🚀 go-pugleaf

kenji@tom.astem.or.jp (Kenji Rikitake) writes:

>Dave McLane (davidg@aegis.or.jp) wrote:
>: kenji@tom.astem.or.jp (Kenji Rikitake) writes:
>: My guess is that the Japanese who are in the US are probably
>: working/living with a relatively small subset of the US culture: the
>: upper-middle class of which I am a member by virtue of the fact that
>: I went to college and have acquired some non-manual skills.
>[rest deleted]

>I agree with Dave on this. I didn't learn a lot about bad points of
>US society when I was in Boulder, Colorado 18 years ago - and I
>should confess that my information about US is mostly second-hand
>basis.

While I spent most of my life among the middle class I had two
direct experiences with members of other classes within the US: 4
years in the US air force as an enlisted man (1955-59), and 2 years
living in a small town in N. California where the principle industry
was logging (1970-72). That's such a long time ago that details
wouldn't be very relevant to what life in the US is like today, but
I would guess there are still basic differences between lifestyles. 

When I was in the US last spring visting my daughter we had long
talks about how her life as turned out, considering her childhood.
She was born in LA, her mother and I were divorced when she was 2
and she moved around between her mother and I, living sometimes in
LA and sometimes with me in N. California or other places. Then her
mother got remarried and she went to live in Vermont, way down a
one-lane country road in an old farmhouse. Most of the kids she went
to school with were country or working-class people. After 6 years,
her mother moved to Santa Monica and she went to Santa Monica high
school. What a great learning experience!

IMO, most everything that gets written about the US is about the
middle or upper class, and the few things that are about the other
classes are highly idealistic. If you're Arnold Schwarzenegger (sp?)
and you walk into a country-style bar (as in Terminator II) you come
out of it OK. But if you're a middle-class kid like me and you walk
into a place like that (and I have), you feel lucky to get alive... 

Dave

--
Dave McLane  davidg@aegis.or.jp
You're free to copy/quote/translate as long as credit is given. 
Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087