Homework 2

1. a) How would you express condolences to an American family
From my experiences with funerals, its usually a really difficult thing to deal with. Typically when someone dies say a friend's grandmother (where we don't know the person well) there's not much you can say, usually "i'm sorry for your loss", and you might give flowers or attend the funeral etc. If you know the person better usually funerals are a time for sharing memories of that person, so you might tell a story you particularly remember about the person.
b) Have you ever been to a foreign funeral
Not really, the closest thing I experienced was actually a rather unusual story. It was when I was studying in Japan as a high school student and I was staying at another student's house during golden week vacation. The first night there his Great-grandmother (who lived in the house with them and I met only that first day) died. There was quite a bit of commotion, and I had no idea what was going on. The family tried basically to hide me for a while, I think they were rather embarrassed. They made arrangements for me to go stay somewhere else, so I didn't really see much of what was going on, but the one thing I did notice was that the whole family assembled really quickly (like that very day). Anyway thats the closest I got to a funeral in Japan.

2. a)Why are Japanese designer crazy? why does what you wear matter?
I often wonder about this question myself. In America having a designer hand bag, or wearing designer clothes is generally a sign that a person has a lot of money. But here even the girl that runs the cash register at McDonalds has a Louis Vitton wallet. To me, its really strange, and I think it has a lot to do with Japanese ideas of status. I sometimes feel like its almost a requirement for being a part of mainstream society.
As for what we wear, I think that so much of our first impression of people is dependent on what they wear. We look at a person's clothes and immediately think about how much money the person has, what kind of work they do, etc. Thats why a lot of people spend money on clothes and things to make themselves appear high class, even if they're not.
b)What does "don't judge a book by its cover mean to you?
Don't judge a book by its cover means not to make judgments about a person, especially about their character, based on their physical appearance. Of course in this case we're talking about judging people based on their clothes, but I think it applies to all the stereotypes we have on things such as race, gender, religion etc. We generally have ideas about people based on our experiences and stereotypes that we've learned thorough our lives, but we should try to get to know people before we judge them.