the orientation to show my disgust towards that discrimination.

Don’t Panic

Once in a while in life you get to experience the unexpected. They aren’t always pleasant. There I was having a slow day at work, teaching a student in my lesson booth. It was just a sluggish afternoon or so I thought. Suddenly things started to move.

After being in Japan for about a year I was used to earthquakes and didn’t really get panicked. But this one seemed to be quite strange. It didn’t stop in few seconds as usual and my student started to panic. On to my left I could see that my fellow instructor who has only been in Japan for 2 weeks was turning red with terror. He didn’t know what to do. He was looking at me with the expression, “what the hell is going on here?”

Well, the only thing that came in to my mind was to go under the tables as I was told more than hundreds of times by my husband and we all did. We were clinging on to the steel bars of the table. My student started to scream in Japanese and I could hear a quite a lot of swearing on to my left. On the other hand I thought that it was ‘THE END’. Therefore as a Buddhist, I was recalling all the good deeds I have done in my entire life. Surprisingly it wasn’t really scary as I expected it to be.

I was in the 3^rd floor and the Building went swimmy. The shaking got stronger in every second. Books and laptops started to fall down from the tables and it felt like an hour. Later from the reports I got to know that it lasted only for five to six minutes but believe me, it felt much longer than that.

After the two major earthquakes we all came out of the building from the emergency exits. Everyone was shaking with fear. I will never forget those facial expressions for a quite a long time. I think major disasters have the power to unite people, for that’s what happened on that day.

Trains and busses stopped operation for they were expecting aftershocks. Therefore all of my workmates and I went to the nearby evacuation center. Even though the Japanese insisted that the buildings are earthquake proof as foreigners we had doubts about staying inside a building therefore we went to the soccer field outside. Everyone shared their experience. For us it was bonding over an earthquake.

One of my friends has been in a bus and she had seen how the buildings started to swing and how her bus was rocking like a ship. Another workmate was really nice that he was in a restaurant at the time and he had run out of the restaurant keeping a 1000Yen note on the table. Isn’t this world full of beautiful people?

With the earthquake telephone network went down and I had no idea about what has happened to my husband. Surprisingly internet was available and I could put a status on Facebook. After trying so hard for about 5 hours I could finally contact my husband for few seconds and have never felt so relieved.

All this time aftershocks continued at least once in every ten minutes. It felt as if we were in a ship. The temperature was also near zero. It was almost impossible to stay outside and with heavy hearts we went inside the evacuation center. At the evacuation center there were more than thousand people and everyone was given blankets, food cans and water bottles. This level of preparation surprised us all. It was only after watching TV at the evacuation center that we realized the true impact of the disaster.

All of us who were travelling from trains had no choice but to spend the night at the evacuation center. I thought it was going to be a very long night. All by sudden my husband came to the evacuation center looking for me. He had been cycling all the way from home to the evacuation center. It was such a pleasant surprise. Both of us walked home for about 5kms.

It would have been wonderful if this was the end of the nightmare but both of us woke up next day to another middling aftershock to find out the real catastrophe with the nuclear plants. A lot happened within these two weeks. Most of our friends left the country. Radiation levels rose. Water got contaminated. With all these happenings it is astonishing to see the resilience of Japanese. They keep on working as if nothing has happened.

All this time it hasn’t always been easy to keep it all together. But there is one thing that keeps me going. That’s what I have read in the book “Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy”. In that science fiction there exists a guide which has all the information about the entire universe. The Guide is encased in a plastic cover with the words "DON'T PANIC" inscribed on it in large, friendly letters.

10 things you didn’t know about Japanese Toastmasters clubs

At this end of the world Toastmastering is way different than it is in Sri Lanka and unfortunately mostly not in a good way. Therefore my dear Gaveliars, do enjoy and cherish those inspiring Monday afternoons. They are very rare to find anywhere else. After nearly 6months of search I found an English speaking Toastmasters club in Tokyo. I can easily write a list of 100 things but I don’t want to bore you to death with my grievances

So here goes the list

1. My greatest disappointment with Japanese Toastmasters clubs is that there is no round robin session in meetings. For me that’s the essence of the meeting where everyone gets a chance to speak. One certainly needs a warm up to open up. There was this one time they introduced round robin session as a special session. Many got freaked out that they never tried it again. Many Japanese are naturally very reserved. Therefore expressing their true opinion is very out of place. That might be the reason they hate it so much. Well, in my opinion there is no other way to destroy the core sense of a meeting more successfully than removing the round robin session.

2. There are two other roles replacing the round-robin session. Namely Thought of the day, and Joke master. I’m sure these two are superb concepts, if used properly they might make the meetings more interesting and I recommend you all to try it out. As the names suggest joke master cracks a joke and the person who present the thought of the day present some food for thought. Well I believe both of these concepts don’t work well in Japan. We rarely get their jokes. I think they lose the core when translated in to English and don’t get me started about the thought of the day. Many Japanese don’t reveal their thoughts and emotions as a result, they are beating around the bush and at the end no one gets the thought. One of my fellow foreign members who had enough of it once asked, “I’m sorry, but where is the thought?”

3. A significant attribute of Japanese Toastmasters clubs is the competitiveness. At the end of every meeting the best table topics speaker, the best prepared speaker and the best evaluator is chosen from the votes of every member. Only the speakers who are within the time limit are considered in voting. The winners are given small certificates which are provided by Toastmasters International. Before announcing the winners all the members beat the tables in the rhythm of drum-roll which I found pretty cool. The winners are photographed and published in the club website. This might be a great encouragement for members to improve their skills but I prefer the relaxed atmosphere we had at Gavel club. There is no harm to try it out for a change.

4. Table topics session is purely impromptu in Japan. The table topics master reads out each topic and points out a member for each topic. Thanks to my long surname that can’t be read by any one, I have never done a table topic in here and no volunteering is allowed too. So I believe it’s not fair. Table topics are not evaluated too.

5. If you lack self-confidence I recommend you to come and do a prepared speech in a Japanese Toastmasters meeting. At the end, in your evaluation you will hear nothing but the good points in your speech. In here evaluations are more of appreciations than evaluations.

6. Evaluations are timed in these meetings. Time allowed for prepared evaluations is 2-3 minutes. Evaluator is given color signals and only the evaluations that are within the time limit is considered in voting. This might be a good technique to limit some expressive evaluators.

7. Induction ceremony is an important feature in the meetings. Unlike in Sri Lanka where the induction ceremony is conducted once a year at the installation ceremony, here it is done every time when a member joins the club. Members should vote in order to give their approval for the new member. Many bureaucratic procedures are included in this ceremony. Usually once a month this ceremony takes place and it wastes a lot of time that can be used for the educational meeting.

8. One of the most irritating facts about the meetings is that members are using the same set of phrases for each role. That makes them so predictable and kills the excitement. Most of the time I can easily guess what they are going to say next.

9. Without doubt the most annoying thing in the meeting is the ever so loud hammering of the Gavel. Each time they pound it I get jumpy.

10. Many Japanese have very stiff facial expressions but their body language is excellent. It comes naturally to them probably because they are mostly slim and inertia is far less than ours.

These are some fun facts that I noticed in Japanese Toastmasters clubs. No need to say how much I miss my dear Gavel club each time I attend these meetings but by far this is the closest I can get to stay in touch with those good old Monday afternoons..

The Art of Conversation…

There is a famous Chinese proverb, “A single conversation across the table with a wise person is worth a month's study of books” and I totally agree. Food and meaningful Conversations are two things that I enjoy most. The Research presentation competition of IMECHE (Institute of Mechanical Engineers) which I took part last month could not only fill my stomach with mouth watering dishes but also provided me with a vast supply of food for thought.

The contest itself was mind-blowing with seven mechanical engineers from seven different countries presenting their research in detail to a non-technical audience. Even though the presentations were highly technical each of those presentations was inspiring, because each and every one of us had a true passion for what we were presenting. I must say all those presentations were second to none of TED talks I was watching recently. From the secrets of formula1 car racing to self balancing scooters, from convertible technologies to greener solutions, from face tracking robots to lean manufacturing, they all were truly inspiring.

Apart from the competition I enjoyed the fruitful conversations amidst of never ending food courses. What more can you ask for when you are on a vacation? It was interesting how all of us share many experiences including the engineering softwares we use such as Solidworks, PROE and so on. On the other hand it was equally interesting to observe the different perspectives across the globe for example in Sri Lanka where Engineering field is highly recognized with top students are entering Engineering field In China and Hongkong the field of Engineering is not treated with the same status. There the top students enter management and marketing.

We are living in an age where we are connected across the globe with various networks but at the same time it makes this a silent age that isolates us to iphones, laptops, and ect that makes us ignore the presence of people. I learnt the power of conversation through my grandma. As a person who haven’t received any education more than 5th grade her awareness about the world is better than a college graduate all due to the family culture of conversation where all of her seven children share their day with her. On the other hand conversation is way different from gossip that is why they say “Conversation is an exercise of the mind; gossip is merely an exercise of the tongue.”

My signature in cyberspae

Writing is something that I always had a passion for. My father always thought that I would do better in writing or in law rather than in engineering. May be he is right. So thatta this blog is dedicated to you. Through the years from grade 6, I had diaries, scrap books in which I scribble down how I see things and how I feel the world. It was the perfect way to express myself. Sometimes I felt that it is by writing that I clarify exactly what I feel about things. The worst part was my parents found those writings interesting and they used to secretly read them, which was very annoying. Through the time I always get embarrassed by what I wrote in past. So most of the time all what I wrote ended up in garbage cans. May be I will not dare to delete my blog posts. So here I am putting my signature in the cyber space. These posts are not written to please or impress anyone they are an aid for me to discover myself better.
Signing off for today...