終了じゃない。

This is my last night in Japan before I board a plane out of Narita tomorrow. Still a lot to digest about this country, but as I wandered outside my Capsule hotel in Asakusa, Tokyo tonight I got the best going away present I could have asked for. A gaijin asked if I lived here and could give him directions. Maybe it was because I had just dropped off all my luggage so I no longer had the telltale signs of a traveler myself, but in that moment I felt so at ease in this city that I very easily could have passed as an expatriate.

My relationship with Tokyo, for having been here a sum total of three days, is already very different from Hakodate. In a small, silly way, I own Tokyo in a way that I never owned the city where I spent two months during HIF. While I certainly know the sights of Hakodate better, Tokyo is free and open to me. With the self-taught subway skills, I can go anywhere. There are no expectations for me to be anywhere or to fit into somebody else's system- I'll make my own choices and my own mistakes, and I'll deal with the consequences. (This is not to downplay the huge amounts of help I got from Nick- he was exceedingly generous in letting me crash at his place, show me around a bit, and travel with me to 盛岡 in 岩手県 and 田沢湖. But I've still had a lot of time on my own, and a lot of things I've accomplished on my own.)

I'm suddenly able to apply Japanese in new ways- for the first time, I can imply meanings and readings of unfamiliar compounds with my expanding knowledge of kanji. I can play through a text heavy RPG on DS (ドラゴン・クエスト　IX: 星空の守り日と） by reading most of it, looking up what I can and figuring out the rest. I bought a book intended for adults WITH NO PICTURES in it. It could hardly be called a novel by real writing standards, but still, I can read it, and that's a milestone.

Both in Hakodate and Tokyo, I see swarms of お盆 tourists and resent them- I am no longer one of them. Japan is not a week-long joyride of museums and resorts, Japan is years of struggle and pain and misunderstanding and un-acceptance before you should be allowed to have fun with it. They belittle all I've worked for, by furthering the widely-held idea that foreigners have no capacity to master any part of this language or culture.

In certain ways, I already found parts of Tokyo not known to either the gaijin or the natives. I love the Asakusa street markets piled in a maze around Osenji shrine during the day, and its one of the few overwhelmingly touristy areas I can really enjoy. But at night, its transformed; the stalls close and the hoards go to neon-clad shops on other streets. But here in front of Osenji is still brightly lit from all sides, only now the shrines stand free of the sea of bodies, merely the sound of cicadas and one straggler shaking out his lucky stick from the みくじ jar breaking the reverie.




But in the end, the best thing I've come up with to describe my relationship with Japan: Hate sex. There's some aspect of love intermingled oh-so-messily with a frustration, or a resentment,
that manifests itself in vehement urges, not of violence but of wanting so badly to be good at this language that the only thing I can do is thrust myself angrily into it. And I feel like I can't slow down. I want to be ぺらぺら to spite all the natives who believe the blonde American is incapable. I need to earn that respect, (and not the ubiquitous and insincere 上手ですね) by dominating the language, and speaking it severely.

Tomorrow, to Tsukiji to look at fish, to Narita to board a plane, to Spokane to finally catch my breath.

さようなら!

Grammar Lessons with Elliot

I went to a club in the hilariously sketchy 西新宿二町目 district, where before long I was danced all up ons by a Brazilian. I was really hoping for a Nihonjin, but because this particular Brazilian lived in Japan and spoke Japanese fluently that was really my main criterion.

After dancing, I was told the following: ”やりたい”。

This statement included neither a subject nor an object of the verb, as Japanese speech is wont to do. But as I've gradually gotten better at understanding these sorts of things and filling in the blanks, I was pretty sure what was meant, but decided to clarify all the same.

"僕を？”

Yes, that is exactly what was meant. I discovered that night that not only has my speech progressed to the point where I can flirt in Japanese, I can also politely decline (adamantly refuse) night club intercourse. Hooray!

旅行しています

I'm in Morioka! After the insanity of the speech contest / IS presentations / final exams / goodbye party and the like, I hit the road. First a few days in Nick's apartment in Tokyo, then to Morioka until the 13th. Then I'll be back to Tokyo for a night in a capsule hotel before I hop a plane home on the 14th.

In short, the past couple of days have been too silly/improbable to be real. Speedy bare summary-
SATURDAY
~Arrive in Tokyo: steal a key to Nick's apartment while he finished his final presentation elsewhere
~Adventure to Asakusa, buy some sweet omiyage for family, and a jinbe coat for myself
~Meet a small hoarde of Yalies on the subway. (Seriously?)
~Meet up with Nick, adventure out to Nishi-Shinjuku-Nichoume, a marvelously sketchy place. Hahaha. Buy sketchy omiyage for Kelvin.
SUNDAY
~Go to Ikebukuro. Objectify cats at the cat cafe.
~Go to Akihabara. Objectify women at the maid cafe.
~Fan-made manga, used electronics stores, cheapest and/or most questionable anime I've ever purchased
MONDAY
~Help Sun Academy kids move out of their apartments, go out for western styled pizza. (I miss New Haven!)
~Almost leave behind my bag on the subway. Say whew, that was close, let's not do that again.
~Actually leave behind my bag as we board the bullet train. EPIC FAIL.

So I'll be roughing it a few days... we got the station to find my bag and hold it till I'm back in Tokyo (free storage! WOOOOO). I probably would have been able to manage on my own eventually, with lots of miscommunication and frustration, but it was very nice to have the language competency and moral support of Nick on my side. Until then, I have my wallet, my passport, my dictionary, my DS, my compy, and a lot of anime. I lucked out in that I have everything essential with me, but nothing comfortable (IE CLOTHES). The cable connecting my camera and PC is with the lost bag, so you get none of the pretty pictures of Tokyo. BOOO.

Really looking forward to coming home, but a few days of chill, clothes-less travel time will be a good way to debrief. The summer had its positive points but also its share of challenges and frustrations- going over these with my infinitely wiser suitemate who faced many of the same things will be helpful.

憧れ

So things are starting to wind down. All the projects and presentations are finished, and the final's tomorrow. Earlier this week I was fearing I'd leave with a lot of pent-up frustration, towards the country and the program and the language, but I think I got over at least part of the negative hump tonight.

Sometimes, I rant about the impression Japan is like an after school clubhouse--they have their special bottle-cap badges and the secret knock at the door and the "no girls allowed" sign on the door. Now make it a little more grown-up (but only a little) and replace "girls" with "gaijin". So of course, gaijin Elliot is not invited to the weekly meetings. But even so, there's moments of incredibly compelling kindness that wipe away all the negatives.

Today I went to the Judo dojo for the last time, to say my goodbyes to Suda-san and the sensei and the other judo-ka. I had already parted ways with my rental gi, and was surprised to see everyone else in their officer uniforms, not yet changed for practice. I had never conceptualized of most of them in anything but the white robe. We sat outside the dojo as they smoked, making small talk. Somebody had requested me to come (Suda-san? Mae-san? The polite suggestion of Okada-sensei who found me the class in the first place? When I was told my presence had been requested, the Japanese tendency to avoid attributing facts to a subject left this part out) but I didn't know what was expected of me.

It was a quiet goodbye, without events or speeches, just being, a time of enjoying the moment without much need for words. A goodbye is hard, something I barely know how to do in English. But I had a moment of realizing I was just sitting there amid these powerful, grown men, and I was accepted into the club.

My clumsy foreigner's tongue stumbled over the words for kindness and simple expressions of thanks I've used any number of times. I wonder if they understood the sincerity of what I tried to convey. I feel like one of my finest accomplishments of the summer is continuing to go to Judo; every time I started the hour-long commute by myself I could feel the deep knot of fear in my stomach. I went day after day, first to a dojo that had little interest in accepting me before I found the new one (that certainly brought its own uncertainties for being part of a prison facility). I knew I would be thrown to the mat effortlessly by the blackbelts, and acquire a new collection of bruises / blisters / inexplicable bleeding bits, and struggle to hang onto the sensei's every word in a desperate attempt to understand the physical moves that are both art and war. With the kindness of private tutorial before class and constantly imparted advice, I finally found a connection between the effort put in and the results I gained. Though I still couldn't dream of beating the real blackbelts, I learned increasingly difficult throws (or sometimes, how to deal with being thrown in an increasingly difficult fashion). That took a phenomenal burst of courage everyday.

If I found a class at home, will it mean the same thing in an environment of comfort? Hmm.

And now to to do a complete mood 180, please enjoy the video of me performing Hakodate's いか踊 (SQUID DANCE!!) at sunday's festival, 港祭り。(video credits: Julia Leonard) Please note that my arms are unreasonably long.


函館名物いか踊
いかさし、しおから、いかそめん
もう一つおまけにいかぽぽ
いかいかいかいかいか踊

Hakodate’s famous product - squid dance
squid sashimi salted squid guts squid noodles
one more dish - ika popo
squid squid squid squid squid dance!!!!

希望

Sheesh, I've fallen behind on a bunch of things I wanted to talk about. I was gonna update on a bunch of things, but then this one topic ended up taking more than its fair share.

I need to discuss this with someone and set my head straight. Please argue this, in either direction. So you know how most college students have majors? Like, before they become juniors? Um yeah. About that. I've been waffling for a while, but had nearly completely settled on Ecology/Evolutionary Biology over the runner-up Neuroscience. I knew full well I have no ambition to go into research careers, or research-oriented grad school (I take these classes because I'm interested in learning about science... but sometimes the necessary repetition and precision and drudgery of DOING good science is pretty dull). I kind of half-heartedly maintained that maybe if I was totally sold by this summer, I could still swap to East Asian Studies. Hahahaha, I'm so funny.

But wait. While I am not "totally sold" by this summer (I maintain "marginally bought", with a lot of haggling along the way), I'm suddenly considering that change of majors very seriously.

Let's suppose that one's career path is at best weakly correlated with college major, and that I have no ambition for the kind of career that requires a specific BS degree. And let's suppose that after this summer, I'm still nowhere near fluency in Japanese (FACT). And let us suppose that after this summer, and 4 more semesters with one language class each at Yale, I still can't achieve a high level of conversational/literary/masterful fluency (more than likely). Then I'll graduate with a chronological 7 years of study of something that won't crystallize to something meaningful and will therefore soon fade with disuse into nothingness.

But what if... What if I'm not just doing one language class a semester. What if I reach a point where I can attend real classes in the original language, at Yale or elsewhere. What if instead of spending next summer doing science research for a senior project, I come back to Japan, with not only the conversational ability I've painstakingly built up til now but also another year's worth of study at Yale. What if I can take the kinds of classes discussing literature and humanities and international relations and real people that have been conspicuously absent from most of my liberal arts education?

In thinking about this, though, I can't get rid of the bitter taste of thinking of devoting an entire college's worth of study to one language. I think about how many international students at Yale can study at a level that meets or surpasses my level of English thought in a language that is not their native one. Or else, I think about how many people with strong language programs in high school are already at the point where they can study abroad in Spain or France. And I feel pathetic as someone who can, at most, speak English. And now they're working on their third or fourth. So I feel that it's a shame to spend a college's worth of study and not yet even master one. Is that a misuse of the opportunities that I have?

So as to not make this entirely one-sided... I still really like EEB, and even if I did East Asian Studies I would still be taking those classes as electives. When we went hiking on Hakodate Yama, people I've met here who barely know me instantly saw the joy I had in discussing plant cycles and identifying birds and the adaptive reasons for insect behavior. I would say I thought I was studying ecology and they'd say, of course, that's perfect for you. And in the long term of career potential, I would like to do something environmentally related. If there is a tree, I want to hug it.

But I want so badly not to be the American who's the butt of the world's jokes, whose fat and stupid and didn't bother to learn another language. I want to show the naysayers (oh, and there's a lot of them) that even a white gangly blonde gaijin can learn their silly little language. I want to show them I can write their nasty little scribbles that linguists agree is the least suited writing system for the language imaginable, but they refuse to modify because of the deep roots into their history and culture. I want to give the collective Japanese nation my middle finger.

That's enough of my pontification for now... I wanna hear what you think. Or at least I want you to look at pretty pictures.

Don't mess with me, Japan. I am a big-ass hammer wielding, rice smashing, soba making machine.
Last weekend I traveled up and down the coast with Suda-san, stopping at a number of onsen along the way. I don't think I can live in a country that doesn't have onsen.

This could be the cutest pencil case ever. Or maybe, if you consider the juxtaposition of the seals and what I can only assume are lotion bottles, its kinda creepy.


Coolest parade float from 函館市夏祭り ever- riding on top of giant drums AND hitting them with sticks. It's my two greatest loves, united at last.


I'll also debut in another festival tomorrow, the 函館港祭り。I play the historical figure 石塚. I have lines. I get to speak like a samurai. Aw yeah, でござる。

Cheesecake vs. Cheese Cake

Perhaps the last couple of posts have been less than enthusiastic, but that's definitely not the entirety of my time here. (Once more, total disconnect between photos and text- ごめんね！)

Monday night, I finally saw the nightview from the peak of Hakodate Yama, allegedly the 3rd best nightview in the world. My camera fails, but it's pretty.

Right now, I'm an aspiring Judoka- I was taking Judo classes with a high school team, but then it became evident that for their practice and tournament schedule the newbies weren't entirely welcome. Now I take classes at another dojo- as it was first explained to my minimal comprehension, its "at a jail" but its "not with criminals" and its okay "because sometimes even children go there".

We learned to make 和菓子！ We'll pretend that my attempts at Dango were actually as pretty as these.

Turns out its completely non-sketchy, though,and the sensei even speaks in a way that I can actually understand (mostly). Considering every other 柔道家 in the dojo is a blackbelt, it's a little bit hilarious when we spar. There's the middle schooler who looks and is built like a rock and has no qualms about beating the crap out of me. There's the wise 50 year old who probably weighs twice as much as me- my attempts at throwing him are futile, but he'll give me lots on pointers before casually throwing me to the ground. There's the sensei who makes little noises somewhere between encouragement and amusement with every move, and there's the really nice guy who lets me throw him a couple times before he makes it very clear that he's going to throw me and there's nothing I can do about it (repeatedly) but does so in the nicest, gentlest manner possible. All in all, lots of interesting bruises and blisters but I'm loving it.



Also learned 生け花 (ikebana) the traditional art of flower arranging. The purple ones are surprisingly sharp.

Also, somehow it's been arranged that a wise 60 year old, Suda San, who was also a black belt in his younger days, gives me a ride home to the next city over. Older people are much harder for me to understand: Suda-San's voice in particular reminds me of the way Grandpa Keith talks, just faster. But I'm getting better at comprehending him and we've had some interesting conversations. Including the conversation where I got the impression he was inviting me to something but didn't really know what so just politely agreed. Turns out, I just discovered we're going to an onsen in the morning! And then maybe drinking or something. He likes his booze, apparently. Little nervous to hang out one-on-one, in case my listening abilities fail me, but 頑張るぞ！

The store calledドンキホーテ (read: donkihoute, or Don Quixote) is like a General Store but exploded in pink and glitter. One of the best things I found is this FEELMAX brand underwear. It's a monkey eating a banana. Guess what goes where. If you'd prefer, you can also go for the elephant with a cute trunk. Fetish has never been so adorable!

And beyond that, talking with my host mom continues to be awesome. She's very willing to badmouth (lovingly) the other members of the family, which is actually quite entertaining. She's actually looking forward to the twin girls hitting puberty, because once they become interested in boys, maybe they'll CHILL THE FRIG OUT so that boys will like them. We've also discussed the above mentioned novelty underwear at length; apparently everyone wears it to end of the year office parties. We sometimes marvel at the skill of Beyonce and strip dancers who can pull off the "Ｍ字開脚" (according to Jisho.org, "pornographic pose (spreading one's legs open wide with knees bent, creating the shape of the letter 'M') ") after Hikari was sitting like that at dinner. Sometimes I don't believe the sheer amount of unlikely silliness that occurs in my life.

Contrary to expectation, this cheesecake was actually cheese cake. As in, cake that tasted like Cheeze-Itz. Um, what?

Also looking forward to Sunday- Hokutoshi has a particular summer festival, and James and I will be participating wearing traditional gear. There was also the possibility that we'd be clad in happi and fundoushi--think the pants (or lack) that a sumo wears--but turns out we'll wear real pants. I guess that's okay too.

Cutest ice cream ever: Pikachu. Other options were Jigglypuff (strawberry) and Torchic (vanilla) but I couldn't really not order Pikachu.

Frustration

I want to call Japanese a "clumsy" language, but maybe that's more of a reflection on my own proficiency and not the language itself. I think the more accurate description might be "hideously impractical".

There's not just one Japanese, there's any numbers of Japaneses to watch out for and switch between, beyond just the super-polite forms that made up my previous rants. Success at reading academic materials is determined largely by kanji ability, just memorizing characters. When new compounds show up, I can often imply the meaning through familiar characters even if I have no idea how to read it aloud. Writing (at least for class) is a test of the complicated patterns of grammatical particles. Speaking in class is mixing the rigid rules of particles with one's ability to draw out vocabulary smoothly on the fly, but speaking to people my age completely abandons all the rules of 丁寧語 and 上司. Because the rules of "proper" japanese are boorishly clunky, casual speakers ignore all them altogether. And of course, listening is a struggle to apply the template of what I've already learned to the speaker's own patterns. Voice and pitch and speed and enunciation vary more from person to person than I ever would have expected in English. I struggle to comprehend old people, young people, most males... all in all its a pretty limited field. I've still yet to understand a full-length sentence spoken by my host sisters. (We did play 人生ゲーム，or the Japan'ified version of the classic Game of Life tonight, though. They took one of my children out of the car and explained something in their caffeine squirrel voices that I didn't understand. I think my son died of dysentery?)

Each of these feels like a separate language dominated (or perhaps its better to say limited) by its own skill. And right now, I can do none of them. What the F, Japan?

Unrelated to anything else, over the break I got an Ainu (the native population) instrument called the Makkuri. I call it the TwangerDanger, because you twang it and manipulate the sound with your mouth.

After spending last weekend with Japanese college students my own age, I was suddenly so comfortable with the comparatively grammar-less, direct, simplified style of speech used in casual contact. Yet my feeling of satisfaction was short lived, as any advances made there did nothing for the other skill sets required for the majority of everything.

There's so much of Japanese language that I can't justify beyond "that's the way its always been". As a foreigner looking in from the outside, it's hard to view these challenges as anything other than outright shortcomings or flaws inherent to the language. I know that trying to "fix" a language can never really happen, short of going dangerously into 1984 territory. Streamlining the language into an ideal of "efficiency" limits the range of expression it has- double plus not good. Efficiency is the death of nuance and expression and poetry. However, please note that in Japanese poetry such as Haiku, they also ignore the formal rules of grammar and particles, because in polite Japanese absolutely nothing can be said in a grand total of 5-7-5 syllables. Irony, because efficiency kills art but art demands efficiency. How are you supposed to hold both simultaneously?

Signs with cute faces
Canines, please no pooping here!
Only in Japan

I'm doing immersion, right? But what does immersion actually do for adults? I'm far beyond the point where my pre-adolescent brain could have learned Japanese just by being around it. And since then, my brain decided all those extra neurons weren't actually very important and shore them off, (thanks puberty), forever limiting my capacity to learn new things as an adult.

I think I'm just grumpy from not enough sleep. I think I would get more if I didn't live in a house with three incredibly high maintenance children. For instance, there's an upright piano and a digital keyboard in the house. The girls much prefer the keyboard. When I sometimes play it, I set the volume to one third, or maybe half. Something small. They play nothing but full volume. They play Menuet in G set to the keyboard's pre-recorded rock beat at 7 am. And then they stomp and scream and run around naked. Do not want.

A dangerous sweatshirt

Though pictures and shenanigans of the overall awesome semester break trip will be put up soon, first some musing.

I feel like Kelly must be a little bit prescient when he sends the Light Fellowship email because the latest question about running into a clash of cultures came at exactly the time my group did such a thing. Really, nothing that scandalous, but for the sake of not repeating gossip there's no need to recount the actual events here. I wasn't involved, but in short, various flirtations and cuddles between the Japanese college students we traveled with over the weekend and our group escalated to the point that friends of the Nihonjin involved got defensive and angry.

The words used: "We have different cultures. We're not like you, and we don't do that." I took it upon myself to try to repair things, since a combination of sobriety and language skills left me more capable than the friends actually involved. I apologized in the most humble keigo I could muster, full of わたくし達s and お間違いいたしましたs。I hate keigo. As I said the words, I felt the shame inherent to the language of groveling so lowly. I understand the reasons to speak in exultant language regarding the person to honor, but see no reason why this must be accompanied with talking degradingly about oneself, or why one in the position of 先輩 is entitled to speak down to the other. Even daily Japanese is full of such language: when entering a home, "おじゃまします"means I'm being a nuisance, when you leave "失礼します" means I have commited rudeness. As ritualized expressions, the literal meaning hardly matters, but when ways of negating the value of the self through constant self scorn are so deeply ingrained into speech I wonder if it doesn't impact the general mindset of native speakers.

Of the three incidents of the night, two set off drama, and the third had absolutely zero repercussions. The difference? Two were known by all, and one was discreet. Not secret, because certainly a lot of my friends knew about it, but it was out of sight enough that we could all assume that even though everyone "knew" about it, it wasn't "visible" and therefore was a non-issue.

I'm about to go on a tangent- bear with me, because I'm coming back to this.

I was recently shown some materials prepared for post-grad JET Fellows dealing with handling their sexuality as anything other than heteronormative in highly normative Japan. A few lines from it really struck me:

"In the West, you are either gay or straight (or maybe bi). But here I’ve noticed that it’s not uncommon for men to have a wife and kids, and also have a male lover “on the side,” or engage in anonymous, random gay sex on occasion. In some respects, I think it’s more acceptable for people (men especially) to engage in homosexual sexual behavior – as long as it’s not discussed or mentioned in public. It’s sort of an “anything goes” culture – as long as you don’t talk about it! "

In western culture, the "immorality" of sexuality, whether impure thoughts or premarital or queer, stems heavily from the Judeo-Christian tradition that is inexorably tied up in our culture, mores, and politics. In Japan, the Chrisitian influence is there (my host mom is presbyterian) but never puritanical or evangelical. The predominant religions, Buddhism and Shinto, are not dogmas in the same way as the bible and its commandments. And in my admittedly limited knowledge of Japanese history, religion wasn't really used as justification for political acts the way it has been in the west. Example- most of the crusades can be argued to be more the driven by the plunder of war or a corrupt papacy or territorial struggle rather than the holy mission they claimed. In contrast to that, the closest case I can think of to a Japanese war of religion is when the Shogunate 幕府 government prohibited Christianity at the penalty of death, actively persecuting believers through the use of 踏み絵. But this religious genocide was not excused by saying it was the religious duty of the dominant power, but rather the shogunate was much more candid about the necessity to consolidate its own control by crushing opposing factions and prevent foreign influence.

Now that I've weaseled all over the mulberry bush, back to the previous story of the weekend's events. I feel like the negative reaction to やらしい behavior was not based in moral decency, but rather the visibilty of propriety. When the Japanese man involved in the discreet incident professed his love and offered to break up with his current girlfriend so that he could get with the American girl, suddenly I have a hard time accepting "we have different cultures, we don't do that" as this universal blanket statement of the moral and cultural superiority of Japan.

It seems like some things that the West professes to be driven by a moral consideration, Japan would attribute to the much more practical measuring tool of social order. Even when the West uses moral excuses to justify more pragmatic reasons (ie the crusades), it seems that for once Japan is direct in its thinking and argues immediately to the end result of pragmatism (ie the expectation of social propriety). In some ways I appreciate this comparative candor, but take some gripes with how it seems the moral issue isn't given full worth. The discreet event had more potential than the other two to be morally bad, but because it wasn't brought up in public it was perfectly acceptable.

Of course, it's entirely possible I'm overattributing significance to things, too. Everything turned out alright in the end, and when I apologized the Japanese insisted everything was fine (though the finer points of the explanation I couldn't translate). In the morning, they all acted as though nothing had ever happened.

Another perspective- James was talking with Shunsuke and learned a Japanese fable where the Wise Old Man gives advice on cherishing the earth and the Lying Man tells people how to cheat their way to more money. Those who listened to the Lying Man end up broke and miserable, and those who listened to the Wise Old Man have bountiful harvests and are happy. At the end, James said, oh, so it's about valuing what's important and not being materialistic. Shunsuke corrected him, no, it means you're supposed to listen to your elders. Hmm. Ponder this distinction in viewpoints.

An exercise in juxtaposition.

Because I accrue pretty pictures far more than I actually post, the photos of the following post will bear little if any relation to the body text. If you like to analyze my every post as unique bodies of art, think of this one as surrealism. Or not. It's up to you.

This elephant is advertising "White Lover" candy. I think this is what they would call me here if I spent less time studying and more time lovin' up on the ladies.

Tomorrow is the semester final exam, so clearly I am being very studious right now. As soon as I got home today, I got upstairs to my bed and promptly passed out, my legs dangling over the side because I failed to get on the bed all the way. I was later awakened by the giggles of the host sisters at my door as they watched me sleep (thankfully I stayed dressed, they told me one of the previous year's ryuugakusei slept in the nude and they saw him). I think semester break is coming at a good time.

Okaasan! (内藤　直子） She is so sassy. Also featured, my sigma chi bro James and his host okaasan, さざきさん. This was the day parents came to class to watch us give speeches on where we want to travel, and then had parent teacher confereces. Just like kindergarten!

Over the break (and by break I mean slightly longer weekend) I'll be traveling to some more obscure locations in the northern parts of Hokkaido, to see some Ainu villages, volcanoes, and the like.
Con: doing this trip (organized by HIF) means submitting more of my autonomy to the regimented elementary school approach of the program, which is generally my biggest gripe.
Pro: This trip goes pretty far off the beaten track, and isn't nearly as mainstream as going to Sapporo, as most students are making plans for themselves.
Con: not going to Sapporo. I didn't know much about Sapporo when I decided on the alternative trip, and there's lots of fun stuff there, including a thriving scene for singles bars. No yellow fever (I have the vaccinations to prove it) but I'd really like to try flirting in Japanese with native speakers close to my own age.
Pro: the trip I'm doing is in conjection with local University students, which is the big draw for me. Associating with people my own age! What a novel concept. I love my host fam, but 9 year old girls and a host mom are very different from college students.

Buddhist temples are pretty. Last week we visited one of these close to the school. Unfortunately I paid more attention to the four cats (FOUR CATS!) than I did to the historical significance.

Trying to interact with people my own age has also been a big draw of the Judo classes for me beyond the visceral excitement of beating up mofos. I've tried to go to all of them regularly, with the aim of winning first the respect and eventually the friendship of the regular judoka. By my third class I managed the backward roll into a handstand, and I am SO FRICKIN' CLOSE to being able to somersault into horizontal splits. But I've gotten the impression they don't want newbies around to slow down practice, and apparently since they've got some big tournaments coming up I won't be permitted to go their practices for a while. But since Okada-San, one of the administrators of the program, knows I'm really into the judo classes, she found me another class. I missed the finer points of her explanation, but apparently there's some classes at a jail (?!) but it's not with the criminals, and its safe, and children can go too. I guess just using those facilities? Or taught by security guards or something? We'll see starting next week.

When we visited Asahi Elementary school, I saw some posters the children had made about eating onigiri (rice balls). Their artwork sometimes frightens me. OM NOM NOM

Fun fact: in Japanese the common word for uvula is ”のどちんこ”. I'm pretty sure this means "the throat's little penis". Nobody I've spoken to knows the scientific/medical term for uvula.

And speaking of MORE CATS, a bunch of us visited Brown-san's okaasan's quilt show. This cat on a quilt is gettin' crunk.

Anyway, as of tomorrow I'm half done with the language program. I've griped about how I'm treated like a child, and not being actively engaged in class, and I've wondered how much this summer will actually matter for accomplishment. Like, in applying for the Light Fellowship, I had to discuss my future goals / career ambitions for Japanese. Being nebulous and unclear about my future in general, I crafted some interesting possibilities that would sound a little more tangible, with the hope of interning in some aspect of sustainable and efficient city management for a place as dense as Tokyo, or maybe even the US Embassy in Tokyo. And now I doubt even with the progress from this summer and another year of Yale study after that if I would be anywhere near proficient enough to be useful in such a position. So long-term, what do I get from investing this much into Japanese study?

I had the pleasure of explaining to my host mom why candy called カラッパ(english sound: crapper) is funny.

There's a semester's worth of classes left, which probably means four more chapters of fill-in-the-blank excercises out of a shoddy textbook. What can I accomplish in that amount of time?

Pokemon cut-out nori. This means you can put pikachu on your rice balls. Best idea ever? Why yes. I think so. If I can accomplish something as awesome as making pokemon out of seaweed, I will be happy.

BUT, not to come off as too nihilistic, things are actually on a great upswing now. Before I left the States, I saw all the graphs of projected enjoyment for study abroad, and thought it was BS. Although now in analyzing my experience, I certainly had the initial rush of "Woo Japan kawaii omg" followed by a major crash of feeling stifled and frustrated with academics. I hung out in the valley of lameness for a while, but this week has been much better. I've been talking with my host mom more, which I think has really made the difference. I even had a conversation on Sunday with two Nihonjin driving by where I didn't realize they were asking me questions in English until halfway through the conversation. Even class has gotten a little more interesting, with more discussion and less fill-in-the-blank (although trying to debate about convenience stores wasn't very successful... "um, yes, I too think that they are very convenient"). Things are looking good, though I wish I could better articulate why; there's not often a lot of time to reflect, because taking time off for anything else sometimes gets in the way of other things. Like right now studying for the semester final. Oops.

The view of the city from the base of Mt. Hakodate. It is full of hope and change, and dreams. Dreams for the future. And hope. And peace. And change and youth and hope.

竹に短冊、七夕祭り

As I'm gradually getting accustomed to swapping languages on the fly, I've been making some efforts to avoid as much English as possible. Basically what this has meant is that I set my computer and facebook to Japanese (which didn't really do anything because I knew all the menus without reading the unfamiliar kanji) and neglecting my blog.

Today we had the dreaded speech contest- memorizing a four minute speech wasn't bad at all (but I guess I memorized so many 8-10 speeches in my debate days that something of that length is a snap). The general consensus among my class is that we wouldn't be caught dead delivering the same speech in English; the limited length of the speech, paired with the necessity of polite (read: long) forms means there's very little of insight we can actually say. I couldn't succinctly sum up the Japanese culture in a speech of that length in English, or even a summer's worth of blogs. So as we revised our drafts amid Sensei's constant questioning of "What's the message?", I finally had to resort to the earth-shattering Pearl of Wisdom "it's not that one culture is better than the other, it's just that I think they're different".

An interesting development in the language swapping: Sunday I went out running to clear my head, deep into the rice fields and far enough that Hakodate Yama, the cow-shaped mountain that looms over every activity of every day, disappeared altogether. Apparently a lone gaijin walking the side of the road attracted enough attention that one car of two japanese ladies drove past me, stopped, turned around and asked me why I was so far from anywhere else. They asked me friendly questions, and I responded in Japanese- it wasn't until halfway through our conversation that I consciously realized they were asking questions in English. Whoa.

Of course, the process of training myself to speak something else comes with its own screw-ups. A few of my favorite recent examples of WORD FAIL:

"この手紙を送りたいから、何時まで教科書があいてる？"
("Since I want to mail this letter, until what time is the textbook open?" Host mom gave me some funny looks. Probably meant Post Office. The words aren't even close.)

When I went to actually mail the letter, the post office lady did the transaction then invited me to seal the envelope. I immediately put the flap to my mouth... and she handed me a stick of glue. The entire post office laughed. Apparently they do these things differently. Maybe something to do with the general germophobia here? I didn't know the verb "to lick" to explain how we usually do it in the states, so I figured it'd be best to cut my losses and leave early. (Although I guess I could have explained it with something like "封筒に舌をすると、のりになる！” "If you do a tongue to the envelope, it becomes glue!")

I tried to tell my host mom that I learned how to make ちょうちん (paper lanterns) after class, but instead told her I brought home a ちんちょう．My dictionary won't tell me, but I'm pretty sure I told her something about a penis.

I was invited to go to ドン・キホーテ (English: Don-kihoute, or as I eventually figured out, Don Quixote.) I thought we were going to a play based off the book, but it's actually a store. Like the general store but exploded with glitter. I bought engrish apparel, including Rilokumma bear underwear that says in roman characters "kyou to ashita mo minna goro goro shimasu" ("Today and also tomorrow everyone's just kinda loafing around") It is the most fabulous piece of clothing I've ever worn.

The big deal of today was 七夕 (Tanabata). On the 7th day of the 7th month, there's some lore about the daughter of a god and a normal person who were lovers make a bridge to meet on that one day. This holiday isn't a big deal in most of Japan, except here in Hokkaido, it's a close approximation to Trick-Or-Treating. All the obscenely adorable children dress up in obscenely adorable yukatas and go door to door, singing the Tanabata Song (in a similar fashion to the phrase "trick-or-treat", some regions' songs threaten bodily harm if they don't get candy). The original tradition and the song's word ask for candles as mementos, but everyone gives out candy or toys (I got a balloon dog!) and the few old people who actually give out candles are immediately blacklisted from the neighborhood.

Nozomi (pink), Hikari (blue), and me (tall American dude) pose with the decorated sasa tree outside the house. It's covered with little origamis, chains of paper, and small prayers written out on cards. I decorated the tree myself!

I went around to a couple houses with my host sisters, adamantly insisting I was too old and I didn't need the candy, but everytime my host sisters insisted even more adamantly I needed it, and then took the candy for me and held it at me / threw it at me until I finally accepted it. Probably the best part of Tanabata is that our friend and neighbor Shibuya-san gave me beer in exchange for singing the Tanabata song.

As Amanda-san and I caught up with the itty bitty host sisters to go out Tana-Bata'ing, I explained that even though we were too old Amanda and I wanted to experience it together. Actually said we wanted to get married together. Oops.

Awww, children are adorbs. This is moments before they ran shrieking to the next house. This happened between every house, as if all the sweets would be gone if they didn't hurry.

Lots more interesting things to report/ponder, but its late and the semester final exam is fast approaching. For now, the tanabata song, which requires only two notes and will be stuck in my head forever after the number of times I heard children singing it tonight.
竹に短冊七夕祭り
大い祝おうローッソク　一本
ちょうだいナア！

Who decided it would be a good idea to give them THAT MUCH sugar? Crap.

Shenanigans of the Japanigan variety

Long and disparate post again: short recap of the weekend via photos first, then longer cultural musings.

The Weekend: Onuma. We went to a "Quasi-National Park" which was really an excuse to gather all the foreign students at this swanky resort and hang out and have shenanigans for the day, which I was totally okay with.
The park itself, though, was also gorgeous. Please note that this man has died his poodle's ears pink.

We didn't go on the paid bike tour, which is a shame- those wacky Japanese have invented individual bike carts that link into the one in front to make an enormous chain, as many as 52. Dad- I think you would like this one.And Dad, you'll also like the next one. Hokkaido is also famous for its bears- we couldn't resist posing along with a couple of kuma. Please note that I'm wearing my Happy Bear Hat, which I now take with me every time I travel to show the bears being happy in as many locations as possible.



Though we missed out on the chain bikes, we did rent some buggies- you can't see it here, but Phil's buggy is riding on the rear bumper of Pedro's and my buggy after he rammed us. We then swapped our buggy for a tandem, which was pretty exciting considering my partner had never ridden a bike. Then I found all the children's play places! This jungle gym castle is not only meant for children, who are smaller than me, but also Japanese children, who are much smaller than me.

And then the スポーツ・スライダ！This is what I took on the way up the hill, sitting on basically a skeleton luge on a chairlift before plunging down the metal track.
Dinner at the resort was highly nom-worthy. Tempura, sashima, shabu shabu, rice, fruit, scallop, pickled vegetables, and udon- a 和食 feast!
After dinner was the talent show- classes IIB and IIA sang　世界に一つだけの花, one of the most popular songs in Japan. I haven't yet decided whether the translated lyrics are genuinely inspirational or wildly cheesy, but I really like the song anyway.


Once I got back, the family had just got Wii Sports Resort, which equates to lots of thrashing flailing video game fun that require very little language ability. Here, my sisters canoe enthusiastically.
But apparently I'm no longer worth my salt as a gamer- I nearly redeemed myself through the bike racing game tonight enough to make up for the number of times I've lost to 9 year old girls, but then my homemaker host mom schooled me at bowling. I am ashamed.

Sunday, back in Kunebetsu, I went to a Band Festival that host sisters Nozomi (trumpet) and Hikari (clarinet) were playing in. Their band director is frickin' intense. My elementary school band never would have attempted the level of pieces they play, and it would probably would have been appropriate for some of the lower levels of my high school band. Sheesh. But I continue to be a celebrity among the children- that day I was deemed their very tall god when I demonstrated my prowess at lifting them to the top of the monkey bars. Girl in the front row, second to the left kept on yelling ”外人，やってやって！”　（Foreigner, do me next!") And then host sister Hikari explained because "かれはあたしのイートン君“(He's my Eaton!) she got to go next. I was struck dead with adorableness.

Today's kimono class: although there's a huge amount of elaborate care put into how the girls are supposed to properly wear kimono, for the guys it's a little boring. Put on the coat. Tie it with a belt. Tada!

And now a discussion of things. The Light Fellowship inquires what preconceptions I've started to shed, but if anything, I'm just more aware of the ways in which I still feel trapped by preconceptions. I feel like college suitemate Nick (currently in Tokyo) hit the nail on the head when he said that the Japanese don't expect foreigners can actually do the things associated with Eastern culture. Like in the aforementioned kimono class, the instructors tried to do everything on us rather than demonstrate or explain (and the male yukatas are simple).

Conversely, I feel indoctrinated that we as foreigners need to be so hyper-sensitive to cultural mores that its been suffocating a lot of my own personality. In Japan, I've been far more reserved and quiet than I would be anywhere else. For instance, I realized there's no such thing as a high five here (I tried to give my host brother Yume one after we went hiking, and he was scared to walk down a step hill, so I piggybacked him down). But then with all the things I've had shoved down my throughout about propriety and personal humility in Japanese culture, I felt as if trying to explain the high five would be a taboo of self-aggrandizement and personal space. That can't be right- high fives are awesome!

This feeling relates back to my previous rant on being a child in this culture. When I'm out in public with my host mom, we inevitably encounter some of her friends and stop to chat. Sometimes I'm not introduced, and just hover awkwardly in the background, noticing that this other mother's 2nd grade child is doing the same, either not following or not caring about the adult conversation. And when I am introduced, it's always to a chorus of praise about how good at Japanese I am, and then the adults lose interest in me before I have the chance to prove that I'm a somewhat intelligent individual. I never felt like this before the homestay, when I went out exploring on my own, set my own schedule, and spoke with adults as an adult. Now I feel like a one-trick pony paraded out in front of the crowd. I am so sick of ”上手ですね！”, the compliment they give to any foreigner who can speak a single word of Japanese. Empty sentiment dictated by social norms dominate the Japanese style of speaking- there's a lot of fluff to any sort of polite situation which still seems pretty unnecessary.

My image of a stereotypical family structure is a little harder to relinquish. I don't quite get the adult dynamic in my family- host dad Yoshinao leaves early (as in before I'm up in the morning, 6:30) and gets home late (often after I've gone to bed, anytime between 10-1). So basically he never exists in the house, I go days at a time without seeing him, and there hasn't been anything resembling a conversation between us since my first day. I feel indebted to him in that he's the breadwinner for the roof under which I'm staying, and everytime host mom Naoko makes a delicious dinner or brings home a sweet from the コンビニ its from his income. They have separate bedrooms, but when I brought up the topic host mom was quick to assure me that was about ease of sleeping and personal space, not anything negative in their relationship. It's just strange for me to see the work/home dynamic polarized so far between the couple. I can't say how "typical" this is of Japanese families at large, and there really isn't a particular profile of family that tends to host the various students, but I've heard from several sources that for a country so progressive in technology Japan remains pretty far behind on gender equality. I guess my understanding of these things is still a work in progress.

Beatin' up mofos

Deep thoughts to come at a later point. For now, pretty pictures!

Host sister Hikari tries on my jacket. She later tried the shoes, which were boats to her itty bitty feet.

Engrish: "There is no guy who does not believe in Victory here!"
I am inspired.

水あめ, (Mizu-ame or water candy). Looks like honey but is more like caramel.

HIF offers us the chance to take classes in Kendo (stick whacking), Judo (mofo throwing) and Kyudo (archery). Here, Ashok gallops into battle, ready to scream "MENNNN" and whack a mofo in the head. There's particular battle cries for different targets- we learned "men" for the head, "kote" for the wrists, and "dou" for the side.

I also beat up mofos aggressively. We used some training dummies and some real people as targets. Sorry Koh.

Phil likes violence!

Julia unleashes her beastliness.

Also started judou, which is unreasonably badass. They started us off with a series of increasingly challenging warm-up exercises (somersaulting, somersaulting out of a handstand, somersaulting into splits, backward somersaulting into a handstand). With the little bit of age 6 gymnastics training I have, I actually did all right with these. (Although Kelvin, we still need to take that tumbling class at the gym). Then we learned how to throw our sparring partners! I felt a little guilty, since it wasn't a reciprocal back and forth thing (if you don't know how to be thrown properly you can get injured pretty badly) so I just threw my buddy Kento a lot.

Today is the weekend excursion to Oonuma, quasi-National park. I've seen that "quasi-National" title attached to Oonuma all the time and have no idea what it actually designates, but it should be a fun trip. Updates to come later.

Now for a real post...

The following post comes in three (longish) sections: one that's moderately serious followed by two that are amusing but less so.

MODERATELY SERIOUS (DUN DUN DUH!)
The Light Fellowship asked if I've encountered any cultural misunderstandings with my hosts, but I really can't think of any I've had. If anything, I feel like the the Light program over-prepares us for culture shock. For instance, nowhere is it mentioned that Sapporo and the surrounding cities are the least "formal" in all of Japan for the levels of politeness expected in spoken language. My host family barely ever uses particles, and I started off constructing elaborate ladders of expression that they understood and replied to before I'm halfway through the ritualistic endings. My friend Yiwen (PhD candidate in history at Stanford) has ranted at length about her beef with Asian Exclusivism, the idea that Japan/China/East Asia in general are so culturally removed from anyone else that we can't understand them. The fundamental motives I see driving my homemaker host-home revolve a deep love for her three kids, despite the difficulty of her oldest son being severely mentally handicapped and her husband working till late each night. That drive is not at all alien, even if some of the niceties of the gift giving culture and social hierarchy are.

But all the understanding I have comes with limitations. Even though my family's been very friendly and easygoing with me, and I've accomplished a lot (today's win came from describing my allergy-induced dry eyes to the pharmacist to order the right kind of eye drops, when I've heard Japanese drugstores can be notoriously difficult) I'm still intellectually a child in this culture. I can ride the train by myself, or stay out late, or order a glass of sake, but none of these relate to the level of expression I can manage. I'm getting increasingly more competent but that just reveals how much more I can't yet do... even asking for help with the eye drops was accompanied by the confession "I can't read any of this". I suppose the conversations I've most enjoyed in English with close friends are about their beliefs and philosophies, incredibly nuanced pieces of thought and debate that I can't even begin to describe through my Japanese.

This is not to say I can't have an adult conversation. Yesterday I described what I had once discussed with Young, (freshmen year roommate who did the HIF program last summer), his idea that having everyone raised in a nigh-identical culture (as is the case in minority-less Japan) may be superior to what we usually laud as the American melting pot. But the range of such conversations I can handle is determined by whatever vocabulary sets I can apply (移民族国 FTW!), and these are only the vocabulary sets I've already been spoon-fed by a sensei. Independent Elliot resents.

Which brings me to the classes, which I haven't yet discussed via the blogosphere. I'm in Intermediate 2B, which isn't bad (most of the Yalies who finished 2nd year are here too) but the grammar doesn't challenge me. I've been at this whole "learning a language thing" for 5 years now (granted, 3 years of Lewis and Clark High School language equated to only one semester of Yale study) and it kills me that there are people who've done it for one year who are in the same place. (Also granted, they're native Chinese so they can read anything in Japanese, and I'm better at speaking in class, but still). The topics of the dialogues (ordering food at a restaurant and giving gifts) are the same kind I've seen since my first semester of Japanese study. And I feel like much of the program is on rails, holding my hand through everything (quite literally in the pottery class, where the instructor mumbled quietly as he puppet my hands for me on the wheel). My bad boy resistance to this comes in the form of writing totally kick-ass essays on all the homework assignments, with less obvious responses and longer explanations full of grammar we're not supposed to know yet. I'll keep on writing these awesome essays until the senseis feel bad about themselves. HA!! THAT'll show 'em.

I attract attention wherever I go. It's not exactly a surprise considering how blatantly foreign I look (not that many Japanese stand at 188 cm and reek of Scandinavian heritage) but its a lot. Sometimes its fun, like getting swarmed by adorable children who want to love me, and sometimes its less so, like children who stop dead in the middle of the street when they see me.

I suppose my very existence in Japan comes with misunderstanding. The notion that I can speak at all is inevitably a surprise. I've been told "Harro" by any number of people (not even an exaggeration- even though that's how Americans tend to mock the Japanese accent when being less than PC, that's the only way I've heard them say "hello") and they gasp when I respond with a "konnichiwa". Doing research on the mountain for my independent study today, I said "konnichiwa" and "sumimasen" as I passed a guy on the narrow path- he gave me a funny look, but then as I was leaving he said something else at me not expecting I would respond- but I did, and we got into a conversation about the environmental research I'm trying to pull off.

As a whole, this rant is not to say my experience here is not awesome- because it is. It's just that learning is hard. Who'da thunk it?

And now a new section...
CONVERSATIONS I WASN'T SUPPOSED TO UNDERSTAND (BUT I DID)
The first such conversation came when I commented on the Disney Princess placemat at dinner my host sister had. I mentioned that Hillary's favorite princess was Ariel, and then adorable baby sister Nozomi launched into a long tirade about clam-shell bras and nipples. I can still barely comprehend my sisters because they talk super fast in adorably high-pitched voices, but the gestures and the use of おっぱい (nipple!) was unmistakable.

Yesterday in the department store food court, I leaned back in my chair and stretched, which prompted my host mom to karate chop my exposed belly. When host sister Hikari tried to follow suit, host mom explained that when you do that you're only supposed to hit the belly and not the penis. I thanked her for the sage advice.

Also, the form of punishment that my host mother uses on the kids is a chucky doll. The kids have seen many horror movies like Child's Play, and are convinced that Chucky lives in America, so they ask me about him everyday. When they're bad, the mother says that Chucky is coming to play or brings out the doll (cue the girls screaming and hiding all over the house) and when she feels the kids are satisfactorily cowed she reminds them that Chucky only lives in America.

So as a result, when most adorable nine year olds draw you a picture, it's something cute like faeries or animals. My host sisters instead draw me pictures of demented man-doll Chucky savagely disemboweling a naked lady.

A note host mom left out for the kids- the bottom says "If you don't listen to what I've said, I'll call Chucky"

This has gotten pretty long, so in short,
COOL THINGS THOSE WACKY JAPANESE HAVE CREATED:
~Japan has invented 卵の販売機 (vending machines that dispense eggs by the dozen)
~self-moving carwashes (as in, the drive-through kind that takes a block in the US takes two small car-lengths. You park and the machine tunnel 洗車 moves back and forth over the car)
~self made packets of ソフト・アイス (where you place a packet of flavor into a compressy machine and it dispenses soft serve ice cream out perfectly into a cup lined with corn flakes).

For your entertainment, some wonderful Engrish from the train. (Click to zoom in).
Please note the thief and the owl to denote "sneak".

CATS

It's official... videos of me spinning cats are a hit in any language.



The host family was even more impressed by the original Wiggy Spin, marveling that he doesn't even need a box to spin on the hardwood floors.

OMG CHILDREN

I am officially a rockstar. I went with my host mom to pick up the girls from their brass band practice (they play trumpet and clarinet). As the students filed out, several of them stopped dead in their tracks to stare at the tall blonde gaijin. I talked with two of the 6th graders (they thankfully spoke slower than Nozomi and Hikari) who squealed over my every word as I reigned over a sea of people half my size. They actually worshipped my feet to see how large they are. I was overwhelmed by the swarm as they pressed me against a wall and asked questions bursting with enthusiasm. Hakodate itself is a decently international tourist spot, but the neighboring city Kunebetsu where my family lives is pretty quiet and sees far fewer non-Japanese.

I also got an invitation to go back to the school and practice trumpet sometime- I'll have to show the children how to play and sing our Bulldog fight song sometime.

Little sis Hikari is far left in the second row.
Can you find me?
Once you do, notice the mild look of fear in my eyes.

This photo better captures the scale of the wave of babies.

Today I bought the JR Rail pass at the station- I was pretty pleased with myself for filling out nearly the entire form that was written almost exclusively in kanji, much of which I didn't really know.

Plus, I finally figured out how to tell the twins apart. Nozomi more consistently wears pink, and Hikari tends towards green. Plus Nozomi has a tiny beauty mark above her lip. Though I appreciate the suggestion of post-it notes, I think I can now handle it on my own.

And for mainly my own entertainment as I mentally plot how to indoctrinate the children of Japan with Yale spirit, a shoddy translation of Bulldog into Japanese:

ブル！ Buru!
ブル！ Buru!
ワンワンワン Wan wan wan
イライ・イエル Eri Yare

ブル！ Buru!
ブル！ Buru!
ワンワンワン Wan wan wan
チームは失敗するまい teemu ha shippai suru mai

イライの男児受けを割ると Irai no danji uke o waru to
あの全長留意ぞ！ano zenchou ryuui zo!

ブル！ Buru!
ブル！ Buru!
ワンワンワン Wan wan wan!
イライ・イエル Eri Yare!

HOST FAMILY をします

I finally met the host family. I was terrified of the two little girls, who are cute beyond reason but talk far too fast and casually for someone spoon-fed textbook japanese to follow. No rejection is as complete and merciless as a 9 year old Japanese girl who suddenly loses all interest in you because you have no idea what she just said.

At first I struggled epically as all the japanese I ever knew left me, but gradually I've been able to talk with my parents. They like watching Child's Play (チャッキ) and Saw (ソー) as a family. And it turns out the train station is literally a block away, so this eases the transportation nightmare I previously saw.

Nozomi and Hikari are identical twins. All look same? I kept track of them by their shirt colors but then they got into pajamas. I'll have to start over again tomorrow.

But fortunately, the girls and I bonded over making origami squids, or I least I tried to follow the directions while they said ”こうして、こうして” and finally did it for me. I later explained I wanted to become a パテイシエ (it's a Japanified french word for pastry chef) which elicited extreme cries of ヘエエエエエエエ？！

Highlight of my life: there was a cheesy news story on about "The Secret Millionaire", and in an effort to teach her daughters important values, the mother starts exclaiming in her best bimbo voice "ミリオナイアの妻になりたい！” She then continued in a more imperative tone- "サーデイアラビアはどう？たくさん石油がある！サーデイアラビアでオサマの妻になって！”

The fact that my host mother told her daughters to go to Saudi Arabia in order to marry Osama and become a millionaire's wife is proof that my family will be awesome.

No pictures of the host family yet, so instead a pic of my last hotel dinner:
bento boxes of sushi and coconut pocky. Major yum.