Catching up on things

I can finally post again. Here's what I've written since my last posting. I'm certain that there's something I've forgotten to mention in here, but I don't have the time to properly check.

6-24-08

About 9:45 PM here, so 5:45 AM back home. I think. I’m rather tired and my

6-25-08

5:48 AM on Wednesday local, 3:48 PM Tuesday back home. Sorry about the sudden break last night. That was where I realized that “If tired, then sleep” and followed those directions.

The weather yesterday was more pleasant than it had been. The sky was clear for a lot of the day, and I think that burned off a lot of the humidity. It may have just seemed more pleasant because I didn’t have to be out in it for very long.

Last night we went to a tea ceremony. It was one of those places where you sat in traditional, formal Japanese style and drank hot, bitter tea. It was not fun. I hate tea. I have hated every kind of tea that I have ever drank, despite being willing to try just about any kind of tea I have the chance to drink.

We received a new student last night as well. She couldn’t make the proper flight with us and had to wait until yesterday to catch one. She’s been assigned to group two, my group.

I suppose that it is time that I describe what life in the guest house is like. I’ve already said that there isn’t any wifi in the guest house, so we have to go to one of the school buildings to use the internet. I think that the school buildings with internet access are closed on the weekends, so I probably won’t be able to get in contact with the outside world then. Speaking of contact with the outside world, our primary method of getting news from abroad is our television. It receives disappointingly few channels, less than ten in all. How are we supposed to get an idea of Japanese popular culture without more channels?

Most of the things here are designed for people smaller than us. Even most of the spoons are oddly small. The showers can be a little cramped, but aren’t too bad. I don’t think we’re using the showers right. We’re supposed to wet ourselves down first, turn off the water, and then soap ourselves up, but I think we are missing what we’re supposed to do with the water container available. It doesn’t make sense that it would be enough to wash off all the soap, but I can’t think of any other use for it. At least the toilets are normal. In the school building we use, in the (male) bathroom we found, there is one normal toilet and one squat toilet set into the floor. Of course there are urinals there as well.

The guest house has three floors, although I think it is only two stories tall. There’s one spiral staircase that connects the floors, and the second floor (only one room) goes off in a different direction than the third floor. The third floor is the bedrooms. Originally the girls were going to have two rooms and the guys one, but we outnumbered them on the first night and got the two rooms for ourselves. They got the second floor room (with two beds) as a consolation. I sleep in the smaller of the two rooms we have, with room for four people.

Now for the people; I won’t describe all of them yet, but I will describe the ones more significant to my writing. First up is Angela, leader of group 1. She feeds us (sometimes) with stuff like miso soup and curry. It got to the point where I wondered if we should be paying her, but she declined the offer. Fujiko (not her real name, but used more than it) is obsessed with cleaning. The other night she had everyone gather up their dirty clothes so that she could wash them. She even folded them when she was done. Must thank her.

Teresa is the leader of Group 2, my group. I’m not sure what else there is to say about her, I think she’s taken Japanese for a significant amount of time. The other members of my group are Sam 2 (Saburo), Ashlegh, Meghan, and Ashlie. I think there is a strong resemblance between Saburo and myself. He is one of the students from Kazuko’s Japanese 103 class. Ashlegh, I’m not sure where she is from. Meghan has been rather unfortunate so far. First she was suffering from motion sickness on the trains, and then she got sick after the welcoming party. Ashlie is the girl who just arrived last night. I’ve had a class with her before, and she if completely new to Japanese.

My roommates come next, I suppose. There are four of us in the room, on two bunk beds. I’m on one of the bottom bunks, the other is taken by Derek, a new student to Japanese. Above me is Sam, who both looks older than me and has a knowledge base that it astonishingly large for a 19 year-old. Ryan sleeps above Derek. He’s funny at times, but like I told his girlfriend, he seems like the sort of person you should take out insurance one.

Yesterday there was finally time to sit down and think. The homesickness is beginning to set in now. I’d been too busy up until now to have any energy to spare on it. Because I cleared the memory card on the camera before coming here, I didn’t think that there would be any pictures on it for me to take comfort from Somehow, though, a picture of one of my cats survived. I don’t know how it is there, but a picture of little Toebi looking at me managed to find its way onto my laptop. I also have pictures of my family, but I prefer not to take them out with the rate at which things around me get damaged.

6-25-08, 7:40 PM local time

Yeah the homesickness has definitely sunk in now. No energy. Sleep.

6-27-08 6:26 AM Friday here, 2:26 PM Thursday back home

This is probably going to be the last time I get to post online until Monday (late Sunday back home), because I’m pretty sure that the buildings with internet access are closed on the weekends. On Wednesday, I and a few others headed over to Machida to shop. The digital camera here are more expensive than I thought they’d be. I think we’re supposed to head over to some shopping areas tomorrow (Saturday), and I’m hoping I can find a cheaper camera there. If not, then I’ll go back to Machida on Sunday and buy one of the cameras there.

This is as good a place as any for a funny aside. On Wednesday, Kazuko was teaching us the names of different foods, and then she got to cucumbers. She kept going on about how American cucumbers were “Too big, too filling” and Japanese cucumbers were “Small and thin.” There was so much laughter, and I don’t think she understood why.

I’m beginning to seriously dislike Kazuko (I already dislike her, but it‘s just starting to get serious). I’m not sure if I have ever met a more annoying or bossy person. She won’t even let Mary (the other teacher) do things her own way. I keep wanting to tell her that we are neither children nor puppets (in Japanese) but I’m not sure of the particles to use. She’s a good enough teacher (in my opinion; other students disagree), but she is an absolutely terrible tour guide. On Wednesday, she wanted to take us to a grocery store as our activity for the day; there were enough objections that it didn’t happen. Yesterday (Thursday), she had us watch some students performing kendo. That in itself wasn’t too bad, but she had us stay there for way too long. Then we went out to a Denny’s. The food was worth nowhere near as much as it cost. Today she wants to take us out to a coffee shop,. I have no intention of going. I have better things to do with my time.

We also had to attend a symposium yesterday. It was completely in Japanese. We thought that we weren’t going to have to attend, and none of us wanted to go, but the staff wanted to get pictures of the Americans at the symposium. We all had to waste two hours of our lives there. We spent three hours in class yesterday, two at the symposium, one hour free for lunch, three more hours in class, had to go to the kendo practice, and then Denny’s. We didn’t get back until past nine at night. As an example of why I dislike her, she tried to stop us from going back to the guest house to drop off our backpacks before going to kendo, The woman has no consideration for the needs or desires of others. Ironic, considering how much time she spends telling us about how we should be considerate since that is the culture here.

6-27-08 (Cont. 8:11 PM)

Today was actually an unexpectedly good day. I didn’t have much for breakfast; just two tiny bite-size tuna sandwiches that I’m pretty sure were leftovers from the party on Monday and some of my ice-water, but I didn’t get hungry. Kazuko arrived and told us that the café was optional, so that was a nice way to start the day.

Japanese class progressed as usual, nothing special happened either way.

We had our last history class today. Mary has to go back to the US on Sunday to deal with some family stuff, I think. We were able to compress over a hundred years of Japanese history into a single week of class.

After history, something that wasn’t so welcome occurred: Kazuko came back and told us that since the reservations had already been made (by a local student, not by her) that we had to go to the café anyways. Then she told us three things that were pleasant: The school would cover the costs at the café, she would be returning the money she had us spend to get into the Tokyo Tower and off the train system on Saturday, and that the café is in Machida.

I ate more than I thought I would at the cafe. Since neither Jennifer nor Ryan were in class on the day the orders were placed, we placed orders for them. We knew they liked tea better than coffee, which were the two drink options, but didn’t know if they would prefer apple cake or cheesecake so we ordered them one of each. Turns out that neither could stand cheesecake, so Jennifer offered theirs to anyone who wanted it. I was the first volunteer. I paid her back for it though; the people at the café gave me a tea that I didn’t want, so I gave it to her.

We didn’t use tickets to get to Machida, Kazuko gave us cards. Much more convenient, since the cards can be used whenever (she approves), but we’d have to get the tickets from her at the station. We were released after we left the café, to go back to campus on our own schedule. A group of us decided that we wanted to go shopping, and three of us needed new cameras. I know I said the cameras here are more expensive, but maybe it just felt that way to me because I got a deal on the one I broke. I bought a new one for 20,000 Yen, which translates to (as of the last time I checked) just under US $200. And then they gave me some sort of Gold Rewards Card that is word 4,600 Yen, or US $46. I’m not sure why, though. All three of us who went to get cameras bought them, and one of the others bought the same kind as me, but I was the only one to get the card.

My breakfast is taken care of for the next few days as well. I bought five 苺ジャムのパン (ichigo jammu no pan), or strawberry jam bread, so that should last me a while. I bought five because they were 98 Yen each, and I didn’t want anymore 1 Yen pieces. Also, I do like the stuff.

6-28-08 8:40 PM Saturday local, 4:40 AM back home

This Saturday was much better than the previous Saturday. I have now mostly adapted to the weather here, and I did not get lost today. The planned activities were far superior as well.

We started off by going to a shopping mall. Then we found out that it wouldn’t open for more than an hour, and most of us went to the Fuji TV station. I saw a statue of the new ship of the pirates from the anime One Piece, but the Fuji station was mostly unremarkable.

When the shopping mall opened, it was highly disappointing. For a Japanese shopping mall, there were surprisingly few technology stores; which is to say zero. There was a place to get crushed souvenir tokens, however. They were more expensive than the crushed penny places in America.

We went to a buffet in the mall after our shopping time. I really wanted to make them regret letting me in by eating them out of everything they had, but only managed a few plates. They have weird pizza in Japan.

After that, we took a couple of rides on boats. The boats themselves weren’t that great, but while waiting for the boats to arrive, we saw some interesting sea life. There was a big fish, and more importantly, what we think was a sting ray. It may have been a skate of some sort. Talking about the ray led us to a discussion of who would win in a fight between Steve Irwin (RIP) and Chuck Norris. Ryan thought that Chuck Norris would win, while Fujiko and I favored Irwin. We all agreed that Zombie Steve Irwin would definitely defeat Norris.

We went to a temple at Asakusa after the boat trip. The temple grounds were much closer to what I thought a festival would be like than the festival we went to last week. I was still unable to find taiyaki. I was, however, able to find a souvenir. After we left, it turned out that at the temple itself, there was some special incense smoke that we were supposed to be able to waft in and get some sort of reinvigoration, but I’m not upset that I forgot to do that.

We then went to something that I think was called “Ameyayako” but am probably wrong about. It was in Uedo. I don’t remember right now. The others went to explore the main shopping street, which was like a giant flea market without the chance of finding something valuable. It was also open air and quite hot. I went into a technology store (incidentally the same chain as I bought the new camera at). It had air conditioning. I consider myself to be the winner in that area. I checked out all seven of the floors in search of PC games (I used the map and found the console games on the top floor to start with, but not PC games). The top floor had some interesting takes on the machines that you put coins into and get random toys out of. They were selling tiny dolls out of them. I hoped to find one that had Kanon characters in it, but there weren’t any. The closest was one that had characters from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya in it. I got a Tsuruya-san figure out of it. Very cute. A lot more expensive than most of the machines in America, but the toys are of much higher quality. The doll is something of an irony; The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is distinctly Japanese, but I enjoyed it back in America, so the doll reminds me of home. Speaking of Haruhi Suzumiya, I miss my (peripheral) involvement in the Suzumiya Seitenkan project. I’ll have a lot of backlog to catch up on when I get back to the States. Not just with that, but with The Daily Show and Colbert report as well. A few other things, too.

The low point of the day was parting with Mary. This was the fifth class I took with her, and she is leaving tomorrow, without coming by to see us. It felt like the end of an era. It was fitting though, I began my first quarter at my college with two classes from her in the morning, and in my last quarter I took a two-class length class from her in the afternoon. As I was making the long trek back to the guest house, it began to rain, as though the sky itself was weeping for our separation from our professor. The rain was light, though, indicating that it wasn’t a very sad occasion.

Right now, people are going through their pictures on the television. The camera I bought should be able to do that as well, but I’ll want to look through my pictures and get rid of the ones that didn’t turn out well. Considering the amount of pictures I took today, there must be some that didn’t turn out well.

I’m doing better on the homesickness issue. I’d still like to see my family and my pets, but I think I’m beginning to get used to Japan. I saw an anime shop in Machida yesterday, even though I didn’t have time to go in, that made me feel better. A lot of my problems were from a sense of immense disappointment in what I thought Japan would be. Now that I’ve had a bit of immersion in what I thought proper Japanese weirdness would be (I’d explain, but I want to see my family’s reactions when the see what I saw), I’m feeling better,

I might as well mention that my allergies have been acting up since Friday. Sore throat and a very runny nose. Nothing I do seems to help, even eating chocolate. Just isn’t working. Not too bad, though.

6-28-08 (9:03 PM Sunday local, 5:03 AM home)

Today was our first day off. It was nice. I only went outside once today, to search for some needed supplies and some souvenirs. I wasn’t able to find any of the needed supplies (food that I judge worth the price), or most of the souvenirs I was looking for. All I got was a small fan to replace the one I got at the festival, which I’d put through too much abuse already.

I took care of some stuff I’d been meaning to do. I took care of my laundry; all of it fit in one washing machine but I had to use both dryers since they can’t handle large loads. I also found my flash drive again, which allowed me to look at the stuff I kept in it. Turned out that it was in my carrying pouch, which I HAD looked in.

Most of the others have gone out to do karaoke. My allergies have been acting up, so I have that as an excuse to not go. It’s allowed me to catch up on some writing (which I’ve been working on for a lot of the day), and get to know a few of my housemates better. Sam has an astonishing number of things of things on his computer, and Sandra is hilarious. If anybody asks, she peed her pants.

An movie in English is on right now. I think it’s Anaconda 2. Television in English really is refreshing. Kazuko mentioned yesterday that every time she returned to Japan up until two years ago it was like “I’m home!” The thing that changed two years ago was that she subscribed to Japanese TV, so she feels like she has that connection back home.

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I might as well take this opportunity to further explain living conditions over here. To start with, the cost of living is higher even than it is in Washington, which I understand has a relatively high standard of living. I liter container of milk costs about two-and-a-half dollars. I can’t find the material to make a decent sandwich either. Can’t find any sliced meat or sliced cheese. That just isn’t right.

The guest house has three floors in two stories. The middle floor is off to the side of the top floor, so that’s how it fits. The bedrooms are on the top floor (the middle floor’s room is a smaller bedroom, taken by the girls). The guys and the girls each have two rooms, although the girls’ second room (on the middle floor) is smaller than that of the guys. We needed more space first, since the late arrival was a girl and we had greater numbers until she got here.

There are two bathrooms and two shower rooms, one for each sex. The guys have the toilet and shower on the top floor and the girls the ones on the bottom floor. The girls’ toilet room has two toilets, while the guys’ has only one. The toilets here have heated seats. They just feel wrong. On Wednesday I sat on our toilet and it nearly burned me. Turned the blasted thing all the way off after that.

The laundry room is actually a covered and locked-off space attached to the house that is open to the air. There are two washing machines and two dryers. Both are easy to use for someone who can read katakana like I can. The dryers are quite weak, though.

When we go out onto campus, we have to wear identification cards that make it clear that it is okay for us to be on campus. The ID cards have little American flags on them. I understand that we’re at a private school, but we shouldn’t have to wear them the whole time. The security should recognize us by now. The normal students don’t have to wear ID cards, and we stick out enough that it should be easy to recognize us.

That’s another thing: we stick out. A lot. I’m not used to being so clearly in the minority. At least the people are friendly. Friendlier than I’m used to, actually.

It also takes some time to get most places. We’re relatively close to our class building and the cafeteria, and that at least is a blessing. It isn’t truly close, though, as I’m pretty sure that even the distance between the guest house and our usual building is at least as great as the width of my official campus. Considering that this is apparently the second-largest campus in all of Japan, that sort of thing is to be expected.

I can’t think of anything else to describe at this point.

_______

Toay we're heading over to Machida again, this time for ramen. I expect to have the chance to visit the tech store and the anime store. That should be nice. My opinion of Kazuko has gone up, but I can't really identify what did it.

Oh, and the reason Friday's entry was written like I would be posting that day is that I thought that I would. Turned out that I spent that time writing emails instead.

Ja ne.