Getting older, wiser,

By 2050, 33% of the Japanese population will be over 65 years old.

Have it your way.

The relationship between Japanese cashier and customer might be one of the most noticeable differences between here and home. Of course, the philosophy of both of our capitalisms (?) is to put the customer first, but here the language and mannerisms are completely different; "O honorary customer, it is our greatest pleasure to accomodate you in this establishment" is basically what they are saying over and over.
It's creepy.
I never have any idea what they are rambling about to me, but they are trained to use a certain voice and intonation that drives me absolutely crazy. They will rarely step out of this character, except the select few who struggle through their English to make me understand what they're asking. It is hard to believe that their Japanese cashier voice and Novice English voice can belong to only one human.
The funniest is when I'm treated to fast, quality service at a KFC, i.e., and am sent away with a bow and ultra polite form of "Thank you" from a slim, attractive Japanese college student. Now imagine an American KFC worker. See? Funny. I apologize for stereotyping fast food workers in America, but if you allow yourself to do so as well, it's funny.

Not much to say.

I'm just seeing if this works. It's a video from last weekend's Danjiri Festival, that could have been taken at a better angle.
Edit: It should work if your computer is compliant. It seems to take forever to load up, though, so I apologize if that's the case for you, too.



Apparently shaking your leg up and down while seated is a sign of disrespect in Japan. Likely having already offended my Japanese professors and friends, I need to quickly adopt a new nervous habit. It's the little things that are the hardest to shake off, pun intended.

I'll take suggestions of which English/American slang to teach my Japanese friends. The farthest I've gotten thus far is "What's up?", "Hanging out," "Awesome," and "Bummer." Surely I can do better than that.

Irrashaimase!

Sometimes I get Japanese phrases "stuck" in my head, like a song you somehow wake up with and repeat to yourself throughout the day. The voice is always a very high pitched Japanese woman--sometimes computerized, as it is at the ticket station or ATM. The title of this post is an example of this; it means "Welcome!" but of course is 5 syllables long. Every common phrase is at least twice as many syllables in Japanese than it is in English. What is said is thus much more valued.

Back to business. This weekend has been wonderful. Monday is a holiday ("Respect for the Aged Day") so we had an extra day to travel and experience this place more in depth. I went to the Danjiri Festival on Saturday in southern Osaka. It's a Shinto tradition where hundreds of people represent a town and each craft their own float. Men ride the float while these people pull it as fast as possible through the narrow streets. It has no steering device or brakes, thus injuries occur. Fortunately I did not witness any such thing.



It was an exciting festival, with the floats running almost every 5 or 10 minutes. We were captured by a hyper old Japanese man who called himself Marky; he took us to the information center where we met other foreigners and had our pictures taken wearing the traditional little outfits you see in the above photos.


Today, Sunday, I went to the EISA Festival--a dance and song festival--somewhere else in Osaka. Osaka is enormous, by the way. The highlight of the day was when my British friend and I were approached and invited to a booth for free food and drink. Drunk old men talked to me in Japanese for hours while I shrugged and smiled and said "Hai, hai, hai, huh?"




To close this post, I'll leave you with a really cute kid:


Awwwww.

Finders Keepers What?

Today I left my precious little iPod in the women's restroom. I went back after class and it was gone, because it was already in the Lost & Found.
I recall cases where Wooster students would send out notices: "I lost my iPod, please contact me if you find it!" but never hear back.
Welcome to Japan, where personal property is actually respected.

Day Trip, Tuesday, September 11th, 2007. Himeji Castle, about 1.5 hours away from campus near Kobe.


Getting to the actual castle took awhile; they structured it much like a maze and it was uphill the whole way, of course. We stormed through the gates nonetheless and captured Princess Sen.

Me, tiny, standing at the back of it. Aw.



View from the top tower. Unfortunately a picture can't quite capture what it felt or even looked like to be up there. Especially after climbing all those flights of stairs, it was a wonder.

My friend and I dressed in traditional kimono, playing a game of Kutsukanee. That's the castle cat watching us.

It was a good, though tiring, day all-in-all. Seven of us went at a moment's notice and paid far too much money for the train and castle entrance. But money's never wasted on art or travel, as they say.

It was strange realizing that yesterday was September 11th. Of course it was not a discussed topic in Japan from what I saw, but I can imagine what kinds of stories ran in the paper and on the news at home. I thought it would be impossible to think so, but America seems so small and distant. I am almost embarrassed to admit I'm American here and I can't quite explain why. It's been six years since 9/11/2001 and non-Americans didn't understand why I even made a passing comment about it yesterday.
Ethnocentrism in practice, on everyone's part.

Now I must study. Goodnight, or God natt as the Swedes say, or Oyasuminasai as the Japanese say.

P.S. Those "women" in the last picture are fake if you didn't guess. The castle cat is real, though...

Thursday... one day from Friday. As of yesterday, I had attended at least one of each of my five classes. Was that proper grammar? I think my English has declined tremendously in constantly simplifying it for my Japanese/ESL friends. Being back in beginning language classes feels bizarre. I'm 20 years old and learning how to count, tell time, and identify colors. I'm also learning how to cross the street safely, hold utensils properly, and be polite to my elders. I stare at the TV in wonderment, watching the flashing images but not understanding what is going on. I also now play with rattles and scream and throw my bottle when riding public transportation.
Jokes aside, it does feel like I am a child again. It's kind of nice having free reign to make mistakes for that reason (silly foreigner) though of course I do not wish to offend anyone and would never exploit my foreignness (?).

About my other English-speaking classes:
My professors are American and have all taught at American universities, so the feeling within these classrooms is familiar. I'm taking an economics/business class which I have not done before. It's supposed to be about the merging of Japanese society/culture with the economy, so there is the sociology half of it that I hope I can master. I'm a little intimidated since the class presupposes I've had some basic background in economics or business, and my fellow classmates are all International Business or Asian Studies majors. Err...
My anthropology classes are quite anthropological. Much of what we have gone over is review for me, but of course the first days of such classes professors always need to cover "What is anthropology? How do we define culture? How and why do we study it?" which is always a snore fest. I'm still optimistic!

It's proven interesting to be in such a multicultural environment. Today I had lunch in my dorm's kitchen with a Japanese girl, my Swedish roommate, a Norweigian, and a Brit. It was a mishmash of language and miscommunication to say the least. It keeps surprising me how cultural humor is, and how much of my own humor does not resonate with others. I tried telling my Swedish roommate "Yo Mama" jokes last night--if you're familiar with those--but that kind of thing can not be explained to a non-American. It does feel nice to be asked which English word to use to convey a particular meaning or to be asked about my country in general, even if they just want to know what kind of wild animals we have or why we would ever reelect George W. Bush for a second term. I love hearing what they have to say about America, even though it's rarely complimentary.

I need to do homework, but here are some pictures.

Classic "Engrish", though I have seen much worse since:



Sometimes restaurants have "fry poteto" on their menus, and it's always a treat, especially alongside traditional Japanese foods like onigiri and yakitori:


Yumiko san and me on the train. She is a local Gaidai student but lives in the Seminar House in order to improve her English. She thinks she's fat, by the way, if that gives you any idea of what body image is/means here:


Thanks for reading.

Pictures, finally.

My laptop's internet is up and running! Now I can post more often and more easily. I have uploaded my pictures to my computer, so I wanted to share some of them here. Please click on them individually to see a much larger, more detailed version.

Here is my dorm room. Typical Japanese style with sliding doors that are paper-thin (made of rice?) that separate our study area from sleeping area. The floors are made of tatami mats. We sleep on futons that we're supposed to stow away during the day but... we don't. Anyway, the closets are spacey, we have many shelves for storage, we have curtains to keep the sun out in the morning, and my roommate and I get along really well.





Here is one of the many temples in Kyoto. Wonderful view of the ominous clouds, ne?




Corey and I in Kyoto. Precious.




I didn't ask about this water-drinking ritual so I am unsure what it means, but it was picture-worthy:




Our group of foreigners + Japanese friends, working the peace signs Asian youth love so much:


And Osaka's madness.



Osaka's version of Mt. Rushmore, perhaps.



This is within Hirikata City, where I live. Rice fields are aplenty, but I found it interesting that they're located in the midst of suburbia, surrounded by highways and internet cafes.



Hope that gives you a better sense of where in the world I am.

Japan is a society that is amazingly efficient, whose smoothness is directed by some great invisible hand. It is incredible to witness such structure and compare it to America, my big sloppy homeland across the sea. The U.S. implements such strict health and safety codes and laws--helmets, seatbelts, smoking bans, FDA requirements, etc--and yet in my short time here I realize how America seems to stumble over itself so often because its people have such a difficult time obliging to rules that inconvenience them. It is not just enforced laws that keep the Japanese "behaving" but rather some underlying force, deeply embedded in their history, that makes this country run like clockwork. It could be its homogeneous population, or its shame-based honor system, or just the fact that there are so many of them in such small space that it could run no other way. America is so young (and sparsely populated) a nation whose people have such different backgrounds and values; it can not run like Japan and never will. I am not saying that this is a positive or negative thing but I find it interesting making such observations.
I was thinking about this mostly when Corey and I walked into "Mos Burger" in Hirakatashi after buying our bicycles tonight. We were set on eating burgers for dinner but were too proud to walk into McDonald's just yet (which are everywhere, even on campus). The place was a typical Western-style fast-food restaurant, but because it is in Japan it somehow had a nicer atmosphere (and nicer cashiers). They were playing Justin Timberlake overhead as we ate our burgers, fries, and shakes. I was feeling very comfortable there because of its relative familiarity, until other customers pulled out their cigarettes and started to smoke. Smokers in Japan are plentiful but stationary. Though legal, "smoke-walking" is socially unacceptable, as is eating/drinking (especially alcohol) while walking. Anyway, I have become very unused to smoke clouds hovering over my food in restaurants, as I am from America where smokers are being increasingly shunned. I don't know, however, if our laws are causing the negative attitudes toward smokers, or the negative attitudes are encouraging the laws to be put in place...
...I don't think I am taking this post in the direction I intended at all, and I don't suppose there is really any point to it, but take what you will. Maybe I can conclude that the societies run so differently because America's laws and customs--the ones I'm talking about anyway--seem to mostly be in protection of the individual (safety, health), while Japan's are more in protection of the collective conscience. Fine. I'm not sure anyone cares.

Here's a list of what I should have talked about instead:
-A group of us went into downtown Osaka on Saturday... well, one of the downtowns. It felt like Chicago but crazier. Spent millions of dollars on transportation/food alone. I avoided the Chanel and Gucci stores, of course. Japanese women dress so impressively and their hair is always perfect even in this humidity that I always feel like a mess compared to them. They also wear high heels to do anything, be it travel or play volleyball.
-We spent yesterday with Corey's Japanese friend that he met here two years ago. Small world?
-Rotating sushi place ($1/plate--wonderful)
-Classes started today. Looks okay so far.
-Bought a bike! Biking in Japan is not leisurely, but necessary.
-These French people behind me in the lab are driving me crazy. I do understand their curse words.
-I'm having a wonderful time.

Goodnight!