I worked early today. This morning, it was snowing slightly. After having breakfast and showing up, I joined the daily English Zoom meeting. Today's theme was how frequently Apple products such as Macintosh computers, iPads, and iPhones are used daily. Instead, what kinds of Japanese companies are famous in the world? Although IT technology there must be greater worldwide, then how about anime, manga, and literature (famous the Haruki Murakami, etc.)? We talked about these a lot in English.
After that, from 10 a.m. I started today's work. This afternoon, I got a phone call. It was from a chief member of the English Studying Club which said tomorrow's reading meeting had been canceled because of this snow. OH NO! However, that's life. After having a lunchbox, I read an interesting discussion on a LINE group which cast a question there: if there is a foreigner who is fluent in Japanese (so fluent to read "classics" casually), can you accept them as a Japanese one?
I answered this actually like this: TBH, I can't tell about how they would be accepted as a Japanese migrant politically, but at least culturally I want to keep trying to welcome several foreigners casually/widely into this territory called Japanese culture because simply I can't believe that I would be able to become the person who can judge those foreigners if they are Japanese or not. Even though I could be so, I believe that there must be so many "outsiders" who can stimulate Japanese culture itself beyond my tiny, stubborn, and also strictly limited bias. For example, Yoko Tawada is that kind of a pretty charming and awful "outsider" to me.
However, thinking about this, I have to consider what position I tend to stand on unconsciously because simply I am not God. I am a heterosexual Japanese man with autism who can have a limited, maybe "discriminative" point of view toward those "outsiders" with my stubborn point of view. I'm talking about not only "hating" them by that, but also "praising" or "adoring" them with that. For example, I have yellow skin and black hair as an Asian dude, so "maybe" unconsciously tend to respect "white" culture like Junichiro Tanizaki's novels represent. But of course, I need to think about this controversial topic carefully... OH MY GOSH.
After today's work, I went back to my group home. There, I spent my time freely with doing nothing specially (maybe because I've walked too much... Over 11,000 steps!).
