Typhoon and the Matters of the World

Well, what am I to say?
It is a Friday and a typhoon is coming this weekend. Hurray!!!
I have already been warned, by Sachiko先生, before she left the office today, not to, under any circumstances, go out and run around and dance in the streets in rain when the typhoon comes!
I am rather amazed how well someone can get to know you just from watching you play with their kids and occassionally drinking coffee with you. And I promised not to.

And yes, it is a Friday, the first Friday in this month and so, typhoon still no where to be afraid of, I cycled over to the City Hall to take my pottery class.
Usually, if you don`t use all the clay you are given in the class, you can take it home with you and make things at home, and so, then, when you come to the class next time, you bring your works of art and put them on a designated table so they can continue to dry and get ready for the burning.
Before I started coming to the class, and this is just a pure result of observation, no big-headidness in it or anything, only a piece of evidence to support my claim. Anyway, beforehand, everybody, since indeed it is a traditional Japanese pottery class, used to make simple plates, cups, bowls, vases, tea pots, whatever. But I don`t really like making bowls and vases that much and so when I would come home I would make some beads and pendants and little things you can put on a string and hang them all over yourself. And when I did make a bowl or a cup I would decorate it, with flowers or leaves or drawings and so on.
Since then, everybody started trying to do something similar, about which I was happy. You know, giving inspiration and all that.
In the class there is also this woman who has been doing pottery for about 4 years now. Nice girl, she would help me if I asked her something and explain things to me that I didn`t understand and when she saw my beads she showed me one really pretty bead that she made herself some time ago. She is really good. Her bowls or cups or plates don`t crack in the process of drying like ours and she has a good sense, as they say it here.
And so when I came with my ideas of some more beads and some candle holders (or covers) and she said, uh, it`s really nice, you have a sense, I was really happy.
Though the next class she came with some candle holders herself, things that very much resembled mine ones only they were done in a finer manner, they were more worked, for indeed, she has been doing it for a looong time and obviously knows what to do, how to do and what not to do. But I was fine by it. No problems, I take inspiration from things I see around me all the time.
However, this Friday, she came to the class and when we were all looking at what everybody else made, she, standing next to me, started taking things out of a paper tissue, telling me, `Look what I made. I made some beads and pendants too.` And what I was being shown were my ideas, finer copies of my beads in her hands, followed by, I don`t know, a statement, question, simple stating of the obvious, `I copied yours. I`m sorry.`
I didn`t know what to say. I didn`t feel what I should say at that moment yet. I said, `Cute.`
She left me with a miserable evening, and I know I should not be feeling it that way, but I could not help myself feel cheated big way. She is the one who`s been doing this for 4 years. She is the one we, the rest of us beginners, should copy, and so what she did I felt was utterly unfair.

I am starting to wonder about this all-around-the-world-known Japanese politenes. I think it only reaches as far as the `ごめんなさい`, `すみません`, `しつれいします` (`I`m sorry.`) though I don`t think it roots anywhere deeper than the tongue and a pair of lips. I have experienced a very rude karate先生 who accused me of stealing and was prooved wrong and didn`t even appologize and who treated me with an absolute lack of respect, claiming I had no manners because I was not Japanese and she called all this budo. In budo, I believe respect goes two ways, from the student to the teacher, of course, but there needs to be respect coming from the teacher towards the students too, otherwise the communication must fail. She called upon me not understanding anything because all this matter is based in Japanese culture, and budo, however she also hid her hidious behaviour behind budo, and I think it is close to something I`d call blasphemy. I found more natural respect in my karate club in England than in Japan and I am hurt and so disappointed about it.

There is no difference between people anywhere in the world, I think. People have feelings, negative and positive and mixtures of them, there`s loads!, nevermind where they come from, whether they are Europeans, Asians, Africans, whether they are from Russia or England or Brazil or Japan. Some people don`t say anything about anything, some people shout them out, some people hide them behind other words, but the feeling s are there and they inevitably do have to come out somehow. We are people and there is no escape.

I was only taken aback with this realization, I think my ideology bubble has been pierced in yet one more place,...
However there are always things that are real and you can trust and believe and that shall keep me in that bubble, floating on.

(*Though again, I think my world view needs revisiting, detox and new revelations.)