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December 7, 2011
[SSJ: 7018] Re: 6998] Re: 6990] Re: 6980] Re: 6975] Re: 6937] Re:From RonaldDore
From: David H. Slater
Date: 2011/12/07
One Japan experience about national diversity closer to
home: I have lead a number of relief groups up to Tohoku, mostly full of Japanese, mostly urban, Tokyo-ites. Esp. the younger ones are shocked to find that in fact Tohoku-ben is often incompressible to them. (Older male fishermen seem to harder to understand than the old male farmers.) They had heard about this linguistic diversity, but did not believe it. It is not uncommon for these Japanese urbanites to come back from digging saying things like, "We really don 't know anything about Tohoku people or culture."
Another one said, "{Tohoku} is like a whole different country."
The recognition of diversity is a function of scale: at what level are you able to look with insight will determine if things look similar or different.
David Slater
Sophia U.
Approved by ssjmod at 02:12 PM