Back in the U.S.A.

Hey!

A lot has happened since my last real post, so let me explain.  What I’m going to do is make this a text post, and then post a bunch of pictures in a later post.

So when I last left off, I was busy enjoying the company of my Japanese class, a wonderful cornucopia of ethnicities and personalities, but just a really cool bunch of people.  Throughout July, I spent more and more time with these guys, and we got closer and closer.  In particular, I spent a lot of time with Nadya, the Russian girl who sat right behind me, and Greg (see his Japan blog here), a funny mutton-chop wearing guy from Virginia.  Once I told Nadya that my girlfriend at home had been studying in Russia last semester, things really took off.  We talked pretty often about Russia and America and she was a great person and a great resource to hear about other cultures.  And just a great friend.  We found some great places to hang out in Tokyo, like a little bar in Shibuya called something like “The Little Oasis in the Middle of Shibuya,” and a little coffee shop in Shinjuku where I introduced Nadya to the Coca-Cola float (they didn’t have root beer), which she became instantly addicted to.  There was a great trip with Nadya and Julia, the Swedish girl in my class, and a Japanese friend of hers to a Russian restaurant someplace southwest of Shinjuku.  It was wonderful!  We spent the entire evening eating delicious blinis and borscht and talking about our four respective cultures.  Very enlightening.  Russian weddings sound terrifying, by the way, and often include a quiz for the groom to allow him into the house of the bride and a tug-of-war between the bride and groom for the biggest half of the wedding cake, which will signify that you will wear the pants in the relationship.  Eek!

One particularly great experience was celebrating the Fourth of July with Greg.  I spent most of my time in Tokyo trying really hard not to act like an American, so I felt like I really ought to spend one night being as American as possible.  Greg and I first went out with Jonas the German and Jess the American to a blues bar west of Shinjuku, where Greg played some sax and Jonas played the drums for a set.  They were really good!  Afterward, Greg and I split off from the others and headed back to Shinjuku, in fact to Kabukicho, the seedy part of town.  We went to a few bars to eat and drink, and when it hit midnight, we sung the national anthem.  We had discussions about our favorite American revolutionary moments and figures, and agreed that Benjamin Franklin is probably the coolest guy ever.  We then headed to a karaoke bar and paid $10 or so a piece to stay all night, singing literally ever song we could find in the guide with anything to do with America (eg: “Born in the U.S.A.”, “Hotel California”, “American Woman”, etc.).  By 5 am, my voice was hoarse and I was dead to the world.  But as it was a Friday morning, we had class in a few hours, and I went back to campus as soon as I could and camped out in the classroom until class.

Greg also introduced me to the Square-Enix store!  I went there with Molly from Macalester (after a failed attempt to find the place with Simone, also from Macalester), and splurged on some sweet merchandise like a keychain, name card holder, etc.  It was a pretty cool, nerdy place.  I had a big surprise when I was standing in the showroom and I looked down and found… Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII RIPing in the floor!!  Geez, I jumped about a foot in the air.  Scared the crap out of me.

Unfortunately, I had to part ways with my two groups, Aikido and darts.  I had a great last party with the darts club, where we went out for okonomiyaki in Akihabara, then hung out at one member’s apartment for a while.  I really regret that I couldn’t go to the club’s going-away party for us foreign kids at the end of the semester, but I had already made plans!  I ended up heading back to Kamakura with some Macalester kids and Aki, my closest Japanese friend.  Speaking of all that, Aki will be in the U.S. in September, and Jeritt and I are planning on travelling up to Minnesota to visit her and our Macalester friends for a weekend!  I am psyched!  Aki gave me some beautiful gifts, and was just a completely wonderful person to get to know.  We had a great relationship where I would speak Japanese to her and she’d speak English to me.  This meant that both of our listening skills went to pot, but our speaking got better and better!  I also taught her quite a few English slang words, for better or worse.  I’m so glad I got to meet her!

Toward the final month of my time in Tokyo, I ended up spending a lot of time in parks.  I loved to hang out with friends and just have wine in the park, talk, socialize.  I brought all sorts of people to parks with me, from my Macalester friends to my Japanese class.  Of course, the park in Yotsuya near campus was the most convenient, but my absolute favorite place to go (especially in the evening/night) was the frog fountain at Ueno park.  You can just sit on the edge and talk, drink, whatever.  Wonderful!  It was very low-key, low-stress hang-out time, and I needed that.

I finally made it to a few festivals, too!  First, Jeritt, Molly, Mike and I met up and headed over to Ichigaya to go to the ever-controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where there was a lantern festival.  It was really fun, especially after the sun set and all the lights came on.  There was, however, a scandalous incident when Jeritt and I went into a little side show tent only to find a woman biting the head off a live snake!  Oh man, it was the last thing either of us expected, and it was a miracle Jeritt didn’t toss his cookies right there in the crowded tent.  Not cool, Japan.  Caught us off-guard there.  A much more normal festival took place at the end of July; fireworks at Asakusa over the river!!  I went with Nadya and a bunch of her friends.  We dressed up in the yukata we had just bought the previous day and headed into the teeming mass of people.  Seriously, I have never seen so many people congregating in one place.  There must have been tens of thousands of people.  On the walk back, the wide streets were completely packed with people as far as you could see!  In fact, the police urged people not to use the local train station, as it would be completely packed.  In order to avoid this, we just headed over to the local shrine and hung out on the steps until things quieted down a bit.

I think finals went alright.  I had a bunch, for sure.  I had a take-home essay for literature, an in-class test for religion, and in-class exams in each part of Japanese: grammar, reading, kanji, interview, writing, listening.  Japanese was by far the most stressful.  I think everything went all right in the end, though.  We’ll see!  My grades show on my Grinnell transcript, but in terms of credit everything transferrs pass/fail, so I ought to get full credit for everything.  Regardless, I’m hoping for straight Bs for the semester.

Being all in the same boat on the turbulent waters of finals, my Japanese class and I studied together, got up early and crammed together, and of course partied together afterwards!  We had a couple great farewell parties!  The first was at an Arabian Nights-themed joint in Shinjuku.  I can’t say too much about the night, but we all hung out, ate and drank great fare, and got really emotional.  Julia was bawling by the end of the night, which was tough for all of us to take.  Soon after, we had another farewell party… it’s hard to say goodbye, you know?  Especially to people you spent 3 or 4 hours with every weekday morning for 4 months.  Anyway, we all went out to a really nice place where Yi-Chen (a Taiwanese girl in the class) was working part time.  And, to make things better, we brought our favorite teacher Kobayashi-sensei and his girlfriend along!  It was a great time, with amazing food and good conversation.

I almost forgot… there was a really random event that I ended up going to.  Julia and Greg are big Star Wars fans.  Who isn’t really, but Julia especially loves the movies.  Well, it just so happens that about 15 minutes away from my homestay at the Makuhari Messe convention hall was… STAR WARS Celebration Japan!!  Of course, we had to go.  It was just so close, after all.  It was really fun!  I got to see a panel discussion with Peter Mayhew and David Prowse, the original actors!  Nice.  Also, we got to pose with all sorts of dressed-up characters.  It was the last thing I thought I would have done in Japan, but it was a lot of fun!

After tearful goodbyes and final parties with my friends and host family, I left the country at around 6 pm on the 31st of July, arriving in Chicago a couple hours earlier, maybe 2 or 3 pm on the 31st.  Essentially, I went back to the future.  There was a little hiccup when my flight home from Chicago was cancelled and I had to stay in a hotel for the night, but no problem.  I got home safe the next day.

So that was that!  My trip to Japan was over before I knew it!  What can I say about the experience?  It was amazing.  It was hard and stressful to a level I thought I’d leave behind at Grinnell.  It was really rewarding, leaving me a much better Japanese student in every area, especially kanji, leaving me with a great new set of international friends, and some seriously incredible memories.  I had so much fun!!  I would love to go back to Japan, but I would not like to enter the traditional workforce there.  The life of a Japanese businessman is basically all work and some fun, but only with other workers or clients.  You pretty much have no time for your family, which is something I wouldn’t like at all.  That being said, the country is amazing to be in, especially for a tourist with a JR pass.  Once you can get around on the trains, the country is your oyster.  I’d love to go back and do that, with pretty much whoever wants to.  Call me up, let’s do it.

That wraps up this post, and this part of the blog!  Thanks to all my readers for the support, and if I inspired anyone to learn Japanese or visit Japan, my work is done!  I will post a Japanese wrap-up and pictures soon, and that ought to be about it.  Thanks!!

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Hold tight!

Well, that’s embarassing… it’s been over a month, and I’m back in the USA now!  I want to add a few final posts, but I’m going to have to wait until after the weekend.  Hold on a bit more, and I’ll be back soon with more pictures and wrap up my Japan experience.

Fun with June

June was a blast. It all went by so fast! June was absolutely chock full of time-consuming things, and before I knew it, it was July.

After I got back from Hiroshima, it was straight on to midterms. Oh man, I had 6 separate tests. It was pretty stressful for a bit, since that was all on top of the normal rigors of Japanese class. But it all went pretty smoothly, and I pulled good enough grades in most things that I feel pretty good about it on the whole.

Next, my mom came here! And Jeritt’s mom came here! Oh man, it was weird (in a good way) to have another person I know come here. It was pretty fun to lead them around Japan and kind of show off a bit. Also, because we traveled around a bit, it was a good chance to run into (and solve) a bunch of problems, like asking for various things, buying tickets, navigating, etc. Great practice. I think our moms had a pretty good time, too, so it’s a win-win situation. Like I said, we took some pretty sweet trips. We went to Kawaguchiko, near Mount Fuji. Then later, we went to Kyoto! It was really cool. We had to find our little hostel, figure out the bus system, and budget our time so we could see some cool sites. It was a little tiring by the end, but a good experience, and I’m really glad I got to go there! I was worried I wouldn’t get a good chance.

After that, everything sort of went back to normal. Classes are back to normal, I have some free time occasionally, etc. I haven’t been to aikido for ages, though. I didn’t have time when my mom was here, and I think that if I go now, I will sort of drag behind the rest of the white belts. And after all, there’s only a month left. I can’t stay in the club forever. It has, however, rekindled my love for the sport, and I’m going to try hard to go to aikido again in Grinnell. Last semester I had no time for it, thanks to the musical I music directed, but next semester I’m trying to cut down on things like that, so I ought to have time. We’ll see!

I’ve been having a great time with my class here. It’s a great group of people! So international. American, German, Russian, Chinese, Thai, Taiwanese, Sweden, British… a great mix. I really love the whole idea. It’s great to see how people from these other countries think, and learning a new language together makes us all students together. If anyone has read Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, it’s much like the way David describes learning French in Paris. And on top of all that, everyone in my class is just really fun! We’ve gone out a couple times, and it’s always been great. A week or so ago we all went to a Japanese bar to celebrate Theresa, the Chinese girl, having a birthday, and then did karaoke. Great fun. Tonight, I’m actually going out with Jonas the German and Greg from America to a blues bar somewhere in Tokyo, and then Greg and I are planning to stay out all night celebrating Independence Day, most likely by obnoxiously singing patriotic songs at karaoke. We’ll see how it goes. It’ll be my first all-nighter here. It’s about time!

By the way, how’s everyone’s summer break? Good, I hope! Christine is still in Germany, but all my other friends are probably back from their respective countries of study, right? Most everyone’s either relaxing or working, right? Leave a comment and tell me what you’re up to!

Oh, and I’m posting this at school, so I can’t put up any pictures right now. But after I get back from tonight and tomorrow’s excursions, I’ll put some up. Probably on Saturday if I have time.

日本語でもちょっと書きたいです。　みんなの夏休みはよろしいですか。　アイオワが大好きだけど、外国人にとっていつもアイオワにいるのはちょっとつまらないかもしれないので、州外旅行をすればいいと思います。　何かしている人、下でコメントをして、夏休みはどうと書いて教えて下さい！

先月、広島から戻った後、最も面白いのは母とタッカーさんのお母さんは一緒に東京に来たのです。　面白かったです！　母は全然日本語が出来なくて、タッカーさんのお母さんは頑張って、色々な表現を習ったけど、そうしても旅行のは難しくて困っていました。　そうかと言って、結局、母達は大体問題がないで色々な所に行けました。　私とタッカーさんは授業で忙しかったものの、母達は自分で新幹線で広島に行きました。　その予定が分かったが、そうしてもびっくりしました！　二人の日本語が知らない外国人のおばさんが遠く旅行出来れば、日本は本当に安全で素晴らしい国でしょう。　一方、アメリカには英語が知らなかったら、どこも行けないと思います。　素晴らしいですね。　母達は楽しんで、タッカーさんと私にとっていい経験でした。

これからもう一ヶ月しかありません！　信じられません。　ちょっとステリオタイプだけれど、いかにもいつの間にか時間が経ってしまいますね。

Hiroshima and Miyajima

I’m back from my trip with CIEE to Hiroshima! I left Friday night at 5 pm and got back Sunday night at 10 pm. Leaving me with a grand total of basically no time to study over the weekend, despite the fact that I have 6 midterm tests coming up. One of which, Kanji, I took today, and it was pretty rough. But again, I think everyone is in the same boat, and I was impressed by how much I was actually able to do. And I’ve done pretty well on the normal tests and quizzes in the class, so things ought to even out in my favor, assuming I can keep it up.

But I digress. Hiroshima was a really good trip. It had its ups and downs, but it was indisputably worth my time. I am so glad I was able to go!

Friday night was uneventful. Except for riding the shinkansen bullet train, which was pretty nice. It feels like a cross between a train and an airplane, with an incredibly smooth ride and more legroom than either usually has. All 70-some of us packed onto one reserved car and raised hell for the 4 odd hours it took to make it there. Our resident adviser noted that whenever they take a trip like this, if you open the door between the CIEE car and the next, it’s amazing to note the difference in volume. This trend unfortunately continued as we stumbled through the rain from the station to the business hotel we stayed at our first night. I was so shot by the time we got there that I just found my room, took a cold shower, drank some tea, and fell right to sleep. I have to say, it was a nice change to sleep in a bed again instead of a futon on the floor. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

The next day was our day around Hiroshima, mostly looking at the history of the place. We took tours of the Peace Park, then checked out the atomic bomb museum. Later, a survivor came to tell us her story, as well as a nuclear expert from the Peace Institute, who educated us on the current world nuclear situation. I can’t express properly how moving the whole day was! I don’t really cry easily, but listening to the woman’s story, and walking through the museum, it was impossible not to. It was a tough day, and it was very hard to push back the immense guilt I couldn’t help feel at standing on that ground. Why our country? Why theirs? So many “why”s and “what if”s. I cannot wrap my head around the suffering caused by a few insignificant rocks bumping together. Could I keep going after 60 years of pain, death, and nightmares? I don’t know, and I am incredibly sorry that people were forced to do so. The woman who spoke to us said her single request was that we all take her message of peace away, and carry it with us, keeping in mind that we ought never to repeat such an evil. I gave her my word after the speech, and I would also ask anyone reading this to oblige this woman’s request. It’s not so much to ask for, right?

The picture I posted at the top is the picture I most needed to take. It was in the middle of the plaza between the victim’s memorial and the museum. The place was chock full of wild clovers! It was beautiful, and after seeing what the earth looked like after the bomb hit, it is an amazing testament to the power of time and human regrowth.

That night, we all stayed at a Japanese-style inn in Hiroshima, ate delicious Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (basically the most delicious thing ever), and after a few games of pool at a bar, I was able to go back to the inn and relax in the onsen. I went back in the morning, and talked politics with some old Japanese businessmen. Good times, and a much needed relaxation after the previous day.

The good times kept rolling when we took a ferry to Miyajima island on Sunday. It is the island famous for the ootorii, the giant Shinto torii gate in the water. The weather was gorgeous and the island was equally gorgeous, and smelled like the sea. It was great! We climbed a mountain, had delicious local snacks, and chilled with a bunch of friendly monkeys and paper-munching deer. It was perfectly summer-break-ish. After that was finished, we headed back on the shinkansen, all flustered about whether or not we should try to study or not.

Oh, and Monday was my 21st birthday! I didn’t really celebrate much, but I will when I get more time. My Japanese class is going to go out together tomorrow after our grammar midterm to party and sing and what have you, and then I will have another party next week sometime. I’ve gotten some great gifts from Emma and my host family, and one of my Japanese friends gave me a copy of The Little Prince in Japanese to study with! Nice!

こんにちは！　日曜日に午後十時ごろ私は広島から東京に戻りました。　その旅行は楽しくて面白かったかわり、さびしかったです。　広島の原爆ミュージアムに行って、それから被爆者が来て、自分の話を話して、非常に重い気持ちがありました。　アメリカ人として沢山難しい質問を聞きたかった。　どうして私の国でしたか。　それに、どうして日本でしたか。　どうして誰か原爆を作って、どうして今、六十年以上後、世界の最も影響がある国で原爆まだありますか。　難しくて、私はあまり答えが分かりません。　だけど、将来に平和のためにいつも広島の最悪が覚えられます。　みんな、一緒に平和的な世界に変えましょう。　お願いします！

広島以外に宮島も行きました。　天気はちょうどよかったです。　大鳥居を見て、みせんと言う山に登って、かわいい猿と紙をよく食べた鹿を見ました。　今週中間試験が六つあるけど、その宮島の旅行は忙しくなくてうれしかったです。

ところで、広島のお好み焼きや旅館の温泉は私の最も好きなことになっています。　アメリカに帰った時、多分さびしがります。

Living on a Prayer

Viva Bon Jovi! I feel it for sure, now that I’m about halfway through with my time here! I am super busy right now. Club activities are continuing on, class is still barreling along, the usual. But now I have midterms to study for (I have 5, although I’m only in 3 classes… go figure), and my weekend is going to be spent traveling to Hiroshima! We’re going as a group to see a bunch of things, from lectures to monuments to apparently amazing restaurants. A lot of people are worried it will be really depressing. While I could see how that could happen, I don’t think it will be. Probably really thought-provoking, definitely tragic, but I think that this trip will be a microcosm of my Japan experience in general: there will be too much going on to have time to feel that bad.

I’ve had a great couple of weeks, actually. I’ve been out to karaoke a few times, made some new Japanese friends, and started making plans with to show our moms around Tokyo when they visit in June. I got to try on this sweet yukata here at a CIEE picnic. I’ve found a great little standing-room-only noodle shop in the train station I use everyday, and found a few great new little restaurants and bars. I’m managing to keep my head above water in Japanese class, and my other classes are a breeze.

Probably the coolest thing I’ve seen recently was a sumo match. I went to the final day of the big May Tokyo tournament last weekend! It was pretty amazing, I have to say. I was there from around 7 am (to buy last-minute tickets) to 7 pm after the matches were through, and I saw matches at every level, from the fairly amateur to the best in the nation. I was shocked by how muscular all these guys were! Well, most of them. I shouldn’t have been, I think, but still… they have a lot of fat, but there’s some pretty intense muscle on some of these guys. Anyway, a Bulgarian and a Mongolian are the two best wrestlers right now. A little evidence of the growing internationalism of sumo!

みんな、久しぶりです！　日本語が読める友達のために日本語でちょっとタイプします。

やっぱり授業は続いていて、それに来週には中間試験があります。　三つコースを取っているが、日本語で文法、会話、漢字は別な先生がいるから、中間試験が五つあります。　少し心配だけど、いつものように心配だったのに、結局よく出来るかもしれません。

日本人の友達が出来たのはすごいです！　いつも新しくて面白い日本語のことを教えられるから。　例えば、先日日本人の友達と擬音語のことを話しました。　彼女によると、点々を使ったら、意味はもう少し強くなります。　例えばとんとんという擬音語よりどんどんの方が強い意味があります。　そのような面白いことをよく学んで、習えば習うほど、面白くなって、分かるようになります。

明日から交換プログラムの人と広島に旅行することになっています。　楽しみにしています。　さびしい歴史があるから大変そうだけど、何と言っても役立つでいい経験のじゃないかと思います。　しかも、もう一度東京のような忙しい町を出るのはtごくいいと思います。

At School

I received a request from Asaoka-sensei at Grinnell to write a companion blog in Japanese.  First of all, I’m really glad you’re interested enough to ask that!  But I don’t think I have the time to write a whole other blog.  I could, however, try to add some Japanese into these posts for those readers who can understand it.  I have some free time right now, so I think I’ll try.

So Japanese class is crazy, as I was saying.  This week people have just been really frustrated, I think.  I see people in my class just sort of slowly cracking as the crazy schedules and homework requirements and weekly tests build up.  We are working out of one book for grammar, reading, speaking, and writing, and another for kanji.  Since we have to be able to read things from the first book, we have to learn those kanji as well, on top of those in our actual kanji class.

I have mixed feelings about this.  On one hand, it’s a lot of work, and it’s just really hard.  And frustrating.  And often it’s really tough to keep up.  But on the other hand, this approach makes for a lot of emphasis on kanji that the non-intensive classes don’t get.  And honestly, kanji are pretty much my favorite thing.  The more I learn about them, the more I love the Japanese language.  It’s so interesting to see why a word is what it is, and it’s so more obvious to me than most English words.  My common example is “haguruma,” the word for gear.  In English, I can’t tell you why it is called “gear,” but in Japanese, it’s the eloquently simple fusion of “ha” (tooth) and “kuruma” (wheel).  It’s this sort of thing that, if I can see a word’s kanji, gives me a much deeper understanding of what’s really going on.  Granted, this doesn’t happen all the time.  There are a lot of kanji compounds that aren’t nearly as clear as this.  But there are enough to keep me satisfied.

Also, most of my friends are coming home from their study-abroad excursions now!  Steph got back a week or two ago, Emma goes back on Thursday… it’s ridiculous.  I still have two and a half months!  Ack!

これから、ちょっと日本語に訳してみます。多分よく間違うが、がんばります。したかったら、どうぞ、コーメントして、私の文法を直してください。

今取っている日本語のクラスはめちゃくちゃ難しいです。今週みんなはちょっと破けるようになってきました。毎週宿題、会話、クイズ、試験などのことがいっぱいで、それにクラスの定格はちょっと分かり難いですから。しかも、使っている教科書が二枚です。一枚で会話、文法、読解をして、他のは漢字と熟語しかありません。

この場合、私の気持ちはあまりはっきりじゃないです。よくがんばらなかったら、非常に大変になります。そうかと言って、難しいことは難しいが、私にとって日本語の中に一番面白いことは漢字だし、この教え方はよく漢字を使うし、うれしいです。実は、漢字を勉強すればするほど、日本語に興味を持っているようになります。日本語の一年の授業でいつもひらがなだけ使いました。でも、今、漢字がないと、言葉の意味があまり分かります。例えば、英語のgearという言葉は歯車といいます。漢字があると、英語より、むしろ日本語で意味が分かります。面白いですね。

Circles

I’m still alive, I swear! No worries. I have, however, been swamped with all kinds of school stuff. Japanese class is a Mack truck going 90 down the freeway, and I a home-made street luge dragging behind it, hanging on for dear life. (Not that I’ve ever done that…?)

Since I last wrote, I’ve been to all kinds of places. First, there was our one vacation, Golden Week. It’s actually just a Tuesday and then Saturday through the next Tuesday. If you ask me, it’s kind of a cop-out to have national holidays on the weekend, but what can I do? Anyway, it wasn’t much, but it was a short, nice break from classes. On Saturday I took a trip with Jeritt, Aki (a Japanese friend I met in my religion class), and a friend of hers to Yokohama. It was wonderful! I hadn’t seen the ocean yet since I’d been here, as crazy as that seems, but Yokohama is right on Tokyo Bay, so it had a great seaside vibe. You step off the train and are met with the salty smell of the sea air, and the entire environment, after living in Tokyo, is calm and refreshing and relaxed. I definitely want to go back, and I also want to find more places like that, where I can walk by the Bay. I am totally down with that scene.

The next day, Jeritt and I headed to Kamakura, which is actually just a few stops past Yokohama on the same train line for me (you can see it on the above map). Again, the place was totally un-Tokyo. There was so much green everywhere! My host dad said that was his favorite part about the place, and I think I agree. Kamakura is famous because it was once, briefly, the capital of Japan. It also is home to (I think) around 60 Buddhist temples, including 5 Zen Buddhist temples, as well as a number of Shinto shrines. In the immediate afternoon it was intensely crowded (since everyone travels to places like Kamakura during Golden Week), but later in the day the crowd tarried off and it was just amazingly relaxing. Jeritt and I sampled some of the food and drinks, and it was a good chance to just hang out and talk. Very necessary after busy, busy Tokyo. Kamakura is also home of the less famous Japanese daibutsu, or big Buddha statue. Unlike the famous one in Nara near Kyoto, this one is outside. It was breathtaking! You can’t see it when you first pass through the gates, but then you round a corner and there he is, staring down at you.

Monday was a day to chill out, study, and waste some time playing FFIII on my DS. But Tuesday was another fun trip. I went with the Aikido club to a picnic at a park near Kichijouji, just west of Shinjuku. The weather was perfect! Hardly a cloud in the sky, but not too hot thanks to a little breeze. We hung out on a grassy field in the middle of the park, and it was filled with cute dogs and babies and one scantily clad obese man tanning the entire time. We played volleyball and dodgeball and catch, and it was a great time! Check out all our pretty faces.

Wednesday I went back to class, but that night it was the darts club that I went out with. We went to a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome, the Yomiuri Giants from Tokyo vs. the Hanshin Tigers from Osaka! It was crazy. Everyone was super into the game. The head of the club’s parents were from Osaka, so he’s a big Tigers fan, and we all sat in the Tigers’ section. He even brought jerseys for us all to wear. We weren’t the biggest fans there, though. A certain drunk guy sitting just a few seats down from us spent most of the game yelling at the umpire. Classic!

All that was fun, but the big kicker was the following Saturday. It was time for the Aikido club’s new student party with Chida Sensei, the 4th dan (at least) Aikido master who comes twice a month to teach us. I may have mentioned that the Aikido club has a very strong sense of senpai/kohai, the senior/junior distinction. Well, we kohai received a list of rules on Friday night about how to act at this party. Basically it was things like A) Never let a senpai’s glass empty, and always pour beer with two hands, with the label facing upwards, B) When the Sensei is sitting, always sit in seiza, C) Whenever addressing a senpai, always begin with a hearty “Osu! Onegaishimasu!”, but always use keigo when addressing or referring to the Sensei, etc. On top of the multitude of rules (most of which I couldn’t read), I had to wear a black suit (which, luckily, I could borrow from a similarly-built CIEE friend), and learn the two school songs of Sophia University.

That all being said, the actual day was really, really fun. The party was split up into two parts. After practice, we all headed off to an izakaya, basically a Japanese bar. They had a very traditional tatami-mat room where we all gathered. We did self-introductions, ate and drank delicious food and beer, and chatted. Pouring for the senpai was actually really easy, and when I asked (politely), it was no problem to switch out of seiza, which I can only do for about 10 minutes tops. In fact, everyone was really laid back about the event, on the whole, and once I got into the swing of which things were really important and which weren’t, it was no problem at all. Better yet, one of the older senpai (there are a few that have already graduated) knew some English and really liked to talk to the few foreigners. After that, we moved to a different izakaya for the second part of the party. It was essentially the same, except everyone was even more laid back. It was all-you-can drink, so everybody got pretty tipsy together (including said English-speaking senpai, who was hilarious by this point). To top it all off, I got to sit at the table with the Sensei, and we talked about fishing! He is a really funny, cool guy. In practice, he can have you on the mat before you know it, but in the bar he’s just another fun guy who likes to joke around. Plus, everyone was super impressed at everything I talked about, like having done tae kwon do in high school, having a girlfriend studying in Russia, or being a music major. It was rock star status, albeit a foreigner rock star. After the party, I got to ride almost all the way home with some of the other senpai who live in my direction, including one who had just received her black belt at the party. It was a great chance, much like the previous picnic was, to show that I am not just the foreign kid who wants to do aikido but can’t usually understand what people are saying during practice, but that I am also an interesting person who can communicate about a variety of issues. Take that, Japanese language.

3 Weeks Down

It’s been a while since I last wrote! So much to tell.

Let me begin with school. I’m fully immersed in classes and schoolwork now. Intensive Japanese is, not surprisingly, fairly intense. I have homework everyday, tests or quizzes nearly every day, and 5 different instructors: two for grammar and reading, two for conversation and writing, and one for kanji. We cover about one chapter in our textbook a week. Comparatively, this semester’s advanced Japanese course at Grinnell is covering four chapters of the same book. We will do all 15. It’s pretty rigorous. Everything is still review for me, since I’ve gotten halfway through the book we’re using in previous classes, but that doesn’t make it easy. Keeping up with what’s going on in such a rushed environment is very difficult. On the other hand, I do feel like I’m definitely getting the best experience possible, and I’m working hard. I am fairly comfortable having class conducted in Japanese, even though there are times when you simply have to smile and nod. I’ve been doing alright in the class, probably largely due to the fact that it’s review, but things are getting tougher and tougher by the week. Everyone in the class is feeling it, though, so I know I’m not alone. The chapter test we took today was unanimously voted as ridiculously hard.

On to other things. For one, I just made a new purchase! After some serious waffling, I decided to bite the bullet and buy a DS. There’s a really cool kanji dictionary game I got, which has already proved handy. And there are tons of other kanji training and practice games, not to mention all the other games in the DS library. Plus I got a sweet leather case, so when I use it on the trains, it looks kind of professional.

In the world of clubs, everything is still going strong. I invested in a uniform for aikido, which fits me wonderfully, and I’m still going strong. That club is very cool. One Swedish exchange student from my Japanese class is in it with me, and I get along really well with most of the senpai, my superiors. Recently, I’ve started to make friends with some of the new freshman who joined the same time I did, and I hope that we’ll hang out more later. It’s a great time to practice my Japanese, too. As is the darts club, which is also amazing! Last week we went bowling, during which I bowled perhaps my best game ever (171), smashing everyone else. Next week we’re going to go see the Tokyo Giants and Chunichi Dragons at the Tokyo Dome. Oooh, which reminds me! CIEE is planning a trip to see the final day of the sumo basho here in Tokyo later in May! I am very psyched.

Outside of all of that, I’ve been trying to spend some time socializing. Just keeping myself sane, and spending time with the friends I’ve made. Here’s a picture of my friend Simone and I with a group of CIEE kids at a high school baseball game we went to. High school baseball is pretty popular here, not like in the states. It’s odd to think that high-schoolers actually because nationally famous because of the big televised tournament every year.

In another very cool situation, my Japanese class decided to celebrate Showa Day by going out for Indian food and karaoke

together, and we invited one of our Japanese teachers to come along. He did, and what’s more, he brought his girlfriend! It was a great time, and sensei rocked out to some Talking Heads. The picture here is one of my favorites. It’s my classmate Greg in the middle of a particularly intense song.

Aside from all that, my one holiday for the semester is coming up! This weekend through Tuesday, (May 3-6) is called Golden Week. Jeritt and I are planning to do something, but we haven’t figured out exactly what as of yet. This is probably not good, since everywhere is going to be super crowded and everything will be booked and expensive. We’ll see what we can do!

Weekend Activities

This is from last Sunday night, when we had guests–a previous host student. He still lives in Tokyo, and his mother and sister (pretty recognizable in this photo) came to visit him, and stopped by to check out the Nakagawa household. The bottom left is Chihiro, my host sister, and next to her is Tamaki, my host mom. The stately-looking fellow on the far right is Toshihiko, my host dad. The other Japanese woman is Miho, a mutual friend of both the family and the ex-exchange student. It was a good time! They came over and we had an absolutely giant feast. Tamaki cooked so much, and it was all delicious, of course. I was forced to try my hand at a little shamisen, and then Toshihiko, who was apparently quite involved with music when he was younger, also played. (Later he stood and sang everyone a complete, spot-on rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, followed by the somber, short Japanese national anthem, Kimigayo.) It was a good night.

Tamaki is just hilarious, by the way. When she gets started on something, she gets really bubbly and excited and just goes on like it’s her job. It’s great! Very cute, and I suppose a bit stereotypically Japanese, in a good way. A very nice change from the somber urgency of the people on the trains.

One thing I was kind of sad about was that I couldn’t go out with my friends to karaoke on Sunday, since I had to be around for this event. But luckily, i randomly went the night before. It was so much cooler than I thought it would be. Honestly, I didn’t expect anything special, but it was really, really fun. And I am going to need to do it again.

Before the karaoke, a bunch of us met up in Ueno park, the same place I described earlier when I went a-hanami-ing, for a wine and cheese party. Oh man, it was gorgeous, and the weather was perfect, and everyone brought way too much food! It was great just to relax in the midst of this giant, crowded park, surrounded by Japanese people doing the same thing. Just enjoying the opportunity to hang around and eat and drink and have fun. I almost made it to the zoo in Ueno park, but it closed just before we got there. I blame the wine. But it was still a great afternoon, and paved the way for a great night out in Shibuya and Ginza. The pic below is from the wine & cheese party.

Kanpai!

First of all, thanks to Jeritt, my Grinnellian compatriot, for linking to me on his blog, which you can find at nigate.wordpress.com. It is hilarious and informative, you you should all check it out.  I’d link to it, but I can’t figure out how to work the “links” widget for my page, so this’ll have to do for now!

Alright, so that’s it for business.  Now for pleasure.  This has been a great week of just hanging out with people.  Over the weekend, I went out with a friend to Shimokitazawa, a place outside of the main part of Tokyo that draws a very young, hip crowd.  Apparently.  Anyway, we wandered around, found hilarious signs and shops, and ate.  We didn’t know where to eat (most of the signs are in Japanese), but I eventually stepped up and chose this random restaurant.  Their specialty was meat on a stick, which you can sort of see in the picture here, and it was pretty good.  The sake was even better.

Since then, a few friends (curiously all from Macalester) and I hung out around Shinjuku.  We found a cool little ramen shop with great service.  Interestingly, lots and lots of restaurants here work on the ticket system.  You go up to a machine like this one.  You choose what you want and get a ticket, which you then take to the owner/cook.  It’s quick and easy, and you’ve already paid.  Anyway, we walked around some more, saw these cool glass pyramids akin to the Louvre’s (only smaller), and wound up at a place called Kirin City, where you could sample an assortment of Kirin beers.  They were all delicious.

Last night I met for the first time with the darts club!  They are a really cool assortment of 4th-year econ-major boys and first-year English literature-major girls, with a small spectrum in between.  But they are all very cool.  Best of all, they call themselves the “Darts Vaders”… nice.  I am psyched about this.  It was a really good time, and I actually kicked butt at the darts I did play.  This seems like a great low-stress once-a-week club where I can just hang out, talk, eat, drink, and be merry.  The other club I’m doing is the Aikido club, which I have yet to go to.  Maybe tomorrow.  I was really debating doing the rock band club that Jeritt and I saw (description here), but I think that between intensive Japanese, shamisen, these two other clubs, leaving time for hanging with friends, and the possibility of part-time work, I don’t want the added responsibility of being a band member.  But man, it’d be cool!  I’ll go to Jeritt’s concerts, fo sho.