The sun sets early here (6-6:30ish) as it moves on to your side of the world, thus it always feels much later than it actually is. The side streets are also so quiet that you get a feeling everyone is in bed and your normal conversation voice is disturbing their sleep. The only insulation Japanese homes have is the rack of clean clothing drying on the balconies, and yet on the walk home you may hear a distant TV or crying baby and that's it.
What a day! I loved it but I could fall into bed (or, futon on the floor with a small bag of beans for a pillow) right now. This morning was the semi-formal opening ceremony for the Asian Studies Program students. They told us we're their biggest group of students enrolled for a semester, rounding out around 440. 260-some of those are Americans, but 37 countries are represented. After several speeches, we were treated to a buffet luncheon. I remember luncheons in America: pork roast, mashed potatoes, three bean casserole, iceberg lettuce + ranch, iced tea, etc etc. Luncheons in Japan: raw beef, fatty chicken, unagi (cooked eel), tuna rolls, spicy shrimp dishes, hand-held pyramids of rice, green tea, Coke Zero (?), and probably the most delicious desserts one could ask for. It's little things like that that challenge my ideas of what's normal or even what's right (shouldn't it be cooked??). It's just food, but it means much more.
Later in the day was our "field trip" to Kyoto, a nearby city that is a huge tourist attraction for its beautiful temples. The point of the trip was to get us familiar with taking the train to Kyoto as well as to interact with local Japanese Kansai Gaidai students. They matched one Japanese for each foreigner and we traveled in small groups. Luckily my friends and I were matched with several of the Japanese girls who live in my Seminar House. They knew English hardly and we know even less Japanese (me being the worst), but we actually ended up forming great friendships with them. Japanese girls my age are my favorite people to interact with; they're so excited about everything you tell them ("Aooh! Kentooky, ne! Like Ken-took-ee Flied Chicken?! Yehh!"). I bonded with Amiko-san specifically. We were the only ones who were willing to be line leaders. We talked about our respective boyfriends in verrryy slowww Ennglissh, and in GirlWorld that means we must really feel comfortable with each other.
Kyoto itself was gorgeous. Even tourist shops in Japan seem wonderful to me, just for the novelty of it. I should have bought an "I [heart] Kyoto" shirt, ne? The city was very mountainous and we climbed a huge hill dodging cars and taxis to get to the temples, but the view was worth it. I took many pictures of today but I can not post them here yet. Still waiting for that laptop thing to work out. The Japanese prefer to remain isolated from the rest of Asia, the world, and each other really (there exist many "rivalries", as between Tokyo and Osaka), and this is why I imagine foreign electronics do not work here.
So I registered for classes, which start on Monday. I am in Spoken Japanese 1, Reading & Writing Japanese 1, The New Japan Economy: Culture, Society, and Power, Visual Anthropology, and Culture & Everyday Life in Japan. 5 classes total, just so I get the needed 16 credit hours for Wooster. They discourage us from taking 5 classes because they like to stress how we need to "get out of the library and experience Japanese culture first-hand"... which to college-age students likely means different things than what they intend. Hopefully I can handle it all and still "get out". I guess holing up in the library at Wooster was okay since there wasn't much culture to experience there anyway.
I do miss Wooster though. Maybe what I miss most about it is getting honked at while walking along the main road on campus... Japanese men do not honk to get your attention or to express their feelings about you being a girl and they being a man. I don't know if that's only an American thing, or only a Wooster townie thing.
Well, if you didn't catch the dry joke, I do not miss such a thing and would never miss it.
The end for now. Pictures to come sometime next week. Hopefully I'll go somewhere interesting again soon. Downtown Osaka is likely next. See the REAL Japan.
Love love.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Bonjour, mes amis. Oh, to know French and never use it. Oh, to not know Japanese and never know what is going on.
Hello from Yapan! I know this is only my first post and I have been gone for a long time, so it seems. How can I calculate the hours, as I am in a time warp here? To my surprise, I have survived the first rough days of exhaustive travel and the awkwardness of adaptation. The plane ride was okay; it felt like a terribly boring 12 hour long sleepover party where everybody slept but me. I sat across the aisle from a Japanese woman who sat perfectly still with her jacket over her head for at least 10 hours of the flight. Suffocation must not be a threat to her, this superhuman. I sat next to a boy named Corey who giggled at his comic books, and the other man in our row sat basking in his laptop light for 12 hours. This man and I did not sleep.
Hai. Japan is wonderful in its own way. Almost everything they said about it turned out to be true. Rachel-san was a great help to us on our first night; we did not know her before but she allowed us to stay in her apartment somewhere south of Tokyo. Her Japanese roommate cooked us dinner and was very excited to meet and speak English with us. We had a great time just talking with them. The beer I can now legally drink was a somewhat unpleasant addition to my 28 hour sleep deprivation, however.
So now I am at Kansai Gaidai University. It is orientation week and thus I am very busy sitting in auditoriums listening to people on microphones. Campus is about a half-hour walk from the dorm, something I am very unused to at Wooster. Here I am always walking and always hungry (rice only seems filling). New diet: living as a Japanese. My roommate is 25 years old and Svedish. I have been interested in Sweden because I always learn in sociology classes how much it contrasts with America in many good ways. Japan, also, is a society that so impressively contrasts with my own homeland.
The first thing I noticed on my arrival here is how quiet it is. Though there may be many Japanese compacted in a small environment, they will not talk to each other or they will talk very softly. Most of the time it would only be Rachel, Corey, and I saying anything when on trains. Sometimes young children will screech in excitement in public, but the older they get, the less likely this is to occur. About the children: Japanese children are hands-down the cutest in this world of ours. It takes a very beautiful American child to impress me, but every Japanese kid I find adorable. This is the only reason why Japan is better than the States.
Kidding. There are many interesting aspects to this culture, and yet living here even for so short a time has proven how frustrating an experience it is trying to fit in. As is everywhere, unwritten rules govern the people, but I am only slowly learning these rules and thus always embarrassing myself. The Japanese are so polite, however, that they will never say anything about it. I wish they would, though! They are so polite that they will listen to me speak English to them and nod and say "Hai" ("Yes, that's right, I understand...") and then end up not knowing anything I said. They will pretend to know, though. They will always be content with my answer to their questions, even if I do not answer it how they meant for me to. This is not how I believe communication should work, but that is how it works here.
Well, there is much more to talk about but I am not on my own computer. There's a computer lab very close to my room, which is convenient considering how the internet does not work on our computers until we register them. I am sorry for not being in touch more.
Hope all is well with everyone.
Hello from Yapan! I know this is only my first post and I have been gone for a long time, so it seems. How can I calculate the hours, as I am in a time warp here? To my surprise, I have survived the first rough days of exhaustive travel and the awkwardness of adaptation. The plane ride was okay; it felt like a terribly boring 12 hour long sleepover party where everybody slept but me. I sat across the aisle from a Japanese woman who sat perfectly still with her jacket over her head for at least 10 hours of the flight. Suffocation must not be a threat to her, this superhuman. I sat next to a boy named Corey who giggled at his comic books, and the other man in our row sat basking in his laptop light for 12 hours. This man and I did not sleep.
Hai. Japan is wonderful in its own way. Almost everything they said about it turned out to be true. Rachel-san was a great help to us on our first night; we did not know her before but she allowed us to stay in her apartment somewhere south of Tokyo. Her Japanese roommate cooked us dinner and was very excited to meet and speak English with us. We had a great time just talking with them. The beer I can now legally drink was a somewhat unpleasant addition to my 28 hour sleep deprivation, however.
So now I am at Kansai Gaidai University. It is orientation week and thus I am very busy sitting in auditoriums listening to people on microphones. Campus is about a half-hour walk from the dorm, something I am very unused to at Wooster. Here I am always walking and always hungry (rice only seems filling). New diet: living as a Japanese. My roommate is 25 years old and Svedish. I have been interested in Sweden because I always learn in sociology classes how much it contrasts with America in many good ways. Japan, also, is a society that so impressively contrasts with my own homeland.
The first thing I noticed on my arrival here is how quiet it is. Though there may be many Japanese compacted in a small environment, they will not talk to each other or they will talk very softly. Most of the time it would only be Rachel, Corey, and I saying anything when on trains. Sometimes young children will screech in excitement in public, but the older they get, the less likely this is to occur. About the children: Japanese children are hands-down the cutest in this world of ours. It takes a very beautiful American child to impress me, but every Japanese kid I find adorable. This is the only reason why Japan is better than the States.
Kidding. There are many interesting aspects to this culture, and yet living here even for so short a time has proven how frustrating an experience it is trying to fit in. As is everywhere, unwritten rules govern the people, but I am only slowly learning these rules and thus always embarrassing myself. The Japanese are so polite, however, that they will never say anything about it. I wish they would, though! They are so polite that they will listen to me speak English to them and nod and say "Hai" ("Yes, that's right, I understand...") and then end up not knowing anything I said. They will pretend to know, though. They will always be content with my answer to their questions, even if I do not answer it how they meant for me to. This is not how I believe communication should work, but that is how it works here.
Well, there is much more to talk about but I am not on my own computer. There's a computer lab very close to my room, which is convenient considering how the internet does not work on our computers until we register them. I am sorry for not being in touch more.
Hope all is well with everyone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)