2025 Max’s Blog

 Hello, the weather today was absolutely horrible, even if I like sunny days like in Mexico, this was too much, the sun was burning my skin along with the humidity is not a good experience to be honest, people don’t believe when I say this hotter than in central Mexico. Last class we discussed about many topics, like manners and behavior in convinience stores, about this topic it was very interesting to see the differences with my country, because mexican people are so friendly but in this case for some reason we are not very friendly, when you enter to a store the staff doesn’t say “ いらっしゃいませ “ most of the times, it’s just silent, normally we say good morning/afternoon/night when we approach the cashier, but also sometimes we don’t even greet because i don’t know, the staff or we (or both) are not on the mood to greet. Also another thing that really surprised me is that Japan is a very advanced country, but for some reason they still use A LOT of plastic bags for an insignificant ...

 In the last class we discussed something pretty simple but interesting because it’s something we all experience every month or every week; inviting guests to our home. We reviewed several aspects of this, for example; Who do you invite to your home? What’s the reason of the invitation? What do they do in your home? Do you prefer indoor or outdoor activities? From my mexican western perspective, my home is not really a “sacred” place or something very very personal, of course it’s my home and my privacy but it’s not a big deal if people come to my house, of course as long as they’re not strangers and if they’re strangers they should be watched to avoid stealing or they should not leave the common area at all. In Mexico we have this saying of “Mi casa es tu casa”, which means “My house is your house” so that’s why we normally have our doors opened to everyone. It was interesting to see the difference here because people of the West had similar perspectives, like me, but maybe some s...

 In the last class we discussed about several communication topics including the topics we like to talk about (like hobbies and favorite things), also if we like to be short when we’re communicating or we rather give more information to the person. On the other hand, we also shared how we feel when someone antagonizes our opinion and things we don’t like in a conversation; in this case the results where so similar, in average we don’t like when someone is not paying attention when we speak or if the topics are boring. Although the results on the manners were similar, the content on the conversation was somewhat different, for example; in the countries where everyone hates the government, politics is a common and accepted topic with strangers (normally because everyone agrees) while in other countries like Mexico the opinion is divided 50/50 and it’s so sad. Talking about the main topic of the class; power distance refers to how equally power is distributed in group settings. A high...

 In the last class we discussed about the differences between many things in the education field, such as: Behavior when answering or making questions Manners in how people talk to their teacher  Cram school Preferences in teaching methods (Lecture/Discussions/Projects) As usual, most foreigners agreed on the kind of behavior we should have when we are answering the teacher’s question or when we make questions, although we didn’t have japanese students this class we had chinese students as guests and they gave us interesting insights and differences in this topic; it seems that asian students rather stay quiet instead of saying “I don’t know” because they think this is disrespectful, while the foreign students believe that being quiet after a question is very disrispectful. Probably this can be explained because a lot of japanese students are not confident with their answer or themselves, sometimes they’re scared of the teacher because they may be too strict and they’re afraid...

In the last class we talked about the working culture and how it changes depending on the country, also we ranked the most important things when looking for a job. The most important factors were: - Salary - Oportunities - Work/Life balance - Company values - Personal Interests Most people agreed that the most important thing when looking for a job is the salary because is the main reason why people work, but also it was interesting to see that some people prefer personal interests or company values above work/life balance. Then we discussed about what do you think is the most important when hiring people? Is it work performance, titles and degrees, race and diversity or maybe seniority? Also most people agreed that the most important quality in order to hire someone is the job performance because you want your employee to perform as needed regardless of their degree, although, even if I agree I also think that it is important to look into someone’s CV, to review their degrees and expe...

In the last class we talked about our sleeping habits in many different cultures, we had some differences but in general it was very similar, we like to sleep in average 7-9 hours, also there are similar factors that can make it difficult to conceal sleep such as anxiety, noises, study and work. I think sleep is really important basically because if you don’t sleep properly during your life, you’re going to die early, poor sleep quality can lead to heart disease, diabetes, mental illness and among other terrible outcomes for your health, something I didn’t understand from the documentary is that japanese people sleep less than 5 hours per day but they use weekends to recover this time so they stay healthy? You can recover sleep hours in weekends and be healthy like it’s maths? And about the japanese schedule, I think it’s to wild; even if they’re allegedly healthy they should prioritize sleep above studies or part time job, if it’s not a life-death matter then just sleep. Japan has man...