2025 Zimnako´s Blog

17 December, 2025 ______________ This week's class was about shopping culture in Japan and how it compares to shopping culture in other countries, especially the Netherlands. In many ways, shopping in Japan is quite similar to the Netherlands, but there are also clear differences. One noticeable difference is the way shopping spaces are built. In Japan, shopping malls and stores are often built vertically, with many floors on top of each other due to limited space in cities. In the Netherlands, we have a mix: some shopping centers have multiple floors, but many malls and shopping streets are spread out horizontally with only one or two floors. The survey we did in class also showed how people think differently about customer service. For me, good service means clear communication, a polite attitude, and knowing how to help when I am looking for a product. I do not need over-politeness or bowing. During discussions, I noticed that many students had similar experiences to mine, espec...

 14 December, 2025 ________________ This week we talked about Hofstede’s dimension of short-term versus long-term orientation in politics and society. The Netherlands has a mix of both orientations. Because the Dutch government is built on coalitions with multiple political parties, governments change regularly and priorities shift from left to center to right and back again. As a result, making strong long-term political decisions is often difficult. Many political choices are therefore focused on the short term. Although there are long-term policies in areas such as sustainability and the economy, the issues most important to Dutch citizens right now are groceries, migration, and housing. These problems require immediate solutions, especially because many people have lost trust in politics and want to see direct results. Japan’s government, on the other hand, is much more long-term oriented. Japan has been governed mainly by the same party for decades, which creates stability and...

 3 December, 2025 ___________ This week’s class was about politics, a topic I find especially interesting because I follow politics in the Netherlands. Over the last few years, many people, including me, have lost trust in how politics works in my country. Before elections, politicians say nice and hopeful things, but too often those promises are forgotten afterwards. The political system in the Netherlands works with a democratic, plural-party system: there are several major parties and voters choose between left, center, or right. For more than ten years, right-leaning parties were often in power. Over the last one and a half years, a more extreme right party gained influence, but they still failed to deliver on many promises, eventually a centrist-left coalition won with a narrow margin of about 30,000 votes. In class I also learned something surprising about citizenship law in Japan. Many people (myself included) thought that if your family bloodline has no Japanese ancestor, y...