I went with four friends from Narita to Singapore airport on Friday night, April 25th. The flight was longer than I expected: about 7.5 hours! I guess Asia is pretty big, after all. Singapore is only a half degree above the equator - which should give you some idea how far away it is from Japan. Its location means that it is very tropical and that it has basically equal days and nights year round. We arrived very late Friday night (actually about 2am Saturday morning) so we stayed at the airport transit hotel rather than trying to make it to a hostel in the city. You can stay for 6 hours at a time, which was enough for us to sleep so we felt refreshed and ready for our first day in Singapore. (As an aside, the Singapore airport has been named the best in the world about six years in a row. I can completely understand why. Lots of places to eat are open 24 hours, there is free internet, there's that hotel, there's a fitness center and a swimming pool, a spa...you could spend days in the airport without ever venturing out into the city!)
We had an early start on Saturday, setting off with our bags by train into the city to our hostel. It was definitely hot, even early in the morning! Our hostel was in Little India, which was a very interesting neighborhood full of Indian shops (selling saris, Indian foods and spices, Indian music, and gold jewelry) and plenty of Indians. As it turns out, it was a good place to stay as far as atmosphere. Singapore is pretty bland, in general. For tourists there isn't that much exciting to do or see. There is the downtown business district with skyscrapers, a couple of cute riverside quayes with restaurants and cafes, the famous esplanade area with the characteristic twin round, spiny theaters....and lots of shopping. Even in Lonely Planet, the traveller with two days in Singapore is basically instructed to eat lots of delicious food (of that there is plenty) and go shopping. We saw what sights there were to see and followed LP's instructions.
Singapore is pretty clean and modern, even compared to Japan. In the subways, the ticket system is a map touch-screen system. Apparently chewing gum is still illegal (for littering/cleanliness purposes) except with a prescription. Prices are lower than in Japan but still significantly higher than in the rest of Southeast Asia. I guess Singapore was a good introduction to Malaysia, which is MUCH farther removed from Japan in terms of overall atmosphere. For some reason, Singapore felt a little bit like Disneyland to me (and to other members of my travelling crew). Maybe because it's very clean, for starters. Then there's the fact that it's a relatively new city/nation. It was put on the map by its colonial oppressor, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles in 1819. Before he snared it for its key location as a hub of trade, I think it was basically undeveloped swampland. This newness comes through in kind of strange ways. You know how in older cities, you can see levels and layers of growth? After a while there's no room to build more things that stand alone, so the new gets incorporated in with the old. In Singapore there is still plenty of room, so each building has a very autonomous feel. A colonial-style government building might be right next to a mosque, right next to a super-modern skyscraper. Each style retains its own characteristics and does not have to do much to blend in with the other styles. Kind of like at Disneyland!
We spent two full days in Singapore, and at the end of the second day, got on an overnight train to Kuala Lumpur. It was a decidedly coach-class journey (the train bathrooms were the most appalling I've seen yet) and we had to get out at the Malaysian border to be herded through customs. Everyone got off the train and stood in line, then re-boarded the train for a few more hours. We arrived in KL very early (6:30am) so we arrived at our hostel before 8. In this tropical culture, not much gets started that early in the morning, so we weren't able to do too much other than eat a breakfast of champions (fish ball soup and iced coffee) and wait for things to start happening. We ended up taking a bus out to the Batu Caves, which were made famous when an American naturalist discovered them in the late 1800s. They are a series of limestone caves, with 272 steps leading up to the main one. There are Hindu shrines in these caves and it's the site of a major festival in January or February. There are plenty of pesky monkeys who live on the hillside that like to get fed by tourists and who will snatch your belongings if you're not careful with them. The huge gold statue at the base of the hundreds of steps is a pretty impressive sight...but I could have done without the huge number of mosquito bites I got in those damp caves.
In KL, our hostel was in the Golden Triangle area, which has a lot of interesting restaurants and cafes. The usual Malaysian fare was present: Malay cuisine, Indian, Chinese; we ate at a Lebanese restaurant the first night we were there. Hummus! Tabouleh! Another ever-present feature of KL, and especially in the Golden Triangle, is foot reflexology and massage parlors. My friend Lauren and I had 40 minutes of foot reflexology, including a hot soak, Chinese tea, hot compresses for our stomachs, and hot shoulder pillows. It was amazing! They gave us this chart of our feet, so we could tell what parts of the body corresponded to the parts of the feet they were working on. I had no idea my feet had so many kinks and painful spots! After a few days of sightseeing and city-walking, it was definitely a welcome indulgence. I felt like I was walking on new feet afterwards...
Kuala Lumpur is a really interesting city. Its Muslim influences are strong, and can be seen in the architecture. Many of its skyscrapers have elements of Islamic art. The Petronas towers are perhaps the most famous example of this style of building. They are the world's tallest twin towers and are surprisingly graceful for huge metal structures. There are quite a few mosques in the city, some quite extensive and ornate. You can hear the beautiful sounds of the call to prayer several times a day. We visited Merdeka (Independence) Square, which is a big green lawn with a tall flagpole at one end. In August 1957, the Malaysian flag was raised there for the first time to declare Malaysia's independence. There is also a strong Chinese influence, and of course there is a fairly large Chinatown. There is a Little India.
Basically, KL is buzzing with constant activity. People are loud, traffic is fast and wild, the cheap hawker food (food stalls) are always full and always dishing out delicious fare. Vendors at kiosks sell freshly-cut tropical fruit of all kinds. I ate tropical fruit every single day. Mango, papaya, pineapple, watermelon, starfruit, and other delicious fruits that I'd never seen before and can't identify (crystal apple?). KL is also a shoppers' paradise of sorts. Attached to the Petronas towers is the most gigantic shopping mall you've ever seen. I didn't spend much time in there at all, but it did come in handy when we passed through KL again on the way to the beach: there was a bookstore! With an extensive collection of English-language books! This is a rare treat. Even in Tokyo there isn't a bookstore with such a good selection.
Of course I can't report on any travels of mine without commenting on the food in extensive detail. I chronicled nearly every single meal we ate in photos. And there were some delicious things worth chronicling. Malaysian cuisine is excellent! Its influences are from Indian and Chinese cuisine, and of course traditional Malay dishes. The Indian influence means that it's easy to get a delicious vegetarian meal. Many Malay meals are served on banana leaves. This is apparently designed to stimulate the appetite (the scent of the banana leaf is supposed to be released when something hot - usually rice - is laid on top). I'm not sure this actually works but it's fun to eat off of a banana leaf instead of a plate. We ate one meal called nasi kandar. You get a plate of rice, upon which is heaped some kind of curry that you choose (chicken, vegetable, spicy or not spicy) and then some other veggie mixtures. Then a bunch of sauces from all the curries available are poured on top of the whole thing. It sounds like a mess but believe me, it's absolutely delicious. Another great thing to eat is called nasi lemak. This is a traditional dish that can be eaten any time, but especially at breakfast. On a banana leaf is a mound of coconut rice, and around the rice is a hard-boiled egg, a fried and dried fish or crunchy fish flakes, peanut pieces, slices of cucumber, and a spicy red prawn sauce. You mix together all these ingredients however you please and eat up! I had nasi lemak twice. Once it was at a kind of posh restaurant, and I had a fancy shrimp, four slices of cucumber, and various little vessels and pots with the ingredients in them. I paid 18 ringgit for this. (About 6 dollars.) The second one was just about as tasty but much more bare-bones. One slice of cucumber and half an egg. This perfect breakfast weighed in at exactly 2 ringgit. In KL, we ate plenty of Indian food, too. Lauren and I went to a place suggested by our LP - a vegetarian Indian restaurant that was full to bursting with locals. This was the first time I'd been in a proper Indian restaurant, where everyone eats with their hands. There is a sink where you walk in so you can wash your hands before and after your meal. You need to! After that meal I had the best cup of chai tea I've ever had - definitely made with a masala blend of real spices. You could see the traces of the cardamom, cloves, and whatever else was in there.
After KL, we escaped the heat and the bustle for a couple of nights, going north to central Peninsular Malaysia to Cameron Highlands. This area is known for its tea and strawberry plantations and its mossy forests. The guesthouse we stayed at arranges tours. We took the "Morning Madness" tour, to which we had to report at 6am - before sunrise. Our guide was a man named Kumar, who grew up in the Highlands and has spent his entire life educating himself about everything one could know about the natural features of his home. He took us up to the highest peak in the area, and there we climbed a lookout tower to watch the sunrise. When it came up, we descended to a breakfast of hot tea (prepared by Kumar with his portable camp stove) and banana bread. He then scared us all by dangling all kinds of creepy-crawlies in our faces (millipedes, cicadas, moths)...and then led us on a very muddy, very intrepid "interpretive walk" through the mossy forest. It was fascinating. He told us about all kinds of flora and plant systems, especially about the healing and medicinal properties of the plants that we saw. There was even a wild cinnamon tree - I ate a piece of the bark and it was spicier than any cinnamon candy I've ever had. After the walk, we went to a tea plantation and - what else? - drank tea and ate scones and strawberry jam. Very English. More English than the English.
After the Highlands, Lauren and I passed through KL for one more night en route to our final destination: Tioman Island. My friend who lives in KL recommended a great, run-down, no-frills "resort" on a very quiet beach on the island. She did not steer us wrong. You take the bus from KL to the mainland town of Mersing. From Mersing you take a ferry to Tioman. Then - because we'd called ahead and made a reservation - the guy who runs the place came and picked us up in his speedboat. He zipped us and our huge backpacks about 10 minutes around the south side of the island, through crystal blue water. At our beach, we hopped out of the boat - no shoes! waded through the surf to go ashore - and sank into island paradise. For three nights and two days I think we saw a total of 15 people or less. No shoes, no real clothes - just a bathing suit and a sarong. No schedule except what I dictated to myself. The first day I swam from one end of the beach to the other, and back. The second day I did handstands in the water for 20 minutes - because I wanted to! There were hammocks in the shade of palm trees in which I lazed about and read my books. We had one of the beachfront "bungalows" (shacks, really! haha) and it was amazing to just open the door in the morning and see the water. There was a little restaurant where we could get everything we needed. If you want water, beer, or a can of juice, you just take it from the fridge yourself. If you want coffee, pancakes or an omelette for breakfast, freshly-blended watermelon juice or a plate of fruit for lunch, or one of many delicious spicy dinner dishes (tomato chili calamari and fish curry were notables), you just write your order on a little slip of paper and ding a little bell. Truly, it was a slice of paradise. No pretentions, no frills, just friendly people and gorgeous scenery.
I was very sad to leave the island for the long trek back to Singapore and then back to Japan. Not too much is notable from the trip, except that the customs going INTO Singapore is unbelieveably strict! The facility is not just some hut in the middle of the road. It is a GIANT building with a soaring tent-like metal roof, and it looks like it could be an airport or a major train station. But it's just customs! I actually got taken into one of the back rooms because my passport is kind of old and the digital scan never works. Normally the customs official just types my passport number into the system. Here, though, I was basically detained (for about 10 minutes) in some back chamber with lots of computers and people with official-looking headsets while I guess they ran some checks on my passport. I actually have no idea what they did because they didn't tell me anything. They just took my passport from me and held it until they were done doing whatever and I was free to pass through. Even though I knew I had nothing to worry about...it still made me kind of nervous to get held up like that!
This taste of Southeast Asia has only whetted my appetite for my longer trip in August. Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos are on the agenda - or at least as much of them as we can see in four weeks. It was kind of a bummer to come back to Japan, not least of all because the weather was unseasonably cold and rainy. The weather in Malaysia was warmer than in Japan, but I'd say the culture was also warmer. People are more laid-back, less formal, less rigid. Even shopgirls in headscarfs who start off by staring at you as you walk by break into huge grins and say hello as soon as you smile at them. Anyway, I've got just under 12 weeks left in Japan (and at work) and I'm determined to make them great!
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
extrajapanish experience number one: Seoul
In March, I ventured to non-Japan Asia for the first time. I spent a highly satisfying weekend in Seoul, South Korea, visiting a friend who was living and working there for a few months. Getting there was a breeze...I couldn't believe that international travel could be such a breeze. It helps to have almost no baggage weighing you down.
My host lived very centrally in the city, near Myeong-Dong, which is a bustling, trendy area with lots of shopping, food vendors, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. Staying with her was especially nice because she and her coworkers live in "serviced residences," where a maid comes every day to clean your room, give you new sheets and towels, etc. This was a good time to go visit her, too, because they've been in Seoul since January, so they've been able to figure out a lot of logistical things involving food and tourism. I was the lucky recipient of that wisdom.
Seoul is a huge city, with over 10 million people. In three days I obviously couldn't see a terribly significant portion of that giant. I did get to visit a couple of markets, a palace, the place where the ancestral "spirit tablets" of the monarchy are enshrined, and do plenty of random wandering and exploring. The city felt really vibrant, in a different way from Tokyo or other Japanese cities. Seoul is dirtier than Tokyo (what city isn't?). It has a more exotic feel for me, thanks to an unfamiliar writing system and old men vending things like simmering pots of bugs (silkworms, maybe?), dried snakes (I swear), and lots of other varieties of crazy-looking health remedies.
There is lots of street food, plenty of street vendors, and giant outdoor markets everywhere. I ate what I fear may have been intestines on a stick. A more successful street-food purchase was a kind of sushi roll with vegetables wrapped in a thin omelette with some green leafy vegetable mixed in. Bakeries are really common, and you can get a traditional plain or chocolate croissant, or something more on the Korean side: pastry with red bean paste or sweet potato, a glutinous rice donut with sweet cheese inside (YUM), or one of an array of towers of toast with a poached egg on top, or some kind of tomato-fish flakes concoction. I have to say I stuck more to the sweet offerings rather than the savory. The food at restaurants was delicious, if somewhat uniform. Grilled meat, kimchee, soups that are kind of similar to kimchee (cabbage-based, kind of spicy, red-tinted), lots of cabbage that was not in kimchee, red sauce that claimed not to be kimchee sauce...I think I would be craving something radically different pretty fast.
The highlight of the trip was probably our visit to a clinic of traditional Korean medicine. My friend wanted to try to get acupuncture, so we found a clinic where the doctor spoke English. The place smelled VERY strongly of herbs. Behind the reception desk there was a wall of little drawers with different kinds of herbs. We each consulted with the doctor. She was a young woman who was very kind and spoke pretty good English. We had heat scans taken of our bodies. It was decided that my friend didn't need acupuncture (to her disappointment) but she was able to get "incense therapy." I apparently was afflicted by irregular enough digestion to merit an acupuncture treatment. I had eight needles in me and a tray of incense balanced on my stomach. Apparently the little incense holder was made from some kind of pressed herbal extract and seeped into our skin. It was REALLY stinky. [nota bene: I later found out that the herb was mugwort. The Japanese are apparently just as enamored with it as the Koreans, even featuring it as an ingredient in springtime sweets. Ugh.] She also sold us some custom-brewed herbal remedies. I am supposed to drink this brown sludge three times a day for ten days. Don't worry, it's safe. I made her write down the ingredients in English and I looked them all up before I drank any of it. It tastes horrible. It tastes like we smelled after spending an hour at that clinic on Saturday. But if it helps, I'm willing to choke it down for ten days.
Seeing the differences between Korea and Japan was really interesting. The Koreans aren't AS polite as the Japanese. They spit on the street. They aren't as obsessed with packaging as the Japanese. They are largely Christian (there were traffic jams for Easter). I think they speak better English than the Japanese. According to a girl that I sat next to on the plane, this could have something to do with the fact that Korea isn't a rich country, and they have to learn English to be successful. This theory could be applied to the Japanese, who don't feel that they ever have to leave Japan, and to Americans, who feel that if they only speak English it will have no negative effect on their possibilities for success.
One more (silly, girly) reason I liked Seoul: it's easy to get an affordable pedicure and other cosmetic treatments. No kidding, it can cost 100 bucks easily for a pedicure in Tokyo. And you can go ahead and forget about waxing, threading, or any kind of hair removal. It may sound stupid, but it's not really sustainable to live in a place where you can't meet your own standards of cosmetic upkeep or find products that you need (or even "need") on a regular basis (effective deodorant, I'm looking at you).
My host lived very centrally in the city, near Myeong-Dong, which is a bustling, trendy area with lots of shopping, food vendors, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. Staying with her was especially nice because she and her coworkers live in "serviced residences," where a maid comes every day to clean your room, give you new sheets and towels, etc. This was a good time to go visit her, too, because they've been in Seoul since January, so they've been able to figure out a lot of logistical things involving food and tourism. I was the lucky recipient of that wisdom.
Seoul is a huge city, with over 10 million people. In three days I obviously couldn't see a terribly significant portion of that giant. I did get to visit a couple of markets, a palace, the place where the ancestral "spirit tablets" of the monarchy are enshrined, and do plenty of random wandering and exploring. The city felt really vibrant, in a different way from Tokyo or other Japanese cities. Seoul is dirtier than Tokyo (what city isn't?). It has a more exotic feel for me, thanks to an unfamiliar writing system and old men vending things like simmering pots of bugs (silkworms, maybe?), dried snakes (I swear), and lots of other varieties of crazy-looking health remedies.
There is lots of street food, plenty of street vendors, and giant outdoor markets everywhere. I ate what I fear may have been intestines on a stick. A more successful street-food purchase was a kind of sushi roll with vegetables wrapped in a thin omelette with some green leafy vegetable mixed in. Bakeries are really common, and you can get a traditional plain or chocolate croissant, or something more on the Korean side: pastry with red bean paste or sweet potato, a glutinous rice donut with sweet cheese inside (YUM), or one of an array of towers of toast with a poached egg on top, or some kind of tomato-fish flakes concoction. I have to say I stuck more to the sweet offerings rather than the savory. The food at restaurants was delicious, if somewhat uniform. Grilled meat, kimchee, soups that are kind of similar to kimchee (cabbage-based, kind of spicy, red-tinted), lots of cabbage that was not in kimchee, red sauce that claimed not to be kimchee sauce...I think I would be craving something radically different pretty fast.
The highlight of the trip was probably our visit to a clinic of traditional Korean medicine. My friend wanted to try to get acupuncture, so we found a clinic where the doctor spoke English. The place smelled VERY strongly of herbs. Behind the reception desk there was a wall of little drawers with different kinds of herbs. We each consulted with the doctor. She was a young woman who was very kind and spoke pretty good English. We had heat scans taken of our bodies. It was decided that my friend didn't need acupuncture (to her disappointment) but she was able to get "incense therapy." I apparently was afflicted by irregular enough digestion to merit an acupuncture treatment. I had eight needles in me and a tray of incense balanced on my stomach. Apparently the little incense holder was made from some kind of pressed herbal extract and seeped into our skin. It was REALLY stinky. [nota bene: I later found out that the herb was mugwort. The Japanese are apparently just as enamored with it as the Koreans, even featuring it as an ingredient in springtime sweets. Ugh.] She also sold us some custom-brewed herbal remedies. I am supposed to drink this brown sludge three times a day for ten days. Don't worry, it's safe. I made her write down the ingredients in English and I looked them all up before I drank any of it. It tastes horrible. It tastes like we smelled after spending an hour at that clinic on Saturday. But if it helps, I'm willing to choke it down for ten days.
Seeing the differences between Korea and Japan was really interesting. The Koreans aren't AS polite as the Japanese. They spit on the street. They aren't as obsessed with packaging as the Japanese. They are largely Christian (there were traffic jams for Easter). I think they speak better English than the Japanese. According to a girl that I sat next to on the plane, this could have something to do with the fact that Korea isn't a rich country, and they have to learn English to be successful. This theory could be applied to the Japanese, who don't feel that they ever have to leave Japan, and to Americans, who feel that if they only speak English it will have no negative effect on their possibilities for success.
One more (silly, girly) reason I liked Seoul: it's easy to get an affordable pedicure and other cosmetic treatments. No kidding, it can cost 100 bucks easily for a pedicure in Tokyo. And you can go ahead and forget about waxing, threading, or any kind of hair removal. It may sound stupid, but it's not really sustainable to live in a place where you can't meet your own standards of cosmetic upkeep or find products that you need (or even "need") on a regular basis (effective deodorant, I'm looking at you).
memoirs of a gaijin: WINTER
Pecked out on a frosty day in February:
Believe it or not, I will have been in Japan for six months this week. That amount of time is very strange in that it's simultaneously short and long. When I consider the amount that I've learned, been exposed to, seen, tasted, felt, and experienced since August, I am amazed that it can all fit into a paltry half year. Then again, when I think about how much more I have to learn before I can make some headway on understanding this perplexing island nation (not to mention the lingo), it seems like I might as well have arrived yesterday.
It seems that these reports are coming in quarterly installments. My last missive touched on the fact that winter was on the way. Well, it's here. And as far as winters go, it's relatively mild. In fact, the outside temperatures are very rarely uncomfortable, even for ME (the biggest complainer about cold there ever was). My Japanese coworkers are always asking me what the winter is like where I come from. I tell them that in Virginia, it's colder outside in the winter...but in Japan, it's much colder inside. For a country that is supposedly so technologically advanced, for a populace that's addicted to ingenious solutions, it is unbelievable to me (and to any other non-Japanese person you ask) that these people have not managed to make the winter any more comfortable. Firstly, buildings are not insulated. My apartment is an ice block when I'm not heating it. The saving grace for me is that I have wall-mounted heaters in my bedroom and my living room, both of which have timers! I can set them to come on an hour before I come home from school. In more temperate times, I can set my heater to come on an hour before I wake up in the morning. These days, I sleep with my heater on. It's gotten cold enough that if I don't have it on, I wake up in the middle of the night with a cold nose and feet. There is no heating element in my bathroom, which means that a trip to the toilet is usually a frosty experience. Now I understand why so many Japanese toilet seats are heated! (And the ones that aren't have those nasty fabric covers.) At least I can take comfort in the fact that I don't have to sleep in my coat, and my olive oil doesn't freeze (as is the case for some of my friends).
The cold in my apartment is one thing, because I can regulate it myself. At school it's a different story. The individual rooms are heated, usually by kerosene heaters, connected by unwieldy metal pipes to outdoor exhaust, and usually equipped with humidifiers (giant kettles or pots of water sat on top of the stoves). The hallways are torturous. Windows and doors stay open for "ventilation" and as a consequence the hallways are actually windy. Teachers wear coats to walk from class to class. Those students who have the misfortune to be female and required to wear a skirt and knee socks as part of the uniform wrap fleecy, Disney-character-emblazoned blankets around their legs like skirts. (Actually I think they're allowed to wear tights, but most of them don't, so I can't feel TOO sorry for them. Victims of teenage fashion, victims of themselves.) People run down the hallways because it's too cold to walk. And as for the bathroom....let's just say you might as well be outside. People OPEN the WINDOW in the bathroom! And the tap water is of COURSE unheated, which means that the next logical step after using the bathroom is always running down the hall back to the teachers' room and grabbing the handle of the giant kettle on top of the stove so that your poor frozen digits can be revitalized.
With all this frozen discomfort abounding, my new favorite thing to do is visit onsens - hot springs on top of which there are public bathhouses. These places are everywhere. There are thousands of them in Japan. For the price of anywhere from 500 yen to upwards of 2,000, you get to enter and make use of all the health-giving, sweat-inducing facilities. Men and women usually have separate areas, due to the fact that no bathing suits or clothing of any kind are allowed. After putting your things in a locker or basket in the changing area, you enter through the sliding glass portal into the steamy wonderland of the bath area. You can take a tiny little towel with you, which can be used as a washcloth, and you can take your own shampoo etc if you don't want to use the products that the onsen provides. There is a row of plastic stools, each one in front of a low mirror with its own shower head and tap. Before entering the soaking baths, you are supposed to clean yourself thoroughly. Once you've soaped up and rinsed off completely, you can soak in the large baths of various temperatures. Some have jacuzzi jets and some are still. Onsens often have outdoor baths, which are particularly nice at this time of year, especially if there is snow on the ground! After a day of shivering, of frozen fingers and chilly hallways, there is nothing better than sinking into a swirling hot bath. The air is steamy and lends an extra element of protection from the world outside. After you can't possibly sit and sweat a moment longer, you emerge into the carpeted changing area. There is always a luxurious mirrored sink area, where there are hair dryers and usually several mysterious lotions and potions that you can use if you desire. When you're all dressed and dry again, you can reunite with the males in your party out in the lobby area. Onsens usually have restaurants, and you can eat and drink together after the bathing experience. I usually just go home in order to melt into bed in a warm, soft, clean puddle. This is my idea of an excellent Friday night in Hitachiota. :)
While my own rural surrounds are less than thrilling, I'm lucky to be close enough to Tokyo to go into the city fairly frequently. Tokyo is a strange kind of place. It's a giant metropolis that has no central downtown. Rather, it is an interconnected mesh of various "towns" that flow from one to the next and give the city multiple personalities. For a visitor to Tokyo, it's hard to get a sense of the city because of precisely this schizophrenic character. The best thing to do is go to the top of a very tall building and look out. Tokyo is an ocean around you that stretches past the horizon. It's hard to conceptualize all the things that are happening in a city of nearly 13 million people. (In the entire metropolitan area, that number goes up to over 35 million.) This explains why Tokyo can feel like a different city every time I go.
On one recent trip, I met my friends in Shinjuku on a Saturday night to visit some themed restaurants. These are some of Tokyo's stranger offerings. The first one was called the "Christon Cafe," a name whose etymology clearly points to its theme: Christianity. Good-and-evil-themed drinks ("orthodox cocktails"), decor purportedly from European churches (baptismal fonts, an altar, stained glass windows, plenty of red velvet curtains and rampant iconography), and staff dressed in Christian pop-art t-shirts make the place worth a visit. The food and prices make the place not really worthy of a second visit. My overall impression was that the place was actually quite elegant. I hadn't expected the Christian aesthetic to translate that way. Even rustic wooden sculptures fit into the baroque excess when they're sharing wall space with gargoyles.
The next stop of the evening was called Alcatraz-ER. As you might gather, the theme was "prison hospital." The result was a restaurant that felt like a theme ride at Disneyland. You push a button to indicate your blood type to open the door, and a doctor and a nurse are waiting for you in the caged reception area. They handcuff one member of your party and lead you to your cell. We were put in the brain surgery chamber. The drinks are all based on the mad-scientist theme - test tubes, brightly colored pills, and severed heads are involved. It's exactly as bizarre as it sounds. The atmosphere and service might have been enough to classify it as a pleasantly absurd outing...but then they put on a show. You know how some restaurants sing to people on their birthdays, make them stand on the table, or wear a funny hat? Well. At this restaurant, the "lucky" customer was kidnapped, dragged around in a stretcher, pinned down on the floor and violated. One waiter (dressed as some sort of creature whose connection to the overall premise was tenuous at best) held down his arms and the sexy nurse dealt with his lower half...let's just say that I didn't expect to have a side order of bare ass with my appetizers. And all this took place two feet from me, just outside of our caged chamber. I high-fived the guy when it was all over.
On the more traditional side of culture, I had the opportunity to attend the second-to-last day of a 15-day sumo tournament last weekend. I don't know too much about the sport, so I'd been watching it on tv a little bit in order to get mentally prepared. I must confess that I didn't learn that much. Most of the wrestlers still look exactly the same to me: huge man-mountains with baby faces. But I did learn enough to know that there is an incredible amount of culture and ceremony behind the sport. Each match lasts a matter of seconds, but the entire event is full of symbolism and meaning. Many of the elements are derived from Shinto beliefs. The dirt ring is under a huge roof, which looks like it's from a shrine, that is suspended in midair from the ceiling of the arena. The wrestlers stomp the ground before the bouts in order to drive evil spirits from the ring. They throw salt into the ring to purify it, and cleanse themselves by washing their faces with water and wiping them with paper. The referees are dressed in beautiful, colorful robes, whose elaborateness corresponds to the class of wrestlers. Some things are universally common to sporting events: stadium seating, french fries and beer. Sitting on cushions on the floor and eating bento lunches, however, is decidedly Japanese.
Afterwards, I went with a group of Ibaraki JETs to a restaurant, where we ate as the sumo wrestlers do. Apparently part of the reason they are able to get so big is that their days look like this: they get up and begin training on an empty stomach. Then they eat a huge lunch of "chanko nabe," which is basically a vat of soup with all kinds of meat and vegetables. Afterwards they go straight to sleep and wake up in time for dinner. Our meal wasn't as hefty as the fare that the wrestlers consume, thank goodness. That kind of overeating is one of the factors that contributes to their short life expectancies.
In case anyone was waiting for a report of the wedding I went to in October, let me fill you in. It was really a lavish affair. Apparently it was a traditional Japanese wedding reception (only the family attended the Shinto wedding ceremony) but it looked a whole lot like a western wedding. There was a huge cake that got ceremoniously cut, there were speeches, there was a ton of food and endless toasts. But there was also karaoke and there was no dancing. The whole affair looked a lot like a wedding that we'd recognize but the feel of it was a lot more like a graduation or a coming-of-age ceremony. It definitely had a lot to do with progressing in life rather than "soul mates" or "true love." The bride wore a kimono first, which was a gorgeous navy blue with some patterns and golden accents. She had roses in her hair along with some other pins and decorations jutting out at artistic angles. Later she changed into a white western-style wedding gown. The food was amazing - lots of courses. It was sort of like a tasting menu. Lots of seafoody things, lots of things that looked too artistic to be edible, steak, sushi, sashimi, desserts, coffee, champagne, sake, tea, etc etc etc. Every guest got a gift to take home. We all got a lovely cup-and-saucer set by a famous Japanese designer and a box of little cakes. The groom's mother also gave me a box of chocolates, for some reason. I got to play a special role in the festivities: every English teacher from our school gave a toast in English, and I translated it into Japanese for the other guests. "Translated" should be understood loosely to mean "read the translation phonetically from a cheat sheet." It was a huge hit with the crowd and at least one guest liked it well enough to make me pose for a photo with him afterwards. Haha!
As for work, I've had a love/hate (ok, like/hate) relationship with my job. Some days I really enjoy myself. Those are the days on which I actually get to teach a class. All too often, though, there is nothing for me to do because my classes seem to be always getting cancelled. The students are forever having exams, preparing for exams, going over the results of exams, ad infinitum. You think Virginia has a problem "teaching to the test"? Japan's test-oriented mentality is nationwide and even more deeply rooted. The entire system is based on one all-important exam at the end of high school - the university entrance exam. Students spend their entire high school careers learning things expressly so that they can pass this exam. School curriculum is dictated by the content of these exams and there are cram schools in the afternoon and on weekends that are supposed to give students extra preparation. But I digress. When I actually get classroom time, my days pass more quickly and I enjoy interacting with the students. One other thing that's been exciting lately is a pen-pal exchange that I set up between the girls in the English club and some high schoolers from an internationally-oriented club at Loudoun County High School. Last week we got the first package from the US, and it was full of booty! Candy, magazines, music, and of course letters. I'd made my students start writing drafts of letters a week earlier, so we were able to send fairly content-heavy replies back to VA along with our own little treasure chest of magazines, manga, and eccentric snacks.
I've even gotten into a rhythm with the school that I go to on Fridays. The technique that I have adopted is to spend almost no time planning. A few weeks ago I literally came up with the idea for the lesson while on the bus on the way there. I had them make fortune tellers and write in prognostications for the new year. (I had to write a list of fortunes that they could just copy because there's no way they could think of eight fortunes on their own.) This was a huge hit and even made a splash in the teachers' room. Haha! It seems counterintuitive that lessons that take no forethought work so much better, consistently, than ones that I try and think through. Maybe it's because the thought-through ones are more complicated than the flash-invented ones.
Another reason that things are going better on Fridays is that I've gotten to know the students at that school a bit more. I went to their school festival one Saturday. Each class had made some kind of food (donuts, udon noodles, octopus balls, chocobanana) and the event was basically a gorge-fest. I showed up by myself and spent most of the time talking to two third-year girls. I also get a bit of extra time with them because I have to ride the bus out to Satomi village some weeks. And by bus, of course I mean the school bus. I commune in misery with the students when I catch the 7:09 am bus. They sleep all the way there, despite the piercing "door-open" tone and the recorded babble of the woman announcing stops. In the afternoons everyone is awake, and I'm usually regarded at a distance with some confusion, but lately some of the girls have been making an effort to talk to me. Grass-roots internationalization, I am your pawn.
Ok, I think I've exhausted myself and your attention span. Warmest greetings from snowy Japan!
Believe it or not, I will have been in Japan for six months this week. That amount of time is very strange in that it's simultaneously short and long. When I consider the amount that I've learned, been exposed to, seen, tasted, felt, and experienced since August, I am amazed that it can all fit into a paltry half year. Then again, when I think about how much more I have to learn before I can make some headway on understanding this perplexing island nation (not to mention the lingo), it seems like I might as well have arrived yesterday.
It seems that these reports are coming in quarterly installments. My last missive touched on the fact that winter was on the way. Well, it's here. And as far as winters go, it's relatively mild. In fact, the outside temperatures are very rarely uncomfortable, even for ME (the biggest complainer about cold there ever was). My Japanese coworkers are always asking me what the winter is like where I come from. I tell them that in Virginia, it's colder outside in the winter...but in Japan, it's much colder inside. For a country that is supposedly so technologically advanced, for a populace that's addicted to ingenious solutions, it is unbelievable to me (and to any other non-Japanese person you ask) that these people have not managed to make the winter any more comfortable. Firstly, buildings are not insulated. My apartment is an ice block when I'm not heating it. The saving grace for me is that I have wall-mounted heaters in my bedroom and my living room, both of which have timers! I can set them to come on an hour before I come home from school. In more temperate times, I can set my heater to come on an hour before I wake up in the morning. These days, I sleep with my heater on. It's gotten cold enough that if I don't have it on, I wake up in the middle of the night with a cold nose and feet. There is no heating element in my bathroom, which means that a trip to the toilet is usually a frosty experience. Now I understand why so many Japanese toilet seats are heated! (And the ones that aren't have those nasty fabric covers.) At least I can take comfort in the fact that I don't have to sleep in my coat, and my olive oil doesn't freeze (as is the case for some of my friends).
The cold in my apartment is one thing, because I can regulate it myself. At school it's a different story. The individual rooms are heated, usually by kerosene heaters, connected by unwieldy metal pipes to outdoor exhaust, and usually equipped with humidifiers (giant kettles or pots of water sat on top of the stoves). The hallways are torturous. Windows and doors stay open for "ventilation" and as a consequence the hallways are actually windy. Teachers wear coats to walk from class to class. Those students who have the misfortune to be female and required to wear a skirt and knee socks as part of the uniform wrap fleecy, Disney-character-emblazoned blankets around their legs like skirts. (Actually I think they're allowed to wear tights, but most of them don't, so I can't feel TOO sorry for them. Victims of teenage fashion, victims of themselves.) People run down the hallways because it's too cold to walk. And as for the bathroom....let's just say you might as well be outside. People OPEN the WINDOW in the bathroom! And the tap water is of COURSE unheated, which means that the next logical step after using the bathroom is always running down the hall back to the teachers' room and grabbing the handle of the giant kettle on top of the stove so that your poor frozen digits can be revitalized.
With all this frozen discomfort abounding, my new favorite thing to do is visit onsens - hot springs on top of which there are public bathhouses. These places are everywhere. There are thousands of them in Japan. For the price of anywhere from 500 yen to upwards of 2,000, you get to enter and make use of all the health-giving, sweat-inducing facilities. Men and women usually have separate areas, due to the fact that no bathing suits or clothing of any kind are allowed. After putting your things in a locker or basket in the changing area, you enter through the sliding glass portal into the steamy wonderland of the bath area. You can take a tiny little towel with you, which can be used as a washcloth, and you can take your own shampoo etc if you don't want to use the products that the onsen provides. There is a row of plastic stools, each one in front of a low mirror with its own shower head and tap. Before entering the soaking baths, you are supposed to clean yourself thoroughly. Once you've soaped up and rinsed off completely, you can soak in the large baths of various temperatures. Some have jacuzzi jets and some are still. Onsens often have outdoor baths, which are particularly nice at this time of year, especially if there is snow on the ground! After a day of shivering, of frozen fingers and chilly hallways, there is nothing better than sinking into a swirling hot bath. The air is steamy and lends an extra element of protection from the world outside. After you can't possibly sit and sweat a moment longer, you emerge into the carpeted changing area. There is always a luxurious mirrored sink area, where there are hair dryers and usually several mysterious lotions and potions that you can use if you desire. When you're all dressed and dry again, you can reunite with the males in your party out in the lobby area. Onsens usually have restaurants, and you can eat and drink together after the bathing experience. I usually just go home in order to melt into bed in a warm, soft, clean puddle. This is my idea of an excellent Friday night in Hitachiota. :)
While my own rural surrounds are less than thrilling, I'm lucky to be close enough to Tokyo to go into the city fairly frequently. Tokyo is a strange kind of place. It's a giant metropolis that has no central downtown. Rather, it is an interconnected mesh of various "towns" that flow from one to the next and give the city multiple personalities. For a visitor to Tokyo, it's hard to get a sense of the city because of precisely this schizophrenic character. The best thing to do is go to the top of a very tall building and look out. Tokyo is an ocean around you that stretches past the horizon. It's hard to conceptualize all the things that are happening in a city of nearly 13 million people. (In the entire metropolitan area, that number goes up to over 35 million.) This explains why Tokyo can feel like a different city every time I go.
On one recent trip, I met my friends in Shinjuku on a Saturday night to visit some themed restaurants. These are some of Tokyo's stranger offerings. The first one was called the "Christon Cafe," a name whose etymology clearly points to its theme: Christianity. Good-and-evil-themed drinks ("orthodox cocktails"), decor purportedly from European churches (baptismal fonts, an altar, stained glass windows, plenty of red velvet curtains and rampant iconography), and staff dressed in Christian pop-art t-shirts make the place worth a visit. The food and prices make the place not really worthy of a second visit. My overall impression was that the place was actually quite elegant. I hadn't expected the Christian aesthetic to translate that way. Even rustic wooden sculptures fit into the baroque excess when they're sharing wall space with gargoyles.
The next stop of the evening was called Alcatraz-ER. As you might gather, the theme was "prison hospital." The result was a restaurant that felt like a theme ride at Disneyland. You push a button to indicate your blood type to open the door, and a doctor and a nurse are waiting for you in the caged reception area. They handcuff one member of your party and lead you to your cell. We were put in the brain surgery chamber. The drinks are all based on the mad-scientist theme - test tubes, brightly colored pills, and severed heads are involved. It's exactly as bizarre as it sounds. The atmosphere and service might have been enough to classify it as a pleasantly absurd outing...but then they put on a show. You know how some restaurants sing to people on their birthdays, make them stand on the table, or wear a funny hat? Well. At this restaurant, the "lucky" customer was kidnapped, dragged around in a stretcher, pinned down on the floor and violated. One waiter (dressed as some sort of creature whose connection to the overall premise was tenuous at best) held down his arms and the sexy nurse dealt with his lower half...let's just say that I didn't expect to have a side order of bare ass with my appetizers. And all this took place two feet from me, just outside of our caged chamber. I high-fived the guy when it was all over.
On the more traditional side of culture, I had the opportunity to attend the second-to-last day of a 15-day sumo tournament last weekend. I don't know too much about the sport, so I'd been watching it on tv a little bit in order to get mentally prepared. I must confess that I didn't learn that much. Most of the wrestlers still look exactly the same to me: huge man-mountains with baby faces. But I did learn enough to know that there is an incredible amount of culture and ceremony behind the sport. Each match lasts a matter of seconds, but the entire event is full of symbolism and meaning. Many of the elements are derived from Shinto beliefs. The dirt ring is under a huge roof, which looks like it's from a shrine, that is suspended in midair from the ceiling of the arena. The wrestlers stomp the ground before the bouts in order to drive evil spirits from the ring. They throw salt into the ring to purify it, and cleanse themselves by washing their faces with water and wiping them with paper. The referees are dressed in beautiful, colorful robes, whose elaborateness corresponds to the class of wrestlers. Some things are universally common to sporting events: stadium seating, french fries and beer. Sitting on cushions on the floor and eating bento lunches, however, is decidedly Japanese.
Afterwards, I went with a group of Ibaraki JETs to a restaurant, where we ate as the sumo wrestlers do. Apparently part of the reason they are able to get so big is that their days look like this: they get up and begin training on an empty stomach. Then they eat a huge lunch of "chanko nabe," which is basically a vat of soup with all kinds of meat and vegetables. Afterwards they go straight to sleep and wake up in time for dinner. Our meal wasn't as hefty as the fare that the wrestlers consume, thank goodness. That kind of overeating is one of the factors that contributes to their short life expectancies.
In case anyone was waiting for a report of the wedding I went to in October, let me fill you in. It was really a lavish affair. Apparently it was a traditional Japanese wedding reception (only the family attended the Shinto wedding ceremony) but it looked a whole lot like a western wedding. There was a huge cake that got ceremoniously cut, there were speeches, there was a ton of food and endless toasts. But there was also karaoke and there was no dancing. The whole affair looked a lot like a wedding that we'd recognize but the feel of it was a lot more like a graduation or a coming-of-age ceremony. It definitely had a lot to do with progressing in life rather than "soul mates" or "true love." The bride wore a kimono first, which was a gorgeous navy blue with some patterns and golden accents. She had roses in her hair along with some other pins and decorations jutting out at artistic angles. Later she changed into a white western-style wedding gown. The food was amazing - lots of courses. It was sort of like a tasting menu. Lots of seafoody things, lots of things that looked too artistic to be edible, steak, sushi, sashimi, desserts, coffee, champagne, sake, tea, etc etc etc. Every guest got a gift to take home. We all got a lovely cup-and-saucer set by a famous Japanese designer and a box of little cakes. The groom's mother also gave me a box of chocolates, for some reason. I got to play a special role in the festivities: every English teacher from our school gave a toast in English, and I translated it into Japanese for the other guests. "Translated" should be understood loosely to mean "read the translation phonetically from a cheat sheet." It was a huge hit with the crowd and at least one guest liked it well enough to make me pose for a photo with him afterwards. Haha!
As for work, I've had a love/hate (ok, like/hate) relationship with my job. Some days I really enjoy myself. Those are the days on which I actually get to teach a class. All too often, though, there is nothing for me to do because my classes seem to be always getting cancelled. The students are forever having exams, preparing for exams, going over the results of exams, ad infinitum. You think Virginia has a problem "teaching to the test"? Japan's test-oriented mentality is nationwide and even more deeply rooted. The entire system is based on one all-important exam at the end of high school - the university entrance exam. Students spend their entire high school careers learning things expressly so that they can pass this exam. School curriculum is dictated by the content of these exams and there are cram schools in the afternoon and on weekends that are supposed to give students extra preparation. But I digress. When I actually get classroom time, my days pass more quickly and I enjoy interacting with the students. One other thing that's been exciting lately is a pen-pal exchange that I set up between the girls in the English club and some high schoolers from an internationally-oriented club at Loudoun County High School. Last week we got the first package from the US, and it was full of booty! Candy, magazines, music, and of course letters. I'd made my students start writing drafts of letters a week earlier, so we were able to send fairly content-heavy replies back to VA along with our own little treasure chest of magazines, manga, and eccentric snacks.
I've even gotten into a rhythm with the school that I go to on Fridays. The technique that I have adopted is to spend almost no time planning. A few weeks ago I literally came up with the idea for the lesson while on the bus on the way there. I had them make fortune tellers and write in prognostications for the new year. (I had to write a list of fortunes that they could just copy because there's no way they could think of eight fortunes on their own.) This was a huge hit and even made a splash in the teachers' room. Haha! It seems counterintuitive that lessons that take no forethought work so much better, consistently, than ones that I try and think through. Maybe it's because the thought-through ones are more complicated than the flash-invented ones.
Another reason that things are going better on Fridays is that I've gotten to know the students at that school a bit more. I went to their school festival one Saturday. Each class had made some kind of food (donuts, udon noodles, octopus balls, chocobanana) and the event was basically a gorge-fest. I showed up by myself and spent most of the time talking to two third-year girls. I also get a bit of extra time with them because I have to ride the bus out to Satomi village some weeks. And by bus, of course I mean the school bus. I commune in misery with the students when I catch the 7:09 am bus. They sleep all the way there, despite the piercing "door-open" tone and the recorded babble of the woman announcing stops. In the afternoons everyone is awake, and I'm usually regarded at a distance with some confusion, but lately some of the girls have been making an effort to talk to me. Grass-roots internationalization, I am your pawn.
Ok, I think I've exhausted myself and your attention span. Warmest greetings from snowy Japan!
memoirs of a gaijin: FALL
Another semi-exhaustive update from yours truly...
I've successfully passed the two-month mark here and am steadily approaching three months. Not everything is still as frustrating, thrilling, new, and indecipherable as it was when I first arrived. Thankfully, and naturally, I'm feeling much less helpless than I did. This is due partially to my slowly evolving Japanese skills, but also to the fact that I'm just getting used to the systems and various resources available to me. Travel, for example, seemed intimidating. In my last email, I wrote that taking the train was somewhat difficult. I've since discovered that it's just about the easiest thing ever. In fact, I made it all the way to Kyoto by myself, and that required me to negotiate the purchase of a bus ticket by myself, and then take the bus to Tokyo, transfer stations, find the right bullet train, and board it. I managed to do all this with a minimum of floundering. The point is that I did it, by myself. The next time will be even easier. I understand enough Japanese now to know that there is a ridiculous amount of information coming at you, constantly, when you're riding any form of transportation. On the bus to Tokyo, the bus driver announces the bus's route multiple times, the stops the bus will make, the rest stop, how long the bus will stay at the rest stop...etc etc. There's no danger of being underinformed.
I'm still slowly conquering the supermarket, one mysterious product at a time. I've bought such Japanese staples as mirin and sake (both cooking wines), fish stock, various seasonings for rice, tiny dried shrimp to sautee with eggplant, yogurt in fanciful flavors such as aloe, pickled cucumbers, radish, eggplant, etc. Tracking down normal things that I wanted has proven to be the hardest of all: it took me six weeks to locate baking soda. I knew it had to be there somewhere, because after all they eat tons of cakes...but it wasn't where I expected it to be and it was in a tiny little package.
My job is going pretty well. Some days I really enjoy it, and other days I'm bored to death. The problem is that my actual teaching responsibilities are somewhat sporadic. It seems like the students are forever having exams or else they're off on some trip. From what I hear, though, I'm better off than most of the other JET program people in my area in terms of getting independence to plan lessons. My school is Ota First, which means that it's the highest level high school in the area. That explains why my students are uniformly such dutiful high achievers. I must say that I enjoy that as well. My Friday school is quite low-level, and it's frustrating that the students a) don't care to learn English and b) don't have a level of English that makes it possible to do anything very interesting at all. Though I had lofty goals of giving these students the speaking practice that they so sorely need, I may abandon them in favor of activities that actually work in the classroom. I only go to that school on Fridays, and not even every Friday. What hope, then, do I have of counteracting an English education that consists of their teacher opening every class with "Open your textubooks on pagee...sirtysree" and proceeding to lead a class of ineffective repetition and parroted phrases? Never fear, I'm not quite ready to give up on them yet. I'm just working on figuring out which things work with them and which don't.
Since the last time I wrote, summer has mercifully given way to autumn. This summer was really unbearably hot, and the fall is proving to be beautiful, long-lasting, and most importantly, temperate. The Japanese are very aware of the seasons (they'll tell you every chance they get that Japan has four seasons: did you know?) and as a consequence there is a preponderance of seasonal products, an emphasis on the various goodies available at various times of the year, and of course the craze over nature's seasonal show (in the form of autumn colors in the current case, and in the spring in the form of the cherry blossoms). In case you were wondering, the autumn harvest yields: grapes, mandarin oranges, squash, chestnuts, Japanese pears, tons of crazy mushrooms, and apples, among other things. Obviously there is some overlap with the crops that we're used to. One of the funniest ways that the seasonal things get pushed forward is in the many flavors of KitKats. In Japan, KitKats aren't just chocolate and wafers. Right now you can get the regular ones, as well as vanilla bean, dark chocolate and orange, chestnut, caramel, green tea, and red bean. In the summer there was kiwi KitKat and melon, and lemon.
Anyway, it's fall now, and the temperature is basically perfect and comfortable. I don't expect it to really get cold until December or January. That's more than fine with me, since my apartment is *not* insulated and I'm going to have to cozy up to my heaters and my electric blanket. I also have a heated table, called a kotatsu, which the Japanese use to keep warm in the winter...but its heating element is broken, so that'll do me a fat lot of good. (I haven't actually seen one of these things in use, but in the stores they're displaying them with their special blankets and pillows. They look kind of cozy...if you want to sit on the floor by a table all day.)
I've done a bit of travelling so far...I mentioned that I went to Kyoto. I was duly impressed by the gorgeous shrines and temples, but was put off by the masses of tourists. The Japanese appear to approach tourism the same way that they approach consumerism: dutifully and zealously. This means that at any of the "Japan's top" whatever sights, you're guaranteed to be elbow-to-elbow with picture-snapping hordes. Kind of takes some of the magic out of the places. In Kyoto, we did manage to end up at a few places that were empty (usually because of the late hour or bad weather), and it was in those moments that I was able to appreciate the magic of the place. My favorite place in Kyoto was a shrine called Fushimi Inari, where there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of orange gates in the woods. You can hike around in there for hours. Really a special place.
Last weekend I went to a town called Kamakura, which is sort of a more compact version of Kyoto. There are tons of impressive zen temples and some very pretty shrines. The most notable attraction of the town is the giant Buddha statue, which was constructed in the 13th century (I think) of bronze and has outlasted a few buildings built around it as shelters. My favorites there were definitely the giant Buddha, and another temple that housed a huge gold image of the Buddha and had a spooky cave for a female deity, as well as some great gardens.
Tomorrow I'm going to have a true cultural experience: I've been invited to my coworker's wedding reception. The actual wedding ceremony is tomorrow too, I think, but only the family gets to go to that part. Everyone from the English department was invited to the event, in the spirit of true group dynamics. Imagine being duty-bound to invite all your coworkers to your wedding, regardless of the fact that you've only worked at that school since last April. The principal of the school is going to give a speech at the party. Seems a little bit impersonal...but I'll reserve judgment until I see how it all goes off. The bride will apparently have several outfits. The Japanese-style wedding dress is a white kimono and this huge round headpiece. I think she'll have a western-style dress too. I've heard that lots of people get married outside of Japan (in Hawaii or Spain or any number of other places) because it can actually be cheaper that way.
In November I'm not really planning too much. We have a long weekend for Thanksgiving, so I will probably take an extra day off and go down to Hiroshima with a friend from Ibaraki. Hiroshima is pretty small, but there is plenty to see related to the bombing, a couple of good museums, and Japan's NUMBER ONE sight: a "floating shrine" called Miyajima. Then it'll be December, which is sure to be a hectic month, what with the holidays and various visitors!
I've successfully passed the two-month mark here and am steadily approaching three months. Not everything is still as frustrating, thrilling, new, and indecipherable as it was when I first arrived. Thankfully, and naturally, I'm feeling much less helpless than I did. This is due partially to my slowly evolving Japanese skills, but also to the fact that I'm just getting used to the systems and various resources available to me. Travel, for example, seemed intimidating. In my last email, I wrote that taking the train was somewhat difficult. I've since discovered that it's just about the easiest thing ever. In fact, I made it all the way to Kyoto by myself, and that required me to negotiate the purchase of a bus ticket by myself, and then take the bus to Tokyo, transfer stations, find the right bullet train, and board it. I managed to do all this with a minimum of floundering. The point is that I did it, by myself. The next time will be even easier. I understand enough Japanese now to know that there is a ridiculous amount of information coming at you, constantly, when you're riding any form of transportation. On the bus to Tokyo, the bus driver announces the bus's route multiple times, the stops the bus will make, the rest stop, how long the bus will stay at the rest stop...etc etc. There's no danger of being underinformed.
I'm still slowly conquering the supermarket, one mysterious product at a time. I've bought such Japanese staples as mirin and sake (both cooking wines), fish stock, various seasonings for rice, tiny dried shrimp to sautee with eggplant, yogurt in fanciful flavors such as aloe, pickled cucumbers, radish, eggplant, etc. Tracking down normal things that I wanted has proven to be the hardest of all: it took me six weeks to locate baking soda. I knew it had to be there somewhere, because after all they eat tons of cakes...but it wasn't where I expected it to be and it was in a tiny little package.
My job is going pretty well. Some days I really enjoy it, and other days I'm bored to death. The problem is that my actual teaching responsibilities are somewhat sporadic. It seems like the students are forever having exams or else they're off on some trip. From what I hear, though, I'm better off than most of the other JET program people in my area in terms of getting independence to plan lessons. My school is Ota First, which means that it's the highest level high school in the area. That explains why my students are uniformly such dutiful high achievers. I must say that I enjoy that as well. My Friday school is quite low-level, and it's frustrating that the students a) don't care to learn English and b) don't have a level of English that makes it possible to do anything very interesting at all. Though I had lofty goals of giving these students the speaking practice that they so sorely need, I may abandon them in favor of activities that actually work in the classroom. I only go to that school on Fridays, and not even every Friday. What hope, then, do I have of counteracting an English education that consists of their teacher opening every class with "Open your textubooks on pagee...sirtysree" and proceeding to lead a class of ineffective repetition and parroted phrases? Never fear, I'm not quite ready to give up on them yet. I'm just working on figuring out which things work with them and which don't.
Since the last time I wrote, summer has mercifully given way to autumn. This summer was really unbearably hot, and the fall is proving to be beautiful, long-lasting, and most importantly, temperate. The Japanese are very aware of the seasons (they'll tell you every chance they get that Japan has four seasons: did you know?) and as a consequence there is a preponderance of seasonal products, an emphasis on the various goodies available at various times of the year, and of course the craze over nature's seasonal show (in the form of autumn colors in the current case, and in the spring in the form of the cherry blossoms). In case you were wondering, the autumn harvest yields: grapes, mandarin oranges, squash, chestnuts, Japanese pears, tons of crazy mushrooms, and apples, among other things. Obviously there is some overlap with the crops that we're used to. One of the funniest ways that the seasonal things get pushed forward is in the many flavors of KitKats. In Japan, KitKats aren't just chocolate and wafers. Right now you can get the regular ones, as well as vanilla bean, dark chocolate and orange, chestnut, caramel, green tea, and red bean. In the summer there was kiwi KitKat and melon, and lemon.
Anyway, it's fall now, and the temperature is basically perfect and comfortable. I don't expect it to really get cold until December or January. That's more than fine with me, since my apartment is *not* insulated and I'm going to have to cozy up to my heaters and my electric blanket. I also have a heated table, called a kotatsu, which the Japanese use to keep warm in the winter...but its heating element is broken, so that'll do me a fat lot of good. (I haven't actually seen one of these things in use, but in the stores they're displaying them with their special blankets and pillows. They look kind of cozy...if you want to sit on the floor by a table all day.)
I've done a bit of travelling so far...I mentioned that I went to Kyoto. I was duly impressed by the gorgeous shrines and temples, but was put off by the masses of tourists. The Japanese appear to approach tourism the same way that they approach consumerism: dutifully and zealously. This means that at any of the "Japan's top" whatever sights, you're guaranteed to be elbow-to-elbow with picture-snapping hordes. Kind of takes some of the magic out of the places. In Kyoto, we did manage to end up at a few places that were empty (usually because of the late hour or bad weather), and it was in those moments that I was able to appreciate the magic of the place. My favorite place in Kyoto was a shrine called Fushimi Inari, where there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of orange gates in the woods. You can hike around in there for hours. Really a special place.
Last weekend I went to a town called Kamakura, which is sort of a more compact version of Kyoto. There are tons of impressive zen temples and some very pretty shrines. The most notable attraction of the town is the giant Buddha statue, which was constructed in the 13th century (I think) of bronze and has outlasted a few buildings built around it as shelters. My favorites there were definitely the giant Buddha, and another temple that housed a huge gold image of the Buddha and had a spooky cave for a female deity, as well as some great gardens.
Tomorrow I'm going to have a true cultural experience: I've been invited to my coworker's wedding reception. The actual wedding ceremony is tomorrow too, I think, but only the family gets to go to that part. Everyone from the English department was invited to the event, in the spirit of true group dynamics. Imagine being duty-bound to invite all your coworkers to your wedding, regardless of the fact that you've only worked at that school since last April. The principal of the school is going to give a speech at the party. Seems a little bit impersonal...but I'll reserve judgment until I see how it all goes off. The bride will apparently have several outfits. The Japanese-style wedding dress is a white kimono and this huge round headpiece. I think she'll have a western-style dress too. I've heard that lots of people get married outside of Japan (in Hawaii or Spain or any number of other places) because it can actually be cheaper that way.
In November I'm not really planning too much. We have a long weekend for Thanksgiving, so I will probably take an extra day off and go down to Hiroshima with a friend from Ibaraki. Hiroshima is pretty small, but there is plenty to see related to the bombing, a couple of good museums, and Japan's NUMBER ONE sight: a "floating shrine" called Miyajima. Then it'll be December, which is sure to be a hectic month, what with the holidays and various visitors!
memoirs of a gaijin: SUMMER
What follows is a detailed account of the minutae of my life in Japan, or more specifically in Hitachiota, just a few weeks after I'd arrived. Touch-down was one steamy day at the beginning of August. My initial impressions:
The language barrier is a formidable one, and I had forgotten what it was like to really be helpless. In this case it's worse than it ever was in Poland or Spain , because I can't just read the words off a sign or the paper and ask someone what it is. The kanji (Chinese characters) are numerous (thousands of them) and complex; they might appear in several contexts and be read in different ways. On the flip side, one word or sound might mean several things and only be distinguished by the various kanji associations. I think the majority of my culture shock was based on the fact that - because I can't get information from normal sources - I really am not a fully functioning member of Japanese society. If someone explains to me how to take the train, I can memorize the kanji I need to know to get off at the right place and make all the appropriate transfers. If I want to stock my kitchen, I have to sit with a dictionary first and write down all the possible kanji and phonetic spellings of the items that I want. If I want to get something done, I have to rely on the kindness and knowledge of my coworkers, fellow JETs, and the general public. In public places, especially in a mall or in a busy city district, the visual "noise" of hundreds of nonsensical characters can be over-stimulating and exhausting.
All this makes me all the more eager to learn Japanese! The good part is that since I've arrived, the sound of the language has become less foreign, and if you hear it without really listening, it could be any European language. Japanese is not tonal like Chinese or Thai and is not quite as foreign to my ears as some of the other Asian languages or what I imagine African languages would sound like. In some ways, I'm arriving in Japan with just as much knowledge and linguistic resources as I did when I came to Poland , despite having grown up with Polish in my family and having studied it for a year or so at college. My formal and informal contact with Japanese has been much more brief and thus less complete than I had had with Polish in October of 2004. Nevertheless, I feel that the types of encounters I'm having in Japanese and the amount that I feel I can glean from a conversation is just about the same as the Polish equivalents at the beginning of my Przegorzaly experience. Japanese grammar is much easier to manipulate than Polish grammar, at least at the beginning, so my rudimentary attempts to communicate are usually fairly successful - and as an added bonus, there are far more stock phrases to convey understanding or agreement in Japanese than in Polish, so it's easier to feign understanding and just smile and nod along!
I've found that the Japanese that I've met in my "city" have been exceedingly friendly and warm. I was warned that they would stare at me and that they might be wary of me. It is true that they stare. Usually if I make eye contact back and kind of nod/bow at them they will end up smiling and saying hello. Instead of being the ostracized foreigner, I've had more experiences in which people go out of their way to be complimentary and inclusive. When I went to pay the deposit to the landlady yesterday, I uttered some basic phrases and was met with wild approval. Two of the rental company ladies forced obscene amounts of cookies on me and went on and on about my beauty! Ha! The other day at school, I was sitting at a computer next to another teacher, and I said something in Japanese about the rain coming. Despite his disagreement with my prognosis, my linguistic overture was countered with a spontaneous tour of the amenities available to me in the teachers' room, including several ways to boil water and refrigerator space.
My supervisor is a very kind woman who has gone out of her way to help me since I've arrived. She not only spends long hours with me, tracking down the various important documents necessary for my residence here, but has on several occasions brought me vegetables from her mother's garden! After I make them for dinner, I take photos and show her the next day, which she loves. When I got here, I told her that I was relieved to finally be here and see that the people were kind and that it will be a good environment for me for the next year. She told me that she was also relieved to finally meet me! Yesterday she told me that "my smile makes other people smile" and this morning she told me that she found a quote on the internet that she wanted me to know: "a loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror."
The other teachers at my school have also been quite friendly with me, especially the English teachers. There are 11 English teachers at Ota First Senior High, and I'll be working with all of them. Some of the teachers have invited me to lunch with them, and I've gotten to sample ramen, udon, and soba thanks to them. All of them seem to be open to chatting and seem interested to know about me and what I think about Japan . I, in turn, pump them for information about Japan , the food, the school, and anything else I need to know.
In addition to Ota First, I'll be working most Fridays at Satomi Senior High, which is about a half hour away through countless rice fields. I'll usually take the bus, but another JET in town goes out to Satomi most Fridays, so when I can I'll hitch a ride with her. I went out to Satomi yesterday, and found that it's a much smaller school than Ota (64 students to Ota's 700+), but the teachers are also friendly and I think it will be a pleasure to work there. The setting is much more rural, and the level of English will be markedly lower: some of the students don't even know the alphabet! Talk about starting at square one...
Hitachiota itself is not the most exciting place in the world. I live between a newer area and the older, more historic district. The newer road, down in the valley, seems very American to me: strip malls galore! Though it's not very scenic, I can get my groceries at a great store that has a huge selection, there's a gym that I might be able to join, and there's a 100 yen store that has everything and anything I could ever need. In the other direction, up on top of the hill, is central Hitachiota. I prefer that area: the buildings are low and wooden and the shops seem to be in the more traditional style. Sometimes I can't even tell if some of the houses are places of business or someone's home! It seems that a lot of bars or restaurants are run out of the back room of someone's house. Either that or there are lots of private homes generating massive amounts of empty beer bottles that get set out on the street the next morning. I haven't explored terribly much in that area, since I'm working during the day and I haven't strayed that way at night, but it seems that there are a couple of interesting restaurants and maybe a few places to hang out.
I have gone that way quite a lot in the mornings, though: my morning run takes me through that part of town, which is quite ideal for jogging. The streets are cobbled with black and white stones and there is very little car traffic. There are plenty of other joggers here (all male sightings so far, though), and unlike Krakow , I feel free to run wherever I please. I'm looking forward to exploring other areas soon! I can also get around on my little bike, which is not the most luxurious piece of equipment I've ever owned. Its biggest fault is that it doesn't have a basket, which makes riding home from grocery shopping awkward. I think I'm going to invest in a better bicycle after next month's paycheck.
Yesterday was my first payday, hooray! Despite giving a third of it away immediately to the landlady for the deposit, it still feels good to have liquid assets! As we all know all too well, this is truly a foreign concept to me. From what I can estimate, my monthly rent and utilities costs will never be more than 1/3 of my salary, and probably closer to 1/6. That will leave lots of money to save and plenty to take trips. One more thing about finances: when I got my bank account, I was issued a cash card and a bank book. I thought that the book was an old-fashioned checkbook, but it's not! When you go to the ATM, you stick your card in AND your book in, and the machine automatically updates the balance for you with all the transactions that took place since you were last there. That includes any withdrawls I make, any automatic withdrawls for bills, and the automatic deposit of my paycheck! What a great system. Leave it to the Japanese to make things work.
As far as I can tell, I think I'm going to be able to have a very comfortable life here. It may not be the most exciting place in the world, but I'll be plenty busy. In addition to my grueling schedule as an assistant teacher (ha! right), I can take part in (and am encouraged to join) any of the after-school clubs, like calligraphy, tea ceremony, kendo, track, English club (that one I'm obligated to help run), etc etc. There is also a Japanese language class at the community center on Thursday nights, one in Mito on Saturday mornings, and an Ikebana (flower arranging) class in town on Fridays. There are monthly cooking classes I can go to - and on top of all that I'll be traveling some and just trying to continue running, hanging out with friends, and studying Japanese on my own! So although it's not Tokyo , I think it'll be ok.
Other uniquely Japanese things: it's the hottest summer in 70 years, according to my supervisor. Because of this, all of them are walking around with hand towels to mop off their sweaty faces. Some of the women hold their cell phones in the towels so as not to get them smudged with sweaty fingerprints. The men walk around the school with the towels around their necks like sumo wrestlers. Bowing: it7s not a myth, folks, the Japanese DO bow to each other, and if you're not careful, you can get into a situation where no one knows when to stop bowing and take a graceful exit. At the rental agency yesterday, we bobbed up and down for about 20 seconds upon arrival AND departure! It7s not just bowing that makes the Japanese so polite, either. At the bank, the tellers (always women) ceremoniously place a dish in front of them with both hands, so that you can put your money or your bank book into it, and they bow when they take it from you, using both hands (a sign of respect). When you buy something at a store, the salesperson will put it in a plastic bag and tape it closed. Then they quite often walk around the counter to hand it to you (with two hands, of course). Women stand with their feet together and their hands clasped, if the situation dictates a bit of formality. Gestures are also very controlled: fingers together, graceful sweeps of the arm.
Of course, not everything is good. I suspect that people are so friendly towards me as an extension of their view of me as something exotic, to be regarded from afar. In the grocery store parking lot today, I heard a woman yell something about a foreigner and then stare back at me. On the way home, a group of teenage boys on bikes across the street at a red light were laughing and saying things about English and America. I don't know what they were saying or even if it was necessarily directed at me. I assume that it was, that it wasn't malicious in any way, but that it pinpoints me as an object to be regarded as strange.
There has been plenty to keep me busy since I've arrived. Just getting settled in and oriented takes some time. There was a festival (Obon) last week, and I got to dress in a kimono and dance around with lots of people from the town! This weekend I'm going to help out at an English camp for high schoolers. It should be more fun than work, and even better, I get two "replacement" days off for having to "work" on the weekend! I have plans to meet next month with the brother of a friend (a Japanese friend from Krakow ), who lives in a nearby city. Conveniently, she is also friends with a Polish guy who lives in her city, so communication will probably happen through that channel rather than in English.
All in all, it's been an interesting two weeks! I'm sure that things will continue to be bizarre and exciting and wonderful (and sometimes frustrating and indecipherable) as long as I'm here.
The language barrier is a formidable one, and I had forgotten what it was like to really be helpless. In this case it's worse than it ever was in Poland or Spain , because I can't just read the words off a sign or the paper and ask someone what it is. The kanji (Chinese characters) are numerous (thousands of them) and complex; they might appear in several contexts and be read in different ways. On the flip side, one word or sound might mean several things and only be distinguished by the various kanji associations. I think the majority of my culture shock was based on the fact that - because I can't get information from normal sources - I really am not a fully functioning member of Japanese society. If someone explains to me how to take the train, I can memorize the kanji I need to know to get off at the right place and make all the appropriate transfers. If I want to stock my kitchen, I have to sit with a dictionary first and write down all the possible kanji and phonetic spellings of the items that I want. If I want to get something done, I have to rely on the kindness and knowledge of my coworkers, fellow JETs, and the general public. In public places, especially in a mall or in a busy city district, the visual "noise" of hundreds of nonsensical characters can be over-stimulating and exhausting.
All this makes me all the more eager to learn Japanese! The good part is that since I've arrived, the sound of the language has become less foreign, and if you hear it without really listening, it could be any European language. Japanese is not tonal like Chinese or Thai and is not quite as foreign to my ears as some of the other Asian languages or what I imagine African languages would sound like. In some ways, I'm arriving in Japan with just as much knowledge and linguistic resources as I did when I came to Poland , despite having grown up with Polish in my family and having studied it for a year or so at college. My formal and informal contact with Japanese has been much more brief and thus less complete than I had had with Polish in October of 2004. Nevertheless, I feel that the types of encounters I'm having in Japanese and the amount that I feel I can glean from a conversation is just about the same as the Polish equivalents at the beginning of my Przegorzaly experience. Japanese grammar is much easier to manipulate than Polish grammar, at least at the beginning, so my rudimentary attempts to communicate are usually fairly successful - and as an added bonus, there are far more stock phrases to convey understanding or agreement in Japanese than in Polish, so it's easier to feign understanding and just smile and nod along!
I've found that the Japanese that I've met in my "city" have been exceedingly friendly and warm. I was warned that they would stare at me and that they might be wary of me. It is true that they stare. Usually if I make eye contact back and kind of nod/bow at them they will end up smiling and saying hello. Instead of being the ostracized foreigner, I've had more experiences in which people go out of their way to be complimentary and inclusive. When I went to pay the deposit to the landlady yesterday, I uttered some basic phrases and was met with wild approval. Two of the rental company ladies forced obscene amounts of cookies on me and went on and on about my beauty! Ha! The other day at school, I was sitting at a computer next to another teacher, and I said something in Japanese about the rain coming. Despite his disagreement with my prognosis, my linguistic overture was countered with a spontaneous tour of the amenities available to me in the teachers' room, including several ways to boil water and refrigerator space.
My supervisor is a very kind woman who has gone out of her way to help me since I've arrived. She not only spends long hours with me, tracking down the various important documents necessary for my residence here, but has on several occasions brought me vegetables from her mother's garden! After I make them for dinner, I take photos and show her the next day, which she loves. When I got here, I told her that I was relieved to finally be here and see that the people were kind and that it will be a good environment for me for the next year. She told me that she was also relieved to finally meet me! Yesterday she told me that "my smile makes other people smile" and this morning she told me that she found a quote on the internet that she wanted me to know: "a loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror."
The other teachers at my school have also been quite friendly with me, especially the English teachers. There are 11 English teachers at Ota First Senior High, and I'll be working with all of them. Some of the teachers have invited me to lunch with them, and I've gotten to sample ramen, udon, and soba thanks to them. All of them seem to be open to chatting and seem interested to know about me and what I think about Japan . I, in turn, pump them for information about Japan , the food, the school, and anything else I need to know.
In addition to Ota First, I'll be working most Fridays at Satomi Senior High, which is about a half hour away through countless rice fields. I'll usually take the bus, but another JET in town goes out to Satomi most Fridays, so when I can I'll hitch a ride with her. I went out to Satomi yesterday, and found that it's a much smaller school than Ota (64 students to Ota's 700+), but the teachers are also friendly and I think it will be a pleasure to work there. The setting is much more rural, and the level of English will be markedly lower: some of the students don't even know the alphabet! Talk about starting at square one...
Hitachiota itself is not the most exciting place in the world. I live between a newer area and the older, more historic district. The newer road, down in the valley, seems very American to me: strip malls galore! Though it's not very scenic, I can get my groceries at a great store that has a huge selection, there's a gym that I might be able to join, and there's a 100 yen store that has everything and anything I could ever need. In the other direction, up on top of the hill, is central Hitachiota. I prefer that area: the buildings are low and wooden and the shops seem to be in the more traditional style. Sometimes I can't even tell if some of the houses are places of business or someone's home! It seems that a lot of bars or restaurants are run out of the back room of someone's house. Either that or there are lots of private homes generating massive amounts of empty beer bottles that get set out on the street the next morning. I haven't explored terribly much in that area, since I'm working during the day and I haven't strayed that way at night, but it seems that there are a couple of interesting restaurants and maybe a few places to hang out.
I have gone that way quite a lot in the mornings, though: my morning run takes me through that part of town, which is quite ideal for jogging. The streets are cobbled with black and white stones and there is very little car traffic. There are plenty of other joggers here (all male sightings so far, though), and unlike Krakow , I feel free to run wherever I please. I'm looking forward to exploring other areas soon! I can also get around on my little bike, which is not the most luxurious piece of equipment I've ever owned. Its biggest fault is that it doesn't have a basket, which makes riding home from grocery shopping awkward. I think I'm going to invest in a better bicycle after next month's paycheck.
Yesterday was my first payday, hooray! Despite giving a third of it away immediately to the landlady for the deposit, it still feels good to have liquid assets! As we all know all too well, this is truly a foreign concept to me. From what I can estimate, my monthly rent and utilities costs will never be more than 1/3 of my salary, and probably closer to 1/6. That will leave lots of money to save and plenty to take trips. One more thing about finances: when I got my bank account, I was issued a cash card and a bank book. I thought that the book was an old-fashioned checkbook, but it's not! When you go to the ATM, you stick your card in AND your book in, and the machine automatically updates the balance for you with all the transactions that took place since you were last there. That includes any withdrawls I make, any automatic withdrawls for bills, and the automatic deposit of my paycheck! What a great system. Leave it to the Japanese to make things work.
As far as I can tell, I think I'm going to be able to have a very comfortable life here. It may not be the most exciting place in the world, but I'll be plenty busy. In addition to my grueling schedule as an assistant teacher (ha! right), I can take part in (and am encouraged to join) any of the after-school clubs, like calligraphy, tea ceremony, kendo, track, English club (that one I'm obligated to help run), etc etc. There is also a Japanese language class at the community center on Thursday nights, one in Mito on Saturday mornings, and an Ikebana (flower arranging) class in town on Fridays. There are monthly cooking classes I can go to - and on top of all that I'll be traveling some and just trying to continue running, hanging out with friends, and studying Japanese on my own! So although it's not Tokyo , I think it'll be ok.
Other uniquely Japanese things: it's the hottest summer in 70 years, according to my supervisor. Because of this, all of them are walking around with hand towels to mop off their sweaty faces. Some of the women hold their cell phones in the towels so as not to get them smudged with sweaty fingerprints. The men walk around the school with the towels around their necks like sumo wrestlers. Bowing: it7s not a myth, folks, the Japanese DO bow to each other, and if you're not careful, you can get into a situation where no one knows when to stop bowing and take a graceful exit. At the rental agency yesterday, we bobbed up and down for about 20 seconds upon arrival AND departure! It7s not just bowing that makes the Japanese so polite, either. At the bank, the tellers (always women) ceremoniously place a dish in front of them with both hands, so that you can put your money or your bank book into it, and they bow when they take it from you, using both hands (a sign of respect). When you buy something at a store, the salesperson will put it in a plastic bag and tape it closed. Then they quite often walk around the counter to hand it to you (with two hands, of course). Women stand with their feet together and their hands clasped, if the situation dictates a bit of formality. Gestures are also very controlled: fingers together, graceful sweeps of the arm.
Of course, not everything is good. I suspect that people are so friendly towards me as an extension of their view of me as something exotic, to be regarded from afar. In the grocery store parking lot today, I heard a woman yell something about a foreigner and then stare back at me. On the way home, a group of teenage boys on bikes across the street at a red light were laughing and saying things about English and America. I don't know what they were saying or even if it was necessarily directed at me. I assume that it was, that it wasn't malicious in any way, but that it pinpoints me as an object to be regarded as strange.
There has been plenty to keep me busy since I've arrived. Just getting settled in and oriented takes some time. There was a festival (Obon) last week, and I got to dress in a kimono and dance around with lots of people from the town! This weekend I'm going to help out at an English camp for high schoolers. It should be more fun than work, and even better, I get two "replacement" days off for having to "work" on the weekend! I have plans to meet next month with the brother of a friend (a Japanese friend from Krakow ), who lives in a nearby city. Conveniently, she is also friends with a Polish guy who lives in her city, so communication will probably happen through that channel rather than in English.
All in all, it's been an interesting two weeks! I'm sure that things will continue to be bizarre and exciting and wonderful (and sometimes frustrating and indecipherable) as long as I'm here.
Primero, lo primero
First post! Should I do the "hello out there" stuff that usually accompanies the birth of a new blog? I'll spare everyone all that, as my first few posts should clear up all the who-what-where-when-why details. I'll be posting things that I've written over the past few months. Once those are up, new stuff will follow...
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