2025 Max’s Blog

 Wassup Everyone, how are you? ‘S all good man? Vamoooos! In the last class we discussed about familiar topics for me: extracurricular activities and uncertainty avoidance. I want to start with the extracurricular activities because it is something pretty common in Mexico. In Japan there’s A LOT of sports clubs, art clubs, writing, journalist, etc., same as in Mexico and this is pretty common since early years of school like elementary, maybe I’m biased because I went to a really nice private school which I’d say most of them offer many activities after school; like soccer, volleyball, swimming, atletics, music, drawing, karate, school journal, etc. Most students join these activities because they like it but some others join because their parents said so, or maybe their parents are busy and they have to wait until afternoon or night to be picked up and they have to do something in the meantime, in Japan it seems that it is something cultural, people like this sense of belonging an...

 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...