Violence, Humidity & More Baseball

Hello!

I hope that you are all doing well!

By now, you probably have heard the major news that Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot and killed in Nara on Friday. For me, it was really quite shocking to hear that gun violence took the life of such a prominent figure in Japan.

Guns are extremely difficult to purchase in Japan. From this article that I read, it appears that it is impossible to get ahold of a handgun. Shotguns are available, but one must go through a tough acquisition process. I also believe that I read somewhere that if you do purchase a weapon, the police will visit your home regularly to carry out inspections of it and where you store it.

Based on news reports and pictures, though, it sounds as if the weapon used on Friday was homemade. I have also heard that due to Japan's safety record, high profile politicians do not take too many special security precautions. Abe, in this case, was speaking just outside a public train station.

But, please, for any details related to the event, I encourage you to read information from major news outlets - most of what I am sharing here is what I have quickly read or heard about the event, so definitely do your own research if you want to hear more about what happened.

The shooting happened while we were at school. It seemed like the staff in the staff room found out about it via smartphone alerts, but there was not any major reaction from what I could tell.

When I found out, I showed the news article to my vice principal - he had already heard about the event and seemed very surprised.

From other English teacher friends in Kobe, I heard that the physical reaction of the Japanese teachers mostly seemed indifferent. That might be, though, just the emotion that the teachers show on the outside and not their true feelings. I have heard from friends that the Japanese can tend to appear rather calm on the outside when major events happen.

For instance, in one friend's office place, a colleague passed away suddenly but my friend said that the office mostly carried along almost like nothing had happened.

This can be a significant difference between Japanese and Western culture - Western people will tend to show their feelings outwardly whereas the Japanese will mostly maintain face and keep their true feelings to themselves.

"Reading the air" is a big thing in Japan, meaning that you might not be told directly what someone thinks or feels, but you have to read their actions or the feeling they give you to figure out their true thoughts. This is partially the reason why I was surprised by all the emotion shown at the end of last school term when teachers left our school to go onto new schools.

Emotional displays like this is not something you see often.

Friday's events aside, we are approaching summer break. My class schedule has started to slow down as grades have their last English lesson before the end of the semester. I will have some more free time in the next two weeks.

The weather in Japan has been extremely humid. Temperatures are normally in the 80s, but humidity is constantly in the high 70s and 80s all day. So sometimes I will look at the temperature and think it must not be that bad outside, but it ends up being pretty uncomfortable given the humidity.

As I mentioned in prior updates, the humidity means you have to be careful to manage mold in your apartment. I have normally been leaving my air conditioner on "dehumidify" mode during the day while I am at school. There are also small moisture collection packets that you can buy at stores that will help you manage your home's humidity levels.

Other than that, there was more high school baseball this weekend plus a visit to Kobe's HottoMotto field which plays host the Orix Buffaloes of Japan's professional baseball league. The Buffaloes play most of their games in Osaka, but arrange to play a handful of games each season in Kobe at HottoMotto.

I watched high school tournament games at a field nearby HottoMotto then went to the professional game with some other English teachers that evening. You will see photos of that in this week's album.

For language learning, my experience continues to go through peaks and valleys. I have been in a valley the past few days. I pushed it pretty hard this past week, attending two online sessions and an in-person session. I think I am going to take it more slowly this week to recover as we enter the summer break.

Until next time,

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Photos from this week!

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