6 May 2005 (27 Nisan 5765)
Unfortunately, there are times when the best or even the only thing that a country or an individual can do to protect themselves is to use the same "language" that their enemy uses. Whether you like it or not, this is a reality. Whoever tries to be an idealistic pacifist under every conceivable circumstance is too naive at best. We cannot deny the fact that there are countries and people in the world who do not understand the rational language that we use. When leftist peaceniks in Japan demonstrated against the American decision to attack Iraq under Saddam Hussein and the decision of the Japanese government to support it, I became quite frustrated with their naiveness (and was angry with their double standard not to protest against the atrocities being committed in Tibet and elsewhere by China, in which they seem to have blind faith and to which they seem to be more loyal than to Japan).
I have been suffering from three sources of noise: cell phone conversations in means of public transportation, barking dogs (especially the one beside our building) and a neighbor of mine who plays the piano and noisy music on her stereo. Unfortunately, I have not found any effective means to solve the first problem. Most of those who are not ashamed to wash their dirty linen in public in Israel speak so loudly that earplugs I shlep everywhere do not help me much. With the two other noises I was forced to use the same "language" they understand, that is, noise for noise.
Of course, I cannot blame for the musical taste of a neighbor of mine, but I still think that it is outrageous to play the piano and music on the stereo loudly. According to the types of music she plays and listens to (unsophisticated pseudo-classical music on the piano and boring Israeli pop music on the stereo), I was certain that she would not stand Hasidic and klezmer music. Some time ago I started an experiment of playing Hasidic and/or klezmer music every time she started playing her music loudly enough for her to hear it but quietly enough for the other neighbors not to hear it. I seem to have been right; one's music is another's noise. It does not take long until she stops playing her music if I play mine. I always hesitated to play music on the stereo loudly, but every time she plays something loudly, I allow myself to do the same (and enjoy it).
This successful experiment has led me to try another, that is, with the barking dog, which is the worst noise I have now in my old-new life here in Jerusalem (as a few good friends of mine who heard it agreed completely). Some time ago I found online and ordered an equipment called "Super Bark Free" against barking dogs; it emits an ultrasonic noise that dogs do not like (but we humans do not hear) every time they bark. This week I received it by mail at long last and started using it. I am not sure yet how effective it is as there are trees and plants, which seem to absorb this ultrasonic noise, between my building and the dog. But at least psychologically it helps me a great deal as I know now that I am doing something against this unbearable dog. I am only sorry that our technology is not advanced enough to develop a similar equipment to emit a noise against irresponsible humans who fail to train their dogs not to bark nonstop.
13 May 2005 (4 Iyar 5765)
Although word processors may have made the preparation of electronic documents easily accessible to the general public, and they can do a descent job of fulfilling this task if used properly, the very illusionary concept underlying their makeup, i.e., WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), has helped the majority of non-savvy (and often even savvy) users forget and/or remain ignorant of at least two important things: 1) existence of alternative, simpler formats and tools, and 2) distinction and/or separation between textual information (and its logical structure) and its formatting. The way the Word documents I constantly receive from various people in all walks of life are authored and the very fact that they seem to take it for granted to Word format as the format of exchanging electronic documents with someone else and using it exclusively for all the text-related purposes strengthen this skepticism of mine about word processors in general and Word in particular.
Word processors are supposed to assume two tasks about text, i.e., editing it and formatting it. And they fulfill them only with a decent degree of sophistication. In those cases in which only the textual information is important and relevant, there is no need to format it. To use a tool that has to format text in some way or other for such a purpose is like swimming in the sea with a suit and a tie; you carry things that are not only unnecessary but even often detrimental to your task. Besides, the very part that is supposed to fulfill it is not sophisticated enough. It is also stupid to choose a binary format that requires the recipient of your documents, which you cannot always assume. When only the textual information is all that matters, we have a far more (or probably the most universal) format called plain text and more appropriate and efficient tools called text editors. If you use only single byte non-RTL languages, your selection of sophisticated text editors is almost endless. If you also need double byte languages (such as Japanese), you still have a large number of choises. Only if you also need the support of RTL languages (such as Hebrew), you are left with a far fewer selection of text editors. Every time I see someone who exclusively uses a word processor for text-related tasks, I am reminded of a swimmer with a suit and a tie and cannot help feeling really sorry that he or she does not seem to know how comfortable it is to swim with an appropriate swimsuit.
Even when you need to format text, you can do so with a word processor much more efficiently by separating its logical structure from its formatting. The illusionary force of WYSIWYG, however, is often quite powerful and rampant. Although you can adhere to the principle of the above distinction more or less strictly by using the so-called "styles", the majority of users fail to make this important distinction and use styles accordingly. Besides, even if you make a systematic use of styles, you have the problem of (often proprietary) binary file format. As anyone who has used more than one version of Word knows, using (one of the) Word format(s) is probably the worst way of archiving documents for yourself or posterity (and of course, of exchanging them with others). As far as I am concerned, when formatting is important, I prefer using derivatives of plain text, i.e., XHTML and CSS for online publishing, and XML and its satellite technologies for offline publishing. It may be difficult to start and learn them but difficult to abuse them, while it is easy to start and learn Word but easy to abuse it, and devastatingly at that.
All in all, I totally agree that word processors are stupid and inefficient, but on the other hand, I cannot be so optimistic as to believe that the majority of computer users will stop using these stupid and inefficient tools as the exclusive means of preparing electronic documents in the foreseeable future.
20 May 2005 (11 Iyar 5765)
This week I ordered a round-trip ticket for my first, hopefully annual visit to Japan in August. I will spend most of my time at my parents' except for a very short stay in Tokyo and Kansai areas for giving talks. Although I feel more satisfied with my academic and private life here than in Japan, this trip excites me in a few respects. In addition to the excitement of seeing my parents, my sister and some of my relatives and friends there, I am really curious to see how I will feel back in Japan after spending one year in Israel.
I say this because when I returned from Israel to Japan in the summer of 1993 after spending five years here as a doctoral student, I had a very hard time readjusting myself to Japanese society, wasting at least a few years. By the time I left Japan for Israel last August to assume a full-time position as a lecturer in Hebrew linguistics at Bar-Ilan University, to whom I really owe my deepest gratitude, I had learned to cope with my social maladjustment in Japan and switching between the two cultural antipodes (and had found that being a "professional outsider", I am actually a kind of person who cannot feel at home in any country). So perhaps this time I will not experience the same culture shock I experienced 12 years ago. Nevertheless, certain types of people, things and customs I cannot find in Israel will probably surprise me anew, for better or for worse.
Negative remarks not all I have to say about Japan. There are of course a number of things I like there, and I hope I will be able to enjoy them during my planned visit, though for a very short while. Although I am not so attached to Japanese cuisine, there are a few things I really miss, including my mother's vegetable tempura, sansai, which I used to pick in the nearby mountain with my late grandmother in my childhood, Sanuki udon, (vegetable-only) oden, nori, konbu, wakame, katsuobushi, chikuwa, tofu, yuba, natto, miso soup and of course a couple of Japanese beers I liked (such as Kirin Brau Meister and Suntory Malt's but not, God forbid, Asahi Super Dry, which is nothing but blasphemy to beer culture) [* a note for kashrut-keeping potential Jewish visitors to Japan: all the foods and beverages mentioned above are kosher in themselves].
Another thing I am really looking for is the pleasure of browsing and buying books in bookstores. Although I keep myself updated on new Japanese books through TRC and Kinokuniya e-Alert, there is nothing like touching books physically. Compared to the largest bookstores in Japan, their Israeli counterparts are just Lilliputians. I still find it very difficult to understand how the "People of the Book" are content with such a miserable state of bookstores in Israel. Every time I enter a "bookstore" here, I become depressed not only because I find such a small number of books about such limited areas but also because I am sorry for monolingual Hebrew readers whose only gateways to the world of books are these miserable "bookstores".
27 May 2005 (18 Iyar 5765)
Perhaps no two groups of students are so different from each other as Japanese and Israeli students. These differences are reflections of the respective societies where the students live in general and results of different methods and both explicit and implicit goals of the respective educational systems in particular. In traditional Japanese culture at least as much emphasis is put on silence as on language, while in traditional Jewish culture silence is not such a positive value as language, at least in practice. Teaching in Japanese schools and universities is based on unidirectional monologs of teachers with few or no reactions from students, while that in Israel also involves constant verbal interaction between teachers and students or between students themselves in class. So silence and noise prevail in Japanese and Israeli classrooms respectively.
Japanese students may be better disciplined and persevere more in learning passively, but their Israeli counterparts are definitely much better at expressing their thoughts and opinions, whether in speech or in writing. As a person who is basically a product of Japanese educational system (though I spent five years at an Israeli university and four months at an Israeli yeshiva), I feel I still have much room for improvement in this respect and am often amazed at the eloquence of some of my students, to say nothing of my colleagues and ex-teachers, in Israel.
Knowledge that is stored in one's brain but not shared with others is probably half-dead. Active communicative competence is in my opinion one of the most important bases for us as social beings and is growing in importance more and more as we have more and more opportunities to communicate with people with whom we do not share the same culture and/or values. Although each one of us has an innate faculty of language, we need to be trained and practice to speak and write well just as we have to learn how to run efficiently.
I fear that the Japanese educational system makes a wrong tacit assumption that it is enough to throw students into water so that they may learn to swim in the sea of language. It is not enough that the language in question is our mother tongue. Of course, there are born orators and writers, but the majority of us, including myself, need to be taught to speak and write academically. I do not remember receiving such instruction throughout my school days in Japan, nor do I think things have changed drastically. Some of my students in Japan did write quite nice term papers, but when it comes to speaking in public, few impressed me. This is unfortunately the case not only with students but also with teachers themselves.
Having taught in Japanese universities from April 1994 through August 2004, I noticed an increasing number of students, specially male students, having difficulties in communicating with others at all. They must be taught how to speak face to face in the first place before being taught how to make oral presentations academically. My impression is that the problem is not only with communication per se but with something more fundamental: they lack certain characteristics as human beings and often look more like robots than human beings (actually some sophisticated robots sometimes seem more human than some of them). On the one hand, I am glad that I do not have to be irritated with these human robots (or robotic humans?) in class any more; although I generally prefer silence to noise, I definitely prefer Israeli noise to Japanese silence in class. On the other hand, however, I am quite alarmed at the future of Japan as their number seems to be on the rise.