about amar
Hello, My name is Amar Shamsah. I am a fourth year Biomedical student at the University of Calgary. I am most passionate about science in the medical field as it is my dream to become a doctor. I am an international student studying in Canada all the way from Kuwait. Kuwait is a beautiful country by the Arabian Gulf in the Middle East. I have enrolled in this group study program to learn about Japanese culture and history. Visiting Japan would be an amazing and fun opportunity to learn about Japanese society. I have heard many things about Japanese culture such as their politeness, organization, respect of the elderly and their strong belief in tradition. In my free time I like to play soccer with friends, going to the gym, spending time with family and streaming shows. For our group project we are going to investigate the significance of the Hakodate port where Japan first exposed itself to the outside world. Our second objective will be to investigate the social impact of ice cream in Japan. Going to Japan will be an amazing experience to learn about Japanese history and enjoy a lot of ice cream for academic purposes.
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Favourite place you have travelled to: Iran, Malaysia, Thailand, Canada, UK
Favourite flavour of ice cream?=: Salted Caramel
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Favourite meme:
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Individual blog post #2: ice cream tasting
We have arrived in Japan. Therefore, we will aim to achieve our project goal of investigating the role of ice cream within Japan. We seek to identify ice cream’s impact on Japanese culture and society. We first arrived at Sapporo. Sapporo is a beautiful city with amazing food, scenery and nightlife. There were many ice cream shops. Some ice creams were tried and some were not. In Sapporo the first ice cream I tried was Choco banana, which is a banana on a stick, covered with chocolate and sprinkles and it is frozen. It is only served in the summer time. It cost me 250 yen (2.92 CAD). The taste was not very good the banana tasted old and the chocolate tasted like regular chocolate. This was at a shop in Odori Park at approximately 11 AM. The atmosphere was lively there were many tourists. After, we went under Sapporo tower where we bought Hokkaido cup ice cream. These ice creams were sold in containers and in a freezer. One ice cream cost us 300 yen (3.50 CAD). We ordered one milk flavored and one chocolate flavored Hokkaido ice cream. The milk flavored ice cream tasted milky and not like vanilla it was creamy and melted quickly. Later on the same day, we went to McDonalds to compare the soft serve ice to Calgary McDonalds. We ordered one Soft serve ice cream from there. We all agreed that it tasted exactly like Calgary McDonalds ice cream. However, it felt thicker in texture and melted quickly. It cost us 100 yen (1.17 CAD). Later that day we had some extra time to conduct our own research so we went to a special ice cream place that specialize in serving ice cream that is mixed with alcohol. This showed a new form of ice cream compared to Calgary/Canadian ice cream. However, we did not eat from it was very expensive. Lowest price ice cream was 1500 yen (17.52 CAD). Later we went to Baskin Robbins, which they call 31-ice cream because it has 31 flavors. We took samples of all the ice cream there. The flavors that existed in Canada tasted very similar. This Baskin Robbins had Japanese exclusive flavors such as Matcha and red bean. We tasted both. The Matcha had a
very deep Matcha flavor and a sticky texture the bean tasted new but deliciously beany.
Individual blog post #3: self reflection and other thoughts
The Journey in Japan has been great. Not only did I gain knowledge about the history and culture of Japan, but I also learned a lot about myself.
Through our Journey we visited many historical sites that showed the deep history and rich culture of Japan. We learned how Japan was an enclosed country and how it opened itself to international trade and became the modern country it is today. There was so much interesting history on how this process happened such as the battle of Hakodate, the arrival of Mathew Perry and the opening of the ports. It is truly amazing how these historical events influenced the Japanese culture in Hakodate. However, I have noticed that the attitudes and behaviors of Japanese people remained the same. An example of the change is how the houses are different from each other. Moreover, some houses were westernized, some were traditional and some were a mix of both. I have not seen the western influence on Japanese behavior. I feel like Japanese people are very much traditional in the way they act and carry their selves’ everyday.
For myself I have noticed that my culture is very different and similar to Japanese culture. For example my culture is very loud in gatherings and outings whilst in Japan I noticed it is very calm and quiet in gatherings and everybody acts very formally. We are similar in that we use specific words for people to show respect.
I have leaned many things that will help me grow as an individual. I will proudly try to incorporate what I learned about the amazing politeness and work ethic that the Japanese have in my life.
