civility
::: cinema tickets are expensive in kobe...the normal cost per ticket is a steep 1800 yen, roughly $17.50...discount days, however, ease the sting...
...for example, a ticket is reduced to 1000 yen ($10) on ladies' night (every tuesday in many theaters)...the same hold true -- for men and women -- on the first day of every month...
...today being the first of august (already!), coupled with our wish to hang out with our asian access colleague -- kari, we caught the late show of pirates of the caribbean: dead man's chest...
...while the movie was worthwhile, it's what i saw after the credits finished that has me thinking about (and appreciating) japanese culture:
...for example, a ticket is reduced to 1000 yen ($10) on ladies' night (every tuesday in many theaters)...the same hold true -- for men and women -- on the first day of every month...
...today being the first of august (already!), coupled with our wish to hang out with our asian access colleague -- kari, we caught the late show of pirates of the caribbean: dead man's chest...
...while the movie was worthwhile, it's what i saw after the credits finished that has me thinking about (and appreciating) japanese culture:
- including us, over 90% of the viewers in the packed theater stayed silently in their seats until all the credits were shown...for such a large group of 20-30 year olds to be silent for 15 minutes was striking...
- we were seated in the second row from the front...so as we were filing out, i was able to observe that over 90% of the viewers carried their trash (popcorn containers, drinks, etc) and deposited them in a discard station located at the theater exit...
- at the discard station, a friendly staff person directed people to separate their trash into burnable and non-burnable trash...
- next to the friendly staff person was the theater manager, who was bowing repeatedly to exiting patrons
...these glimpses speak volumes about the richness of japanese culture...last night's observations fall in line with countless others that demonstrate the hues of japanese civility that color nearly every aspects of social relations...God is teaching me a lot through these observations...
:::
posted by B & C at
11:13 PM
4 Comments:
once again...once again...we're left in awe of the japanese people and their culture!
Fun Times with the Ryu's! Thanks for the fun time "in the city". Let's get together again soon!
Superman is coming...
How was the movie? Didn't you forget the impression of movie you watched for the civility of Japanese people? ^^;
there's always a risk -- when filtering cultural experiences through one's subjective lens -- to generalize a culture based on particular events...hopefully, our readers realize and resist this reductionistic tendency (for example, people in kansai operate under different cultural rules than people in tokyo or way up north in hokkaido)...yet, as we report specific "ooh, ahh" experiences of local japanese culture, there is enough of a sense that these experiences cohere with the culture at large...which, in turn, leads us to repeatedly respect and appreciate the rich aspects of japanese culture...cheers!
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