Shenanigans in Japan - JAPANIGANS

Comparisons and perspective

2012-01-31T02:51:00.000-08:00

It hit me recently that when I told my family I was moving to Japan, they didn't argue with that decision. They didn't even grill me on the details of why. It was just kinda accepted. So I haven't really been forced to articulate why I needed to come here, why I needed to work for a Japanese company. Other than I needed to. There's a reason there, but its worrisome I can't articulate it better.

That worry and doubt of course leads to asking if this is the right path for me, when there were any number of options that didn't involve leaving the states. (Most of them revolved around gainful employment, which I wasn't otherwise finding, but that's a different story.) But thinking about this in November, when I went back to campus for The Game and had a chance to see a glimpse of what my college friends were up to, something else hit me:

"Oh crap. Everyone's so much happier than me".

Maybe "happier" wasn't the right word for it. "Doing better"?

I was jealous of how much of the college network everyone else seemed to retain even after moving away. A staggering proportion of my JE friends ended up in the DC area, and get to see each other all the time. A further staggering amount of couples stayed together, something I had considered so impossible after my own experiences with distance. I thought it so impossible that I didn't even dare to ask before Graduation what they were planning on doing afterwards, assuming it would be a touchy subject. Most everyone had jobs in something they really wanted to do (at this point I was still jobhunting and feeling pretty anxious about it).

Nobody else had an hour commute to and from work, nobody else had lost 10 pounds because of a spartan budget, nobody else struggled with something so basic as buying groceries because they couldn't read the label.

Of course, some of this is just the inevitably human tendency of thinking the grass is always greener. And realistically, I'm sure everyone else has their share of difficult things they're dealing with that I didn't get during our too short (always too short) reunions. In the day and a half of alumni coming back to campus, I only got serious, lengthy conversations with a small handful of people as I tried to see everyone at overlapping events.

Corinna (one of my JE friends, who of course knows lots of other friends from college working near her in NY, and has a comfy living situation, and is still together with her college sweetheart, yadayada) came for a visit two weeks ago on her way to visit her family in China, and spent the weekend at my place. It was great to see her for many reasons, including making the world feel a little more connected, that a Yale friend might casually drop in to Shinkawasaki station for a visit. She also provided me with perhaps a much-needed dose of perspective.

To a lot of my friends, I'm the one with the enviable position, the incredible freedom to jetset around the world. Somebody is paying me, not because I produce a profit for them, but so that I can invest in myself. I'm in such a fantastical wonderland every day that seeing Mt. Fuji or eating fried squid is mundane.

Corinna is very wise. Also she brought these AWESOME maple cream cookies. God bless Canada.

Again, because I am delinquent on pictures, instead please look at the internet-famous Shironeko blog, a series of videos devoted to stacking things on top of cats.

Third Semester

2012-01-29T05:01:00.000-08:00

We're now two weeks into the third semester of classes, and its been a haul.

Here's a breakdown of my week:

Politics & Economics - M&Th, 10:00 -12:00
This is fun because I know diddly squat about economics and now I'm learning about them in my non-native language. But we're using articles taken from a college level textbook, which is in itself pretty exciting. The reading for this class tends to be the toughest assignments I have, if for no other reason I can't keep track of all the different departments in the many layers of bureaucracy.

Modern Japanese History - MTuThF, 1:30 -3:00
The first day we talked about Meiji, and I was all "Yaaaaay this was my senior essay topic I can say lots and people will think I'm smart yaaaaay" and then by day 2 we had moved past Meiji. And then I was sad. The class covers from 1900 to the present, but the bulk of the material is Postwar stuff.

Integrated Japanese - TuW, 10:00-12:00
Nothing too exciting, just a straight-up grammar class. Homework is usually just writing example sentences for a grammar pattern, so its comparatively pretty manageable.

Business Japanese - F 10:00-12:00
The first hour involves roleplays of set phrase and interactions with keigo (the elevated, I-am-sorry-for-committing-an-inconvenience-upon-you-by-my-very-existence style of speaking), and the second hour is a series of practical workshops on resumes, interviews, stuff like that. Since I'm the one person in the class already with a job lined up, I was volunteered to go first for the panel interview next week. It will be a six on one interview with the other students poring over my resume and preparing questions as representatives of the company. The Sensei will play the role of (what I think translates to) "Chief Tormentor" and be mean to me. To see how fast I cave under pressure. Waaaaah T_T

Outside of the regular classes, there's also...
Calligraphy painting - Tu 3:15-5:00
My handwriting is lousy to begin with, but that's all the more reason to try to learn the stylized painting techniques for kanji characters. I still don't excel, but I'm approaching what I might dare to call adequacy. The teacher compliments us (in all sincerity) "oh look how good you're getting at writing your own name!". Makes me feel a little bit like a kindergardener. The sensei also tells me that my characters have their own "distinct interestingness", (独特な面白さ）which I think is a polite way of saying I'm doing it wrong.

By the way, the characters I chose to spell my name are
井惇 (Eaton: "well" and "considerate")
伊雷 (Eli: "having style" and "thunder")

Business - Th 3:15-5:00
This is different than my Business Japanese class, and also different from the Business & Society class additionally offered by the center. (You'd think they'd be more creative with names). Its the only lecture class I've had here, and also the least interesting. We receive upwards of 30 pages of charts and graphs each time, and the teacher points out a couple fun facts, without a very clear path of where he's going. Someone best described it as the kind of one-sided conversation you have when you sit down next to the drunk old guy at the bar.

Apart from just the class hours, school day itself is pretty long--I'm almost always in the building by 9 AM preparing for morning, working through lunch to prepare for afternoon class, and staying until the building closes around 5 doing homework, so I keep myself pretty busy.

In lieu of having pretty pictures, I shall instead introduce something else japanese-y. The cellphone carrier Softbank has a commercial campaign centering around the antics of the Shirato family, mainly starring the iconic white dog Otoosan (Dad). I'm not sure how these commercials sell phones, but they're entertaining. Softbank also manages to sell a lot of Otoosan merchandise in the process.

Oh hey look I have a blog (明けましておめでとう）

2012-01-13T22:57:00.000-08:00

I have been hardcore neglecting this blog. More backlogs of stories to come, but a couple things for now:

I have employable job skills! (lolwut)

I went back to the states in November for the Boston Career Forum, the world's largest English/Japanese career forum. So I flew to 11 hours to Boston to interview with companies that also flew to Boston, even though their Tokyo offices are generally about 30-40 minutes from my apartment. Yeah. I had a hard time explaining that one.

BUT- a couple weeks after I got back, I got a full employment offer from Rakuten. Just accepted it right before the new year, so for the first time in 15 months I am not thinking about a job search, at all. Funny thing though: I still know very little about the concrete job details.

Fastest explanation of Rakuten is that its the Amazon of Japan, but it also has a lot of subsidiaries including travel, electronic money, investments, even wedding planning. When I start in October I'll have a month or two of training/evaluation and then they'll put me where the they think I'd be the best fit. Seems like this should work out well for somebody with an interest in everything but necessarily "tangible" job skills (oh hey, me!). But my various investigations into company atmosphere and happiness of current employees give me good vibes. (doesn't hurt that the pay is probably the most I could get as a new grad without going into finance and banking)

Did a lot of studying over the break, and most notably, I finished the exams on all 1945 of the Jōyō kanji (daily use characters), the characters required in primary/secondary education and generally used as a guideline of basic reading proficiency for newspapers and such.

Of course, the list was updated two years ago to now include 2136 characters. (jerk move, Ministry of Education). But when I originally set the goal to master all the Jōyō kanji, there were only 1945 at the time. So it still counts.

Third semester starts on Monday, reputed to be the hardest term academically. I'll be adding an Econ class, a business Japanese class, and a contemporary history class. The work so far seems challenging and interesting, and by this point we're using pretty much exclusively textbooks intended for native speakers.

To make this post more interesting, a mildly offensive (but still hilarious) example of how Japanese pop groups don't quite get how its insensitive to parody other cultures. T-ara, which is actually a korean pop group that also produces Japanese versions of their hits, dress up like Tiger Lily, and wave their palms over their mouths going "wowowowowowowo" as they dance around the teepees:

Some things are best left unexplained

2011-12-05T15:04:00.000-08:00

I have 18 roommates

2011-11-28T01:40:00.000-08:00

So I very recently moved into a new apartment, with lots of Japanese roommates. It's a "share house" which is basically a college dorm for big people. But I only moved in 1.5 days before I left Japan for the week I spent in the States, so I hadn't yet met most of the roomies very much.

But on the national holiday the day before Thanksgiving (no relation), many of the roomies decided to get bellig. So I got home from class, passed out by 5 pm due to mega jetlag, and woke up around 10 or 11 pm to find a party in my house. They shared the shochu (vodka, ish) and whiskey liberally, but basically everyone else had a fairly low alcohol tolerance so there were a lot of red faces.

Gaydar is culturally subjective. In the states, I have surprisingly good gaydar. If I can tell at all, I usually pick up on the 'mo vibe upon the first eye-contact when meeting someone new. This is not necessarily true in Japan, in large part because much of the hip/fashionable clothing for young men would be effeminate--dare I say fabulous--by our standards.

Today's featured item of Japanese Goods with Questionably Translated Names: STRAIGHT TEA. They did not have any GAY TEA in stock.

One of my housemates, Mochi, is cute as a button and flirtatious with anything that moves and basically a Japanese version of my college roommate Kelvin. I had been wondering about him, but as the drinks kept pouring themselves the following happened:

Mochi: I want to study English so I can meet a good guy. I just want Zak Efron to touch me. I'd say "No Zak, no!" but really I would want it.
Erriot: Oh, so you're gay.
Mochi: Who told Erriot I was gay?!

Lolwut. This was not the first loaded-with-gayness thing he said, but it was definitely the most unmistakable.

Added fun note, many of roommates go by vomit-inducingly cute nicknames. Like, Okazaki Hiroyuki goes by Okapi. His bestie Ogawa Chihiro goes by Ogachi. I swear that Okapi and Ogachi are different evolved stages of the same pokemon.

For Thanksgiving itself, it was my first time not with family. Bummer. But to deaden the pain by eating my feelings, I made an imitation of Sweet Potato Casserole to share with the roomies. Japan does not have sweet potatoes, but this did not stop me. I made do with Satsuma-imo, which are vaguely sweet-potato-ish. But purple on the outside and yellow on the inside.

Also, explaining "Casserole" to people not from a culture inundated with casserole is surprisingly hard. "Um... you can make it out of lots of things. It can be tuna or it can have pasta. But its a big thing you eat for dinner. And its not a dessert food unless is sweet potato casserole, when it is."

Adventures in foreign medical systems

2011-11-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

After a pretty full week, I had been looking forward to Saturday to catch up on work, sleep, and a party I had been assisting to coordinate in Tokyo. This didn't happen when I woke up with what felt like strep throat.

First couple hours of the day I contemplated dragging myself to the drugstore a few blocks away for what I knew worked pretty well on sore throats. I finally got the OTC stuff but it didn't seem to help as much as I had remembered, so I started looking up international clinics in the area, or places that at least would participate directly in the HTH insurance I'm receiving from Yale. (Students of IUC are supposed to enroll in the Japanese national health insurance, which would have made this a lot easier. But Yale pays extra for this service. I'll get reimbursed eventually, but there'll be more paperwork) But, all of these places were an hour + trip away, or closed on saturdays, so I was gonna call it quits.

It's hard enough when I'm healthy to call around in Japanese looking for a place, and then take the train and walk there and get lost for half an hour because the Japanese system of street addresses is useless and then navigate a bunch of unfamiliar bureaucratic procedures, so when I'm sick enough that getting out of bed is a challenge I wasn't really up to it. Armed with the knowledge of webmd.com, I knew strep will go away on its own, and the antiobiotics suppress contagiousness and generally not the actual symptoms, so I was content to wait in my bed until it went away.

But my symptoms were getting worse, so I finally pushed through to find a clinic. Interesting things different about the medical system here:

America's big on privacy and always has the waiting area cordoned off from the reception desk where patients discuss symptoms and payments with the nurse; that didn't seem to be a concern here. I'm used to filling out a complete medical questionnaire about anything that has ever happened to anyone in my family when I go to a new clinic for the first time, but the only survey I did was about the current condition.

I had heard that Japanese doctors tend to be brusque and efficient without much concern for bedside manner, and I guess that stereotype was confirmed but not necessarily in a bad way. He looked at my throat and nose and very quickly decided it was "風邪”, a cold, and subscribed me antibiotics. I asked if we should also do a strep test, since American doctors would usually do that as well, but he was confident that he'd prescribe the same things regardless of the test results and didn't feel the need. I felt lucky that my japanese level was advanced to know things like tonsillitis (扁桃炎、literally "flat peach inferno") because he didn't try to explain anything beyond that.

Although I wonder if the usage of kaze is wider in Japanese than it is in English, because I know most colds are actually viral and prescription antibiotics have no effect. And I definitely wouldn't call tonsils as large mine "the sniffles". But, the prescription drugs seem to be helping at least. Maybe the microorganisms responsible in Japan are more likely to be cold bacteria than cold viruses?

Afterwards, trekked into Tokyo for my appointment to sign the contract and pick up the key (yay!) for my new apartment. And then made it home through Tokyo rush hour commuter traffic, in the rain. I am just rocking out at the unreasonably hard being-an-adult challenges this week.

Now just five days until I return to the states for interviews at the Boston Career Forum, partying at the Sigma Chi 25th Reunion, and reminding hahvahd how many dead goats they suck at The Game!


Unrelated: best unintentionally hilarious advertisement for a bar, TGIFridays.

Also unrelated: terrifying but delightful commercial for Dole bananas.

Work and sweat

2011-11-02T07:38:00.001-07:00

This week is a break between first and second semesters, but its yet to be that restful. Even when I thought I was done with all of it, I've had a surprising amount of resume/application/paperwork related stuff left over in preparation for next week's move. Also discovered I need to open a bank account tomorrow, which is great considering tomorrow is a national holiday ("Culture Day!") and thus banks are closed.

Tonight was my first full-on Japanese interview, conducted via skype. It was with Rakuten, one of the companies I would be more interested in and also felt I had a pretty decent chance at. Right before the interview I had a sudden crisis come up with the new apartment that finished only minutes before the interview, so I was maybe a little flustered to begin with. And then as soon as I turned on the skype video camera I realized I had forgotten to change into the dress shirt I had laid out and was instead still in my gym clothes.

Even after that I didn't feel it went that well, but I figure as much as anything I need experience in handling Japanese style interviews, so hopefully it will help me at later attempts. Although I'm bummed I might have missed my shot with Rakuten.

Had another interview with an American company scheduled for late tonight, (11 pm is about the only reasonable time that overlaps with their business hours) but as I was waiting for their representative to appear on skype I received an email saying "double-booked your interview lolwut sorry". Mrrrrrhhh.
More exciting stories: I had a conversation about dicks with the other guys in judo class. I was so happy when I realized the guy was asking me whether Americans shave their pubes. This is a cultural milestone in male bonding, and it means I have been accepted.

It did take me a while to realize that, though, as he was trying to phrase the question in very broken English, and from picking up "under" and "long" I assumed he was asking whether Americans wear longjohns, and I explained "they sometimes do when its really cold". This answer to the pubes question elicited unexpected laughter.

Also had another great conversation with Train Friend, who previously offered that if he met a girl who wanted to date me he would let me know. This time, as we transferred trains, I asked if he smelt something funny. He calmly explained "it is the smell of girls".

In others news of bridging cultural differences, please allow yourself to be enriched by the cultural goodness of Ayaman Japan performing Poi Poi.

Moving Apartments

2011-10-21T05:24:00.000-07:00

This last week was outrageously busy as I tried to juggle classwork with prepping my resume/applications for the Boston Career Forum (flying back to the states for a week in November) AND simultaneously setting the gears in motion to move apartments.

Moving apartments... being an adult is hard. But I think I got it right this time.

I never really bothered to share photos or descriptions of the current place because its not much to share. From my 8th view window, I can see... car parts factories. At night, the sounds of motorcycle gangs on the adjacent highway serenades me to sleep. On my route to school, I have a lovely tour of used car dealers, and car part stores, and car repair shops. It's a private, functional space, but that's about it. I selected it without understanding much of the area, or even what I was looking for, only that it balanced far enough away from school to be cheap but still close enough to commute by bike.

I also hardly ever encountered the neighbors. It's a monthly apartment, pre-furnished and with an easily adjustable contract, so it caters to working adults whose companies transfer them to work in Tokyo for a few months. Most neighborhoods are meticulously guarded by the local neighborhood watch organization--most of my friends have been scolded by the vigilant grannies for taking out their trash too early. This might be obnoxious, but the presence of trash-guard-grannies evidences the strong bonds of community, which is something my neighborhood/apartment just doesn't have.

I have a weird guilty complex about hanging out with foreigners outside of class and speaking English. But my current situation allowed me hardly any opportunity to meet Japanese people my age. So then I would retreat to my apartment and be bored, and feel guilty that I wasn't better utilizing my time.

But, with the magical powers of the internet, I found a company "Social Apartment" that's basically college dorms but for big people. I'm moving to Shinkawasaki, which is still only a 12 minute train ride (1 transfer) to my school in Minatomirai. Individual bedrooms, but actually really nice shared facilities. There's a lounge with a PS3 and Wii, nearly the largest kitchen I've ever seen in a Japanese house, outdoor wood deck, and a rooftop deck with a pretty view looking towards Tokyo and Shinjuku.

The bedroom is small, but the difference in rent and all means I'll be saving close to $300 a month. And honestly I think the lifestyle change of having Japanese friends to hang out with at night will be a major change in my happiness, in addition to being an invaluable language/cultural learning tool.

I was kinda anxious about the possibility of moving in with creepers / otherwise unpleasant roommates, but having met the landlord I feel way better now. I had been exchanging emails with the landlord for a couple days (incredibly relevant timing because we're working on formal correspondence in class, particularly emails chock full of keigo) before I came to visit and from the business-like tone of the emails I assumed he would be 50 or so. Turns out he's actually my age, and a super-chill bro, and we're gonna play soccer tomorrow. Nevermind that I don't like soccer very much and will probably embarrass myself because I haven't actually played since I was 6.

He vouched very strongly for the other residents being interesting people (I think there will be a total of 18 once I move in, 3 foreigners and otherwise mainly Japanese) and swore by the warm and welcoming environment of the apartment set-up. He insists that partly because it's a more narrow space, everyone gets more cuddly. I like cuddly. :p


Unrelated: went to a Japanese baseball game last week, sitting on the side of the diehard Hanshin Tigers fans. American fans are downright pathetic when compared to the vigor that Japanese fans pour into their constant organized cheering. I was also creepin' hardcore on the trumpeters.

Also unrelated: met some girls from Meiji Gakuin College last week on an event to tour some temples of Kamakura.

Overdue Updates

2011-10-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

I have been super delinquent on the blog, partially because I'm constantly pretty busy with the workload and all, and partly because the first month wasn't quite as "action-packed" as my previous experiences in Japan. Whereas summer programs for undergrads hold your hand as they inundate you with cultural activities, IUC is much more hands off. Its class, and a lot of it, and then students are otherwise on their own for the remaining 10% of daylight hours.

I've been here now just about 5 weeks, and the concept of "I live in Japan" is starting to sink in. A little.

I spend a lot of time thinking about / finding / preparing / cleaning food. My fridge is less of a "living fridge" and more of a "beer fridge", so the size of it (plus the size of the kitchen) makes it hard to prepare and store food in bulk. But I make a lot of tofu dishes, and for the first time in my life I'm cooking fish by myself. Breakfast is usually a rice bowl with kimchi, natto, fried eggs, and wasabi furikake, plus a banana. Lunch is whatever I can buy for cheap at a cafeteria or conbini near school, and dinner is whatever recipe I look up, which is often based around what weird stuff is on sale at the supermarket.

My food budget on the scholarship would be around $20 / day, but with the current exchange rates thats more like ¥1600. Actual parity means it feels like $16 (if we establish the amount of noms I get on a US $1 menu as equivalent to a ¥105 rice ball). I eat a lot in general, but on judo days I'm guessing I take in anywhere from 3000-4000 calories, so I have the mental rule that I'm only allowed to buy things that have a 2 Kcal : ¥1 value. Cost of living around Yokohama/Tokyo is very very high. If I have time to cook properly, that's fine, but busy days are a lot harder. Even a cheap restaurant uses a majority of my daily food budget, and a round trip to Tokyo often ends up around $12 in transportation.

Speaking of Judo, I did join a new dojo last week, although not the Kodokan. This one is also pretty far, but there's a lot of adults (including a couple very prestigious ones... the head instructor is a 7th dan blackbelt, and another one won the National Championships of the Police Judo League). In randori I'm finally to the point where I've been able to get in a few throws on the blackbelts, although the net total of throws is still very much me being thrown. But apparently 小内刈 (ko-uchi-gari) is my best move now, which is surprising because it seemed like one of my worst before.

Adventures:
We had a day off from class to go on field trips sponsored by the center: I went to the Cup Noodle Museum (where I had noodles) and Kirin Beer Factory (where I had beer).

The "My Cup Noodle" attraction: I drew Nyan Cat and Noodle Cat

A visual timeline of all cup noodle products and labels

Magical art noodles flying through the air

Met up with Elizabeth (Carbone) Igarishi two weekends ago, and we went out to the beach at Kamakura and the Daibutsu statue.

Went on a single day retreat to a Buddhist Temple, also near Kamakura. Turns out I'm really bad at meditating.

More to come later. I'll be less bad at updating.

講道館柔道　（Karate Kid）

2011-09-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

So I'm looking at the website for the Kodokan, the dojo that founded Judo. Apparently its the only thing in the world I want.

My attempts to find a dojo in Yokohama have been frustrating. The classes sponsored by most dojos around here are meant for little kids (equal parts daycare as judo class), and then the open sparring time is targeted towards adult black belts. Most young men make the transition from white belt to black belt through judo clubs at their schools, meaning those training options are off limits to me

The Kodokan in Tokyo, aside from being renowned for having the highest level of instruction anywhere in the world, sponsors intensive courses with classes meeting every day. (Most I've done was twice a week, and even that was pretty intense.) They even have a hostel for those enrolled in their programs to stay at. The level is such that after a year of training, I could take a black belt.

Its a full hour of travel to get there, so I doubt with my current class schedule I could enter any class, but I'm toying with the idea of taking the month long winter break as a kind of judo pilgrimage, living at the Kodokan and doing all judo all day erryday.

The idea of that is especially appealing in the sense of a spiritual retreat. When I rowed crew, spring training had two-a-day practices everyday. So I would wake up, row, nap, eat, row, eat, and sleep. That would be my entire day. No planning ahead for deadlines or doing homework or anything. And it was beautifully zenlike. It was only a week, but it felt so profound.

When I was writing my senior essay on samurai, something triggered that memory, and connected it to a samurai's training. And I wanted to be a samurai so much, rather than holed up in the library. The following notes scribbled on the margins of a draft (induced by bibliography madness) convey what I went through over the course of one day.
I wish I were a samurai. I'd be great at the warrior's life of virtue and perfection through physical training. I want to do two-a-days all day, every day. Klingons are like samurai except blacker. Pokemon is racist, because Black and White are separate but equal. Jersey shore is the most amazing thing ever. I really want to get a spray tan. WHAT AM I DOING TOMORROW, do I have time for a spray tan before hockey? New haven Tanning. Angry birds is much more fun with sound effects, apparently. Beer is the salvation of all bibliographies.

So now I'm mesmerized by this idea of living and training at the Kodokan. If I could throw out all this anxiety I have about not being satisfied with my Japanese ability, and the unease I have about being alone in a foreign country, and all those little things that are wearing me down everyday... I don't know. I can't stop thinking about it.

And also a spray tan would be neat.

Yes Man

2011-09-09T23:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I don't fully understand what's going on but kind of agree with everything to be amicable. Maybe that's how I got a ticket to The 31st Imperial Highness Prince Mikasa Cup, All Japan DanceSport Championships?

The community center where I'm taking judo has a variety of events going on, so when I saw a sign saying "Ballroom Dance, participate freely" I decided to come back the next day. I made the awkward introductions, but discovered it was a club much more oriented to the elderly, and it assumed that everyone brought their partners with them.

But, as I am a novelty, a couple of the geriatric dancers got to talking with me, and we talked about dance shoes, and before I knew exactly what was happening one Sato-San was inviting me back to his house to give me shoes. He apparently runs a dance studio, and sells shoes, and localizes foreign-made instructional DVDs.

Somehow this also turned into introducing me to Momoko, a dancer much closer to my age, who is taking me to a different Ballroom club today more oriented towards 20-somethings. And also he has access to free tickets for the DanceSport Championships, so is driving me to Tokyo to spend the day watching ballroom competitions.

I'm a little confused about my friendship with Sato-san (in one conversation, we rapidly covered WWII, exchange rates, electrical differences between Kansai and Tohoku regions of Japan, the Korean war, and Celine Dion... I could not for the life of me figure out what the connections were, or were the conversation was going) but at least its a good first step towards getting to know people around here.

やっと、携帯！(or, how I got over being a whiny emo kid)

2011-09-08T05:35:00.000-07:00

My first week or so wasn't too much fun, but things are turning around.

A big part of that is that I finally got my frickin' cell phone to work. And the stupid solution, is that I just went to a different branch of the same store. They accepted my forms and it was the easiest thing in the world. Apparently another student got over the same paperwork issue by visiting the same store later the same day, when somebody else was on duty. The Japanese government has strict regulations on foreigners obtaining cell phones "so as to prevent crime", but the phone companies don't actually know what the regulations are, only that they're strict. And everyone knows that crime cannot be committed over pay phones.

It's a new contract, so my number and email are different now.
Phone number: (international code 011-81) 080-3009-3261
Email: eeaton@softbank.ne.jp. I receive email freely as texts, so send me stuff!

Class is finally picking up, having finished the orientations and placement tests. Tomorrow we meet our teachers to which we've been assigned. We also started the Kanji intensive program, a series of studying software and quizzes designed for us to master all 2,136 jōyō kanji by the end of the year. I burned through the first 30 (of 143) tests pretty quickly, although they're brutal about the smallest details of proper penmanship, which will be tough on me. It will be a much slower pace from here.

Also finally starting to meet the other students, and we have planned an "AKB48 Appreciation Hour" for the weekend, aka get drunk and sing karaoke. (If you haven't heard of AKB48, they're like any other poppy girl band... except there's 48 of them)

Other developments, I've been to judo class twice so far at dojo nearby my apartment. Its a tough balance, because the ones who come for the lessons are all little kids (maybe 12 years old, tops... I felt like a jerk when I was paired to wrestle one of the bigger ones) and then a lot of adult black-belts who come for the free sparring. I fit neither of these groups very well.

Am continuing my quest for a bar to claim as my own... found a cheap one, but it had just a distantly polite treatment from the bartender. Y'know, the part where they re-explain in badly broken English--"theesu... doriink menyu"--after I have already demonstrated I understand that in Japanese. This bar is not the one.

Obligatory lolsy Engrish photo of the day: In my search for a decent bar, was attracted to this shining "Cow-Cow" sign from afar. Turns out its a pun on the Japanese word "to buy" (kau) and is a car dealer. I was disappointed.

方向音痴 (or, how most of my days have been spent wandering the street)

2011-09-06T02:08:00.000-07:00

I'm approaching the week mark since arriving in Japan, and this experience has differently been different. The bubbly new excitement of a foreign country has worn off, so its a lot of daily routine so far, just removed from other people.

Really a majority of my human interaction since getting here has been economic transactions and asking directions. I'm real good at asking directions, but even better at getting lost.

My grumbley list:

PHONE! I have a phone on a prepaid plan I purchased last year. It should have been easy to buy another prepaid card to re-up the service. But since I hadn't done so in a year, the contract expired. I need an alien registration card (外国人登録証明書） to start a new contract, but the card will take an additional 2 weeks of processing before I can use it. So I spent the afternoon going back to the municipal ward to get a document certifying the card would come through (登録原票記載事項証明書、a document specifically intended for signing phone contracts while waiting for the actual card). The phone company again refused me. I've already paid for the phone and the service, they just won't let me use it. Grrrr.

I also grumble that the document names in question are as long and unwieldy as they are, which makes it really obnoxious to talk about them all the time.

School is so far... orientation meetings and placement tests. I was ready to dive in, but there's not yet much to dive into. Thursday, I actually don't have any class at all. Considering my problem right now is about not feeling engaged, this is a bummer.

We've had two days of tests and things, but the distance of our housing and even the setup of the IUC Center itself doesn't do much to facilitate social interactions.

But hey look we have a class photo!

I have a hip injury which I was addressing with physical therapy over the summer... it seems it has come back.

I have a bike intended for riders "150 centimeters and up". Within the price range I could afford, this was the largest bike I could find. But there is indeed a limit to the "and up" part of "150 cm and up", because 187 cm Elliot does not fit very well. I think this might be further aggravating my hip.

I live nowhere near any other students.

On day three I became sick of white rice. This does not bode well for the rest of the year.

Small consolation to a frustrating couple of days: these donuts are adorable.

横浜に到着 (or, so I guess I live in Japan now)

2011-09-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

[[This post is the start of my year enrolled at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies while living in Yokohama, Japan. Earlier posts are from earlier experiences at CET Osaka in Summer 2010 and at the Hokkaido International Foundation in Summer 2009.]]

I spent the entire transcontinental flight in fear of the sticky note discretely placed by one of the stewards one my set, designating it for some unknown purpose. Was I singled out as a security threat? Did they have an issue with my visa? I saw a few other seats labeled in the same way, but couldn't find a pattern of racial profiling. They had also labeled the empty seat next to mine, (I assumed) to prevent me from escaping. I vacillated: would it be best to hide the sticky note, or would that increase the consequences? I had a lot of time to think about this, trying not to let my paranoia get away from me.

Turns out my anxiety was for nothing, as a steward removed all the sticky notes right before the final descent. Have no idea why they were there at all.

Getting to my apartment was the next step. I rode the Keisei Skyliner from Narita Airport to the Nippori station in Tokyo, and one transfer onto the Keihin-Tohoku line got me all the way to my neighborhood of Yokohama, Shinkoyasu. Finding the place in the dark was tricky (Japanese addresses are useless to begin with, not helped by the fact that few places show their own address) but recognizing the adjacent landmark--a McDonald's, the golden arches brimming with hope--helped me out.

Most importantly, the apartment is called the Shinkoyasu Flat. But because its written in Japanese, it comes out phonetically as the Shinkoyasu Frat. I'm kind of the frattiest person I know.

The place is small, but so far cozy. In very technical measurements, the dimensions of my main room are 1.3 Elliots deep and 2. 5 Elliots wide, and the entrance hallway (which doubles as the kitchen and has the bathroom on the side) is about .5 x 3 Elliots. Its all decently pre-furnished, so that at least saves me a lot of extra errands.

The suddenly extreme and unwelcome presence of humidity reminds me why Spokane is so great.

I've had reassuringly familiar cultural encounters, like the following exchange at a nearby convenience store when I tried to buy shumai dumplings.
Worker: Would you like chopsticks?
Elliot: Yes please.
Worker: Not a fork? Really chopsticks?

Two major snags so far:
~My cellphone contract expired, since its been over a year since I used it. I expected it would be a pretty simple affair to update the prepaid account with money to get service back, but apparently I need to enter a new contract (probably means I won't keep the same number), and that requires me to have my alien registration card, which I won't actually possess for 2-3 weeks, because of the joys of bureaucracy

~I have a daily withdrawal limit on my ATM card which is less than my monthly rent. I planned on paying the rent yesterday, but realize now I need to withdraw over several days to get enough for the rent and the deposit. I called the customer service number on the back of the card to see if I could raise the limit, and they advised me to call the customer service number on the back of the card. Thanks, Bank of America.

For an obligatory Engrish photo:

I know this establishment is called SLOT King. But that cursive script is dangerous, when you don't connect the top of the "o".

I succumb to jet lag. After doing various errands, I came home for a nap at 3 pm, and woke up at 1 am. FAIL. Now I will try sleeping again.

The last week of travel

2010-08-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

[[This is more or less a copy-paste of notes I was keeping during the trip, edited and enhanced with pictures for your viewing pleasure.]]

7/30-8/4:Kyoto：Rented a bike first day because I couldn't walk from the blisters. Failed epically at maps. Highlight was Kiyomizudera, one of the most famous temples. Two cool attractions there are walking through the pitch-black womb of the buddha, and navigating your way blindfolded between the love-fortunetelling-stones. Lost the bike key at but another visitor overheard me looking for it and had found it--I was told the buddha was watching over me. Awwww.

Next day hit up Ginkakuji, the Temple of the Silver Pavilion--little disappointing, and not even because it wasn't silver. I walked through the whole thing and didn't actually realize which was the main pavilion. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion was much shinier.

(Not even silver.)

8/3: day trip to Takarazuka to see Sabrina Fair and EXCITER! put on by the Takarazuka Revue. Sabrina was a little trite but fun, Exciter was what was really worth it. Ignored the pretext of having a story and instead just focused on all the fabulous dances and lights and extravagant costumes and shinies. There were moments of the Rockettes, Follies style girls with enormous feather fans, and vaudeville all rolled together; sometimes it became so farcical that it was inverted to the point of women pretending to be male drag queens.

Came back to Kyoto, stayed at my buddy Ru-san's apartment (we did HIF together last summer) and lucked on a last minute reservation to go inside the Kyoto Imperial Palace. Usually you need to reserve weeks in advance but I was lucky enough to get a spot the morning of.

8/4 afternoon Nagoya: Visiting Hiro as a stop-over between Kyoto and Tokyo. Had an amazing miso-tonkatsu lunch at Yabaton。Visited the Pokemon Center (narrowly convinced myself NOT to buy the giant pikachu) and then three hours in the world's largest Tora no Ana store, where I bought a manga about what happens when Jesus and Buddha come back to Earth and get an apartment together。 Had delicious chicken wings for dinner (who knew these could be a specialty of a Japanese city?!) and boarded a night bus.

8/5: Elizabeth Igarashi (previously Carbone, but just got married and now lives in Japan) and I had made plans to visit the host families from an exchange trip we did in high school. Had a wonderful time hanging out with Yasuko and Michiko san- went to tea (coffee and lemon tart), the Hakasu Jiro museum (he was a cool dud who stood up to General MacArthur, generally revered for more or less being a hottie) and a nice wafuku tempura lunch before visiting Aoki's house. They continued to force treats and tea on me as we sat in her lovely breezey, 200+ year house and gossiped about Spokane and the people on the NICEA trip this year and who had grown up and who had cancer and who was working where. Then went to Keika's house for dinner- met Kaori, Megumi, and the cats Candy and Pipi (AKA Choitto). Was sad to hear her husband had passed of a sudden heart attack two years ago, but otherwise the home was so homey and happy and vibrant. When we all posed for a group photo on the couch they inserted the photo frame of Keika's husband too. She said such wonderful things about Spokane and my house and family- the “dream” of a garden and dinner on the patio and the enormous kitchen. Mom is both “very japanese” and like keika's own grandmother, in the ways she is very fastidious to detail, always takes care of everyone around her, and can read other's feelings very well. Dad is a very good, handsome person with a good character.

We stayed up talking around the dinner table until I realized it was late enough I wouldn't make it to the hostel somewhere in the depths of Tokyo's Akihabara before the curfew, so Keika reissued her order that I stay there.

8/6 Had a leisurely breakfast with Kaori and Keika. In Tokyo, went to Tsukiji Fish Market, wandered the stalls and had the freshest tuna rice bowl imaginable. Sad the auctions are now strictly off-limits. After that visited the lovely Hamarikyuu Royal Gardens, finally making it to the two places I tried to visit on my last trip but were closed. Also saw the contentious Yasukuni Shrine, then went back earlier so I could have a nice dinner with Keika. Made best friends with her kitty.

8/7: Woke up to find that the cat Candy had expressed her displeasure at my presence (she doesn't like people outside the family. She doesn't like men. She doesn't like tall people... I'm screwed) by pooping in my room. Another wonderful breakfast, this time with Megumi and Keika, and a very leisurely departure- wanted to get some photos with Keika, which then took extra time because the girls were otherwise in leisurely saturday mode--clearly unphotographable. Started the day's travel off at Harajuku (after a nightmare of trying to find open coin lockers in Shinjuku)- succumbed to buying a fashionable jacket, ironic shirt, shiny ring. Narrowly convinced myself not to buy the sparkle tux and the shiny but translucent button-up shirt. Eventually made my way over to Ebisu beer Garden (the buildings were gorgeous!) where I learned some history and drank some beer.

My final night, I met up with Hiro again, and we polished off my sake sitting on a curb in a dark back alleyway, in preparation for AnisonMatrix (a series of DJs presenting remixes of Anime theme songs) at Club Mogra. We knew we had arrived when the first person in line (who we had earlier mistaken for a hobo) had a PSP and enormous headphones. It started off slow, but eventually we got the crowd going- we single-handedly taught them how to fist pump, conga line, and spin in a circle. Omega was only moderately successful, although it probably would have caught on if I kept at it. Our two friends who were too cool and didn't “look” like the Otaku crowd were super chill and danced with us a bunch. Actually it was way more fun than I expected, but turns out 6 hours of clubbing is too much.

8/8: gruuuuuumpy. I guess that's what happens when you club straight through the night. Go to Narita airport. Try to stay awake until its time for me to PTFO on the plane. Forgot about all the liquid omiyages I had, got in trouble with security. But I guess its okay when you arrive seven hours early on a surprisingly not busy day! Finally made it back to the states, on the second 8/8.

Update on JR Pass

2010-08-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

[[Again, this was written a while ago, just didn't have a chance to post it while traveling.]]

My JR Pass (unlimited use of the bullet trains for a week) was epic. Perhaps even too epic. I hit up 9 cities in 7 days and it wiped me out. Here are a couple of highlights-

After Osaka, starting on the 24th...

Nagasaki- went to an Episcopalin service in Japanese with Gabe, and the sweet old ladies of the congregation invited us to have lunch with them afterwards. The Peace Park in Commemoration of the Atomic Bomb was deeply moving—even more so because the original Japanese text carried a lot more feeling than the English translations.

Kumamoto- we had been thinking this city would make for a fun night out, but perhaps the guide book exaggerated the night life. Basically not a lot else but shopping arcades here. We tried to visit an exhibit on the house of Lafcadio Kearn, which was closed on just that day.

We did find a hipster wearing wafuku. It's kinda hilarious.

Kagoshima- we went swimming on a white sand beach (swimmable coastline is extraordinarily rare in Japan) with a view of the active volcano Sakurajima. Timing was a little bad because it was the only clouded day we had all week. I had the most amazing dinner of “black pork” made with a sauce from black sugar and garlic—a lot like the sauce on Peking duck. And then we got kidnapped a little bit? Oops.

Beppu- hit as many Onsen in as short a time as we could, although the string of unlucky timing continued as our special target of Beppu's famed “sand bath” was closed only on the 4th Wednesday of the month... exactly the day we went. Also visited “the Hells”, a series of geysers and hot springs full of strange colors and properties from different minerals.

Takamatsu- Not gonna lie, we mainly went to Takamatsu so we could check off the island Shikoku from the to-do-list. With that, I've been to all four major islands of Japan, something a surprising number of Japanese people haven't done. But we did have a nice time at Youritukouen, a garden for the feudal lords of Shikoku back when it was still called Sanuki. Also found amazing chocolate pancakes on the way.

Kotohira- The first destination after my companions and I went our separate ways, in Kotohira I spent an afternoon to climb Konpira-San, a shrine known for its arduous climb to the top—something like 1400 steps. The ascent is lined with places that rent walking sticks, hold on to your bags, and offer to ship home any of the baubles you buy. The city itself felt creepily deserted, but I think Konpira is probably my favorite shrine in Japan.
~Interestingly, this is also the only city in which I've ever encountered an unhelpful employee. My ticket buying excursion went like this:
Elliot:“I want to go as far as Hiroshima.”
Douche:”But due to rain the train may be delayed and you can't book that train.”
Elliot: “Then how do I get to Hiroshima?”
Douche: “If you go to Okayama first, you can possibly transfer there.”
Elliot: “Okay, well then I'll book a ticket for Okayama.”
Douche: “But that train's delayed too so you can't go there.”
Repeat ad nauseum. It somehow worked out, and despite his naysaying I took the ticket and got on a train direct to Hiroshima exactly as scheduled.

Hiroshima- The tragic thing that struck me about the city—aside from the heart-wrenching exhibits in the Atom Bomb Peace Memorial—is that even though the city has rebuilt itself into a prosperous and bustling commercial and living center, it will never be known for any history, culture, or image apart from the site of the world's first use of the Atomic Bomb as a weapon.

Himeji- I knew “the most magnificent castle in Japan” was under 5 year construction, so I had been avoiding the day-trip from Osaka. But the trip was in between two major stops and free with my JR Pass, so I decided to go for it this time around. Underwhelmed. It may be Japan's most majestic castle, but at the time it also suffered from Japan's most spitefully placed scaffolds.

My final evening with a valid JR Pass (7/30), I made it as far as my hostel in Kyoto, stumbled in the door, and passed out. At that point I was very happy to abandon the two-sometimes-three-cities-a-day model of travel and actually stay in the same place for more than a day at a time.

End of school, start of travel

2010-07-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

((Last post of the big bunch written on my first bullet train- I hope to post at a more casual rate from now on, with more of the pretty pictures I've got))

School is all wrapped up and I've said my goodbyes to the two months in Osaka. Now I'm writing this aboard a bullet train, en route to one of the longest trips I've ever taken.

Only vague plans so far, with mostly only train passes, a Lonely Planet Guidebook, and a handful of hostel reservations sprinkled over the 17 day span. The first week is focused on going as far south as possible, to Kyuushuu, so that for bragging rights I can say I've been to all four of the main Japanese Islands (there's a surprising number of Japanese people who haven't). Here's what it looks like so far:

24th: Nagasaki (lots of historical sites pertaining to WWII)
25: Kumamoto, (apparently has super cheap clubs with no cover charge. Aw yeah.)
26: Kagoshima (beaches)
27: Beppu (famous for Onsen baths)
28: A single night (somewhere?) in Shikoku. This is vague, because Shikoku is a large island with many many places.
29: split up with traveling partner Gabe. He goes to Yokohama, I go to Kyoto? Or maybe first Hiroshima then Kyoto? For an unspecified number of days? Either way, after the 30th, I lose the magical money saving powers of the JR Pass that gives me unlimited use of the bullet trains, so I'll be traveling at a much slower pace after that.
...
8/3 Takarazuka. I have a ticket for Takarazuka Revue- a famous all female troupe that's vaguely based on Kabuki except transformed into western musicals. The current show is an adaption of the Billy Wilder film, Sabrina. I emailed my professor who taught a film studies course on Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder last semester to let him know this was going on, and apparently he's already super knowledgable about the Takarazuka troupe and recommended a couple documentaries for me to watch on my return. I <3 Ron Gregg a whole bunch. :D
8/4: to Tokyo! This is the point at which I buy tickets for the ghetto overnight highway bus in lieu of paying for lodging and train tickets.
...
shenanigans?
...
8/8 afternoon: board a plane at Narita (Tokyo), 4:10 pm
8/8 morning, many hours after I have left, at 9:20 am of the same day, arrive in Seattle. International date lines confuse me.

~ ~ ~

By the end of these two months, I was very ready to be done with class and my living situation, and a lot of things about the CET program.

The small group of American students (12 in total) had a surprising concentration of divas. Not that there was active drama, but more like continually high maintenance personalities. When I was describing the situation to a friend over skype, he wisely commentated “It's like a soap opera! Except with Japanese roommates and oral hygiene!” There IS a reason for the oral hygiene comment, I swear, its just a longer story. :p

But I don't want this to sound overly negative. There are still elements that were very satisfying, some people who were incredibly warm and welcoming during my time living in Osaka. Chanho-san, who I expected to not be very sentimental, had a hard time saying goodbye when I went to his bar for the last time on Thursday. Squid Ball Granny (I was never formally introduced but always referred to her as たこ焼きばあちゃん) was as friendly as ever when she gave me my last plate of Takoyaki from her stall—nearly twice as much as the amount I had actually paid—and invited me into the gossip circle of all the neighborhood grannies while I waited.

And then there's Mik-kun. Sometimes I'd see his full name (Mitsutoshi) and nobody would recognize it was his name because everyone always called him Mik-kun; it just fit him so well. The “kun” suffix is kind of like a more intimate, buddy-buddy sort of feel for a guy, and it was perfect because Mik-kun always had the most congenial of dispositions.

Example: On his birthday, I sent Mik-kun a brief little phone mail in Japanese wishing him a happy birthday. He sent me the following in English:

Oh~~, Eaton!!
thank you for celebrating my BIRTHDAY (*^_^*)
I'm very happy.
I'm a happy man, now//（笑）

Thank you for sending e-mail.
Have a nice day [music note] ('o')/

えいぶんあってるかな（笑）

Is that not the happiest text message you could ever receive? I would sometimes pull it out whenever I needed to smile. He also spent hours hand-crafting bracelets to give to all the American students at the farewell party, saying it was a memento of how we could always be together. I'm wearing it now and don't intend to take it off anytime soon. Then, he skipped work today so that he could see everyone off. What a chill bro.

I speak words sometimes

2010-07-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

One of the light fellowship prompts of the week: “With each new language one gains a new personality”. To a large extent, that's been true for me. In general, I'm much more reserved in Japanese than I am in English, but some of those mannerisms have started to carry over into my English personality as well. There's the slightest bit of a head bow anytime I say thanks, and I continuously respond with a little nasal “uhn” to demonstrate that I'm listening to what the other person is saying.

There's a lot of little things- like how its better to apologize rather than say thanks when receiving a gift you didn't expect—if you say thanks, that implies you were expecting it, and that's just conceited. I used to think these kinds of examples were shameful and continually negated the self, but now that I've become more comfortable with their usage I can appreciate how it maintains a pleasant social environment. It's like the gleeful statement of “Let's put all our hearts into expressing our remorse!” in this parody of Japanese methods of apologizing. You might need a little more familiarity with Japanese “NATIONAL CHARACTER” (imagine me making big air quotes when I say that) to appreciate how brilliantly the video parodies it, but aside from the polite way of rephrasing any direction into a cheerful invitation, the video shows the Japanese linguistic expectation that places consideration on the other. And maybe a little bit of that style has infiltrated my English brain too.

Partially for adapting to these notions of proper behavior and partially for linguistic limitations, I've been uncharacteristically taciturn this summer. I've even been told I've gotten more reticent in English, which is something I'm not thrilled about and will probably be working to undo once I return to the states.

That's not to say I totally suppress myself in Japanese anymore, which I definitely used to do under the notions of “this is Japan and therefore I must aspire to the ideal of what the Japanese want me to do”. I have some jokes, and some humor, just a much smaller scale of jokes that I recycle with more frequency—I'm particularly fond of the chestnut and squirrel joke, and my own personal invention “riding the bus”. (For any students of Japanese reading this: say “chestnut and squirrel”, word-for-word, in Japanese. If you need help, chestnut isクリ. squirrel is リス、 Say it in front of other people if you can. Keep on saying it until you figure it out. I take no responsibility for the end results.) But in fun social settings, as I've advanced in my language proficiency I've become increasingly sociable and outgoing with meeting new people.

I've digressed, but I think the point of this is that I feel like I've started to appreciate the words that remain unsaid, and appreciate the value of silence a little more. In visiting the Nagasaki bomb memorials, I found myself increasingly irritated with a traveling buddy's questions of “ooh what's this word mean?” and requests for group photos. Both of those are expected and more or less good things for studying abroad, but in that context I couldn't help but feel a little more quiet contemplation would be in order.

the internet is the secret to all treasure

2010-07-22T03:03:00.001-07:00

There are many things I should be doing other than this, the night before the final and with many preparations yet to do for moving out, leaving Osaka behind, and traveling 18 days, mostly on my own.

But hilarious thing- you know the pop-up ads that say you've won an iPod? Or a bunch of money, if you can only answer the question right?

Japanese ones offer the chance to win a GREENCARD to America, if only you can correctly identify the president.

I'm dubrious.

it's a good thing i was studying all weekend. oh wait... i wasn't.

2010-07-19T04:50:00.000-07:00

[[[Note: This is the part where I started writing at the end of the program but had no time, and then started traveling and wrote on the train but never was able to put anything up. So you get the special privilege of reading WAY TOO MUCH all at once.]]

(Actually from 7/20)
As we approach the final week, there's an enormous amount of stuff I have to do to prepare for the final exam, the final presentation I'll be giving in front of the whole program and guests, and the travel itinerary for the following two weeks. So clearly I did none of that and traveled to close-by cities instead, the kind of day trip I promised myself I would do but haven't for nine weeks.

After Gion Matsuri in Kyoto on Friday night, I visited two of the districts within Osaka that are pretty famous but I've barely seen. Started off at Tennouji, saw a bunch of historical temples, then visited Namba and the infamous ドン・キホーテ(the sound of the store is Don Kihoute... Don Quixote? I don't really get why.)

I spontaneously trekked over to Kobe Sunday morning. I started off with the 白鶴 White Crane Sake factory tour (with free tastings!) and then made my way to Kitano, the district of Kobe that used to be the western style mansions for early western traders, diplomats, and missionaries. Also a surprising number of mosques and halal supermarkets, although maybe that's a more recent thing. The lavish 異人館 (literally "houses of different people") are built on the highest land near the base of the mountain. Oh hey there western imperalism!

The western buildings and abundant churches on the mountain were oddly reminiscent of Hakodate, where I spent last summer. But by the time I got off the gondola at the top of the mountain, all the architecture had turned into some bizarre semblance of a swiss mountain house? Confused. Thinking to enjoy the great outdoors, I took the hiking trail back down, but apparently no one else ever uses it--I clearly followed what the sign said was the hiking trail, but it was so overgrown that I often didn't know where the trail was. I'd then come out of the deep wilderness into some pleasant pocket where nice elderly couples were enjoying picnics, before plunging back into deep mountainy jungley doom. I have no idea how the pleasant old people got there. After a climb a full two hours longer than I had planned for, I came out on the edge of civilization- with a clear, cool river trickling beneath the subway tracks! Salvation.

I thought I'd stroll the streets looking for a nice dinner place but gave in to the first Nishinoya (the McDonald's of rice bowls) I saw. Didn't realize until after the meal how disheveled I looked, with a dirty sunburnt face, over-scruffed beard, and hair still dripping from the river. Maybe that explains all the weird looks I got.

And then... discovered I gave myself massive blisters from walking up and down the mysterious mountain of doom in inadequate shoes. Let's see how I continue to aggravate them over the next two weeks of walking around Japan!

Faux Pas, and How I Made Out with Lady Gaga

2010-07-09T12:08:00.000-07:00

There's an excessive, hilariously polite expression I sometimes use jokingly use to brush off compliments or to convince the other person I'm good at Japanese: お褒めごとを預かって,恐縮です (Literally, "I am shrinking in fear from having received your honorable words of praise). But sometimes the cheeky tone gets me in trouble.

Last weekend I visited a bar for New Half--a Japanese euphemism for transsexual--to conduct informal interviews for my research project on attitudes towards crossdressing TV celebrities. When I entered, I was the only customer there. The employees were a little surprised that I looked so... not a transvestite.

We chatted for a while, and when the barmaster (mistress?) mentioned that I looked straight, I chuckled and said thanks in that over-the-top manner for affirming my normal masculinity. The bartender kind of muttered "I don't know that that was a compliment..." Oops. Maybe that wasn't the best audience for a joke that unintentionally implied a standard definition of masculinity (and passing for straight) as the desirable alternative.

We got over the initial awkward hurdle, and I did make some good progress on my research. But a later discovery in the bar piqued my interest in the mundane-yet-enthralling topic of bathroom decor. I can't really think of any establishments in the US where the bathroom strays from the decorative style that the whole place has, but a number of Japanese bathrooms stand out.

What would you expect to find beside the bathroom sink of Strawberry Times, the bar catering to businessmen who just want to wear a dress after a hard day at the office? Probably not a level 5 Super Sayan.

But the discovery just confirmed a pet theory that all shops in Japan must have bathrooms that provoke deep thoughts. For instance, a noodle shop in the Umeda district has posters of political candidates for the Reform Party. This is normal enough, except that they watch you urinate. A veiled statement about Big Brother?

My favorite gay bar, Bacchus, features a much younger and much less clothed shot of the owner, Chanho-san. Also watching you naked.

And Lady Gaga's favorite bar in Japan, FrenZ, has... actually I have no idea how to describe it.

But its okay, because its the place colloquially referenced as the Lady Gaga bar. They can do what they want and its "performance art".

That moniker for the bar came from an incident that is now local legend. After Lady Gaga performed in Osaka last year, she came in disguise to this bar FrenZ. But she sang karaoke of her own songs, so people eventually figured out it was her, and cheered her into an encore concert. The bartender showed me pictures of where she jumped on the table to perform Just Dance -- I was sitting at the exact same spot.

And then, the bartender pulled out the bar's greatest treasure: the lipstick Lady Gaga dropped and left behind. He told us to be careful with it, as it contained "Precious DNA". My drunky friend insisted on rubbing the lipstick all over my lips... meaning my skin cells have been brushed with those from the puh-puh-puh-po-poker face itself.

We basically made out.

I'm not sure whether using the Secret Treasure should be placed on my ever-growing List of Social Trespasses, but it was totally worth it.

Me, My, and Eaton

2010-07-09T00:39:00.000-07:00

Quick update of logistics: busy week. Did a company tour of Panasonic, presented a point/counterpoint speech on Japanese eating habits, took test number three, finished a 3000 character draft of the final project. Two weeks left of class. Now have a JR Rail Pass but not yet an itinerary of where I'm going.

But the main topic... So... yeah. Identity n' stuff.

As something trivial I didn't expect to still have trouble with- how do I refer to myself in Japanese? One of the first things anyone ever learns is 私の名前は＿＿＿＿です。Watashi no namae ha ____ desu. My name is _____. Of course, contrary to any introductory text, nobody will ever say "watashi". It's just kind of implied in the introduction.

Prior to this summer, I hadn't actually used "watashi" in probably four years, instead relying on the more masculine 僕（"boku"), because I am obviously so manly and masculine. （笑）Watashi felt too polite, too neutral. I never dared to say Watakushi, the more formal equivalent of Watashi. From my outsider perspective, the politer, humbler form of "I" previously came with the flavor of "I... (am a little bitch)". Boku was simple and jaunty and I liked it.

I had an 俺 ("ore") phase at the start of the summer. I had originally learned this as another masculine form of "I", but with a rougher, more assertive edge to it. Too impolite for most situations, so better just stick to Boku. In Tokyo, though, apparently no young men really use boku anymore, and ore has lost the impolite nuance, though my own experience in Hokkaido it was the opposite.

The first day of class when we did formal self-introductions, I got scolded for using boku. Sensei said that boys use it up until about high school and then outgrow it. So for the most part I've adopted Watashi in class, if not the full on formal watakushi, although years of experience make it hard to completely eliminate boku from my self-reference. Despite what Sensei said, I've seen Boku used by adults on television dramas, talk shows, even a congressional meeting. I think my host mom (???) even used it a couple times last summer. I still bust out Ore on occasion, though, mostly just when having guy talk.

I just find it strange that after years of Japanese, I still only barely understand the nuance of what seems should be an elementary concept. And I'm not even touching the "wareware", "washi", "waga", "oira", or any other forms of simply saying "I".

Fun fact- the cute girly form of Watashi is Atashi. The flaming drag queen version of "I" takes it one step further to Atasui. A friend tried to convince me this was popular among young guys and I should use it all the time. I saw through his connivery. :p

I used to think Keigo was demeaning to the speaker, because one has to change all the verbs and vocab regarding oneself to be humble in the presence of the superior other. But as I'm gradually figuring out how to use it more smoothly on the fly, I've begun to enjoy it purely for the academic excitement of advancing a new skill. I can focus on the way it shows respect for the other rather than thinking it belittles me. So now if I bring out a Watakushi in talking to a sensei, I give myself a little mental high five.

And then there's also the question of names. I'm the only in class to still go by last name- Eriotto doesn't really cut it for me, so I always introduce myself as Eetohn. In English, I'm really not a addressed-by-last name kind of guy; even when I was rowing crew and the coach called out most of the team by their last name, I was still Elliot. So now if I get called Elliot-kun in Japanese, or called Eaton in English by the other students, I get confused.

My best friend and barmaster Chanho hadn't realized this at first, because I had been going to his bar for several weeks and always making the introduction as Eetohn. His reaction at discovering the truth, in flawless English: "Oh, Eaton's your last name? I thought that was a fucking weird name."

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Not a very good photo, but this is Chano Kim. I now call him my Japanese "お父ん", the Osaka dialect for dad.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Gabe and I put together a little アメリカの独立記念日パーティ for the Fourth of July, introducing our Japanese roommates to the "traditional American snackfood" s'mores. We didn't have a campfire, so we improvised.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Oh no! What are they teaching in that kind of school?!

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

The "Business Park" at Kyouhashi station, where we went to visit the Panasonic central headquarters' showroom and talk about the possibilities of foreigners working for major Japanese corporations.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

My class took a study tour to Nara on Wednesday after presenting our speeches. I somehow stuttered my way through. But Nara was a great way to unwind from that- here's 東大寺(Toudaiji temple),

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Toudaiji is home of the famous Mega Buddha. (I translate that lightly). Scale doesn't really come across here, but he's 15 meters tall while sitting. I can factually crawl through his nose--there's actually a pillar near the base with a tunnel the shape and size of his nostril, which is supposedly lucky if you can fit through?

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Also famous in Nara, the deer. They're pretty chill about hanging out with humans, especially the ones who buy 鹿煎餅--specially made deer crackers!

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Getting mauled by deer is the cutest wild animal attack ever.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

I know this is warning me about serious risk, but it's just too adorable. I especially like the graphic for headbutting.

Pikachu n' stuff

2010-07-02T02:24:00.000-07:00

As something I've resented for years, well before I attained the legal bar-hopping status of adulthood, I resent being made to feel like a child. Like when the project class spends hours having us discuss the difference between です・ます体 and だ体 (for the non-Japanese speakers, that's a topic mastered in first year Japanese). Or when we spend hours of class time to learn how to input data into an excel file, with Mori sensei hawkishly watching over our shoulders and telling us how 上手 we are--when we're given instruction sheets in Japanese for a skill any student whose ever touched a computer could figure out, there's no reason we need our hands held. If anything, doing the same task on our own would be a valuable exercise to read Japanese and follow practical directions.

In many ways, though, I'm limited to the speech of a child. While from certain perspectives, I've learned the particular vocabulary to play through a text heavy videogame or read an article on Japanese politics or take a stand on a nuclear nonproliferation treaty--ways of receiving and analyzing information--my adult perspective on these things is limited by how naturally I can string together words to sound like I'm actually speaking Japanese. My skill set is like I skipped a couple developmental stages- I'm trying so hard to run before I can walk steadily. So I'm increasingly realizing the importance of small and seemingly unimportant conversations, the kind that are totally everyday and trivial, as a step to master all the little things like intonation and smoothness and accent that no amount of high level textbook study will teach me.

And now to backtrack on this whole "I'm an adult wah wah wah" theme: I went to Pokemon Center Osaka today and it was the cutest thing ever. I bought a Pikachu plush toy. I chose this particular size and pose of Pikachu (over the other 5 bajillion options) because of his expression. Its a dumb sort of vapidness, having no idea whats going on but its okay because everything is easier when you're cute.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

I can relate to Pikachu.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Please appreciate that this is probably the creepiest t-shirt design I've ever seen. The front says "Slumber Party". Stop stealing children, Hypno!

Even though its beyond my ability, I'm trying to stretch myself to tackle complicated topics: for the project class, I'm investigating a topic that I hope would prepare me for my senior thesis, which will somehow pertain to the the topic of gay rights and identity in Japan.

In brief, Japan is weird about the gays. Its not an active or violent discrimination like in American history, but the adult and professional worlds tend to remain super closeted and passively discriminatory through corporate job structures and marriage pressures. But then there's all sorts of contradictions, aside from the way popular male fashion screams out fey to a western perspective. Drag (both cross-dressing straight comedians and transgender celebrities) is everywhere, and it seems like its not treated as a big deal. So though its among the topics that polite people don't ever talk about, drag has a privileged place of respect(?) (fame?) (notoriety?) in the media world.

My (as-of-yet-unsubstantiated) theory is that gayness in Japan is acceptable so long as the individuals involved still fall into clearly defined masculine and feminine roles. As in, a transgender relationship wouldn't be perceived as bad, so long as a man made a clean transition to a female role and avoided that gray space of two masculine men together. So even if you have transgender beauty pageants and Oprah-style talk shows where cross-dressing Miwa Akihiro tells straight celebrities how to handle their feelings, the man-as-woman persona can be safely compartmentalized into existing gender roles, a benign place where it doesn't challenge the definition of straight men and their expected relationships. That way it can be enjoyed purely for its entertainment value without considering it too seriously.

For the project class I'm conducting some research into how people feel about trans and cross-dressing on TV, including whether they think this kind of gender performance in the media world has any connection to sexuality, and whether its appropriate to label this stuff as "gay" or "unusual" or something else altogether. Distributing surveys to random students during lunch was awkward because...
a) intruding on randos to take a survey is worse than the usual ostracism of being an outsider in a lunch room that already resembles Mean Girls, and
b) because my topic is more challenging(?) (off-putting?) (outside these students' frame of reference?) than other topics, and
c) people will inevitably make assumptions about me and my interests based on the questions I ask.

So I distributed a bunch of surveys today, and there was only one table of people I actually knew somewhat. The guy I knew best at that table, one of the other Japanese roommates for the program, gave me a cheerful "はい、お釜” as he returned the survey. I think my friend said "here you go, fag". I don't know how he meant it, and I certainly don't get the subtleties of many terms. I think he said it jokingly with the assumption that I didn't understand? Granted, I often mishear things, plus it was one of those moments where you don't entirely hear what someone says at first but your brain replays the sound clip two or three times and then comprehends it once the moment has passed. So really I'm no more than about 40% sure that was even the word he used. I don't know how I feel about this vague event. Am I bothered? Am I creating an incident out of what was probably nothing?

Either way, the Japanese Senseis have been obnoxiously glib about it when I tried to discuss it with them. The first teacher's reaction was 「それだとしたら、ひどい！」 (if it were that, that's mean!" and then the second didn't respond much beyond 「ああそうですか？」 ("oh really?"). I would've imagined they'd be a little more righteously indignant on my behalf. It's not as if this a damaging experience, but maybe this indifference says something about the broader lack of awareness towards gay subjects in Japan.

And now a number of unrelated (but pretty!) pictures. Blogger's been hatin' recently and won't let me upload photos through its own interface, so I'm resorting to increasingly ghetto methods of getting them to show up in the post.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

At HEP 5, we found a wall for hanging little 短冊 cards for 七夕祭り (Tanabata Festival, 7/7). I enjoyed that these two wished for "world domination" and "to grow to 170 cm", respectively.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Would you believe me if I told you there's a place in Japan with the best Indian food I've ever tasted? Nom nom nan.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

The nom nom nan team from Friday.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Also a tasty shot of sushi from the 懐石 feast we had with the visiting Yale teachers performing site visits.

The land of karaoke

2010-07-02T01:58:00.001-07:00

In other news, I apparently have no sense of whether something is sincere in Japanese, because lyrics to pop songs (especially love songs) that could only be pure cheese in English make me melt when I hear the song in Japanese. PRIMARY EXAMPLE:
嵐：Monster

The lines that get me everytime--
"I'll be by your side until we see the dawn /
Even if all my memories were erased /
and I were reborn, I'll seek you out again

"I'm not what you see, hold onto your heart /
On the night of the full moon, I found you"

Cheesy, right? But I love it. And have memorized the lyrics so that I'll be ready to pwn when I finally go out to karaoke eventually.

2時を少し過ぎる頃(OH No!)残酷なMonster
月明かり草木眠る頃(OH No!)甦る

君の叫びで　僕は目覚める
今宵の闇へ　君をいざなう　Monster

凍りつく夜が創り出す(We are)
君の後ろ　Who？
気付いたときはもう閉じ込める
(Monster)逃げ場は無い

(Just One)君の手を(Two)愛の手を
(Three,Four＆Five)抱いて眠りたい

あなたがいたから生まれてきたんだ
夜が明けるまで近くにいよう
僕の記憶が全て消えても
生まれ変わったら　また君を探す
見かけじゃなくて　心を抱いて
満月の夜　君を見つけた　
Monster

ドアのない部屋に迷い込む(No Way)
誰か見てる　Who？
足音が徐々に近くなる
(Runaway)でも動けない

(Just One)このスリル(Two)止められない
(Three,Four＆Five)怖がらせたい

だけど本当は　君が好きなんだ
朝が見えるまで　隣に居よう

一万年の愛を叫ぼう
生まれ変わっても　また君を探す
Monster

12 時を少し過ぎる頃・・・　
月明かり草木眠る頃・・・　

君の涙で　僕は目覚める
今宵の闇へ　君を連れ出す

僕の記憶が全て消えても
生まれ変わったら　また君を探す
見かけじゃなくて　心を抱いて
満月の夜　君を見つけた
Monster

There's a lot of JPop and JRock I would absolutely not listen to were it not for the goal of language practice, but there's a couple groups growing on me- especially the aforementioned "Arashi" (storm) and "Funky Monkey Babies"... they were big in the 90s?

But then there's others that are just so happy and cute... even if you acknowledge its terrible music, you can't help but squee because its full of cute little Japanese girls being princesses and flying and singing about love. 気まぐれ「ロマンティック」("Romantic" by "On a Whim") is perhaps the best example: mad props to Nick Rosenbaum for originally introducing me.

And then of course, there's all the strange and unfathomable ways in which Japanese "news" programs misappropriate popular western songs. Watching TV while writing this, I just heard an arrangement of the Star Wars Imperial March on banjo and nose flute. Umm... yeah.

Wisdom from the bottle

2010-06-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

I spent last Friday night at my favorite bar in the 堂山町 (Douyamachou) district, about ten minutes walk away from the JR Osaka station. I've been to Bar Bacchus once a weekend and am on friendly terms with a number of the regulars (does that make me a regular, too?) and especially the bar master, Chano-San. He recently shared with me the adage "苦労無くして、前進なし”, which is fairly literally "no pain no gain". Chano-san repeated it to me, half-scoldingly and half-encouragingly, as I started to waver about why I'm continuously working so hard.

By the wee hours of the morning, when it was just me and bar-masters Chano and Goro, (I guess KenKen was there too, but he was, erm, "taking a nap") we got to talking about personal histories and where I was going with this whole Japanese thing. Chano-san likes to brag to other customers that I'm 賢い because I go to Yale and I'm gonna be all important doing 外交 at the 大使館, and I had to confess, that whole thing about going to work in foreign service and diplomacy is mostly to have a satisfying answer when people get curious about why I'm interested in Japanese.

I started to realize at their questions that I have a hard time justifying when people ask "why are you majoring in Japanese?" I kinda waver around it with a long-winded explanation of my defiant urge to be good at the language, to prove myself capable of thriving in their culture. "Why did you choose Japanese in the first place?" I weasel all over the mulberry bush with a rant of how I don't want to fulfill the world's image of the ignorant, mono-lingual American. "Yeah, but why Japanese?" Reasons citing food and video games don't really cut it anymore. Is it enough to just think it's kinda neat?

I confessed to Chano my belief that even if I worked in Japan for a year or two at some point, I could never really be an ex-pat for a whole slew of reasons about me not belonging or not fitting in, not in Japan. He thought most of my excuses were kind of silly. This infinitely wise, moderately inebriated middle-aged man gave me a heart-to-heart explaining exactly how I was holding myself back with all the assumptions I've made depending on being accepted by others' systems.

But this week, I've been able to begin (gradually, painstakingly) shifting myself out of self-deprecating Yalie study mode, obsessed with all the reasons I'm treated differently and barred from ever fully integrating into Japan. I have little patience to deal with non-native speakers of English, yet somehow I've been fortunate enough to make a number of older friends here willing to sit and talk to me for hours, continually correcting my word choice and grammar and politeness and intonation, and then buy me drinks to boot. Even if I'm not finding that connection as much within the student group, the fact that strangers have been so kind and welcoming to me does a lot to undo the damage Ive dealt to myself by focusing on all the ways I'm not accepted.

I was told by a friend, in English, after a series of email exchanges in Japanese: "I could see your heart because you were the first foreigner to write so many word to me..." (awwwww) "...with so many mistakes." (crap).

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

If only happiness were really that simple. And a little bit stylish.

In other fun news, I have a cellphone! I hesitated for the first couple weeks but ultimately its been instrumental in allowing me to get out of the apartment and make plans with new friends I meet. If you're ever just so despondent you need to hear my voice, I receive calls for free at (International code 81) 080-3825-2476. I also have email on my phone- works a lot like texting if you write to roll.you.up.into.my.life@softbank.ne.jp. It is a fact that all Japanese young people must have obnoxiously long email addresses that can not easily be conveyed through spoken conversation, so I followed suit.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

I found some broskis- Tim came up with some friends from Yale Summer Session in Tokyo. We fratted hard by going to the aquarium.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

FISHY. WHY ARE YOU SLEEPING.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Most terrifyingly large crabs ever. They make Alaskan King Crabs look pretty docile. They also have like five layers of claws inside their mouths. ナニコレェ〜？！

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

The enormous Ferris Wheel overlooking Osaka Harbor.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Little prayer cards at a temple in Umeda.

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

I found Waldo! Who knew he was at the novelty omiyage store the whole time?!

From Summer 2010 OSAKA

Please note that when the class went on a study tour to the corporate office of Leo Palace, they had an enormous projection of Lady Gaga playing continuously in the lobby. This is the one aspect of the tour that could possibly make me want to work a corporate job in Japan.

Stranger in a strange land

2010-06-15T06:20:00.000-07:00

CET has weekly "orientation" sessions designed to address notions of dealing with a foreign culture. None of these have been earth shatteringly new--things like...
~Culture is an iceberg (only a small number of things are superficially visible, and there's a lot more to it beneath the surface),
~High-Context / Low-Context cultures (The US tends to be direct, Japan indirect and non-confrontational),
~and today, Cross Cultural Methods of problem solving.

These are the kind of things that most of us tend to dismiss as totally obvious. Yeah, yeah, I know cultures think about things differently. Duh. It's easy to categorize these kinds of talks into that wishy washy bin of the humanities, where you're continually surprised people make careers out of publishing on topics that should be so obvious. But I think CET has actually done a pretty good job at helping me get over the cynical assumption that I know all this stuff.

Like today, I was selected to do a roleplay in front of the group for different cultural methods of problem solving. The task was to confront a friend, played by one of the Japanese instructors, about how she had told the rest of the groups problems I had confided in her about my roommate. For a variety of reasons, my problem solving skills that I thought so well-attuned didn't accomplish much--what most surprised me most is that during the subsequent discussion, most of the Japanese viewed my tone and demeanor as aggressive and angry, when I thought I was being composed and direct. Huh.

But the flip side of these kinds of chats may sometimes result in a kind of paranoia in trying to be too culturally sensitive. Last summer, after the cultural training of pre-departure meetings at Yale for my first study abroad, I felt like I had to suppress my own individuality and background so as to not cause ripples and offend the Japanese sense of decorum. This time at CET, a few students have felt the talks urge to hyper-vigilance, wondering if even when their Japanese roommate is chill and says everything's fine, they have to continually suspect hidden problems gnawing away at their relationship.

But for all those narcissistic assumptions that I already know everything about cross-cultural understanding, the results are pretty telling that I don't. I'm 90% sure I was chosen to do the role play because I've been grumbling about my own roommate issues to anyone who'll listen.
We spoke for maybe 5 minutes this morning, between him waking up and me going to school--this is probably the most we've interacted at once since last Thursday. I'd love to try again with what I took away from the discussion today, but he's once again at his part-time job until after I go to bed. Even if the talk had tried to give me a concrete answer to how to deal with this, it probably wouldn't count for much because this kind of understanding can only be built through experience. That said, I'm barely even getting a chance for that experience when my roommate is never home.

After the roleplay, Chichiishi Sensei commented that she was interested to hear me speaking quickly and assuredly in English, since I stutter so badly in Japanese. The surrounding instructors tittered politely. I'm making the choice to interpret this comment more as being pleased to find my buoyant personality that shines through in English, and less as a reminder of how piss-poor my speaking ability is. At least it wasn't quite so backhanded as another Sensei`s compliment when I apologized for a difficult to read part of my hand-written speech: "Your handwriting isn't nearly as bad on this manuscript as it usually is in your notebook!" Um... thanks?

Time for something more upbeat... look! It says Friend! You can buy food from the Friend Bakery at the Friend Mart.

A sweet photo from the 8th floor observation deck of Osaka Tower taken on my Birthday.

濡れる

2010-06-13T03:24:00.000-07:00

My 21st birthday was fairly laid back, since it holds little meaning in a country where legal drinking age is 20 and even then rarely enforced. Friday night, my last night of 20, I went out to the same bar from last weekend (I guess I'm a regular now, from the number of the regulars I now know). Wasn't going that big for myself but when other patrons heard it was about to be my birthday, they kept on buying me drinks. I tried to refuse but Bar Master Chano-san insisted that you can't really do that, so I just begged him to make them increasingly weak as the night went on. I tried to leave at midnight so I could catch the last train home but the insistence on drinking more detained me; instead another customer who lived in the same direction offered to share a cab when we finally finished around 2 am. The birthday itself was low key, at least partly due to the headache- made some calls home to friends and loved ones, then went sightseeing to Osaka castle. Finished the night when a bunch of the group went to a bar to see Will sing with his guitar at an open mike night.

Osaka Castle

We just entered the rainy season. This means all rain, all the time. The forecast predicts a full week of nonstop rain to follow The Great Wettening of June 13th 2010. I was the only without the foresight to do all my laundry on Saturday so I'm basically sockless for the next week.

So I'm supposedly living in a double apartment, but from how little my Japanese roommate is around, and how we draw out the worst of the quiet introvert in each other, I might as well be by myself. The rain has dampened my ability to go out and explore freely, so the rest of the weekend has been cooped up by myself to do homework. Sure, during the school year I'm a beast at depriving myself of things I want to do in favor of doing the workload that Yale demands, but with summer the drive to be the academically self-deprecating Yalie weakens a lot. Even so, the result of that upbringing kinda leaves me at a loss when left to my own devices. So this summer is perhaps trying to make me learn how to deal with with boredom, with loneliness, with free time, and with myself when I'm alone in a foreign country with limited access to the outside world and limited opportunities to get outside in this country.

I'm actually a little terrified of how much time I have up in the air once the program ends in late July. I have a full two weeks after the end of the academic term before my flight home, and currently no real plans. While this has the possibility to be a chance for freedom and exploration and all those awesome things, the flip side is that I might be very bored and lonely to have no companions for two weeks.

The prospect of independent travel is exciting, but my preliminary research and stab at itinerary making have been discouraging. I didn't manage to get a Japan Rail Pass (unlimited use of the bullet train for a week!) before leaving the states and assumed it'd be fine to have my family buy one there and mail it over, but looks like it might be harder than that. I was considering couch surfing as a way to create a snaking route of stopping points, but there's really not many hosts outside of Tokyo. It doesn't particularly look like my travel dates and plans line up with anyone else on the program. WWOOF usually expects more than a week or two, but I've got a membership pending with their Japan branch. So we'll see.

For now, it's back to the mountain of homework.

Photo dump of silly things!

2010-06-10T01:52:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the first major test of the program, which is surprising that I'm already through a quarter of it. Damn, that's been fast so far.

Japan is weird about Obama. I can't tell you how many little kids have exlaimed "YES WE CAN" upon seeing me walk down the street. I guess that's the trademark of America now? But I was watching the show ナニコレ珍百景 (I like to translate it as "WhattheF***WeirdShit") where they were investigating "Obama Udon". It takes its name from the first letter of three of its main ingredients to spell out O Ba Ma. So this one Japanese comedian whose entire stick is looking kinda like Obama (except Asian) went to investigate by yelling "CHANGE" and "YES WE CAN" at the noodle shop owner a lot.

A fun group shot from going out to Yakitori last week.

I don't know why all Japanese burger chains are so strange. This is "Big Man Big Juicy Burger". I couldn't help giggling while I ate it.

This is clearly the most adorable Pocky box ever. The back has little cardboard flaps that swing out so you can hang the panda box on sills and things. And then eat Pocky. Everybody wins!

Japan has a weird relationship with drag and other things relating to queer identity. I don't think I've gone a day without seeing a drag queen on TV since getting here- whether its a campy commercial or a straight comedian in drag or Akihiro Miwa's Oprah-esque show where he teaches people how to deal with their emotions, drag is common, not really frowned upon, and seems to be widely disassociated from "gay".

So the reason this costume struck me apart from just looking silly: though the text insists the sparkle gown is unisex, its clearly marketed towards men. But I can't think of a US male with any degree of involvement in drag who would buy an item marketed at playing drag--they'd go for the real women's clothes. Though drag is a counter-culture costume of sorts, they wouldn't buy things marketed by mainstream society as a costume. And any non-drag male who wanted to play drag for just a party gag would go to the women's costume section of a party shop. So what does it mean that a unisex female costume is marketed towards the average male consumer? I can't say. But I'm intrigued.

And finally, un-related to cultural musings, its HILARIOUS to put fake boobies on your baby. Thanks Japan!

Belligerence = デッカイ

2010-06-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

Made it through the first full week. Class is tough just for the speed and volume of material it covers but so far nothing in that aspect is too overwhelming. I spent most of the first week being frustrated with my speaking ability knowing it hasn't been measuring up to what I'm capable of, but the weekend came with a couple of nice breaks for that.

Incidentally, Japan sells whiskey bottles out of vending machines. Not that I like whiskey, but just knowing such a machine exists makes everything better.

For Fami's birthday, a bunch of us went out to a nearby Yakitori (grilled chicken n' stuff on a stick!) restaurant and stuffed ourselves silly. I made a point of sitting away from the English speakers (I'm probably coming off as "that guy" to the other American students on the program for avoiding them, but this is what I need to do for my own language practice--Sorry that I'm a huge tool) to hang out with the Japanese roommates. And we bonded in the way that young adult males inevitably will- we made a bunch of crude sex jokes.

Perhaps I'm a terrible person, but I will never get tired of my Japanese friends learning how to properly pronounce "election".

Another thing I've found is that I sometimes need to create excuses for conversations. My roommate and I still don't speak that much (he's busy with his part time job, entering the hell of a Japanese 3rd year college student's career search, and fairly quiet) so I'm creating small excuses everywhere when I go out, like stopping at the civic information center to ask about where to find the bookstore when I have no intention of going to the bookstore.

Another thing about using excuses to meet people- one of our homework assignments was to go out and interview people on campus about their hometowns. Which of course, was fairly awkward to approach strangers and ask them personal questions. But Will had brought peanut butter and apples to the campus cafeteria to share with our Japanese friends (peanut butter exists but is surprisingly rare in Japan) and eventually used the leftovers to go around offering "traditional American snacks" to random people in the cafeteria. He used this as a seque into meeting people and when we realized one group of girls would still be there during our class time when we were doing the interview, we asked them if we could come back to interview their group. So basically, we've used homework as an excuse to meet girls. Everyone's jealous that I interviewed the totally hot girl.

Saturday night I went to a bar, my first foray into 大阪 (Osaka) proper (we actually live a couple train stops away in 吹田市 (Suita)). Aside from being totally awesome that it was the first time I've gone to a bar by myself (I'm getting the jump on my 21st birthday next week by taking advantage of Japan's drinking age of 20) I stayed for 4 hours just talking and listening to other conversations. Most bars in Japan are tiny, and this one had maybe 8 or 9 seats. While I was there, the number of patrons never exceeded three. So I got to chatting it up with the Bar Master. At first it was the typical "Oh! So you're a foreign exchange student! You're studying Japanese!" type interactions, and since the first Sex and the City movie was playing on tv they all gossiped about which characters they liked. (The second one just came out here, so it's kind of a popular topic). But for a while when it was just me and the bar master we got to talking about my own research on America-Japan relations post World War II.

The bar was pretty sweet and I'm definitely gonna keep doing that on the weekends, even if it means I subsist on ramen and rice balls for most of the week to offset the cost.

On Wednesday the whole program took a trip to Arayashi Yama and 天龍寺 (Tenryuuji) temple in Kyoto. My family has a tradition of posing with statues because we're cool like that.

Kyoto also included モンキーパーク(monkey park) where we got to walk through trails surrounded by Japanese macaques. I tried to explain my own experience with the monkey lab at Yale and how monkeys are evil and will still all your things given half a chance.

OM NOM NOM

Getting settled

2010-06-01T01:50:00.000-07:00

This is my apartment- the kitchen/bathroom/front door are there on the right, and the floor space expands in an approximately 2 Elliots x 1.25 Elliots square space to the foreground.

See that tiny little loft up there on the right? That's where I live. About 2 Elliots deep, .67 Elliots wide, and .5 Elliots tall. (Since the Japanese would actually measure this space in tatami mats, I see no reason why my own arbitrary distance doesn't hold equal merit).

My roommate is 中山絢太 (Kenta Nakayama). He seems like a pretty cool guy, although we haven't yet spent a lot of time together. He's really busy with a part-time job and some other things that I'm not really sure about. I'm not entirely convinced that working in a noodle shop requires you to leave for your job at midnight and come back the next morning at 9:30, so I'm going to assume that he has ties to the Yakuza.

Incidentally, Kenta is wearing my fratty glasses in this photo--Thanks Margeaux! Apparently all the Japanese OGU partners thought they were the coolest thing in the world, and there's an extensive series of photos of everyone trying them in turn and looking badass.

First thing I did upon getting home today: make rice, and make tea. I think I'm officially an Asian housewife. But I'm getting better at feeding myself myself in Japan- at first it was a challenge to cook for myself when I was shopping for unfamiliar ingredients with directions I could only read 60% percent. The first dinner didn't happen because I tried to take a brief nap at 4 in the afternoon only to wake up at 4 am the next morning (oops), and then the next one was basically rice and noodles because I didn't have anything fresh or interesting to add to the carb fest. Realizing how quickly I would get tired of that, I made something much nicer tonight...

Isn't that the cutest little Donburi bowl you've ever seen? I pre-gamed dinner with some takoyaki (fried squid balls), then made a bowl of rice with fish and seaweed sprinkles, some beef and onions in a savory sauce, fresh tomatoes, mugi tea, and followed it up later with Dango, a sweet rice flour dumpling. Please note that the cup says in Japanese "Let's go out to find happiness!" It's matching partner says "I want to fly to wherever you are". The spoon has a smiley face. Totally bringing these home.

This is from the open air mall space where we had a banquet for all the students and Japanese partners- the whole area was covered in posters of this cat character doing different things, sometimes recreating classic movies? My favorite is the Star Wars pose. I have no idea what significance the series of cats hold.

I tested into the top level- exactly what I wanted, although I was terrified it wouldn't happen and I'd be stuck in a level that didn't challenge me like last summer in HIF. It's actually the largest of the classes, meaning there are 5 of us (but I guess that's what happens in a program of 14). We practiced speed reading today- something I hadn't really expected I would have been able to do in Japanese.

So far class is pretty manageable. I've been surprised that I feel like my weakness right is speaking. Like, at all. Out of nowhere I've become able to understand most of what's happening on the TV, comprehend all of the lengthy directions and discussions from 三森先生 (Mimori Sensei), and read an enormous volume of complex kanji while figuring out compound words I've never seen from familiar kanji. And despite all that, I'm stumbling over trying to express anything longer than a direct sentence. Balls.

Unrelated to anything else: it's weird how many American stars I've seen on Japanese TV. Ke$ha was at the red carpet entrance to some sort of Japanese music awards night, and she described her costume in the characteristic Ke$ha drawl ("It's like a... sexy bird.") while the subtitles translated ("セックシ・バード。”). Then I saw the cast of Sex and the City 2 interviewed by a Japanese station, and the main lady (Carrie?) talked at length about how you should sleep enough if you want to be pretty. And then the interviewer girl said how little she slept, and it was awkward for everyone.

I'm in Japan. Yeah.

2010-05-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Tokyo what seemed like a couple hours ahead of schedule, and much to my chagrin, the Hot Dog wrapped in an American flag and rubbing himself with condiments was not there to greet me this time. Originally I wasn't supposed to be in till five, but I had cleared customs (I improved my track record by not getting quarantined) retrieved my bags, planned the train route, and boarded the Limited Super Express by 4:45.

I realize it probably could have been easier to fly straight to Osaka, since I found tickets from JFK to Osaka for only about $80 more than to Tokyo. Might've been faster and cost less than the $160ish train tickets. Make a note for next year's travel instructions, Kelly?

These trains and airports, though, are where I take pride in being the only American traveling by himself. I see other people in family or social groups, most often sightseeing and without much language background. But my rarity again sticks out: even when I'm asking (in Japanese) which ticket to put through the turnstile (sometimes its two, sometimes its three, sometimes the machine returns a different number than what you put in) I most often get the response back in English. I walked up and down the 自由席 cars of the train looking for an open spot to sit, realizing of course I was the only non-Asian. Yes, I'm pretty tall, and yes I'm blonde. We've been there before, can we get over that already?

I had toyed with the idea of dying my hair darker before this trip to Japan, just to shortcut the numerous interactions of “OMG LOOK AT THAT TALL BLONDE FOREIGN DUDE” but decided against it. A) It would take a lot more than that to make me look inconspicuous, and B) For this one case, at least, Japan is going to have to adjust itself to my differences, and not the other way around. So suck it.

The first sign that told I had truly returned to Japan: HEATED TOILET SEATS. We are so uncivilized in the states.

But, I did avert the major crises of traveling. After remembering how much I screwed up losing my baggage on the train last time, I ran back just in time to my unattended crew duffel. And then swapping trains at Tokyo's Shinagawa station, I didn't realize that bullet trains only stopped for about 10 seconds before moving on. I barely made it on as I walked along the outside to my designated car then panicked when the gut-wrenching train sounds started happening all around me.

On the train though, I managed to strike up my first conversation with a real live Nihonjin since arriving, a cute girl about my age. She had been dozing and apologized if she had slept with her head on my shoulder; I was so full of the jet-lag madness that I hadn't noticed if she had. We were both kinda tired and my brain wasn't (isn't) yet functional so the conversation didn't get much past simple “where you from” “where you going” type questions, but as she departed at 名古屋 she smiled, leaned in close, and said to me “思い出たくさん作ってください”. ("Please make a lot of memories") D'awww. Maybe a cheesy way to start the trip, but I like it.

"But wait!" I hear you saying. "You haven't even included a single nonsensical picture! And linking to one from last time doesn't count!" Well then. I give you Wicked, on its Japan-wide tour.

You can't even tell the actress playing Elphaba is Asian. Because she's GREEN!

Start of Osaka 2010: a new summer, a new city

2010-05-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

Light Fellowship: Take Two. This is the beginning of posts for the summer of 2010, going to Osaka. Everything before this was Summer 2009, doing a light fellowship in Hakodate.

This time I'm headed to Osaka. Barely recovered from spring semester and deadweek and graduation and the rollercoaster of emotions that entails, and I'm flying straight from New Haven to Japan.

Only issue: the program CET didn't really give me enough arrival details to get a flight that would arrive early enough. They told me just to get a flight arriving on the 28th, so that's what I got. 1:10 pm out of JFK, 5 pm (the next day) in Tokyo. Three hours of bullet trains from there to Osaka. Best case scenario I arrive by 10 pm, most likely much later. This is of course past the time when CET is doing all the orientation and providing me a means of getting into the apartment in which I'll be living. Won't yet have a phone so won't be able to contact my roommate either.

So... unknown city late at night + jet lag + carrying luggage + not knowing my address + no one to meet me there = adventure... right? Bring it on.

Will write more interesting things and add pictures as I'm in Japan. I really got a kick out of blogging last summer, and (maybe it's just me being a total narcissist) but when I had something good to write about I think I managed to convey some pretty cool experiences and insights.

終了じゃない。

2009-08-13T06:51:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-13T06:44:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-10T18:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-05T02:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-30T04:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-23T06:16:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-18T02:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-12T05:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-08T05:36:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-07T03:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-26T06:09:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-06-22T04:31:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-22T01:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-18T04:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

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.

No sympathy for the vertically challenged

2009-06-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

Now that classes have started, the number of blog-worthy adventures and photos have dwindled a bit, but I did find a great game this afternoon where I steal things from Thanh (like her pet hamster Hermes that she lied to me and said she got a real hamster and I was heartbroken when I tried to visit her room and it was a fake hamster. A hamster of lies and deceit) and use my tactical superiority to keep it away from her. Some would say that my strategy is nothing more than being significantly taller, but it works.

Anyway, homestay begins tomorrow. We'll see how that works out, with suddenly being not even remotely in control of my space, my sovereignty, or my curfew. I'm still nervous about how to handle the crippled child, but there's not much to do except go with the flow and be sensitive. I spent a long time trying and failing to find my host family's address on a map of Hakodate- turns out the reason I couldn't find them is because they're in a different city altogether. When I first started asking around, I was told their district of 久根別 (kunebetsu) in the neighboring city 北斗市 (Hokutoshi) was 3 hours away. I can't deal with that commute twice a day. But the most accurate estimate I've gotten from the program office is that the Japan Rail trainline from their city to mine is 20 minutes. Add 20 minutes from Hakodate Eki to the school building, plus however long it takes from their house to the Kunebetsu Eki, and this could be substantial. The whole thing is estimated at an hour by bike, which will probably be my best bet if their house is far from the station, too. Nothing to do but see tomorrow when I finally meet the family.

An (unrelated) nice pic from 函館市公演, which flanked the children's play place 子供の国 as we traveled to 谷地がしり温泉 over the weekend. The mountains and fog here are incredible.

ごめんなさい

2009-06-15T06:02:00.000-07:00

Dear The Environment,

You know that I like you. You know that I'm a big fan of recycling and sustainable foods and not eating endangered animals. But it's not my fault that whales are so frickin' delicious. Maybe if you didn't make the things that I moralistically should not eat in good conscious so tasty, we could avoid this whole dilemma. It's not you, it's whales. Maybe we need to see other people for just a little bit until you can forgive me for ordering the fried kujira burger at Lucky Pierrot, the local hamburger chain that is ironically the most popular restaurant in all of Hakodate. But hey, I hope we can still be friends.

Kisses,
~Elliot

Baby seals, squids, yams

2009-06-13T18:44:00.000-07:00

Saturday was an incredible day for conversing with Japanese people. I started off the morning wandering through the fish market. My group included Nao, whose oral Japanese far surpassed anyone in the group, but pretty soon I was holding my own chatting it up and getting samples from fishmongers. Cool discovery of the morning: いかすみのアイスクリム、squid ink flavored ice cream.

Also note Chris' shirt: 日本語勉強中(in the middle of studying Japanese). This was the best conversation starter with all the natives who chuckled at us.

By the way, my squiddy friends of the marching band, I'm taking photos of every cool squid-related thing I find. And because Hakodate is the squid capital of the world, there will soon be a gallery of epic proportions.

In an attempt to find the young person's night life of Hakodate, my friends goaded me into chatting it up with attractive young Japanese girls. I was told afterwards that apparently I kind of intimidated them with what has suddenly become my "exotic" look of blue eyes, blonde hair, and manly ways. It's equally likely that they were timid about dealing with clumsy, badly spoken foreigners, but as the first explanation is far more flattering to my ego that's the one I choose to believe.

But in exploring the historical district further, we were invited into a Buddhist temple's service. I couldn't begin to explain anything of what was going on (I think the service was performed in classical chinese? At least the prayerbook we saw was written that way), but it was pretty.

With a group, I scaled Hakodate Yama again in spite of the impenetrable fog. It was a longer route and slower going than my previous run, but the fog gave the whole place this mystical quality. At the souvenir shop up top (not open on when I visited in the early morning) I ate caramels on the top of Hakodate Yama that had been flavored as cheesecake, corn, beer, and potato. Corn was the definite winner, being nigh identical to corn pops in candy form. Also tried ICE CREAM INSIDE OF WAFFLES. And then I found candies with baby seals, and resisted the urge to club them. After writing an enormous term paper last semester on how the sealing industry was a precursor to the struggles of territorial control and suzerainties between the US and Japan, any reference to seals in Japan has become even cooler to me than seal references in general. Dorky, I know.

Fog!
Caramel ice cream inside of waffle in a box. Brilliant.
And baby seals, urging me to buy "stick pie"

But then we went to a soba shop that was built into this sweet old couple's house- Ishizawa san and his wife are basically the coolest old people ever. I kept on asking about how the noodles were made in an attempt to stir up conversation (we were the only patrons in a small, homey room) and pretty soon they told us their life history. Even though much of the conversation was taken over by a more linguistically skilled friend and I couldn't track when they both started telling stories at the same time, it was great to make friends out of the blue like that. They even brought us special desserts, made from congealed cooking water produced in the Soba making.

Afterwards, we checked out a traditional bar style alley, with tiny shops (no more than 6 seats or so) stacked on top of each other. I got to talking again with Hi-chan and Maa-kun, my new favorite sassy bartending duo, and after I mentioned I had just turned 20 they brought me a special birthday pudding. How did they know how much I love pudding? Then one of the other patrons there brought our group some sweets made from yams. I frickin' love yams. This day was amazing for how many people I connected with through speaking Japanese, but I suddenly realize the sever lack of small gifts for giving to new friends now that I see how many I've received just by being friendly.

Also from the top of the mountain- a shrine written in classical chinese (we found an old school kanji to write "20" as 廿)

A list of reasons why my birthday in Japan is awesome:

2009-06-12T04:32:00.000-07:00

Were I still in the United States, I would be 19. I have not yet lived for 20 years. But according to my passport and my position relative to the international date line, I'm 20 a day early. It was a little anti-climactic because Japan basically never cards, but I obtained two bottles of personally, legally purchased sake that later partied with me in the hot springs. Aw yeah.

I think I was trying to look pimpin' here. I think I just look squinty instead.
Note the recently purchased Sake bottles and mochi cakes.

I spent my birthday afternoon and night hanging out with a bunch of naked guys in hot water, one of whom is apparently my Sigma Chi bro fromt the Harvard chapter. We were later joined by an older native guy, and we actually made some pretty good conversation with him. His lack of teeth was a major block to our understanding, but he gave us directions to a good ramen spot for dinner.

Did I mention that Japan sells sake in juice boxes?

Actually among the most un-delicious experiences of my life, but it was okay because it was in a juice box.

After a long ordeal of asking directions, we finally plotted out the right bus route to get to the いさりび間　Isaribikan Hot Springs. But the only way to make it there was to sprint from the hotel to the station. We received claps and cheers from a fishmonger on the streets as we raced to our destination.

Never have I been so pleased with myself to be on a bus.

List of fun things I've eaten:
~Salted squid guts. I could feel them for hours afterwards.

~Squid Somen (noodles). I thought this meant I'd have squid served with noodles, but then it was actually squid sliced into noodles.

When I received my dish, I kept on insisting that this was noodles and there would be squid beneath, but then it turned out the entire thing was just squid.

~Whole Squid. It was five inches long.

Not actually what I ate, but the most adorable manhole cover I've ever seen.

~Ramen. With squid in it.

But before that, I first celebrated my coming of age by running up a mountain at 5 am. I know, right? But my sleep schedule is still an epic fail from jet lag, and it was far too bright and pretty out in the morning. Over two hours, I conquered 函館山, which is more steep, tall, and confusing than I had expected. I spent a long time even trying to find a road that would get me there (apparently running straight towards the big rock doesn't work) because Japan's streets are whack. The signs along the way explain the history of the place in English, and the signs along the mountain trails explained about the local birds in the area (I was very excited to see this after complaining about there being nothing but the scariest crows I've ever encountered). I sadly didn't bring my camera for the incredible view.

Early in the afternoon, as we tried out some authentic Japanese gelato at a place called Saltimbocca (fun fact: most popular restaurant in Hakodate is a hamburger joint), we were asked by a Kyoto native to write our dreams on a large card and pose with him for a project. Through some horribly awkward questioning, we finally figured out he has a friend doing the same in Kyuushuu, to see how people's dreams vary between the north and south of Japan. Our dream, that fits into this weekend's goal setting homework for the weekend: 私達は日本語で上手になりたい！(We want to become good at Japanese. And pose in the most Asian fashion possible.)

I seduced two cats and a kitten with my sultry cat yodeling. My gathered audience didn't believe in my skills but I knew I would conquer.

Also, this hotel has MORE FREE JAMMIES. I love Japan.

The start of hakodate

2009-06-10T23:03:00.000-07:00

After a morning full of written exams for class placement, I just had my oral interview, still fighting the massive jetlag. In the first sentence out of my mouth, I forgot how to say America. And in case you didn't know, this, the way to say “America” in Japanese is アメリカ. In roman characters: Amerika. Seriously. Then I was asked about what books I've read recently. I remembered that I just finished this really long, really awesome book at home, but for the life of me couldn't remember anything about it, including its name. So, I ended up talking about Marley and Me which I had watched on the plane ride over. It's probably a good thing I didn't remember the actual book because I would have no way to explain the artsy broken prose and complex familial ties and journey of self-acceptance from The Shipping News by Ann Proulx. But then we got to talk about swine flu, which I was much better at and could tell my sweet story about getting quarantined in Tokyo.

I ate some things that might have been whale blubber but were probably radish, and some things that I thought were mushroom but might have been squid. Usually, the recommended procedure for consuming strange found objects is PERCEIVE – IDENTIFY- EAT. But since I've already failed that piece of sage wisdom, I'll run with PERCEIVE – EAT – MAKE VAGUE CONJECTURES AS TO THE DUBIOUS NATURE OF WHAT IS IN MY MOUTH for now.

I also found some children in our class building, who asked about the bathroom. And I gave them directions. Native speakers ask for me directions because I'm straight pimpin'. Aw yeah. I even answered their questions about proper shoe procedures for the inside. I am a sexy shoeless god of words.

And since I don't yet have good pictures of Hakodate where I am now residing, pontificate upon the viewing pleasure induced by the following public signage above a pachinko parlor. It's okay until you start to consider what those two stick figures are alternating doing to that lady stick figure.

The first period of wakefulness and many hours of travel-induced crazy

2009-06-10T03:04:00.000-07:00

Last night, or whatever period of time ago it was that I last went to bed, I played Plants Vs. Zombies. I played it as it is my sworn duty as an environmentally friendly foe of the undead. Normally when you're told "A HUGE WAVE OF ZOMBIES IS APPROACHING", and then you spud-ow those zombie mofos, you get a present, a new seed with new abilities. But then instead, I got a magically shiny note! I opened it up and this is what it said:
NOT ACCEPTABLE. So I hightailed it out of the country, to a place that would be more zombie free. Fortunately, after hitch-hiking my way down to San Francisco I managed to flag down a plane on the runway, conveniently enough heading for Narita, the Tokyo International Airport.

They had me write some things. I did a fair amount of it in Kanji, including the address of my stay, which after writing four different times on separate forms still makes no sense to me. Please don't notice the fact that I forgot how to write 勉強 or probably misspelled my own middle name in the katakana alphabet.
But fancy that, I didn't make it very far.
At least my smooth-talking Japanese convinced them that Nyquil is a 医者が必要じゃなくてどこでも買える薬。Maybe my hot bod helped when they stuck the thermometer in my arm-pit.

Once I had gained my freedom, I encountered many strange and wonderful things, and failed at flushing this particular toilet.

Not pictured: the shower for babies on the other side of the personal space bubble stall.

But despite all the wonders I may come to find, this statue in the Tokyo airport reminded me just why I love America.

And it's not even Day 1 of the program. Tomorrow is the placement exam which requires waking up at 5 for travel.

EDIT: An update of the utmost importance. Holy crap guys. The hotel in Tokyo where I'm staying before heading to Hakodate tomorrow HAS FREE JAMMIES.

愛してもいい？

2009-06-08T09:39:00.001-07:00

Getting ready for Japan. I'm not sure the enormity of my summer has yet hit me. I leave early Tuesday morning, to fly 8 hours back in time and magically jump forward 24 somewhere in there.

OMG I'M EXCITED!!

HILLARY IS UNCOMFORTABLE!

In preparation for the freeform city exploration I plan on doing in Japan, I had myself an adventure today in Seattle. I live in Spokane, and have been visiting my sister in Seattle before my flight leaves from here on Tuesday. As a warm-up of my city exploration skills (some skeptics would say that I actually failed at reading the bus map) I walked from Pike's Place market to the U District, with no map, no notion of the city layout, and no knowledge of any of the streets between my destination and target. What shouldn't have been that long of a trip become 90 minutes (i knew I was supposed to follow 15th avenue but was very displeased when apparently they put a lake in the middle of it) but it was awesome. I enjoyed the day, the city, the cities, the hobos (actually I didn't very much enjoy that hobo that chased me). Exploring and seeing things and watching people with nothing more than a light pack and a waterbottle is awesome. I can't wait to do this all over Japan, hopefully with a bit more courage to ask for directions.

Adventures led me many places, including the UW chapter of my fraternity Sigma Chi

In lieu of actually studying for my placement exam, I've been reading through Making Out in Japanese and other such books that deal with casual spoken forms more so than the polite textbook forms. I also learn such invaluable phrases like "By the way, how much do Japanese weddings usually cost?"　ところで，日本の結婚式がどのぐらいかかる？ This will be useful for all the Japanese marriage proposals I expect to receive.

Unrelated: most hilarious billboard ever (you may have to enlarge it). I will be sharing lots of hirarious engrish that I find in Japan.

家族やおみやげ

2009-05-30T13:09:00.000-07:00

I just recently got my host family assignments. My feeble kanji ability paired with the sparse nature of the list leave me a little confused. In the Naitou family, there's two parents, Yoshinao, age 49, and Naoko, age 48. Yoshinao is a middle school teacher, and after a long time spent looking up unknown kanji through their radical count I finally discovered the second word in his job title was the name of the school at which he teaches. Splitting the two kanji of 奥尻, they apparently mean "inner" and "butt" respectively, but together, it's just the name of the city Okushiri. He likes オ-ケストラ活動 ("orchestra activities"- does he play? does he listen? I don't really know) and 温泉 (hot springs). Naoko is a professional housewife who's into crafts and making cakes (I'm pretty sure that as an aspiring gourmet pastry chef myself, I will become best friends with her.)

The kids are a little harder. There's two 9 year old girls with the same birthday- I'm hoping they're fraternal twins and not identical. For as much as Americans complain about asian girls who "all look same", encountering a pair who actually do みんな同じそう would be tough. They have the same interest, the three character kanji of which (吹奏楽) the kanji radical look-up dictionary paired with jisho.org have not yet been able to translate. The best idea I have is that they both are instrumentalists (奏者) of some music (音楽) that involves blowing (吹く), although I have no idea how that's said as one coherent word.

The 13 year old son, though, kinda makes me nervous. His hobbies are listed merely as "disabled". The best I could translate from his school/work information is that he's under "protective care". He lives 別屋 (separately) away from the rest of the family. So does the dad. Is it a split family with the father and son living away from the mother and the girls? Or does the dad live elsewhere for work while the son lives in some sort of assisted care facility? I want to ask these things but I'm afraid delving into personal matters like this in the kind of crude half-japanese I could muster up for an email could only come off as rude in a hyper-polite society like Japan. And what kind of gifts are appropriate for this situation? I'm stumped.

Hopefully by the time I'm actually allowed to make contact with my host family (after the week of quarantine imposed by HIF so that we don't give the swine flu to Japan) I'll be moderately competent at the language to deal with these kinds of things (fingers crossed). Another point- how silly and ineffectual the quarantine is. We'll be staying in a hotel and attending classes and going out as otherwise scheduled, just not allowed to meet our host families. I understand the program needs to show they're doing something to appease the fears of the families, but for such a feeble attempt at quarantine we could still spread the infection to Japan just as readily. I get frustrated with the fear-mongering and paranoia created by the media. Remember bird flu? Did anyone actually acknowledge, "Hey, we freaked out completely in disproportion to the actual threat?" I don't think so. But anyway, that's an entirely separate rant. Staying in a hotel with the rest of HIFers should be fun, and a good way to ease into that whole "living in a foreign country" thing.

日本へ行きましょう！

2009-05-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

So. I'm going to Hakodate, Japan, in less than two weeks. I'm a little late on the uptake in actually getting my blog put together, but it's finally here! It hasn't yet entirely hit me how far away I'll be. Temporarily at home in Spokane, WA, I'm running into all these friends from high school only to explain I'm here in the city for only about a week more before spending my summer thousands of miles away from anything familiar.

日本の最も北の島は北海道

Quick explanation of the blog- anything earlier than this post (January through March) is from the blog I keep for Yale Undergrad Admissions. I write stuff here and upload it to the admitted student's website to share some stories of what I do to get the kiddies all pumped up about college. This post and later (May through the rest of the Summer) will be about my shenanigans in Japan, or as I've already decided they'll be called, Japananigans.

Hokkaido International Foundation was my first choice program because of the homestay aspect. Living in Tokyo through Sun Academy Nihongo would be awesome, but I wouldn't have real Japanese people making me real Japanese food every night. All the programs sent out their acceptance letters over spring break while I was in the middle of the Amazonian rainforests looking at birds, far away from email access. When I finally reached a computer when we took a break in Quito, Ecuador, I saw the acceptance decisions from all of them, with confirmation deadlines that had already passed. Thankfully, HIF was pretty chill and let me in anyway.

北海道の地図

Speaking of missed deadlines, I probably should have already sent off the medical forms... let's get on this.

Shenanigans in Japan - JAPANIGANS

Comparisons and perspective

Third Semester

Oh hey look I have a blog (明けましておめでとう）

Some things are best left unexplained

I have 18 roommates

Adventures in foreign medical systems

Work and sweat

Moving Apartments

Overdue Updates

講道館柔道 （Karate Kid）

Yes Man

やっと、携帯！(or, how I got over being a whiny emo kid)

方向音痴 (or, how most of my days have been spent wandering the street)

横浜に到着 (or, so I guess I live in Japan now)

The last week of travel

Update on JR Pass

End of school, start of travel

I speak words sometimes

the internet is the secret to all treasure

it's a good thing i was studying all weekend. oh wait... i wasn't.

Faux Pas, and How I Made Out with Lady Gaga

Me, My, and Eaton

Pikachu n' stuff

The land of karaoke

Wisdom from the bottle

Stranger in a strange land

濡れる

Photo dump of silly things!

Belligerence = デッカイ

Getting settled

I'm in Japan. Yeah.

Start of Osaka 2010: a new summer, a new city

終了じゃない。

Grammar Lessons with Elliot

旅行しています

憧れ

希望

Cheesecake vs. Cheese Cake

Frustration

A dangerous sweatshirt

An exercise in juxtaposition.

竹に短冊、七夕祭り

Shenanigans of the Japanigan variety

Beatin' up mofos

Now for a real post...

CATS

OMG CHILDREN

HOST FAMILY をします

No sympathy for the vertically challenged

ごめんなさい

Baby seals, squids, yams

A list of reasons why my birthday in Japan is awesome:

The start of hakodate

The first period of wakefulness and many hours of travel-induced crazy

愛してもいい？

家族やおみやげ

日本へ行きましょう！

講道館柔道　（Karate Kid）