Japan’s Chuo University Students Seeing Diversity in Indonesia

Prof. Kato visits Indonesia every year and brings his students to see diversity in Indonesia: languages, ethnics, races, religions, cultures etc.

In the following video, they present Indonesian classical songs.

By the way, we heard they as a homogeneous society tend to conform everything as a united entity. If there is anyone doing different thought or action, it’s regarded not proper. People will blame ones that appear differently.

Yes, every nation has their own history along with specific culture as the tool to respond every challenge in society.

Conformity under unity is important to make a solid nation.

Perhaps they once in a while consider to look another scheme called diversity.

Everything in culture is alright: conformity or diversity etc., as long as there is no misusage in these things, either conformity or diversity. Context matters.

Spicy Food Story of Indonesians Living Abroad

Jerome Polin @NihongoMantappu Channel

Jerome and the girl told their mutual experience with sambal (red pepper chilli). Both are living in Japan (with non spicy food available) and share the same experience:

After years in Japan, they returned home country for a while and eat their favorite taste: spicy food and or sambal.

After eating the spicy food, they got diarrhea right away, and it took 2 weeks for recovery. And then they continued eating spicy food. Everything goes normal afterwards, even their appetite over spicy food even increased.

Indonesians usually say: “without rice you don’t really have your meal”.

Some of them might say “without sambal you don’t really have your meal”.

Sambal is obligatory for them.

Sambal is made of mainly red pepper with variation of other ingredients: garlic, onion, soybean sauce, lime, tomato etc. according to what kind of sambal you wanna make

Four Types of “Iya” (=Yes)

Ivy Phan, a Malaysian girl studying in University of Gajah Mada, Yogyakarta, by experience analyses the word “iya” under four contexts:

  1. Normal “Iya”
  2. “Iya” with stressing the validity of a fact being talked about. “Iya” gets expressed with higher tone and longer vocal “i” and “a”: “iiiyaaaa!” e.g. response of a sentence “did she win the award?”
  3. “Iya” with uncomfortable feeling in order to terminate a conversation, e.g. to avoid a silly debate.
  4. Reply for “terima kasih” (=thank you)

Indonesian language is simple, very easy to learn. It doesn’t have gender of a noun, no variation of verbs, etc. But in daily usage, it’s not that simple.

Example:

In English one calls “you” to address anyone, but in Indonesian, you should figure out first the social context.

To address elders, you cannot say “kamu” (=you), instead you should say “bapak” (=sir), or “ibu” (=madam). To stranger with relatively same age : “kakak” (=older sibling), to Javanese ethnic: “mas” for male, “mbak” for female, even “mas” and “mbak” have become a nationally accepted expression, you can use these words for polite call to other person regardless their ethnics.

To address officers? There are more expressions e.g. you should say “pak” or “bu” before the occupation of those officers., e.g. “Pak Menteri” (pak=sir, menteri=minister).

What about “anda”? It’s a good expression of “you”, but then again, you should figure out the social context.

bla bla bla etc etc etc …. in short…. it’s pretty complicated ^_^

If that’s kinda a bad news, the good news is: you can speak proper Indonesian at quite fluent level just by doing conversation with local people as often as possible.

Lami La can speak Indonesian properly within 8 months from zero by hanging out (almost) every day at warung (little restaurant) and doing conversation with the owner and anyone there.

Learning by doing without too much complicated theories of grammar and social contexts.~

Noa, French Guy: First Time Visiting Indonesia, Then Deciding to Live There

For vocation and seeing his sister, he visited Lombok island for the first time.

Lombok island is next to Bali island, also a good tourism destination. In the year 2018, American travel publication Travel+Leisure places Lombok as the 3rd best island, after Java (1st) and Bali (2nd).

Here is a Q&A on his channel: Noa Liepin

“Indonesia is heaven and beautiful”

“It’s earth’s heaven”

“I love Indonesia and that’s because of its local people”

“Yes, I want to live in Indonesia”

“And that is already planned”

“I feel comfortable in here because the local people are very kind”