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.