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In article <816@ukecc.UUCP> wes@ukecc.UUCP (Wes Morgan) writes:
>
>   Mark has made some statements based on his experiences as both a soldier
>stationed in Asia and as the husband of a Japanese-American.  

    I guess I was not clear, I was stationed on an Air Force base, but
  I was a sailor and worked as a computer repairman of a large but 
  unpowerful computer system (antiquated but still in use today). As
  you can see my reaction is based upon being called a soldier when
  technically in the broad sense the term probably includes sailor.

> However, my experiences in the military were quite different.
>   Most soldiers in Asia tend to be 'Asia-phobic' due to the simple fact 
>that most of Asia is still 'American-phobic'.  

    Well that is true to some extent. However the main reason is that
 the Americans (except for the Asian Americans) were limited by the
 culture and the lack of ability to read signs. At least in Europe
 the signs do have familiar characters. To a person who can not read
 even the signs, travel is certainly limited. That is why I mentioned
 that my case was probably the extreme.  

>Soldiers stationed in Germany,
>for example, have no such problem; they readily take part in the local 
>economy.  This is due to several things.  The German society does not 
>class Americans as some outside group; there are no parallels to the
>Japanese 'gaijin' attitude.  
 
 (   gaijin means foreigner to the japanese, and supposedly it conveys
 no more information then when we say oriental. Though I think that 
 there is an unconcious negative connotation to it. Certainly to the
 Americans (or at least me) when I know a person is Japanese I usually
 use japanese rather than foreigner. )
>Secondly, the German language is much less
>of a barrier to Americans than Japanese.  Thirdly, the Germans, while 
>treasuring their privacy, do not adhere to a strict class culture. (I
>have not been in Asia, so I cannot comment on the class structure there.)

  I seem to have seen on 60 minutes of some of the problems that the 
 Americans faced in Germany. I also think that there are many more
 Americans stationed in Germany then in all of Japan. I am not disbelieving
 you, but only suggest that since there were more Americans there it seems
 that a greater percentage of Americans were travelling about.
  Also it is true that more Americans can identify with being "German"
 or "European". There has been a direct influence of german on the 
 English language.
  I think the point of bilingualism really has nothing to do with any
 of the European languages, except for Spanish at the present moment.
 Most of the immigrants to this country are not of European descent.
 That is the problem. When I think of a typical American he ( or she)
 is of European descent.

>   One could expect an American in Japan to have much the same reaction/
>culture shock as a Japanese in America.  

  Yes they will have culture shock, but it isn't because they can't speak
 or read english, although they will not be fluent. It is the difference
 of culture. The difference of being able to walk around in Tokyo with
 a fat wallet and getting it ripped off the minute one steps off the
 plane in America. It is the difference of going into a restaurant, that
 for one does not have wax models of what they are serving and also not
 being able to find a restaurant that does serve sushi.

>... about a culture?  It's simple: Learn the language!!!
>Can we expect any sort of coherent society in the future if we do not
>presume our new Americans to do the same??
>

    Yes you have to LEARN the language, but you also have to LEARN the
 culture. We all can remember President Carter, "Lusting after something
 or other in Polish", because of the translator. The translator knew the
 langauge, but had not learned the thing that only someone who also knew
 cultural nuances knew.
   Learning the culture does not mean replacing that of your own, the
 two can exist side by side. For instance while I was in Japan, I did
 not become fully ingulfed with the Japanese culture. When they were
 having sushi, I had something else, but I tried some of the sushi.
 I think that fact impressed them more that just plain eating the sushi.

 In final, I would like to say that I do not disagree with you, but
 I am trying to clarify some of things you have said.

 mark
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