Sometimes when you're here, you feel so alone, but these are only moments. Soon after, you have so many options, so many thoughts, and so many different people to talk to. And to think I'm going to be leaving in only three months???
One day this week, it got colder, and I got sick. For one day. I told people, 気分が悪い(kibun ga warui, I feel sick), and that was enough for me to get asked several times that day and the next whether I was feeling okay. Yeah, I'm fine! I used that phrase (note the translation) because I didn't want people to equate my sickness with disease-spreading or bed-ridden connotations. The next day I felt fine, after nine and a half hours of quality sleep, despite that there is still enough dust to which I'm allergic on my blanket to circulate around the room and into my nose. Sleep can ignore the hell out of that. Sleep is one of the most marvelous things available to mankind, and I have learned to respect it more than anything in recent years.
When I asked one of my Japanese friends here where his friend was going, he said "Oh, he's first going to the hospital" and I was initially like, "the hospital??" Then, I remembered what my host family told me: the word for "the doctor's" and "the hospital" is one in the same. They are not separate from each other, even though in the US you know there's a pretty big difference between the two. That word is in the title of this post, and it's pronounced "byouin". "Biyouin," as pointed out by my Japanese textbook and probably all the others, means the hairdresser's, so you better make the "byo" part quick. But yeah, sickness and injury are a big deal here. Maybe this is my father's fault or the fault of whoever it was that told me that people here over-medicate, but I'm going to be sure to tell nobody that my wrist hurts because of frisbee today. You know that throw I can whip out where you backhand on the same side of your body as your throwing arm? Don't do it. It's useless and dangerous because the defender won't see it coming, and since you need it to be closer to the inside of your body to get all your strength, there's no way to get it around the defender and still have it be a strong throw. Unless you're really good. Oh well.
I seriously can't believe I'm going to be gone in three months. I think I'm the only person who's realized how true this is now, and make that less than three months. Geez, that's crazy! I don't know if I'm going to be able to make the parting happily. You know what I mean. I mean, what's in Paris besides the language? Ah, mais c'est beau...
I'm totally zoned in now on Japanese: speaking it, living it, hearing it. Also, I can't wait for the seasonal allergies to subside so that I can totally live in my house without having a sharp hay fever reaction to something in my room all the time.
Also, the best way to not get homesick (and to not suffer from allergies in your room) is to go to bed early. If it weren't for the fact that I'll probably be hanging around with Japanese friends later tonight, that's exactly what my schedule would be on this beautiful Friday. I hope it's not raining now, though. I still have to go back.
Lastly, sometimes desire hits me like a brick here. The best remedy for that, as non-sequitur as it may seem, is frisbee. Making every day a frisbee day makes every day a really awesome day. Man, there's this girl here who is so good at getting open and sooooo gentle and delicate that she kind of just flutters about. She gives the softest handshakes and high-fives ever. Man, I hope whoever she's in love with or whoever she falls in love with takes care of her and treats her right. She's the one I inadvertently smacked in the face when I made a high backhand throw right in front of my body instead of to the left side as it should've been. I'm so glad the bruise is gone or never got there! Also, I think she's stronger than she puts on; she certainly doesn't make that impression with any physical gestures. She's fantastic. And she's only one of the many cool people I've met here. Frisbee is the topping on the Gaidai blueberry muffin: you don't need the rest of the muffin, for one thing, and if you have desire, the Gaidai blueberry muffin is there. I love this place.
^____^
vendredi, septembre 26
lundi, septembre 22
Give me lines to draw.
Today, I finally got to play ultimate frisbee on a real dirt field. Grass was not to be had (in either way), but this marked the first time I've played on real God-made surface since I started playing frisbee on the artificial brick-turf all-purpose field behind one of the academic buildings. Were it not for Dan and a few other people from the Bedford and Concord area, it would probably have been years since I've just played casual Ultimate with a group of friends. I know it's been years since I've played casual Ultimate with you, Ashish---isn't that crazy? How is that possible? Man, I miss those days when we'd play against each other and you'd outrun me on successful cuts. Why didn't I play more back then? Too scared, too fragile... I never had the gusto for team sports.
One thing I'm not too good at is working together with people. I realized that today in relation to something over here in Japan, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is. It was a great example, and hopefully I'll recall what it was and put it here. But for now, it was just one of those brief, passing profound thoughts that you try to remember a day later and you just can't. This one was good blog material, though! It was the example that makes the proof, to put a mathematician's perspective on this. Ugh, what was it...
Ah, yes. It might have had something to do with not going to the 1 PM class that I was thinking of adding. Several of my most awesome friends here at Kansai are in that class, and after seeing an example of a reading that we would have to do, I shied away from entering the room. See, today was the deadline for adding classes, so I'll never have the chance to get in that class again. Furthermore, since I would've had to drop the sociology class I'm taking that's getting better recently, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend an hour and twenty minutes sitting in a class I might not like enough. I did that on Thursday and was reluctant to do it again. So I didn't go to the class. But then, after going downstairs and checking to see whether my credit request for the sociology class was approved (which it wasn't), I decided to go upstairs and enter if people were still entering. But everyone was already there, and though the bell hadn't rung yet, I was too much of a 恥ずかしがりや(hazukashigariya, shy/easily embarrassed person) to go through the introductions necessary for me to take a seat in that class at that time.
This, as you may be expecting, stirred some thought within me. I told myself, "Well, the second half of the semester would've been all student presentations, and you didn't want to sit through that, right?" Then I realized...
B: Yes, but you would've had the opportunity to commiserate and work with your friends in this class, and make it easier to hang out with them as a result.
A: But friends don't become friends through work. Don't you remember that? You believe that friends really feel like friends when there's time to chill and relax.
B: I think you really know who your friends are when you need them the most.
A: I think you need them the most when it's time to chill and relax. And sometimes the time to chill and relax for one person is not the same for the other, and that's when friendship really comes through.
B: True, but...
But what Bさん would point out to Aさん next is that maybe I didn't really want to bother with the work part. Maybe even the thought of working together was something I didn't want, even with friends.
But work can be art. The two are intersecting sets, and for sure the drawing of lines on the dirt of what became our Ultimate field was something I missed dearly from home: the opportunity to make art with other people. Yes, even that is art to me, and for some reason, I feel so much more alive now having played on a real, man-made field, lines drawn out and sunset drawn out to the end of the game.
When I played duets with people or accompanied them on the piano as they sung, that was undeniably art. Sometimes some things aren't as evidently art, but they're undeniably art to me. I think I've finally found a (new) good reason that I do so many random things and don't concentrate on one thing. Each thing, in its own way, is in some way art.
And for me, going to Japan and seeing Japan is not appreciating art. It's drawing a picture within this picture that's appreciating art. It's making it.
One thing I'm not too good at is working together with people. I realized that today in relation to something over here in Japan, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is. It was a great example, and hopefully I'll recall what it was and put it here. But for now, it was just one of those brief, passing profound thoughts that you try to remember a day later and you just can't. This one was good blog material, though! It was the example that makes the proof, to put a mathematician's perspective on this. Ugh, what was it...
Ah, yes. It might have had something to do with not going to the 1 PM class that I was thinking of adding. Several of my most awesome friends here at Kansai are in that class, and after seeing an example of a reading that we would have to do, I shied away from entering the room. See, today was the deadline for adding classes, so I'll never have the chance to get in that class again. Furthermore, since I would've had to drop the sociology class I'm taking that's getting better recently, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend an hour and twenty minutes sitting in a class I might not like enough. I did that on Thursday and was reluctant to do it again. So I didn't go to the class. But then, after going downstairs and checking to see whether my credit request for the sociology class was approved (which it wasn't), I decided to go upstairs and enter if people were still entering. But everyone was already there, and though the bell hadn't rung yet, I was too much of a 恥ずかしがりや(hazukashigariya, shy/easily embarrassed person) to go through the introductions necessary for me to take a seat in that class at that time.
This, as you may be expecting, stirred some thought within me. I told myself, "Well, the second half of the semester would've been all student presentations, and you didn't want to sit through that, right?" Then I realized...
B: Yes, but you would've had the opportunity to commiserate and work with your friends in this class, and make it easier to hang out with them as a result.
A: But friends don't become friends through work. Don't you remember that? You believe that friends really feel like friends when there's time to chill and relax.
B: I think you really know who your friends are when you need them the most.
A: I think you need them the most when it's time to chill and relax. And sometimes the time to chill and relax for one person is not the same for the other, and that's when friendship really comes through.
B: True, but...
But what Bさん would point out to Aさん next is that maybe I didn't really want to bother with the work part. Maybe even the thought of working together was something I didn't want, even with friends.
But work can be art. The two are intersecting sets, and for sure the drawing of lines on the dirt of what became our Ultimate field was something I missed dearly from home: the opportunity to make art with other people. Yes, even that is art to me, and for some reason, I feel so much more alive now having played on a real, man-made field, lines drawn out and sunset drawn out to the end of the game.
When I played duets with people or accompanied them on the piano as they sung, that was undeniably art. Sometimes some things aren't as evidently art, but they're undeniably art to me. I think I've finally found a (new) good reason that I do so many random things and don't concentrate on one thing. Each thing, in its own way, is in some way art.
And for me, going to Japan and seeing Japan is not appreciating art. It's drawing a picture within this picture that's appreciating art. It's making it.
Aenigma
The other day I went to Nashinoki Shrine (梨木神社, nashinoki-jinja) in Kyoto with a friend of mine, a little shrine perfectly hidden on the east side of (the outside of, bien sûr) the Imperial Palace. I literally would've walked right past it had I not asked a woman passing by where it was. It was concealed underneath a fairly dense set of bamboo trees, and the entrance was quite narrow, as though the shrine never anticipated welcoming touristy foreigners. But inside, the shrine was a world of its own. The flowers on the shrine grounds didn't need the outside world's sunlight to bloom in full splendor. There was a walkway leading to the south gate lined with these flowering bushes that created the most serene picture my eyes have taken recently. Did my mind have to be serene too かなあ。。。(I wonder)... in order for the picture to be serene?
I wonder how many people are coming here in part to ease their minds. I don't know whether I did. I wonder how much Japan can help that.
We passed by the grounds surrounding the Imperial Palace. Abandoned. Nobody was there. It was quite a change, if for just a moment. I showed Huey the boulangerie (bakery; in Japanese パン屋/panya) I passed on the way to meeting her, and let me tell you, Japan needs more bakeries, because they do baking right, if at a little bit of an expensive price.
We walked down the river "to get water at the 100 yen store," but I think both of us just wanted to walk down the river. It was beautiful, utterly cool. Man, Kyoto's air is so much better than Boston's, in quality, at least. But if you opened a bottle in Boston, closed it and sent it for me to open over here, I bet that the pleasure that I would feel if the scent of Boston trigged memories of home, Tufts, and Boston would be significantly greater. Still, it was great to talk about that and then sit down and watch the fish jump to no avail against the waterfall created by a slight dam in the water. We strolled down further and saw a homeless woman and all her possessions in order next to the river. What does she do when it floods? I wondered. Then, I looked back, and the mountains in the background had suddenly grown in size. I observed this out loud, and Huey reminded me of the fact that the further you get from something, the more you want it; the bigger it looks.
We finally reached the 100-yen shop, and after that BOOK OFF, where I got a CD by the European dance artist Neja, who provided Boston with the hit "Back 4 the Morning" that Star 93.7 played until Star 93.7 ceased to exist. The CD didn't have that track on it, regrettably.
30 minutes later (I'm a slow shopper), we found a restaurant called Ootoya and got some delicious, cheaply priced food. Huey took pictures. My taste buds were pretty happy, and we returned home on the limited-express train from 三条駅(Sanjou-eki, Sanjo station). I waved goodbye, つかれた(tsukareta, tired), and biked home slow.
What's missing from this post?
I wonder how many people are coming here in part to ease their minds. I don't know whether I did. I wonder how much Japan can help that.
We passed by the grounds surrounding the Imperial Palace. Abandoned. Nobody was there. It was quite a change, if for just a moment. I showed Huey the boulangerie (bakery; in Japanese パン屋/panya) I passed on the way to meeting her, and let me tell you, Japan needs more bakeries, because they do baking right, if at a little bit of an expensive price.
We walked down the river "to get water at the 100 yen store," but I think both of us just wanted to walk down the river. It was beautiful, utterly cool. Man, Kyoto's air is so much better than Boston's, in quality, at least. But if you opened a bottle in Boston, closed it and sent it for me to open over here, I bet that the pleasure that I would feel if the scent of Boston trigged memories of home, Tufts, and Boston would be significantly greater. Still, it was great to talk about that and then sit down and watch the fish jump to no avail against the waterfall created by a slight dam in the water. We strolled down further and saw a homeless woman and all her possessions in order next to the river. What does she do when it floods? I wondered. Then, I looked back, and the mountains in the background had suddenly grown in size. I observed this out loud, and Huey reminded me of the fact that the further you get from something, the more you want it; the bigger it looks.
We finally reached the 100-yen shop, and after that BOOK OFF, where I got a CD by the European dance artist Neja, who provided Boston with the hit "Back 4 the Morning" that Star 93.7 played until Star 93.7 ceased to exist. The CD didn't have that track on it, regrettably.
30 minutes later (I'm a slow shopper), we found a restaurant called Ootoya and got some delicious, cheaply priced food. Huey took pictures. My taste buds were pretty happy, and we returned home on the limited-express train from 三条駅(Sanjou-eki, Sanjo station). I waved goodbye, つかれた(tsukareta, tired), and biked home slow.
What's missing from this post?
samedi, septembre 20
On top of Kyoto
As I walked down a Kyoto street somewhat near 出町柳駅(Demachiyanagi station) on the Keihan line, listening to Yoyoy Villame sing how "according to our geography, Philippines is a great country," ...well, okay, nothing really happened, I just wanted to throw that out there.
Kyoto was great today. More tomorrow.
Kyoto was great today. More tomorrow.
vendredi, septembre 19
Japan and Europe
Kansai Gaidai University is a place where many international students come to study Japanese, and where many Japanese students come to study primarily English, among an assortment of other foreign languages. I have met people from Estonia (well, I haven't met him, but I know he's Estonian), Latvia, Sweden, South Africa, France, Germany, Finland, Oklahoma, and other foreign places. Oh yeah, and the Aussies.
For most of the Europeans I have brought up the topic of Eurovision. You know me. I can't help it. So far I have gotten negative reactions on Dima Bilan from both Russians, and the girl hates the Shady Lady because his composer is too flamboyant and ubiquitous. Outwardly I smiled, but I was frowning somewhere deep inside my little stomach. I informed the Latvian as to the pirate infestation in his country, and he said that it was a "fun song" after I played it for him from my iPod.
I have also met a Belgian girl. This was the most peculiar case. She, so far, is the only individual I've met who says she has trouble finding food she likes in Japan. That's crazy. I guess she isn't used to finding curry mysteriously inserted into what appears to be French bread at the bakery. Speaking of that, I should get my ass over there before the bakery closes.
And speaking of "ass" and other words, I realize that two blogs ago I have somewhat of a swear-laced, angsty tirade. That is okay. I think words are worth a thousand pictures, and this gives you a picture of what can go wrong when you're about 一万 (ichiman, ten thousand) miles from home, or wait, do I actually know how far I am from home? It doesn't matter, really. If I were talking to Japanese people about this, I'd have to convert it to キロ(kiro, kilometers or kilometres for all you Canadian spirits out there) first anyway. In any case, what I mean is that I can't guarantee I will convert to putting pictures in my blog, and I can't guarantee I'll keep it clean. The one thing I'll keep it is honest.
But let's go back about 23903キロ to ベルギー(berugi, Belgium). I had to look up the word for Belgium last night for my homework, because I was writing some sentence about how "since she's from Belgium, she can understand a lot of languages" or something, and I found this word among the search results: にっぱく, which has kanji 日白. This word means "Japan and Belgium." If you change the kanji to 日伯, the pronunciation stays the same (にっぱく, nippaku), and the meaning is "Japan and Brazil." What the hell?
Japan and Europe have some weird ways of coming together. Right now I am all excited about the fact that in mid-2009 there will be an Asiavision contest in the style of Eurovision, with similar logos, and it will have about 15 countries in Eastern Asia competing. I can't remember whether India's included, but I know Japan, China, Macao, Hong Kong, Indonesia and the Philippines will all be involved. That's tiiiight.
Bye bye!
For most of the Europeans I have brought up the topic of Eurovision. You know me. I can't help it. So far I have gotten negative reactions on Dima Bilan from both Russians, and the girl hates the Shady Lady because his composer is too flamboyant and ubiquitous. Outwardly I smiled, but I was frowning somewhere deep inside my little stomach. I informed the Latvian as to the pirate infestation in his country, and he said that it was a "fun song" after I played it for him from my iPod.
I have also met a Belgian girl. This was the most peculiar case. She, so far, is the only individual I've met who says she has trouble finding food she likes in Japan. That's crazy. I guess she isn't used to finding curry mysteriously inserted into what appears to be French bread at the bakery. Speaking of that, I should get my ass over there before the bakery closes.
And speaking of "ass" and other words, I realize that two blogs ago I have somewhat of a swear-laced, angsty tirade. That is okay. I think words are worth a thousand pictures, and this gives you a picture of what can go wrong when you're about 一万 (ichiman, ten thousand) miles from home, or wait, do I actually know how far I am from home? It doesn't matter, really. If I were talking to Japanese people about this, I'd have to convert it to キロ(kiro, kilometers or kilometres for all you Canadian spirits out there) first anyway. In any case, what I mean is that I can't guarantee I will convert to putting pictures in my blog, and I can't guarantee I'll keep it clean. The one thing I'll keep it is honest.
But let's go back about 23903キロ to ベルギー(berugi, Belgium). I had to look up the word for Belgium last night for my homework, because I was writing some sentence about how "since she's from Belgium, she can understand a lot of languages" or something, and I found this word among the search results: にっぱく, which has kanji 日白. This word means "Japan and Belgium." If you change the kanji to 日伯, the pronunciation stays the same (にっぱく, nippaku), and the meaning is "Japan and Brazil." What the hell?
Japan and Europe have some weird ways of coming together. Right now I am all excited about the fact that in mid-2009 there will be an Asiavision contest in the style of Eurovision, with similar logos, and it will have about 15 countries in Eastern Asia competing. I can't remember whether India's included, but I know Japan, China, Macao, Hong Kong, Indonesia and the Philippines will all be involved. That's tiiiight.
Bye bye!
jeudi, septembre 18
Amen
Everything is much better with my host family now, or at least I'm 90% sure. I talked to the people at the CIE (Center for International Education) office here and got everything sorted out; they called my host family and everything's good.
Here's what happened. Remember the saga of the gym shorts? My homestay mother thought that these were, to quote the person who helped me out at the office, "the most precious pair of shorts" that I'd ever had and she thought it was totally her fault that she lost them. Well, I did give them to her to wash, or I'm pretty sure I did, but I gave her a hell of a lot of clothes, and since usually people don't wash so many clothes at a time here (they do laundry every day), it's really my fault that they're lost. NO idea where they went, but never mind; it's okay. Of course, even though I said "心配しないでください" (shinpai shinaide kudasai, don't worry), that's exactly what my host mother did. And I should've seen it coming.
That was just the first part. The second was that my host father observed that sometimes, at night, I will go downstairs and sneeze and have to blow my nose. Now picture two nights ago, 11:45 PM. I go downstairs because I think that maybe my room is too dusty or something, and I need to study for this important test that will determine whether I stay in the class that I managed to get into for Japanese reading and writing. My host father is waiting there like a cat to pounce on me. "鼻の病気がある？" (hana no byouki ga aru, do you have a cold affecting your nose), he says. I said no, it's probably an allergy to dust or something.
Stop. He whips out the form that I submitted to Kansai Gaidai before I came here, containing info integral to my homestay experience. He points out on the form that I didn't put down dust as one of my allergies. Now, this was one confusing conversation, and it's a pain to go over it again. I eventually figured out that I should tell him that in America, we don't really think of putting down dust as an allergy, because everyone has problems if there's too much dust. I wasn't gonna bother explaining how these problems manifest themselves differently, and for me it happens to be that I sneeze and have to blow my nose for a little while. I tried to explain how the laundry room was too dusty, and how my room's curtains might be too dusty (which they are). Also, I told him that maybe it's the cat dust blowing in from the outside when I open the window. (Hmm, I notice that yesterday when I came back the window was not open. Good thing. Again, this was two nights ago, so maybe this had an effect.) He was really frustrated this whole time and he asked me if I was okay at the Seminar House, where I stayed temporarily before the homestay. I realized that it kind of sounded like a suggestion that I should move out, and because he seemed angry and/or frustrated, it was scary. This was not good. He told me, "外大を相談して" (Gaidai o soudanshite, consult Kansai Gaidai). What the hell?
So after two hours of agonizing and studying, I went to bed. The next day, I was really sad and depressed (what was going on? why was he so tense last night? does this mean I won't be living in a homestay?), to be quite honest, and until I finally got help from Hashimoto-san at the CIE office that was not a fun day. Thank God for Hashimoto-san, by the way. Without her I wouldn't be very happy today either. I explained everything to her. My main problem, I said, was this: Why is it that they take these as major problems when for me they're such minor problems? They're just gym shorts and dust. Geez. She told me she was going to call them that night, which she did, and I feel much, much better now, and I hope my homestay family does too. They should. If Japanese people can't communicate with Japanese people, then I'm in trouble, but I'm pretty sure that they can communicate in Japanese much better than I can in between my Japanese and my English bailout explanations.
So that's what happened yesterday, forever endeavor amen.
You never thought about that, did you? "Forever and ever," "forever endeavor"... I think it'd be a good band name. So guess what; it's my band name now. And right now I'm the only one in the band. In other words, don't take my band name, homies.
Japan is good again. I am redeemed. Japan is redeemed.
In two words: culture shock. I guess I should've known it'd happen eventually. And it's a royal pain in the ass.
Here's what happened. Remember the saga of the gym shorts? My homestay mother thought that these were, to quote the person who helped me out at the office, "the most precious pair of shorts" that I'd ever had and she thought it was totally her fault that she lost them. Well, I did give them to her to wash, or I'm pretty sure I did, but I gave her a hell of a lot of clothes, and since usually people don't wash so many clothes at a time here (they do laundry every day), it's really my fault that they're lost. NO idea where they went, but never mind; it's okay. Of course, even though I said "心配しないでください" (shinpai shinaide kudasai, don't worry), that's exactly what my host mother did. And I should've seen it coming.
That was just the first part. The second was that my host father observed that sometimes, at night, I will go downstairs and sneeze and have to blow my nose. Now picture two nights ago, 11:45 PM. I go downstairs because I think that maybe my room is too dusty or something, and I need to study for this important test that will determine whether I stay in the class that I managed to get into for Japanese reading and writing. My host father is waiting there like a cat to pounce on me. "鼻の病気がある？" (hana no byouki ga aru, do you have a cold affecting your nose), he says. I said no, it's probably an allergy to dust or something.
Stop. He whips out the form that I submitted to Kansai Gaidai before I came here, containing info integral to my homestay experience. He points out on the form that I didn't put down dust as one of my allergies. Now, this was one confusing conversation, and it's a pain to go over it again. I eventually figured out that I should tell him that in America, we don't really think of putting down dust as an allergy, because everyone has problems if there's too much dust. I wasn't gonna bother explaining how these problems manifest themselves differently, and for me it happens to be that I sneeze and have to blow my nose for a little while. I tried to explain how the laundry room was too dusty, and how my room's curtains might be too dusty (which they are). Also, I told him that maybe it's the cat dust blowing in from the outside when I open the window. (Hmm, I notice that yesterday when I came back the window was not open. Good thing. Again, this was two nights ago, so maybe this had an effect.) He was really frustrated this whole time and he asked me if I was okay at the Seminar House, where I stayed temporarily before the homestay. I realized that it kind of sounded like a suggestion that I should move out, and because he seemed angry and/or frustrated, it was scary. This was not good. He told me, "外大を相談して" (Gaidai o soudanshite, consult Kansai Gaidai). What the hell?
So after two hours of agonizing and studying, I went to bed. The next day, I was really sad and depressed (what was going on? why was he so tense last night? does this mean I won't be living in a homestay?), to be quite honest, and until I finally got help from Hashimoto-san at the CIE office that was not a fun day. Thank God for Hashimoto-san, by the way. Without her I wouldn't be very happy today either. I explained everything to her. My main problem, I said, was this: Why is it that they take these as major problems when for me they're such minor problems? They're just gym shorts and dust. Geez. She told me she was going to call them that night, which she did, and I feel much, much better now, and I hope my homestay family does too. They should. If Japanese people can't communicate with Japanese people, then I'm in trouble, but I'm pretty sure that they can communicate in Japanese much better than I can in between my Japanese and my English bailout explanations.
So that's what happened yesterday, forever endeavor amen.
You never thought about that, did you? "Forever and ever," "forever endeavor"... I think it'd be a good band name. So guess what; it's my band name now. And right now I'm the only one in the band. In other words, don't take my band name, homies.
Japan is good again. I am redeemed. Japan is redeemed.
In two words: culture shock. I guess I should've known it'd happen eventually. And it's a royal pain in the ass.
mardi, septembre 16
Forever endeavor
This is a brief update to demarcate the worst part in my Japan trip, because if it's not then this trip wasn't worth it. I will explain later, but it involves me perhaps moving out soon. Learn more tomorrow by reading 日本でMY感動!!!
All I can say is that I came here to chill out and explore, not to be hounded by restrictions beyond my understanding. Also, apart from a temporary boost in my Japanese, I'm definitely gaining nothing academically from this trip. At least I can gain an understanding of Japan's restrictions?
But right now, when I am trying to study for a very important test that will determine whether I stay in my Japanese reading and writing class, I do NOT appreciate this shit: having to be reminded about the possible downsides and losses that I could've gotten by going here, reminded that I am a silly distance from home, reminded of things too trivial and unimportant for any one of them to finish this tricolon that I can deal with myself anyway.
What I just don't understand is how hospitality works here. Since when is it hospitable to chide someone on his contradictions when he's trying to make it easier for you to be hospitable? Jesus Christ, give me some help here. This time I'm not using your name in vain.
This shit is bananas. God. The number one thing I want to ask my host family that will not translate in any way is this: can we chill? Seriously.
I notice that today marked the last day for Tufts students to add classes. I also thought that finally being able to buy a cellphone today marked the end of me possibly seriously considering going back home, considering what life would be if I stayed at Tufts, taking math courses, living off campus, totally independent of university housing rules, or at least much more independent than last year, nothing to worry about because I'd be waaaaaay ahead of the game for math graduate school. But did I choose that easy route? No.
If I move out, I've got a Hobson's choice, but at least I can take it: move on. But h-what am I doing here?
And I'll be up and early, on probably five hours of sleep, no more, tomorrow morning. Confessingly not bright, not jovial, ... this communication barrier is too thick. At least my face can do the trick.
I can't help but feel maybe my Japanese teacher was right when she said I shouldn't study abroad. And now I've got to deal with the consequences of my actions.
Sigh.
All I can say is that I came here to chill out and explore, not to be hounded by restrictions beyond my understanding. Also, apart from a temporary boost in my Japanese, I'm definitely gaining nothing academically from this trip. At least I can gain an understanding of Japan's restrictions?
But right now, when I am trying to study for a very important test that will determine whether I stay in my Japanese reading and writing class, I do NOT appreciate this shit: having to be reminded about the possible downsides and losses that I could've gotten by going here, reminded that I am a silly distance from home, reminded of things too trivial and unimportant for any one of them to finish this tricolon that I can deal with myself anyway.
What I just don't understand is how hospitality works here. Since when is it hospitable to chide someone on his contradictions when he's trying to make it easier for you to be hospitable? Jesus Christ, give me some help here. This time I'm not using your name in vain.
This shit is bananas. God. The number one thing I want to ask my host family that will not translate in any way is this: can we chill? Seriously.
I notice that today marked the last day for Tufts students to add classes. I also thought that finally being able to buy a cellphone today marked the end of me possibly seriously considering going back home, considering what life would be if I stayed at Tufts, taking math courses, living off campus, totally independent of university housing rules, or at least much more independent than last year, nothing to worry about because I'd be waaaaaay ahead of the game for math graduate school. But did I choose that easy route? No.
If I move out, I've got a Hobson's choice, but at least I can take it: move on. But h-what am I doing here?
And I'll be up and early, on probably five hours of sleep, no more, tomorrow morning. Confessingly not bright, not jovial, ... this communication barrier is too thick. At least my face can do the trick.
I can't help but feel maybe my Japanese teacher was right when she said I shouldn't study abroad. And now I've got to deal with the consequences of my actions.
Sigh.
lundi, septembre 15
Japan blues
You can't do something big everyday, even if you're in Japan. That's why I did nothing big today, except perhaps you might call it big that I played Shanghai III 2-player with one of the guys here that I met through frisbee. On an arcade machine! That was awesome. I still prefer the old really quick joysticks from that machine we used to play on in Vancouver, Titus.
I did my work today, but very slowly, and I spent too much of the day on the computer. I spent some of it biking, under a slight rain. I also bought a 93¢ umbrella (converted to American, but not including tax) that really did not do its job and made me bump into things while I was on my bike. Probably not using that again.
I biked around out of frustration that my room was too dusty, or that the house was too dusty, or that I was inhaling dust from SOMEWHERE. I think closing the window solved the problem. Maybe it's because of the neighbors' cats, which I'm certainly allergic to. It might also be the fact that I failed to vacuum my blanket, which I certainly should have.
Part two in the saga of the missing gym shorts: when my host mother gave me back my gray gym shorts from the same brand, I reached inside and found something I'd never seen before: a price tag from Barnes and Noble that said Champion athletic. Wait, what? I didn't get these shorts from there... Oops, I just solved this mystery by thinking about it right now while I was typing. Yeah, first of all, the brand's different, and second of all, my mom must've bought one of the presents I gave to my host family from Barnes and Noble. (So the tag from one of the shirts I gave them got sent through the laundry into my pocket.) They've been using the t-shirts and apparently abstaining from eating the chocolate. I can't blame them. Tonight, I finished off this red bean mushy thing from like three days ago (Galen, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't be doing things like this) because I was really craving sugar food (e.g. brain food) and because it didn't look like mold had any effect on it. Well, I feel kind of weird now, and it's from the beans, not the mold if there was any. I think that if I were following traditional Japanese dining rules, I shouldn't have eaten that. To think about how healthy this society is! (At least when it comes to dining. To daily life, that's debatable.)
I'm using my chopsticks that I no longer use for eating as a support for my left wrist, because the laptop is wayyy too hot where my left wrist is supposed to sit.
I have a wicked hard "review test" for my reading and writing class on Wednesday, and the same day I have a vocabulary test, and I don't know how much I have to study just yet. Probably all of the list. Instead of getting ahead for that I was reading my sociology stuff for Wednesday (I'm skipping the econs reading for today) and it wasn't very exciting. Some of the stuff the person was explaining was extremely obvious and just needed some extreme clipping. Didn't manage to finish it, and I need to go to bed now so I can wake up in eight and a half hours.
I'm awaiting your comments, and an email (or two? the nonexistent suspense!!!). I know that everyone else's blog has pictures, but that's not how I roll. If you want pure, unblogadulterated pictures, you can go to my Flickr or the other obvious source. I suppose I should link the Flickr, but I need to sleep waah.
Yeah, I'll put it on the sidebar.
Also, the TV was showing a pretty powerful... argh, mot juste (translation: what's the right word... Flaubert was always looking for the mot juste btw so you know I'm literary)... insight (forget the last words. I've studied surrealism too and at least in France they had fun forgetting what they just wrote down) into the lives of wives who had gone to Iraq and come back completely traumatized. Makes the editorial in the Tufts Daily today (yesterday?) about McCain and winning the war in Iraq (winning? haven't we learned that there's no concrete way to say you've won, especially when you messed up in the first place by going there?) look completely barbaric. I'm filing for my absentee ballot.
I'm sorry that this blog is more personal than Japanese today, but I'm also going to add a little note that Georgia dropped out of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest which is going to be held in Russia. Haha, there was no way they were going to be able to outdo themselves on "Peace Will Come" anyway... maybe they'll send the US in their place?
I was hoping Tufts would have a segment on what the IR and poli-sci professors were saying on the South Ossetian conflict and the US's reenactment of Commodore Perry's 100%-purely-peaceful-nope-yep-nothing-going-on-here-WARSHIP-nothing's-wrong entry into Japan, anyway... really more of my tax dollars are going to stirring up tensions in foreign countries? Enough.
I did my work today, but very slowly, and I spent too much of the day on the computer. I spent some of it biking, under a slight rain. I also bought a 93¢ umbrella (converted to American, but not including tax) that really did not do its job and made me bump into things while I was on my bike. Probably not using that again.
I biked around out of frustration that my room was too dusty, or that the house was too dusty, or that I was inhaling dust from SOMEWHERE. I think closing the window solved the problem. Maybe it's because of the neighbors' cats, which I'm certainly allergic to. It might also be the fact that I failed to vacuum my blanket, which I certainly should have.
Part two in the saga of the missing gym shorts: when my host mother gave me back my gray gym shorts from the same brand, I reached inside and found something I'd never seen before: a price tag from Barnes and Noble that said Champion athletic. Wait, what? I didn't get these shorts from there... Oops, I just solved this mystery by thinking about it right now while I was typing. Yeah, first of all, the brand's different, and second of all, my mom must've bought one of the presents I gave to my host family from Barnes and Noble. (So the tag from one of the shirts I gave them got sent through the laundry into my pocket.) They've been using the t-shirts and apparently abstaining from eating the chocolate. I can't blame them. Tonight, I finished off this red bean mushy thing from like three days ago (Galen, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't be doing things like this) because I was really craving sugar food (e.g. brain food) and because it didn't look like mold had any effect on it. Well, I feel kind of weird now, and it's from the beans, not the mold if there was any. I think that if I were following traditional Japanese dining rules, I shouldn't have eaten that. To think about how healthy this society is! (At least when it comes to dining. To daily life, that's debatable.)
I'm using my chopsticks that I no longer use for eating as a support for my left wrist, because the laptop is wayyy too hot where my left wrist is supposed to sit.
I have a wicked hard "review test" for my reading and writing class on Wednesday, and the same day I have a vocabulary test, and I don't know how much I have to study just yet. Probably all of the list. Instead of getting ahead for that I was reading my sociology stuff for Wednesday (I'm skipping the econs reading for today) and it wasn't very exciting. Some of the stuff the person was explaining was extremely obvious and just needed some extreme clipping. Didn't manage to finish it, and I need to go to bed now so I can wake up in eight and a half hours.
I'm awaiting your comments, and an email (or two? the nonexistent suspense!!!). I know that everyone else's blog has pictures, but that's not how I roll. If you want pure, unblogadulterated pictures, you can go to my Flickr or the other obvious source. I suppose I should link the Flickr, but I need to sleep waah.
Yeah, I'll put it on the sidebar.
Also, the TV was showing a pretty powerful... argh, mot juste (translation: what's the right word... Flaubert was always looking for the mot juste btw so you know I'm literary)... insight (forget the last words. I've studied surrealism too and at least in France they had fun forgetting what they just wrote down) into the lives of wives who had gone to Iraq and come back completely traumatized. Makes the editorial in the Tufts Daily today (yesterday?) about McCain and winning the war in Iraq (winning? haven't we learned that there's no concrete way to say you've won, especially when you messed up in the first place by going there?) look completely barbaric. I'm filing for my absentee ballot.
I'm sorry that this blog is more personal than Japanese today, but I'm also going to add a little note that Georgia dropped out of the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest which is going to be held in Russia. Haha, there was no way they were going to be able to outdo themselves on "Peace Will Come" anyway... maybe they'll send the US in their place?
I was hoping Tufts would have a segment on what the IR and poli-sci professors were saying on the South Ossetian conflict and the US's reenactment of Commodore Perry's 100%-purely-peaceful-nope-yep-nothing-going-on-here-WARSHIP-nothing's-wrong entry into Japan, anyway... really more of my tax dollars are going to stirring up tensions in foreign countries? Enough.
vendredi, septembre 12
More frisbee
Yeah, I forgot to mention in the last freewrite that we were practicing our lefty forehands, none of us lefties, and the Japanese guys pretty much figured out how to do it right away. I tried again today and I still can't do it. I just added basically this little bit to the last freewrite, er, blog entry, so, it's there now. Complete.
And I'm completely exhausted. My breath is short right now because I'm exercising too much. Also, the tap water tastes as though it were mixed with perfume, which isn't good. If it's not cold enough, it tastes like tobacco. Oh, and there goes my right ear, starting to hurt. This is the first time in a while one of my ears has started to hurt. I think I need to go back to relaxing again. Hopefully I won't be walking amok all across Kyoto tomorrow. The four of us Tufts-Kansai people are getting together with the Tufts-Columbia people (Columbia has a program in Kyoto) in Kyoto, and the last time I was in Kyoto, I was walking around way too much led by three female tour guides, two of whom were wearing high-heels. Geez.
The last three days, this has been my routine: Wake up at 7:30 (today, 8:30), bike vehemently to school and get there in 15 minutes, which is more than early enough to get to my first class at 9:00 (today, 10:00), in which time I ascend a hill ridiculously steep and basically run out of breath before I reach the top (and the point at which I run out of breath has gotten earlier and earlier), cross the street, and bike a straight shot to the South Gate, and then huff it up two slight inclines, continuing to pedal faster so that I can coast into the bike parking lot, go to classes, sit around in the lounge sometimes, sometimes bored, sometimes conversing with a lively group of people, go to 7-Eleven at least once (if you had told me I'd be going to 7-eleven every day in Japan to eat delicious bread products I would've never believed you), eat usually the same カツ丼(katsu don) lunch every time, play frisbee for 50 minutes with an awesome group of people, including both 日本人 and 外人 (Japanese people and foreigners), toss for another 50 minutes, and leave on my bike, pedaling faster and faster until I get to the hill where eventually I don't have to pedal anymore, hand on the brake to make sure I don't fall into the traffic coming up behind me, balance steady to make sure I don't flip over onto the sidewalk, another smaller hill, the downtown area, and home, where I eat dinner, saying いただきます (itadakimasu, humble form of "I receive") at the beginning and ごちそうさまでした (gochisousamadeshita, it was delicious) once I'm done, do stomach crunches on the floor of the room where the washing machine is (I think this is why I'm sneezing a lot), take as cold of a shower as possible (regrettably 35ºC, as displayed by the water temperature control panel, is not cold enough, and that's as low as it goes), and go to bed, maybe sneezing beforehand, and sleep through the night (except for last night when I woke up and had to sneeze a LOT). Hopefully tonight the sneezing will change, because I intend on cleaning my room.
Tomorrow, it's 京都(Kyoto) time.
And I'm completely exhausted. My breath is short right now because I'm exercising too much. Also, the tap water tastes as though it were mixed with perfume, which isn't good. If it's not cold enough, it tastes like tobacco. Oh, and there goes my right ear, starting to hurt. This is the first time in a while one of my ears has started to hurt. I think I need to go back to relaxing again. Hopefully I won't be walking amok all across Kyoto tomorrow. The four of us Tufts-Kansai people are getting together with the Tufts-Columbia people (Columbia has a program in Kyoto) in Kyoto, and the last time I was in Kyoto, I was walking around way too much led by three female tour guides, two of whom were wearing high-heels. Geez.
The last three days, this has been my routine: Wake up at 7:30 (today, 8:30), bike vehemently to school and get there in 15 minutes, which is more than early enough to get to my first class at 9:00 (today, 10:00), in which time I ascend a hill ridiculously steep and basically run out of breath before I reach the top (and the point at which I run out of breath has gotten earlier and earlier), cross the street, and bike a straight shot to the South Gate, and then huff it up two slight inclines, continuing to pedal faster so that I can coast into the bike parking lot, go to classes, sit around in the lounge sometimes, sometimes bored, sometimes conversing with a lively group of people, go to 7-Eleven at least once (if you had told me I'd be going to 7-eleven every day in Japan to eat delicious bread products I would've never believed you), eat usually the same カツ丼(katsu don) lunch every time, play frisbee for 50 minutes with an awesome group of people, including both 日本人 and 外人 (Japanese people and foreigners), toss for another 50 minutes, and leave on my bike, pedaling faster and faster until I get to the hill where eventually I don't have to pedal anymore, hand on the brake to make sure I don't fall into the traffic coming up behind me, balance steady to make sure I don't flip over onto the sidewalk, another smaller hill, the downtown area, and home, where I eat dinner, saying いただきます (itadakimasu, humble form of "I receive") at the beginning and ごちそうさまでした (gochisousamadeshita, it was delicious) once I'm done, do stomach crunches on the floor of the room where the washing machine is (I think this is why I'm sneezing a lot), take as cold of a shower as possible (regrettably 35ºC, as displayed by the water temperature control panel, is not cold enough, and that's as low as it goes), and go to bed, maybe sneezing beforehand, and sleep through the night (except for last night when I woke up and had to sneeze a LOT). Hopefully tonight the sneezing will change, because I intend on cleaning my room.
Tomorrow, it's 京都(Kyoto) time.
Penultimate frisbee
I've learned about a gajillion new words recently in Japanese, and I don't know how many of them I'm going to actually use. One of them, however, is ほこり (hokori), which means dust, and I had to use that word this morning to explain to my host mother how my room is waaaay too dusty and I need to clean it tonight. I woke up at 4 AM this morning and had to sneeze for about 20 minutes. That wasn't good. Fortunately I fell asleep at like 9:30, but then I went back to sleep at like 5, woke up at 8:30 and the effect is I'm tired. Why???
Hopefully, also, I'll be able to continue in Japanese at the level I got to through the placement test. The "review test" (another test to make sure they placed you at the right level) was extremely difficult and I don't know how well I did. I know I misunderstood "coffee" as "copy" and "sugar" as someone's name. Oops.
I have sociology in less than an hour, so I need to go eat lunch. It seems like I allow an hour for almost everything here, including getting to school but excluding homework. But first let me discuss how awesome the frisbee here is.
I play with both international and Japanese guys and girls, and the Japanese guys have really beautiful throws. One of them (whose name I've already forgotten, argh) can throw a behind-the-back forehand for a touchdown no problem. He did it twice in one game. And when I was tossing with them, they were taking about making their フォーム(form) きれい(kirei), which means beautiful. And they probably have the smoothest throws I've ever seen.
And, lunch.
Edit: Oh, yes, I forgot what throws we were practicing. We were practicing our lefty forehands, none of us lefties, of course. And guess what? The two Japanese guys got it pretty much right away. And today, I tried again and came nowhere close to accomplishing it. Imagine if ultimate became an olympic sport dominated by Japan! They'll have to lower the price of frisbees from 2100円 first, though... because that's just about 20 dollars. (You could probably buy a frisbee online and get it shipped from the US for less.)
Alex
Hopefully, also, I'll be able to continue in Japanese at the level I got to through the placement test. The "review test" (another test to make sure they placed you at the right level) was extremely difficult and I don't know how well I did. I know I misunderstood "coffee" as "copy" and "sugar" as someone's name. Oops.
I have sociology in less than an hour, so I need to go eat lunch. It seems like I allow an hour for almost everything here, including getting to school but excluding homework. But first let me discuss how awesome the frisbee here is.
I play with both international and Japanese guys and girls, and the Japanese guys have really beautiful throws. One of them (whose name I've already forgotten, argh) can throw a behind-the-back forehand for a touchdown no problem. He did it twice in one game. And when I was tossing with them, they were taking about making their フォーム(form) きれい(kirei), which means beautiful. And they probably have the smoothest throws I've ever seen.
And, lunch.
Edit: Oh, yes, I forgot what throws we were practicing. We were practicing our lefty forehands, none of us lefties, of course. And guess what? The two Japanese guys got it pretty much right away. And today, I tried again and came nowhere close to accomplishing it. Imagine if ultimate became an olympic sport dominated by Japan! They'll have to lower the price of frisbees from 2100円 first, though... because that's just about 20 dollars. (You could probably buy a frisbee online and get it shipped from the US for less.)
Alex
mercredi, septembre 10
Work? What's that?
Well, today is the first day I've had to really do homework. Homework is no work for me, at least while I'm in Japan. The real highlight of today was playing frisbee outside with a bunch of awesome people. The lowlight of today was accidentally hitting a Japanese girl in the face at the end of a throw. I was so embarrassed, but she wasn't peeved at me at all, and she kept saying "daijobu daijobu daijobu yo" (it's okay, it's okay, it's okay) so, I guess it was okay. But other than that, frisbee was really fun, and a rather exasperating workout under the simmering sun. And the sun was still simmering at 5:20 when it ended!
I told my host family I would be back at 8:30 tonight because I needed to do some work and play some frisbee. But the language lab closed at 6 (which I didn't know it would because the hours are posted on the INSIDE of the lab) and so I didn't do my listening homework properly. In any case, the transcript of the conversations is provided, and I'm supposed to check my answers on that. I'm going to tell my teacher anyway in case she can see whether I actually listened to the whole file (which is 18 and a half minutes long) three times like I was supposed to. Argh. At least I think I'm going to tell her. Argh, what should I do? I wasn't the only one who didn't listen more than once. Oh well, not like it really matters. The other people can just claim they got it all on the second try. Yeah.
I'm good.
I mistyped that as "I'm god," which I'm certainly not. Geez-us.
My sociology class is going to be so awesome. I'm really looking forward to it. The econs course should be interesting, too, although it went at somewhat of a plodding pace. So did the sociology class, though. And this was all because it was the first day, and the professors here don't have the attitude of the Tufts professors that you should get something done on the first day aside from introducing the course with information that people don't need to write down. And I like it this way, although it also helps that the tuition is lower so you don't really feel like you're wasting money. Either way, let's put this in perspective: I'm in JAPAN. Who cares if I get to relax for once?
Alex
I told my host family I would be back at 8:30 tonight because I needed to do some work and play some frisbee. But the language lab closed at 6 (which I didn't know it would because the hours are posted on the INSIDE of the lab) and so I didn't do my listening homework properly. In any case, the transcript of the conversations is provided, and I'm supposed to check my answers on that. I'm going to tell my teacher anyway in case she can see whether I actually listened to the whole file (which is 18 and a half minutes long) three times like I was supposed to. Argh. At least I think I'm going to tell her. Argh, what should I do? I wasn't the only one who didn't listen more than once. Oh well, not like it really matters. The other people can just claim they got it all on the second try. Yeah.
I'm good.
I mistyped that as "I'm god," which I'm certainly not. Geez-us.
My sociology class is going to be so awesome. I'm really looking forward to it. The econs course should be interesting, too, although it went at somewhat of a plodding pace. So did the sociology class, though. And this was all because it was the first day, and the professors here don't have the attitude of the Tufts professors that you should get something done on the first day aside from introducing the course with information that people don't need to write down. And I like it this way, although it also helps that the tuition is lower so you don't really feel like you're wasting money. Either way, let's put this in perspective: I'm in JAPAN. Who cares if I get to relax for once?
Alex
mardi, septembre 9
Silence. No one can stop! Silence.
I'm listening to the Eurodance compilation CD Dancemania X6, which I bought at BOOK-OFF yesterday for 250円, which is about $2.50. Awesome. But here's my major problem: like all other Dancemania CDs, it's a "NONSTOP MEGAMIX." I would like to listen to the tracks themselves on shuffle without having to hear awkward transitions at the beginning and the end, thanks. Well, anyway, the great thing about this CD series is that this is where DDR used to get the majority of its licensed tracks (as opposed to tracks made in-house by the DDR sound team). I'm currently listening to "GET THAT ROCK SOUND"--actually, no, I think the track switched. But anyway, that track is by the same group that did "ROCK BEAT," a great song in DDR 3rd Mix. Anyway,
Enough DDR. I'm listening to this CD over headphones. I want to listen to it on my iPod stereo thing at my homestay house, but I'm not sure what they'll think of that. It'd break the silence, for sure. In Japan, it's seemed like everything's so silent, except in certain places where loudness is allowed (imagine if I mistyped that as "aloud"), like bars, sports fields, and concert arenas. My host father is also so silent. He isn't much for small talk, at least not so far. I wonder if he and my host mother talk that much when they go walking at night for thirty to forty minutes. A couple of friends were discussing a problem in Japan. Often, a married couple will split the duties like this: the father works all the time (and that means like 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, to use the same exact words as Casey did), and the mother stays at home and manages the house and raises the kids. Then, once the father retires, the kids are gone, and the spouses have nothing to do with each other. So they divorce.
Luckily, my host father and mother have at least tennis in common. That's what they did yesterday, the second day of my homestay. Plus, they both seem like quiet people. But I don't know. This silence permeates throughout the Japan I've come to know recently, and I'm hoping that the classes I'm taking will help change some of this.
Last night, my host mother graciously did all my laundry from orientation week. I'm wicked thankful she did. I noticed, however, that a pair of gym shorts was missing. This wasn't a large problem, but I really had nothing else to talk about with my host parents so I decided before I went to bed to tell her about it. And that's when the machine started.
お父さん and お母さん (my host father and mother) took this with a rather straight, serious look on their faces, and they began to look for it. They seemed somewhat serious with their son (who's 29 years old and studying for a national exam) in looking for it, and I've never seen such a mechanical search in my life. There was something particularly un-human about it that I didn't understand. I couldn't really stop them looking for it. Finally, they came to the conclusion that I lost it while I was living at the Seminar House. I was happy with this conclusion; I just wanted it to conclude so that I could go to bed. We also had four months, too, and I showed them my four other pairs of gym shorts, which also should've shown that I could get along without that pair of shorts. But the thing is, I can recall exactly where that pair of shorts was before I put it into the laundry (which I'm sure I did), and that was in a clear plastic bag, alone with another pair of boxers. They were in this plastic bag all by themselves because I used them the last day I was in Vancouver before I came here, and there was no time left to get those washed. The pair of boxers came through the laundry just fine. What happened to the dark black gym shorts?
You know, in my favorite book of all time, Murakami Haruki's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, there's this "wind-up bird" that a young married couple keeps hearing every day outside of the window. It makes a kind of winding sound, and neither of them has ever seen the bird. But they know it's there. Then, all of a sudden, it stops. And all of a sudden, the wife disappears.
What happens when the machine stops and you don't get what you expect? How do you resolve the mystery? (That's exactly what my homestay mother called it, in Japanese: a mystery.)
I was reminded of something the woman giving the Japanese language placement test said before it began. She was asking us whether we were ready for the listening portion, and added, "Are you sure? Because once the tape starts, no one can stop."
Of course, the pronoun is missing from the end of the sentence, but in that form the last four words can sum up my feelings about Japan entirely. "No one can stop." Well, you have to add three more to the beginning. Once it starts, no one can stop.
What is "it"? And why does there seem to be such a drive here to get something done, no matter how trivial it is?
I'm back now to the same place I was before the gym shorts "incident," which is a general chilled-out silence. But the silence is not the same. Something's disappeared, and it doesn't make sense. What's this silence like?
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is about what happens during that silence, and one way to get out of it. But I would just like to find my gym shorts.
You can also fill in the silence. But with what? I feel like I have to fill it in. I kind of want to bring an orchestra out into the streets of Hirakata and let them play their minds away, and bring an intense jazz band in right after that. But I don't feel like I'm the only Westerner who thinks this way about Japan. There was a professor here who gave what would've been an excellent speech, but was far too long and just seemed to never go anywhere or terminate. It seems as though he was trying to fill in the same silence I'm experiencing here.
But that silence is like a keyhole that lost its key. And the keyhole lost the key itself. Nobody's at fault for losing the key.
Nobody's at fault for losing my gym shorts. Where are they?
Enough DDR. I'm listening to this CD over headphones. I want to listen to it on my iPod stereo thing at my homestay house, but I'm not sure what they'll think of that. It'd break the silence, for sure. In Japan, it's seemed like everything's so silent, except in certain places where loudness is allowed (imagine if I mistyped that as "aloud"), like bars, sports fields, and concert arenas. My host father is also so silent. He isn't much for small talk, at least not so far. I wonder if he and my host mother talk that much when they go walking at night for thirty to forty minutes. A couple of friends were discussing a problem in Japan. Often, a married couple will split the duties like this: the father works all the time (and that means like 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, to use the same exact words as Casey did), and the mother stays at home and manages the house and raises the kids. Then, once the father retires, the kids are gone, and the spouses have nothing to do with each other. So they divorce.
Luckily, my host father and mother have at least tennis in common. That's what they did yesterday, the second day of my homestay. Plus, they both seem like quiet people. But I don't know. This silence permeates throughout the Japan I've come to know recently, and I'm hoping that the classes I'm taking will help change some of this.
Last night, my host mother graciously did all my laundry from orientation week. I'm wicked thankful she did. I noticed, however, that a pair of gym shorts was missing. This wasn't a large problem, but I really had nothing else to talk about with my host parents so I decided before I went to bed to tell her about it. And that's when the machine started.
お父さん and お母さん (my host father and mother) took this with a rather straight, serious look on their faces, and they began to look for it. They seemed somewhat serious with their son (who's 29 years old and studying for a national exam) in looking for it, and I've never seen such a mechanical search in my life. There was something particularly un-human about it that I didn't understand. I couldn't really stop them looking for it. Finally, they came to the conclusion that I lost it while I was living at the Seminar House. I was happy with this conclusion; I just wanted it to conclude so that I could go to bed. We also had four months, too, and I showed them my four other pairs of gym shorts, which also should've shown that I could get along without that pair of shorts. But the thing is, I can recall exactly where that pair of shorts was before I put it into the laundry (which I'm sure I did), and that was in a clear plastic bag, alone with another pair of boxers. They were in this plastic bag all by themselves because I used them the last day I was in Vancouver before I came here, and there was no time left to get those washed. The pair of boxers came through the laundry just fine. What happened to the dark black gym shorts?
You know, in my favorite book of all time, Murakami Haruki's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, there's this "wind-up bird" that a young married couple keeps hearing every day outside of the window. It makes a kind of winding sound, and neither of them has ever seen the bird. But they know it's there. Then, all of a sudden, it stops. And all of a sudden, the wife disappears.
What happens when the machine stops and you don't get what you expect? How do you resolve the mystery? (That's exactly what my homestay mother called it, in Japanese: a mystery.)
I was reminded of something the woman giving the Japanese language placement test said before it began. She was asking us whether we were ready for the listening portion, and added, "Are you sure? Because once the tape starts, no one can stop."
Of course, the pronoun is missing from the end of the sentence, but in that form the last four words can sum up my feelings about Japan entirely. "No one can stop." Well, you have to add three more to the beginning. Once it starts, no one can stop.
What is "it"? And why does there seem to be such a drive here to get something done, no matter how trivial it is?
I'm back now to the same place I was before the gym shorts "incident," which is a general chilled-out silence. But the silence is not the same. Something's disappeared, and it doesn't make sense. What's this silence like?
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is about what happens during that silence, and one way to get out of it. But I would just like to find my gym shorts.
You can also fill in the silence. But with what? I feel like I have to fill it in. I kind of want to bring an orchestra out into the streets of Hirakata and let them play their minds away, and bring an intense jazz band in right after that. But I don't feel like I'm the only Westerner who thinks this way about Japan. There was a professor here who gave what would've been an excellent speech, but was far too long and just seemed to never go anywhere or terminate. It seems as though he was trying to fill in the same silence I'm experiencing here.
But that silence is like a keyhole that lost its key. And the keyhole lost the key itself. Nobody's at fault for losing the key.
Nobody's at fault for losing my gym shorts. Where are they?
lundi, septembre 8
What the
I am in a whirlwind of languages. From Japanese to English, to bad English to French, I have heard just about everything I have ever known in a fully real speaking environment. (I know, "fully real" is lousy writing, but you might understand how words could fail me right now.) Shout out to my buddy from Québec à côté de qui je m'assied. We, along with about 200 other people, just met our homestay families this weekend, and it's going to be quite the adjustment. I was woken up at 8 AM this morning, nine hours after I went to bed, but to tell the truth, I shifted between sleep and sleeplessness all night, and I feel decently rested but decently fatigued. I had slept with an air conditioner on all night in the Seminar House, where I stayed until yesterday for orientation.
Last night I learned that what my friend Galen said was right about allergies being slow to manifest. My host family served me, among other delicious things, agedashi tofu. It was this big block of tofu that I finished pretty quickly, and then I realized that I felt kind of itchy as a result. Well, tofu is mostly soybean content, right? If so, that's a lot of soybeans, and I'm not surprised that happened. I still feel kind of off this morning as a result of that tofu. I might tell my お母さん (okaasan, host mother) not to serve it to me later, but it was pretty good and a fair amount of the meal. Hmm.
I want to run today, but all my gym shorts are in the wash. I am very thankful that my host mother is doing laundry for me, especially when I have so much of it from orientation. Hey, another good thing: I have no curfew! I just have to call my host family if I'm going to miss dinner, come home late, or stay over someone else's house. Awesome. They're a very lax family in every way. They seemed very quiet (I talked more than I did, although I was certainly struggling with Japanese yesterday and this morning), and they're the opposite of strict as far as my 生活 (seikatsu, daily life) goes. My host mother's a piano instructor who has two baby grands in her house that I've yet to have the chance to try. My host father's retired but is very fit for his age. He showed me how to get to the campus from the house by bike, and wow, I don't think my dad could get up a hill like that on a bike. I had enough trouble myself. And it's hella dangerous too! There was hardly any room for the bikes on the road, so I'm a little nervous about that. We'll see...
Today, my family drove me to the train station, and I took a bus from there to Kansai Gaidai. Right now I'm just hanging around the computer lab, waiting for people I know to show up. Language classes don't meet today, so I'm free. I have one non-language class every afternoon except Monday. (All other Mondays, language classes will meet, though. And I have to be there at 9 AM.)
My thoughts are free, too, and are touching down in no logical order. For instance, I recall now how my family has an automatic toilet. The seat goes up once you enter the room, and the thing flushes on its own too. Also, you can have it wash you if you want. There are three options for that: パワフル (powerful), マイルド (mild), or ビデ (bidet). I think you can make the seat heat itself too. This saves toilet paper, but is it actually more power-efficient? I mean, everything else is, but it seems awkward. Well, of course, it is awkward.
And I'm being awkward. I'll stop.
Last night I learned that what my friend Galen said was right about allergies being slow to manifest. My host family served me, among other delicious things, agedashi tofu. It was this big block of tofu that I finished pretty quickly, and then I realized that I felt kind of itchy as a result. Well, tofu is mostly soybean content, right? If so, that's a lot of soybeans, and I'm not surprised that happened. I still feel kind of off this morning as a result of that tofu. I might tell my お母さん (okaasan, host mother) not to serve it to me later, but it was pretty good and a fair amount of the meal. Hmm.
I want to run today, but all my gym shorts are in the wash. I am very thankful that my host mother is doing laundry for me, especially when I have so much of it from orientation. Hey, another good thing: I have no curfew! I just have to call my host family if I'm going to miss dinner, come home late, or stay over someone else's house. Awesome. They're a very lax family in every way. They seemed very quiet (I talked more than I did, although I was certainly struggling with Japanese yesterday and this morning), and they're the opposite of strict as far as my 生活 (seikatsu, daily life) goes. My host mother's a piano instructor who has two baby grands in her house that I've yet to have the chance to try. My host father's retired but is very fit for his age. He showed me how to get to the campus from the house by bike, and wow, I don't think my dad could get up a hill like that on a bike. I had enough trouble myself. And it's hella dangerous too! There was hardly any room for the bikes on the road, so I'm a little nervous about that. We'll see...
Today, my family drove me to the train station, and I took a bus from there to Kansai Gaidai. Right now I'm just hanging around the computer lab, waiting for people I know to show up. Language classes don't meet today, so I'm free. I have one non-language class every afternoon except Monday. (All other Mondays, language classes will meet, though. And I have to be there at 9 AM.)
My thoughts are free, too, and are touching down in no logical order. For instance, I recall now how my family has an automatic toilet. The seat goes up once you enter the room, and the thing flushes on its own too. Also, you can have it wash you if you want. There are three options for that: パワフル (powerful), マイルド (mild), or ビデ (bidet). I think you can make the seat heat itself too. This saves toilet paper, but is it actually more power-efficient? I mean, everything else is, but it seems awkward. Well, of course, it is awkward.
And I'm being awkward. I'll stop.
dimanche, septembre 7
I'm set set
Every meal in Japan is healthy, except breakfast. At least so far. I haven't really figured out what Japanese people eat for breakfast yet, so I've basically been eating what I feel like. (I haven't moved in with my host family yet.) At about 9:30 I went to the supermarket and picked up bread with strawberry jam stuffed inside, bread with a solid layer of honey in the middle, and really iced bread that looked like a half-hearted cinnamon roll without the cinnamon. I only ate the first and the third and it just gave me a sugar high. You'll have to excuse me for that.
One thing I've wanted to get down since last morning is this thought. I may be able to immerse myself in the culture and the environment by living with a Japanese family, but I can never really know what it's like to be 日本人(nihonjin = Japanese). If I could somehow switch bodies (or souls, or however you see this) with a Japanese person for a day... wait, this seems familiar. Ah, yes. Let me recall a game called Shenmue for the Sega Dreamcast.
Back when I played it, I thought this was the best game ever. In fact, going back and playing it now, it's quite boring. The game was a commercial failure because it focused more on recreating a real-life environment than on having fun gameplay. It was rather epic: I have a copy of a Guinness Book of World Records book from some years ago that said that Shenmue was the most expensive game of all time. It's probable that the game no longer holds the record, but there's a reason the series was never finished. A sequel, Shenmue II, was released for Japanese and European Dreamcast and American XBox consoles, and wasn't much successful either, although they put more action into that game.
What was the plot? It's the year 1986. You're an 18-year-old Japanese dude well-trained in the martial arts by your father, who is killed in an epic showdown with another martial-arts expert from China whose name you know to be "Lan Di." You see him die in the dojo that's part of your house, and you try but can do nothing to save him. Why did he die? What were Lan Di and his accompanying mob looking for? That's what you set out to find. This is a fighting game where you spend most of your time walking or running around, asking people for info as to what the hell's going on. (There was a preview disc of this game released in Japan that showed off the fact that you can maintain a leisurely pace walking around, just taking in the beautiful environments of the game and not really hurrying. This didn't work because nobody wants to walk around slowly during a game, and especially not in Japan when time is of the essence. Or perhaps the creator of the game thought this would be appealing specifically because everything's so rushed in Japan. Well, it didn't really work.)
But one thing this game offers you that no other game does is the ability to walk around in a nihonjin's shoes. The environments, while graphically out of date, are extremely realistic when compared to actual day-to-day surroundings in Japan. At home, you have a curfew and you force yourself to follow it; the game makes you go to bed by 11 PM. (People don't break rules here. They just don't.) As soon as you buy a drink at the vending machine, you drink it there and you throw it away. (It's looked down upon in society to drink in public anywhere apart from the place you bought the drink.) Slot machines and pachinko are popular as all hell, and it's not evident why. You take off your shoes immediately after entering the house, and then you step up and into the house. Even the stepping up part is a short cutscene.
You see, all these things are there, and although I will be experiencing all of these while I'm at the homestay, there is certainly one thing that will not be the same, and that's the fact that I'm not Japanese. For sure, the communication will not be smooth at first. It's not just that, however. In Japan, when you're a foreigner, you're always a foreigner, at least as far as strangers and society in general is concerned. The question is, how much does this change on a person-to-person basis? One thing I'm very excited about is forming friendships with Japanese people here. It sounds shallow on the surface, but there's more to it than you'd think. One thing I've never done is become friends with someone across a whole other language. And I'm probably (hopefully!) going to be speaking more in Japanese than in my native language! That's crazy! That's really cool! And I've been running around doing a lot of things to prepare for my time here at school, so I haven't really had time to settle down and become friends with people yet. I'm really excited about what can happen over the next few months, not about classes, but about the interactions I have with people when I'm here. Eventually I'll learn what role I can play as a foreigner in this society, yes, but I'm more excited about the roles I can play as a friend here. And being a friend itself is not a role to play. It's being a friend. That's what's so exciting about this brief stay in Japan.
A few days ago, a professor here was filling us in about alien status in Japan, and he showed us his alien card, which he had had for 34 years. Thirty-four years!! I know that I learned in 6th grade English class that (as far as integers go) you're only supposed to use numerals for the numbers that are of three digits of larger when you're writing, but come on, 34 years. That's a long time to be in a country and to only be considered an alien. He's a "permanent resident." How tough is that? If he doesn't have his card on him, he could possibly be deported. Ouch. I have to keep my passport on me at all times. I do wonder whether Japanese residents have to have a national ID card. That sort of thing ("REAL ID") is happening in the United States, with the federal government forcing states to accept this ID thing or face funding cuts or something. Hopefully the Japanese don't have to put up with this nonsense we're having over in my country. I'm okay with having to walk around with an ID if it's not my own country. But in my own country, which, by the way, calls itself the "land of the free," it's ridiculous that I have to walk around with a card to constantly prove where I belong. And I have to pay for that card?
One thing I've wanted to get down since last morning is this thought. I may be able to immerse myself in the culture and the environment by living with a Japanese family, but I can never really know what it's like to be 日本人(nihonjin = Japanese). If I could somehow switch bodies (or souls, or however you see this) with a Japanese person for a day... wait, this seems familiar. Ah, yes. Let me recall a game called Shenmue for the Sega Dreamcast.
Back when I played it, I thought this was the best game ever. In fact, going back and playing it now, it's quite boring. The game was a commercial failure because it focused more on recreating a real-life environment than on having fun gameplay. It was rather epic: I have a copy of a Guinness Book of World Records book from some years ago that said that Shenmue was the most expensive game of all time. It's probable that the game no longer holds the record, but there's a reason the series was never finished. A sequel, Shenmue II, was released for Japanese and European Dreamcast and American XBox consoles, and wasn't much successful either, although they put more action into that game.
What was the plot? It's the year 1986. You're an 18-year-old Japanese dude well-trained in the martial arts by your father, who is killed in an epic showdown with another martial-arts expert from China whose name you know to be "Lan Di." You see him die in the dojo that's part of your house, and you try but can do nothing to save him. Why did he die? What were Lan Di and his accompanying mob looking for? That's what you set out to find. This is a fighting game where you spend most of your time walking or running around, asking people for info as to what the hell's going on. (There was a preview disc of this game released in Japan that showed off the fact that you can maintain a leisurely pace walking around, just taking in the beautiful environments of the game and not really hurrying. This didn't work because nobody wants to walk around slowly during a game, and especially not in Japan when time is of the essence. Or perhaps the creator of the game thought this would be appealing specifically because everything's so rushed in Japan. Well, it didn't really work.)
But one thing this game offers you that no other game does is the ability to walk around in a nihonjin's shoes. The environments, while graphically out of date, are extremely realistic when compared to actual day-to-day surroundings in Japan. At home, you have a curfew and you force yourself to follow it; the game makes you go to bed by 11 PM. (People don't break rules here. They just don't.) As soon as you buy a drink at the vending machine, you drink it there and you throw it away. (It's looked down upon in society to drink in public anywhere apart from the place you bought the drink.) Slot machines and pachinko are popular as all hell, and it's not evident why. You take off your shoes immediately after entering the house, and then you step up and into the house. Even the stepping up part is a short cutscene.
You see, all these things are there, and although I will be experiencing all of these while I'm at the homestay, there is certainly one thing that will not be the same, and that's the fact that I'm not Japanese. For sure, the communication will not be smooth at first. It's not just that, however. In Japan, when you're a foreigner, you're always a foreigner, at least as far as strangers and society in general is concerned. The question is, how much does this change on a person-to-person basis? One thing I'm very excited about is forming friendships with Japanese people here. It sounds shallow on the surface, but there's more to it than you'd think. One thing I've never done is become friends with someone across a whole other language. And I'm probably (hopefully!) going to be speaking more in Japanese than in my native language! That's crazy! That's really cool! And I've been running around doing a lot of things to prepare for my time here at school, so I haven't really had time to settle down and become friends with people yet. I'm really excited about what can happen over the next few months, not about classes, but about the interactions I have with people when I'm here. Eventually I'll learn what role I can play as a foreigner in this society, yes, but I'm more excited about the roles I can play as a friend here. And being a friend itself is not a role to play. It's being a friend. That's what's so exciting about this brief stay in Japan.
A few days ago, a professor here was filling us in about alien status in Japan, and he showed us his alien card, which he had had for 34 years. Thirty-four years!! I know that I learned in 6th grade English class that (as far as integers go) you're only supposed to use numerals for the numbers that are of three digits of larger when you're writing, but come on, 34 years. That's a long time to be in a country and to only be considered an alien. He's a "permanent resident." How tough is that? If he doesn't have his card on him, he could possibly be deported. Ouch. I have to keep my passport on me at all times. I do wonder whether Japanese residents have to have a national ID card. That sort of thing ("REAL ID") is happening in the United States, with the federal government forcing states to accept this ID thing or face funding cuts or something. Hopefully the Japanese don't have to put up with this nonsense we're having over in my country. I'm okay with having to walk around with an ID if it's not my own country. But in my own country, which, by the way, calls itself the "land of the free," it's ridiculous that I have to walk around with a card to constantly prove where I belong. And I have to pay for that card?
vendredi, septembre 5
Home, stay.
I am quite tired tonight. I've been all over the place this week, including walking all over Kyoto today (actually, it was just in a section that surrounded a temple area), and I'm ready to go to bed. I won't remind myself of the time, because I really want to continue with my habit of sleeping this early. It's prevented me from going out at night and drinking, and stuff, but I'm never in the mood for it when the day is so exhausting, and satisfying.
Yesterday I went for a run in the morning but had to come back early because I was too dehydrated, and then I figured out I didn't have time to both go for a run and walk to campus on time, so I decided to run to campus with my bookbag and my iPod shuffle that's finally starting to see some use. There's something really awesome about listening to the 日本文化-inspired (Japanese-culture-inspired) Kanye West while strolling to a 7-Eleven to get breakfast before anything happens on campus. Mmm, I want my daily パン (bread) with strawberry jam (jelly?) in it. Yum, yum. And it's cheap, too. It's about 150円 (I can't find the other yen symbol), or about $1.50, though I have no idea what the exchange rate is now.
I'm also starting to get back into the habit of doing stomach crunches, for which I use the couches in the Seminar House. I'm going to eventually have to use the gym for those, because I'm not going to be living in the Seminar House for long. I move in with my homestay family on Sunday, and I basically can't wait. Immersion, here I come. Plus, I don't have to make or pay for my own dinners, and the homestay was quite a decent price considering what I'm going to be able to get from it. My homestay mother is a piano teacher. Awesome! And just when I realized that we weren't going to be having a piano at our university.
The place I'm studying at now is called 関西外国語大学, or Kansai Gaikokugo Daigaku, or, as they call themselves whenever they print the name in English, Kansai Gaidai University. The "University" part is repetitive, because "Gaidai" is just a shortening of the two last words in the Japanese name, which translates to "Kansai University of Foreign Languages." It took me forever to realize this, over the course of multiple trips to the bathroom where 関西外国語大学 was written on the slippers. Basically, until then, I was calling it "Kansai Gaidai Daigaku" (Kansai University of Foreign Languages University) when I spoke with Japanese people. Oops.
In any case, that's why I probably won't find a piano here. However, on the other hand, we do have a couple of gyms available for international student use: the one that doesn't have treadmills (unless they're in the "student club building" adjacent), and the one near my dorm that doesn't have a pool (not that the other one does) that I haven't visited yet. I should explain the difference between the words "club" and "circle" in Japanese. The former means serious business; for instance, "Baseball Club" means "Baseball Team." The latter means what "club" means here. I'm hoping there's a "frisbee circle" and I heard that some dude with long (black?) hair and a beard in this Seminar House is interested in getting some frisbee started. Until then, I have to remember to walk around town and campus with my frisbee in hand and my cool look on my face. Yeaaah, ladies... except more like guys...
Well, I hear school has already started at Tufts. Guess what? I start Monday. Yeeah! It's so great to have orientation again; it's like being a freshman one more time. And then I have another orientation when I get to France. Until Monday, wait, no, TUESDAY, I'm free. Actually, I might sit in on a class on Monday, but it's upper level, so, no. I'm taking an introductory economics class and a sociology class, the latter of which should be especially interesting. I'm going to try to use both as social science credits. Yes, I should've taken one arts course here so I could get one of the two credits out of the way, but ehh, it doesn't matter. I can get that done in France. Unfortunately, if the sociology class ends up being intolerable, that won't make me very happy about taking another sociology course, which I've been intending to do when I get back to Tufts. Whatever. I guess I should take one of the--er, the only literature course just in case I decide I want to complete the Japanese major. I also have the option to stay another semester in Japan, which would save a lot of money and be a lot of fun, and really be great for learning. Apparently, spending another semester means getting infinitely better at the language. Unfortunately, I'd have to apply by October 18th if I want to do that, and, la France m'attend. But if I start to really love the homestay, I don't know... once you love something, it's pretty hard to break apart from it.
When I was at the temple in Kyoto today, there was one section where you would take something like a metal version of a measuring cup with an extended handle, this long metal rod with a cup at the end of it, and you'd drink from one of three streams of water falling from a stone roof overhead. You took the metal rod from an "ultraviolet cleaning device," or whatever it was, which was so effective that you couldn't look into the box because of the rays, and you returned it there afterwards. Sam, one of the two guys I was with, said that he knew the middle stream signified romance, and he didn't know what the other two meant. Well, I was going to go for the other two, but a father and his two kids went for the one to the left, and a middle-aged woman was in the process of filling her cup with the stream to the right, so I had no choice. I drank from the fountain of romance.
What a perfect day.
Yesterday I went for a run in the morning but had to come back early because I was too dehydrated, and then I figured out I didn't have time to both go for a run and walk to campus on time, so I decided to run to campus with my bookbag and my iPod shuffle that's finally starting to see some use. There's something really awesome about listening to the 日本文化-inspired (Japanese-culture-inspired) Kanye West while strolling to a 7-Eleven to get breakfast before anything happens on campus. Mmm, I want my daily パン (bread) with strawberry jam (jelly?) in it. Yum, yum. And it's cheap, too. It's about 150円 (I can't find the other yen symbol), or about $1.50, though I have no idea what the exchange rate is now.
I'm also starting to get back into the habit of doing stomach crunches, for which I use the couches in the Seminar House. I'm going to eventually have to use the gym for those, because I'm not going to be living in the Seminar House for long. I move in with my homestay family on Sunday, and I basically can't wait. Immersion, here I come. Plus, I don't have to make or pay for my own dinners, and the homestay was quite a decent price considering what I'm going to be able to get from it. My homestay mother is a piano teacher. Awesome! And just when I realized that we weren't going to be having a piano at our university.
The place I'm studying at now is called 関西外国語大学, or Kansai Gaikokugo Daigaku, or, as they call themselves whenever they print the name in English, Kansai Gaidai University. The "University" part is repetitive, because "Gaidai" is just a shortening of the two last words in the Japanese name, which translates to "Kansai University of Foreign Languages." It took me forever to realize this, over the course of multiple trips to the bathroom where 関西外国語大学 was written on the slippers. Basically, until then, I was calling it "Kansai Gaidai Daigaku" (Kansai University of Foreign Languages University) when I spoke with Japanese people. Oops.
In any case, that's why I probably won't find a piano here. However, on the other hand, we do have a couple of gyms available for international student use: the one that doesn't have treadmills (unless they're in the "student club building" adjacent), and the one near my dorm that doesn't have a pool (not that the other one does) that I haven't visited yet. I should explain the difference between the words "club" and "circle" in Japanese. The former means serious business; for instance, "Baseball Club" means "Baseball Team." The latter means what "club" means here. I'm hoping there's a "frisbee circle" and I heard that some dude with long (black?) hair and a beard in this Seminar House is interested in getting some frisbee started. Until then, I have to remember to walk around town and campus with my frisbee in hand and my cool look on my face. Yeaaah, ladies... except more like guys...
Well, I hear school has already started at Tufts. Guess what? I start Monday. Yeeah! It's so great to have orientation again; it's like being a freshman one more time. And then I have another orientation when I get to France. Until Monday, wait, no, TUESDAY, I'm free. Actually, I might sit in on a class on Monday, but it's upper level, so, no. I'm taking an introductory economics class and a sociology class, the latter of which should be especially interesting. I'm going to try to use both as social science credits. Yes, I should've taken one arts course here so I could get one of the two credits out of the way, but ehh, it doesn't matter. I can get that done in France. Unfortunately, if the sociology class ends up being intolerable, that won't make me very happy about taking another sociology course, which I've been intending to do when I get back to Tufts. Whatever. I guess I should take one of the--er, the only literature course just in case I decide I want to complete the Japanese major. I also have the option to stay another semester in Japan, which would save a lot of money and be a lot of fun, and really be great for learning. Apparently, spending another semester means getting infinitely better at the language. Unfortunately, I'd have to apply by October 18th if I want to do that, and, la France m'attend. But if I start to really love the homestay, I don't know... once you love something, it's pretty hard to break apart from it.
When I was at the temple in Kyoto today, there was one section where you would take something like a metal version of a measuring cup with an extended handle, this long metal rod with a cup at the end of it, and you'd drink from one of three streams of water falling from a stone roof overhead. You took the metal rod from an "ultraviolet cleaning device," or whatever it was, which was so effective that you couldn't look into the box because of the rays, and you returned it there afterwards. Sam, one of the two guys I was with, said that he knew the middle stream signified romance, and he didn't know what the other two meant. Well, I was going to go for the other two, but a father and his two kids went for the one to the left, and a middle-aged woman was in the process of filling her cup with the stream to the right, so I had no choice. I drank from the fountain of romance.
What a perfect day.
jeudi, septembre 4
THE (obscure shape) STORE
So, today, I went shopping.
Walk twenty-five minutes towards Makino Station, winding your way through narrow roads, crosswalks where no one jaywalks, bewaring silent bicycles, humming mopeds and cars hardly audible compared to those in the US; then, you'll come across a charming line of shops, like a Japanese dessert shop and the "boutique se rappeler." Yes. I checked out some of the t-shirts, but found none novel enough for me to keep them, and went over to the bowling-arcade-pachinko place, which was perhaps as big and strange as the Sexodrome in Paris, just in a different way. They had EVERY modern Bemani game (Guitar Freaks, Drummania, Beatmania, Pop'n Music) except DDR. Shame.
I returned to Kansai Gaidai for the welcoming ceremony, initially scheduled for 3:00. Guess what time they changed it to right before the ceremony. 2:30. They changed it at like 2:08 PM, too. Thanks! Well, I got there right on time (3:00 on the dot) and that's when they started. No idea why they decided to call everyone to go over early when it takes 30 minutes to walk to campus from where the international students are housed and they didn't start then anyway.
The ceremony was epic; I felt like I was staring at a cross-section of the Japanese congress. There were about 74 people sitting in two groups of three rows facing towards the audience, all neatly dressed in suits and ties, listening to the speeches that ensued. It was worth it for Eriko's awesome speech at the end and the incredible all-you-can-eat-for-free dinner that followed the ceremony. I feel like I solidified a couple of friendships, too. There was supposed to be karaoke afterwards, but I couldn't find it for the life of me. Why???
Things in Japan are generally pretty confusing. T'was especially true today when I was on four hours of sleep and I was sloppy with speaking Japanese all over the place. I love it when I say "yes" to something and the thing completely opposite of what I expect to happen just happens. And I still don't understand how people think over here.
Let's take the (OBSCURE SHAPE) store. Yes, that's the name of the store, in the title. I have no clue on earth how you're supposed to pronounce the name of the store. It's seriously like an ellipse diced in two at a 35-degree angle from the vertical axis, and then the two parts separated but with something added back to one of the parts. What? When you go into the store, you are greeted with interesting deals, such as 5% OFF! on something that costs 1200 yen (about 12 dollars). There was also a SALE on shampoo, with the added comment, "FOR YOU WHO KNOW TRUE VALUES." Yes. I wanted to take pictures, but again, I was in the middle of a store without a bunch of rowdy gaikokujin. I'd probably look like a spy or a really scary foreigner. I'm going to find people to take pictures of these things with.
I love Japan. Japan loves me, too. I hope.
Alex
Walk twenty-five minutes towards Makino Station, winding your way through narrow roads, crosswalks where no one jaywalks, bewaring silent bicycles, humming mopeds and cars hardly audible compared to those in the US; then, you'll come across a charming line of shops, like a Japanese dessert shop and the "boutique se rappeler." Yes. I checked out some of the t-shirts, but found none novel enough for me to keep them, and went over to the bowling-arcade-pachinko place, which was perhaps as big and strange as the Sexodrome in Paris, just in a different way. They had EVERY modern Bemani game (Guitar Freaks, Drummania, Beatmania, Pop'n Music) except DDR. Shame.
I returned to Kansai Gaidai for the welcoming ceremony, initially scheduled for 3:00. Guess what time they changed it to right before the ceremony. 2:30. They changed it at like 2:08 PM, too. Thanks! Well, I got there right on time (3:00 on the dot) and that's when they started. No idea why they decided to call everyone to go over early when it takes 30 minutes to walk to campus from where the international students are housed and they didn't start then anyway.
The ceremony was epic; I felt like I was staring at a cross-section of the Japanese congress. There were about 74 people sitting in two groups of three rows facing towards the audience, all neatly dressed in suits and ties, listening to the speeches that ensued. It was worth it for Eriko's awesome speech at the end and the incredible all-you-can-eat-for-free dinner that followed the ceremony. I feel like I solidified a couple of friendships, too. There was supposed to be karaoke afterwards, but I couldn't find it for the life of me. Why???
Things in Japan are generally pretty confusing. T'was especially true today when I was on four hours of sleep and I was sloppy with speaking Japanese all over the place. I love it when I say "yes" to something and the thing completely opposite of what I expect to happen just happens. And I still don't understand how people think over here.
Let's take the (OBSCURE SHAPE) store. Yes, that's the name of the store, in the title. I have no clue on earth how you're supposed to pronounce the name of the store. It's seriously like an ellipse diced in two at a 35-degree angle from the vertical axis, and then the two parts separated but with something added back to one of the parts. What? When you go into the store, you are greeted with interesting deals, such as 5% OFF! on something that costs 1200 yen (about 12 dollars). There was also a SALE on shampoo, with the added comment, "FOR YOU WHO KNOW TRUE VALUES." Yes. I wanted to take pictures, but again, I was in the middle of a store without a bunch of rowdy gaikokujin. I'd probably look like a spy or a really scary foreigner. I'm going to find people to take pictures of these things with.
I love Japan. Japan loves me, too. I hope.
Alex
Of course
Yesterday I drew the number 293. It's a prime number ("I argue that this is trivial" - Professor Fulton Gonzalez; and yes, the solution he was talking about was indeed trivial, but it didn't seem like it to the untrained eye at ALL, especially after 70 minutes of straight nonstop lecture) and I wanted to have a chance to draw again. Apparently my dad has pro-gambling genes, so he made sure he never gambled. I will have to do the same.
Yesterday, I wasn't gambling though. I was drawing the registration number for my courses. 293 is solidly in the lower half of the numbers, so I will be registering an hour and 15 minutes later than I could've, which is good, because I haven't picked my courses yet. It being true that I've taken exclusively math, French, and Japanese courses at Tufts (with the exception of a half-credit computer science course), I really have no preference on what I take here, as long as I get into the right level of Japanese language courses. I'll probably take the introductory economics course (if it doesn't fill up before I get there) and one of the sociology courses. I'll have to pick the one that's less popular, because I don't really want to have to go back and change my registration tomorrow. You're supposed to come with your form ready, so you have no chance to know which courses have filled up by the time you got there.
My roommate has 17. Oh, if only I could trade numbers with him; I would have my differential equations professor's favorite number. (At like 9 AM in the morning I would be the only one laughing at his ridiculously awesome example of "17" being a constant of motion that did not satisfy some weird equation thing. He would use the number whenever he could.) Another prime number.
Yesterday, also, I didn't sleep well. I won't go into why. It has something to do with the color blue, though.
In Japan, I have seen the katakana コース used for the word "course." This would mean that the question "What courses are you taking?" would most directly translate, for a Japanese person, to "What course are you taking?". Of course, rarely is there a distinction in Japanese between plural and singular, so maybe I'm wrong. But the latter question is more interesting. What course am I taking? Should my class choice really be as random as the lottery number choice was? Of course not. I went to the faculty introduction session and basically found which professors I really, really liked, and I think I'm going to pick based on what I saw. Except I don't fully remember which of the non-Japanese professors (most professors weren't Japanese) I liked. Hmm, maybe I trust randomness more than I thought. What's the likelihood that choosing my "course" here badly would do me harm? Not much, really, as long as I don't choose upper level.
And how random is it that I'm here? I dunno, but I like it...
Alex
Yesterday, I wasn't gambling though. I was drawing the registration number for my courses. 293 is solidly in the lower half of the numbers, so I will be registering an hour and 15 minutes later than I could've, which is good, because I haven't picked my courses yet. It being true that I've taken exclusively math, French, and Japanese courses at Tufts (with the exception of a half-credit computer science course), I really have no preference on what I take here, as long as I get into the right level of Japanese language courses. I'll probably take the introductory economics course (if it doesn't fill up before I get there) and one of the sociology courses. I'll have to pick the one that's less popular, because I don't really want to have to go back and change my registration tomorrow. You're supposed to come with your form ready, so you have no chance to know which courses have filled up by the time you got there.
My roommate has 17. Oh, if only I could trade numbers with him; I would have my differential equations professor's favorite number. (At like 9 AM in the morning I would be the only one laughing at his ridiculously awesome example of "17" being a constant of motion that did not satisfy some weird equation thing. He would use the number whenever he could.) Another prime number.
Yesterday, also, I didn't sleep well. I won't go into why. It has something to do with the color blue, though.
In Japan, I have seen the katakana コース used for the word "course." This would mean that the question "What courses are you taking?" would most directly translate, for a Japanese person, to "What course are you taking?". Of course, rarely is there a distinction in Japanese between plural and singular, so maybe I'm wrong. But the latter question is more interesting. What course am I taking? Should my class choice really be as random as the lottery number choice was? Of course not. I went to the faculty introduction session and basically found which professors I really, really liked, and I think I'm going to pick based on what I saw. Except I don't fully remember which of the non-Japanese professors (most professors weren't Japanese) I liked. Hmm, maybe I trust randomness more than I thought. What's the likelihood that choosing my "course" here badly would do me harm? Not much, really, as long as I don't choose upper level.
And how random is it that I'm here? I dunno, but I like it...
Alex
mercredi, septembre 3
Laptops, GIVE ME FOOD
Let this be a warning for anyone who intends to use his laptop in Japan: if you have a three-prong plug, you're really screwed. Luckily, my dad has a three-prong to two-prong converter that should be getting sent over here soon enough before I have to get my laptop registered, but, uh, these converters are discontinued in the US so it's basically impossible to get them. That's unless EBay works some miracles, of course.
I'm tired and need more exercise. Some people can't believe that, probably, because we've been walking EVERYWHERE as it takes 25 minutes to get to campus and 20 minutes to walk to a supermarket. But the fact is, I need to give my sinuses and immune system a jolt, because they keep causing problems around my ears and my throat, an unenjoyable treat. Wait, what? Can I make up oxymorons? Anyway, I have a gym nearby that I don't really have time to get to or use. I'm not going to leave my bag in a locker unattended (they have locks but, to quote one of the dudes there that I asked, "nobody use."), with all my money in it (Japan is afraid of foreigners' credit cards and debit cards, which they should be I guess). So I guess, as far as today goes, I have to wait. I haven't found a DDR machine yet either.
I got a Facebook, but I don't want to waste my camera's batteries by uploading pictures. I want to put them on my laptop, because I'm running out of space on the camera, but, well, the laptop is of course a problem and I'd still be wasting my batteries. Ah, I guess I'm just lazy.
And I'm hungry. My God, they never serve you enough food here. Even at an all-you-can-eat last night they took too long to put out new food for it to be sufficient to last until today. So, to sum this all up, I'm feeling less healthy although what I'm eating is certainly a much more healthy diet.
But Japan still rocks my socks.
I'm tired and need more exercise. Some people can't believe that, probably, because we've been walking EVERYWHERE as it takes 25 minutes to get to campus and 20 minutes to walk to a supermarket. But the fact is, I need to give my sinuses and immune system a jolt, because they keep causing problems around my ears and my throat, an unenjoyable treat. Wait, what? Can I make up oxymorons? Anyway, I have a gym nearby that I don't really have time to get to or use. I'm not going to leave my bag in a locker unattended (they have locks but, to quote one of the dudes there that I asked, "nobody use."), with all my money in it (Japan is afraid of foreigners' credit cards and debit cards, which they should be I guess). So I guess, as far as today goes, I have to wait. I haven't found a DDR machine yet either.
I got a Facebook, but I don't want to waste my camera's batteries by uploading pictures. I want to put them on my laptop, because I'm running out of space on the camera, but, well, the laptop is of course a problem and I'd still be wasting my batteries. Ah, I guess I'm just lazy.
And I'm hungry. My God, they never serve you enough food here. Even at an all-you-can-eat last night they took too long to put out new food for it to be sufficient to last until today. So, to sum this all up, I'm feeling less healthy although what I'm eating is certainly a much more healthy diet.
But Japan still rocks my socks.
mardi, septembre 2
Tobacco, banking, decency
I hope my Tufts University water bottle is safe. I left it in the fridge, and if anyone took it I'd be pissed, though perplexed. (You couldn't really take it out in public without the chance that the person you stole it from went ahead and saw you.) I left it there to, um, dry off, because I figured that as the water would evaporate there'd be no problem with bacteria thanks to the refrigerator. See, I ended up wasting about half a Nalgene of store-bought spring water because I left it inside the freezer overnight. Then I tried to put tap water in it, and the tap water tasted like tobacco. Gross. So I cleaned it out and put it back in the freezer.
Boring. Next story. I went to the university at about 9:30 with a group of people I'd met, got there about 10:00 (yes, it takes that long to get there from university housing) and took the Japanese language placement test, which happened to mirror the order in which things showed up in my textbook exactly. They use the same textbooks. It was great, except for listening which was like hell.
Dull. A third try. Well, let's see. I went to the gym briefly but realized I had no time, and then the "Banking Session," in which a bunch of us tried to set up bank accounts with a Japanese bank. Let me tell you, and let this be a warning to Tufts students who go to Japan: setting up a bank account in Japan is ridiculously hard. And, if you'll excuse a third or a fourth "let," let me quote the person who introduced the banking session: "Welcome to the Banking Session. This is the most frustrating, irritating, and--interesting time" and I can't remember the rest. This being the last thing I would expect a Japanese person to say when presenting something, I thought it was quite hilarious.
Insipid, but not for you, the reader. What happened? Well, we had to write with "NO ERRORS"-- and what is an error? Well, you had to write your name and your address exactly as it showed up on the passport. This was not limited to whether a comma was in the name or not. This included whether the middle tip of your M stretched down to the bottom of the legs, whether the I had horizontal lines at the top, and so on. You couldn't even "over-write," e.g. write over a mark if you made a mistake in the direction the mark was initially going. NO MISTAKES. You had to write a signature two times, and it had to be the same both times. Eek. I invented a new signature for this purpose, about 1/20 the size of that on my passport, and that was acceptable. What a disaster. If you were jittery, there was no way you could've done this. Some people didn't finish at all and had to go home with penmanship homework (e.g. basically had to copy things perfectly at home and wait for the next banking session). Anyway...
Yeah. Later I took a tour of Makino Station, which was so-so until the restaurant, which had great food and awesome conversations. Definitely won't forget that soon.
And I'm spent.
Alex
Boring. Next story. I went to the university at about 9:30 with a group of people I'd met, got there about 10:00 (yes, it takes that long to get there from university housing) and took the Japanese language placement test, which happened to mirror the order in which things showed up in my textbook exactly. They use the same textbooks. It was great, except for listening which was like hell.
Dull. A third try. Well, let's see. I went to the gym briefly but realized I had no time, and then the "Banking Session," in which a bunch of us tried to set up bank accounts with a Japanese bank. Let me tell you, and let this be a warning to Tufts students who go to Japan: setting up a bank account in Japan is ridiculously hard. And, if you'll excuse a third or a fourth "let," let me quote the person who introduced the banking session: "Welcome to the Banking Session. This is the most frustrating, irritating, and--interesting time" and I can't remember the rest. This being the last thing I would expect a Japanese person to say when presenting something, I thought it was quite hilarious.
Insipid, but not for you, the reader. What happened? Well, we had to write with "NO ERRORS"-- and what is an error? Well, you had to write your name and your address exactly as it showed up on the passport. This was not limited to whether a comma was in the name or not. This included whether the middle tip of your M stretched down to the bottom of the legs, whether the I had horizontal lines at the top, and so on. You couldn't even "over-write," e.g. write over a mark if you made a mistake in the direction the mark was initially going. NO MISTAKES. You had to write a signature two times, and it had to be the same both times. Eek. I invented a new signature for this purpose, about 1/20 the size of that on my passport, and that was acceptable. What a disaster. If you were jittery, there was no way you could've done this. Some people didn't finish at all and had to go home with penmanship homework (e.g. basically had to copy things perfectly at home and wait for the next banking session). Anyway...
Yeah. Later I took a tour of Makino Station, which was so-so until the restaurant, which had great food and awesome conversations. Definitely won't forget that soon.
And I'm spent.
Alex
lundi, septembre 1
Welcome to Japan, y'all.
Hmm, I'm tired. I thought I got eight hours of sleep last night, but I can't be fully sure. Either way, perhaps I needed more.
I woke up at 5:30 AM today, because I went to sleep at around 9:30 PM last night. I was tired! I wouldn't call myself jet-lagged, as much as exhausted from the flight, the travel from the airport, the walking around the city, and the summer. Yes, the summer. This summer I left no stone unturned; I did everything under the sun, while always under the sun. Nothing was better than the summer sun. I lived and breathed by the summer sun, and I still live under it here-- Japan (日本) is humid and scorching hot, temperatures probably close to 100°F with no forgiveness by way of sunscreen, yet. And I am still yet to adapt to it, but I want more. The gate was closed when I woke up, but now that more people are waking up they might open it. Either way, I'm stuck here until okasan opens the gate and lets us go out into the free world.
The free world? Relative to the US, is Japan a free country? As far as I can see now, it's probably freer for us foreigners than for the Japanese themselves, who follow a wild set of cultural rules so complicated that they don't expect foreigners to really understand them or abide by them. Or is it so complicated? Either way, what constitutes freedom in this country? I wonder what the answer to that is.
Hmm, do they have the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEAN Act too, or something like it? (Yes, it's actually called the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. So absurd. I really wonder how long it took them to write that horrible bill, and how long it took them to come up with the words that would make that acronym possible.)
I'm getting tired of blogging, so I'll cut this post off here. Today, I have some sort of Language Lab orientation, as well as a campus tour to go to and a LOT of Japanese to review. In particular, I will have to practice writing. Well, maybe I'll leave something up for the Japanese people I've met to see, and we'll see how well it reads to them. Nah, too embarrassing for me to try to get that to happen.
さよなら。
Alex
I woke up at 5:30 AM today, because I went to sleep at around 9:30 PM last night. I was tired! I wouldn't call myself jet-lagged, as much as exhausted from the flight, the travel from the airport, the walking around the city, and the summer. Yes, the summer. This summer I left no stone unturned; I did everything under the sun, while always under the sun. Nothing was better than the summer sun. I lived and breathed by the summer sun, and I still live under it here-- Japan (日本) is humid and scorching hot, temperatures probably close to 100°F with no forgiveness by way of sunscreen, yet. And I am still yet to adapt to it, but I want more. The gate was closed when I woke up, but now that more people are waking up they might open it. Either way, I'm stuck here until okasan opens the gate and lets us go out into the free world.
The free world? Relative to the US, is Japan a free country? As far as I can see now, it's probably freer for us foreigners than for the Japanese themselves, who follow a wild set of cultural rules so complicated that they don't expect foreigners to really understand them or abide by them. Or is it so complicated? Either way, what constitutes freedom in this country? I wonder what the answer to that is.
Hmm, do they have the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEAN Act too, or something like it? (Yes, it's actually called the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. So absurd. I really wonder how long it took them to write that horrible bill, and how long it took them to come up with the words that would make that acronym possible.)
I'm getting tired of blogging, so I'll cut this post off here. Today, I have some sort of Language Lab orientation, as well as a campus tour to go to and a LOT of Japanese to review. In particular, I will have to practice writing. Well, maybe I'll leave something up for the Japanese people I've met to see, and we'll see how well it reads to them. Nah, too embarrassing for me to try to get that to happen.
さよなら。
Alex
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