2025 Ali's Blog

The concept of long-term and short-term relationships is something I only became familiar with after coming to Japan. In my home country, not many people talk about whether a relationship is meant to be short-term or long-term. I used to believe that all relationships should naturally aim for the long term. To me, if a relationship is only based on physical attraction or temporary emotions, then it probably shouldn’t have started in the first place. I think couples should be clear from the beginning about whether they’re serious and potentially looking toward marriage. If the answer is no, then I don’t really see the point. In my view, using “short-term” as a reason to avoid commitment sounds more like an excuse, and I believe putting desire above your future is not the right path. Romantic life in Indonesia isn’t very different from Japan in terms of public behavior, but it’s quite different compared to many European countries. For instance, when we’re in a relationship, showing affec...

Living for almost 3 months already, it can be said that i know how Japanese lifestyle on different aspect. Like for example today we talk about the activities and extracurricular in Japan, and my assumption just by reading the title is, they train in a far more serious than most of the people, and it turn out to be true. Having 42 hours of study time, and 21 hours of training per week is something that only Japanese people can do. It took a lot of discipline, and dedication to do it. Personally i agree that of course we have to take thing seriously if we really want to, but chasing two things in the same time and without having enough time to have fun for yourself is what i call imbalance. First they practice so much for their club activities, which i think is good if they really want to take it into professional level. But at the same time they also study so much even sacrificing their own time, and this is the part that didnt align in my agreement. Because the person that i see in a ...

Today we talk about the comparison between shopping culture in Japan and our countries. There is not much to say here because its almost the same. The only significant difference i see is that in Indonesia there is nothing like self checkout cashier (if that what you call it). I think its because of the trust issues we have to the society, actually i would say Indonesia is as a safe country like not too much gun and crazy case happening around, but there is still a lot of stealing happening around.   Another thing is about the topic of Masculinity and Femininity. According to Hofstede it is one of the key dimension of how a society approaches gender role and values. In the modern era that we live in right now, i believe most of the people believe in whats so called gender equality. The way in interpret it is how different genders have the same responsibilities, should be treated the same, and should act the same. I kinda disagree with this concept, because god (or whatever ent...

When we are talking about individualism and collectivism, its not seperated from the degree which people in a society are integrated into groups. Meaning that it measures the connection of a person to a society to achieve a specific or needs. After seeing the video, we can sort of predict  individualist and collectivist based on statistic, for example we see country like India and Indonesia with a lot of population indicates that people there tends to be more collectivist compare to people that came from Netherlands and Australia. Not only population, the amount of rich people staying in the country can also indicate the tendencies between the two categories. Personally, I consider my self as an individualist, because its easier to manage things myself, without even have to worry about other capabilities. Other things is also because I know myself limitations so if i do things by my own, its kinda easier for me to measure where is the thing to i need to spend time the most and wher...

Today in class we discuss about somethings that are common and uncommon in a conversation along with the Hofstede concept about power distance. While discussing in class, a few things that confuses me about other answers. For example if we look at the question "if your friends had different opinion with you in a conversation, how do you feel". Me personally thats what i expect in a conversation, but someone said that it will hurt their feeling. If we are engaging in a conversation should we expect everything to be similar? if yes then whats the point of having a conversation anyway. Other things that i had different opinion is about how often i have a deep talk with my friends. Of course its understandable that deep talk is something that is being done once in a while, but for me things like this are more interesting because it makes me knows the person better and also have a great overview about what people usually thinks in general. And then the next thing i know, our discu...