16 posts from 2008

Life After Japan
The first few days were difficult. There was a strong sense of unreality in being back here—I kept expecting that any minute, I’d wake up in my dorm as usual, eat my breakfast bento, and head to school on the subway.
 

Unfortunately, being back in Texas was the reality, and I had no choice but to accept it. It was hard, though, especially since I didn’t have a steady schedule to return to yet. Though there were things I needed to do—unpack and repack for Pittsburgh, celebrate two birthdays—there wasn’t any particular time I needed to be up and dressed or in bed. I never deal well with this kind of unstructured existence, and jetlag left me feeling fatigued and a little moody as well.
 

Of course, it isn’t all bad. I was happy to be reunited with my family. We e-mailed a lot and they kept up with this blog while I was abroad, but it’s still not the same as getting to talk with them in person. It was also nice to be in the same timezone (or close) as a lot of my friends and to get to chat with them in real-time. Being able to read newspapers and watch the news (and TV in general) helped me feel more connected to the rest of the world as well. And, yes, I do admit that having Internet access 24/7 again is nice, even though at first I wasn’t sure what to do with it—I really had gotten used to only having about an hour a day at most.
 

Also, especially because of my sleep schedule constantly changing and therefore spending many hours lying awake trying to fall asleep, I did have a lot of time to reflect on things—especially the changes that have occurred since I left for Japan in June. In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned that I don’t think my personality’s changed, and I still hold to that. My goals and interests also haven’t really changed, aside from the fact that I’m now more determined than ever to fulfill my dream of working and living in Japan.
 

One of the biggest changes is that, at the start of the summer, when I realized that I am halfway done with college, I was really freaked out about it. Though I’ve had my share of ups and downs, I was thoroughly in love with the college life and couldn’t imagine wanting it to end. But since my summer in Tokyo, I’ve done a total 180. It may have been partly because of my spending so much time with my Korean classmates, all of whom have already graduated college, and realizing that the post-college life is not half so bad. At any rate, all of a sudden, I can’t wait to graduate and be done with college.
 

Another change that I anticipate is a change in my priorities. When I tried to go over what awaits me when I return to CMU, I realized that the prospect of the thing I usually look forward to most—the many clubs and activities I participate in—no longer excites me nearly as much. I don’t dread it, but I don’t feel nearly as passionate—and while half of me hopes that the passion will return, half of me argues that it’s okay. After all, my priorities ought to be finishing my Design degree and, if at all possible, getting my two minors as well. In a similar fashion, while I was going over what would happen if I don’t manage to test out of even a single semester of Japanese (which, unfortunately, is a possibility because I did not cover all of the grammar they cover in IJI) and whether I can still get my minor in that case. It should be possible, but it may mean giving up my opportunity to take Chinese language classes my Senior year, which I’ve always been planning. However, I now realize that, although I truly am passionate about learning Chinese because it’s part of my heritage and I think it’s the most beautiful language in the world, it is not nearly as important to me as learning Japanese—and so it would be acceptable to give up taking Chinese my Senior year if that’s what it takes to finish my minor. I realize that I may have been thinking of college as a smorgasbord perhaps a little too much.
 

In terms of more minor changes, I find myself interjecting conversations and actions with, “In Japan they…” I suppose this is not unexpected. It is human to make comparisons, and since I am not generally a great conversationalist, I am enjoying the opportunity to be able to share some knowledge and experiences that other people do not have.
 

Most of these are cultural differences or oddities I didn’t mention in here earlier because I planned to compound them all in one entry at some point. Since I never got around to it, I suppose now’s as good a time as any.
 

·         Japan really is “Opposite Land”. Not only do they drive on the left side of the road, but pretty much anytime we’re right-oriented, Japan is left-oriented. For example, you stand on the left side of the escalator and pass on the right.

·         Mom said she had heard from someone that no one talks to each other on the subway. This is fairly true, but moreso in the morning. The average person in Tokyo does commute a pretty long way to work/school every morning, so on the morning trains, more than anything else, you will find people sleeping. In the afternoon, you will occasionally find people chatting quietly, though in general, the subways are very silent. It helps too, though, that you are pretty much required to have your phone on silent, and you’re not allowed to talk on your cell phone while on the train/subway. Personally, I kind of like the silence. I like taking this time on the subway to reflect and review my day.

·         The Japanese love Louis Vuitton. At least one out of every five women I saw in the city would be carrying an LV bag—yes, I have tested this theory. It’s not unusual to see men carrying LV bags, either. And you can find Louis Vuitton stores everywhere.

·         It really is very socially acceptable to drink, and to say that you like drinking. Even our teachers, when introducing themselves, would say things like, “On the weekends, I like to go drinking with my friends.”

·         Smoking is very, very common, much moreso in the U.S. It is also much more common among men than among women. However, Tokyo does have a law where you can’t smoke as you’re walking—only when you’re standing still. They actually generally keep to this rule. The Koreans break this law all the time, though.

·         Tokyo is very, very clean, but you’ll hardly ever find any public trash cans in the streets. I’m not sure whether it’s the Japanese traditional custom to take your trash home or an effort to make the city appear cleaner. (After all, overflowing trash cans are not a pretty sight.) Anyway, it’s kind of a pain in the butt, for example, when you’re walking and eating ice cream and need to throw the bowl away afterwards, or something, but there’s no trash cans. After a while, you do learn where you can usually find them—outside a konbini there will often be a couple of small trash cans. But until you figure this out, it’s easy to walk for blocks without seeing a single trash can.

·         Speaking of trash, the Japanese are really gung-ho about recycling and separating trash. EVERYTHING gets separated and recycled appropriately. Even the aluminum cap from your yoghurt or dessert pudding gets separated from the plastic cup and recycled. Even when we got lazy, our dorm mother would go through the trash and separate the things we’d put in the wrong bins.

·         People marketing their stores, restaurants, and products in the streets is very, very common, and streets tend to be very noisy because of all the people yelling about their products and services. Restaurant staff will try to stop you as you’re walking to get you to look at their menu. People marketing stores or products often do this by giving out flyers or useful little freebies, like paper fans or little packs of tissues. I was personally a big fan of the tissues. They always end up coming in handy.

·         At stores, if it’s raining, you either leave your umbrella outside or wrap it in a plastic bag before taking it inside with you.

·         At large department stores with multiple floors, you usually have to pay for each item on the floor where you found it.

·         While in America the trend has been toward more casual dress in the workplace, Japan is still very much a country where men have to wear suits to work, regardless of their job. I have to admit I am quite a fan of this. In my opinion, men look their best in a nice suit, so while in Tokyo, I was constantly surrounded by eye candy.

·         Women, too, dress up. Shaunte often complained that she always feels underdressed in Tokyo. Part of it is, though, that women do dress pretty conservatively. Naked stomachs or bare shoulders are very uncommon. Shorts are very rarely worn, either by very young girls or by teenage girls obviously going for a slightly risqué look. Capris are acceptable, as are regular blue jeans, but skirts and dresses are a slightly more common sight.

·         Weekends and holidays are really the only time when you see families on the train and subway. On weekdays, it’s really just the older generations going to work, or schoolchildren going to school by themselves. So, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the Japanese are still marrying and having babies. It’s very obvious that the birth rate is in sharp decline, though; I’m fairly sure I only saw 3 pregnant Japanese women during my entire stay. (Yes, I counted.)

·         Though you’d think people in Tokyo would be used to seeing foreigners, since it’s such a famous and touristy place, foreigners will often find themselves stared at like you’re some rare animal at a zoo. This is especially the case among the older generations of Japanese; the younger generations don’t really do this, so it obviously has a lot to do with the attitude toward foreigners when people were growing up.

·         Japanese girls love American men. Pretty much anytime I saw an American guy who wasn’t either with an American girl or part of a larger group of Americans, he was on the arm of some Japanese girl. They just snatch them right up, apparently.

 

I’m sure there’s plenty of other things I could list, but this is all I could come up with off the top of my head. At any rate, I’m sure that whenever I do go back, I’ll add to the list as I go. But we’ll get to that topic later.
 

 

Unfinished Business
There’s a few pictures and things I failed to post until now, either because they needed to be scanned or I didn’t have time to upload them all. Anyway, now’s the time when I try to clear up all this unfinished business.
 

First off, here’s some photos from when Susan & I met up in June and did “print club”, where you pose for cutesy/goofy pictures and then decorate them with smileys and text and sparkles and all kinds of other ridiculousness. Although I am hilariously bad at posing for photos, I think the end results are quite cute, so I scanned them in for everyone to enjoy:

Also, here are the videos I took at Ueno Park a couple of Sundays ago. They’re nothing too special, but they show some of the street performances and random entertainment you can find when you go there.

Plans for the Future
I had already mentioned that I want to look into getting an internship in Japan for next summer. I had also mentioned this to Takahashi-sensei before leaving, and she told me to check out Temple University’s Japan program because she said that they help their students find internships with both Japanese and multinational companies in Tokyo. So, last Friday, since I didn’t really have anything better to do anyway, I began to do research.
 

It turns out that what Takahashi-sensei said about Temple is true, but the service is only offered to participants of their study-abroad program, since the internships are for college credit. Temple also doesn’t have a summer program—just fall and spring.
 

That’s when I returned to an idea I’d had since coming to college—studying abroad during the spring of my Junior year. I’d given up on this idea because I was worried about not graduating on time, but at the beginning of the summer, I’d made a detailed spreadsheet of my graduation requirements and my progress so far, including which courses I still need to take which semesters. It turns out I’m still well on-track and shouldn’t have to overload ever again. In addition, spring semester of my Junior year is the one with the fewest required classes—as well as the semester I least look forward to. I don’t like the projects they do in Typography IV, and the only other classes I’d need to take are a couple of Design electives (and spring semester of last year, they did not offer a single elective I was at all interested in) and at least one Japanese class. I don’t have to take any CS classes, and I was planning not to. After this semester, I’ll have only 2 required classes (electives) left for that minor, and I’ll have a better chance of getting into the classes I want during my Senior year.
 

This means that it is actually very possible for me to go abroad in the spring, so long as I can find a program where I can transfer my credits and use them toward my Design graduation requirements. Temple’s program is probably out of the question because, while they do offer art & design classes, they do not have a high-level typography studio that I could take in place of Typography IV. Aside from that, I don’t believe I could use my Carnegie Mellon financial aid, and the cost is too high to pay out-of-pocket.
 

However, I did a little more research. My friend Robin had mentioned that a couple of students in her year had studied abroad in Japan during the spring of their Junior year. I discovered that they’d gone to Nagoya Zokei University—Zokei translating roughly into “Art & Design”. That would explain why their credits transferred. So, Nagoya Zokei is a possibility—but I was a little dismayed, because in the end I’d like to be in Tokyo, just because I know the city well, I have a few friends, and I just generally feel comfortable there.
 

Further research, however, led me to discover that there is also a Tokyo Zokei University. They even have a lot of exchange students come from abroad to study there, so a lot of their classes are taught in a combination of both Japanese & English. In addition, because they don’t have a study abroad program but have exchange agreements with other schools, if I can persuade the CMU School of Design to make an exchange agreement with Tokyo Zokei, I believe that I could use all of my financial aid.
 

The interesting thing to note is that the Japanese school year for university students runs from the beginning of April until the end of January. So, if I do go to Tokyo or Nagoya Zokei, I would be going to school from April until the end of July—and would be off from mid-December until at least mid-March. This would give me ample time to still do an internship, likely in the U.S.—with the added benefit of having less competition for sought-after summer positions.
 

So this definitely seems like an option I want to pursue—especially because, for reasons mentioned earlier, I’m not particularly looking forward to spring semester if I do stay at CMU. However, there is much that is up in the air and questions that need to be answered. Would the CMU School of Design be willing to make an exchange agreement with Tokyo Zokei just so I can study there? If they do approve it, is it true that I can use all my financial aid and all my credits will transfer? What will I have to do to apply for Tokyo Zokei? In Japan, even art schools have special entrance examinations.
 

I’ve already scheduled a meeting with my advisor for 2pm this Friday, so I’m keeping my fingers tightly crossed for a positive response. I feel like it shouldn’t be impossible, but it’s quite possible that there are other obstacles or objections. I don’t really know. But I’m really hoping for the best.
 

If it turns out that it isn’t possible, I guess I will go back to my original plan of trying to find an internship in Tokyo for the summer. I’d prefer the study abroad option though, just because I feel like it would be easier to arrange overall and because I really do want to try to avoid being at CMU next semester.
 

Anyway, so that’s where my plans stand at the moment—and, as I hinted in my last post, this is the reason why this likely isn’t the end of this blog. If I do go back to Japan within the next year, I will most likely reuse this blog, and in the meantime, there might be periodic updates on my progress in getting myself there.
 

So, as before, this is not the end. This is not goodbye—simply a “see you later”, because I am determined that there will be a ‘later’.

Tuesday, August 12^th
After my last post, I headed to my last normal class at KCP… ever. We learned some new grammar and vocabulary, though class still ended a little early, and Saitou-sensei encouraged us to use this time to say our farewells. She had those of us who are leaving tomorrow (ie. Evan, Caslyn and I) make short speeches, and I used the opportunity to distribute my business cards. Saitou-sensei also made a little speech because it turns out it was her last day at KCP as well. She’s moving to Hungary to be with her boyfriend.

 

I had to do my weekly intonation and pronunciation check after class, after which I got talked into walking down to the office with Saitou-sensei, Caslyn, Evan, and Gyeong Mi. The latter three all had tests to retake, and though I hadn’t failed anything and thus had nothing to retake, Saitou-sensei told me I should come along anyway. I didn’t mind too much because I honestly didn’t have anything else to do. I didn’t really do anything… just chatted with Evan and Saitou-sensei a little, and then left.

 

There wasn’t any dinner waiting for me at the dorm, so I decided to have dinner in Shinjuku before heading home. I ended up going to one of the many meal-ticket restaurants, where, rather than ordering from a waiter or waitress, you buy a ticket for the dish you want, give it to one of the cooks, and then they bring you your food. I actually hadn’t been to one of these places yet, so it was an interesting experience. The food is pretty good, even if the restaurant didn’t win any points for ambience. For a quick, tasty, and above all, cheap meal, they’re good places to go.

 

After that, I wandered around the area a bit, looking for last-minute things to bring back. I went back to Kinokuniya one more time to look for a book for a friend, but no luck. With nothing else left to do, I got on the subway and headed back to the dorm.

 

I had two main things to do tonight: packing and studying. To be honest, though, I was never too concerned about the latter. I didn’t learn enough new grammar or kanji this term to feel like I’d benefit from a long cram session. I just read through the important parts of the textbook, reviewed particles, briefly reviewed vocabulary, and that was about it. The better part of my time and energy went into packing, which was already a good 2/3 along by this point, but it’s the last part that’s always the hardest. Trying to cram in the last few things, making final decisions about what to keep and what to throw away… It’s tough.

 

Anyway, aside from a few remaining odds and ends and things I can’t pack until Thursday morning, I’m pretty much done now. Even though I have a feeling I’m not going to be able to sleep too well, I’m gonna head to bed.

 

 

Wednesday, August 13^th
I ended up sleeping okay, but I woke up crying. The reason shouldn’t be any surprise—today was my last full day in Japan. I was very, very conscious of this from the minute I woke up.

 

Feeling restless, I left the dorm very early. I needed to mail my rice cooker home, but even so, I left the dorm far too early. After a good hour spent at FedEx dealing with all the paperwork and personnel who spoke very little English, I ended up wandering around Shinjuku and Kabuki-cho, looking for a restaurant to take Fujimura-sensei for his birthday dinner later. I’d texted him yesterday asking what he’d like to eat, to which he said, “If it’s a birthday celebration, then I want to eat cake!” …which wasn’t really the kind of response I’d been expecting. I’d intended it more as a Japanese vs. Indian vs. western food question. I’d kind of freaked out, because where was I going to find a restaurant that serves cake? Dessert in general isn’t too common at Japanese restaurants. Where was I going to take him so that we could have a delicious dinner and he could also eat cake?

 

I ended up finding three restaurants. One was a café that wasn’t really suitable for dinner, but I supposed we could always go somewhere else for dinner and then come there for dessert. Another was a very European restaurant that only had a grand total of six items on its menu, and it was pretty pricey, too. The last was Jonathan’s, a chain of western-inspired Japanese diners that’s pretty famous. Out of the three, I liked this one the best because it had a very varied menu, including curry, which I knew sensei would love. Though I was a little afraid that Jonathan’s might have the reputation of being cheap, I decided that, for the sake of having a nice variety of choices for dinner and sensei being able to have cake for dessert, unless sensei had another idea, we’d go there.

 

I still had about an hour left, but I headed over toward the school. I used the remaining time to read over my notes one more time and just relax before the long exam. We started off with a 50-minute essay. It wasn’t very difficult. 50 minutes is a lot of time and I actually ended up writing a page and a half when they only expected us to write a page. After that, we had a listening test which was very easy. I can happily say that my listening skills have improved a lot over the course of the summer. Then we had grammar, reading, and kanji. The grammar was pretty easy, though I know I messed up some particles. The reading was a little more difficult, mostly because they asked some strange questions I wasn’t sure how they expected us to answer. The kanji wasn’t particularly difficult, but I know I missed a few. By that point, though, I didn’t care anymore. I was so ready to get out. The entire exam had taken three and a half hours.

 

By the time we got out, though, we weren’t done yet. Evan, Caslyn and I had to head over to the main building for a short closing ceremony for our summer program. It was fairly informal. We were in one of the bigger classrooms. Tanaka-san and a couple of the other administrators made short speeches, and then they handed us our certificates. Those of us who had participated in the speech contest also got an envelope of pictures taken of us at the event. They asked all the students to make short speeches in Japanese about our experiences here. Since almost everyone said variations of either “I had a lot of fun” or “I went from knowing next to nothing to understanding Japanese just a little”, I chose to say 「皆さんは、この後で色々な所へ帰っても、日本語の勉強を続けて、頑張りましょう。」 which roughly translates to, “Everyone, even though after this we’re all returning to various places, let’s continue our study of Japanese and persevere.”

 

Afterwards, they had snacks, drinks, and ice cream for us while they encouraged us to mingle with the teachers and exchange contact information with each other before we said our goodbyes. I felt awkwardly out-of-place and was really ready to skip out on the whole thing and go to my dinner date with Fujimura-sensei (who wasn’t present because he hadn’t really been too involved with the U.S. students program), but leaving early seemed to be in poor taste, so I stuck around. I exchanged contact information with Lane (who, I only just learned today, actually spells his name Laeyn) and talked with Takahashi-sensei for a while. She said she still wants me to keep writing articles for the School Newspaper Club even if I’m no longer at KCP. That makes me really happy.

 

In the end, though, I just ran out of people to talk to and felt far too awkward, so I made my escape before the shindig was officially over. I assumed Fujimura-sensei was at the other building—he said that he was officially free for the day as soon as exams were done, but that he’d stick around and start on grading—but he wasn’t, so I called him and had to wait a little while before he walked up, with Takahashi-sensei. While he went inside to get some papers, Takahashi-sensei and I got to say farewell all over again. And then Fujimura-sensei and I were finally able to go to dinner.

 

Sensei seemed surprised that I wasn’t off with the other American students, but while I know that my decision to have dinner with him instead might in some sense seem antisocial, it made perfect sense to me. I imagine that almost everyone was spending their last night with the person or group of people who have been the most important person to them during their stay in Japan, and I guess it’s true that, however odd it might seem, that person, to me, is sensei. He’s the one person whom I feel understands me on more than a surface level, who doesn’t dismiss my quietude as a lack of interest but realizes it is the effect of thoughtfulness, and who has helped me gain the sense of emotional fulfillment I’d been lacking all this time.

 

Sensei was okay with Jonathan’s, so we headed there. As expected, he ordered curry, while I went for udon noodles in curry soup. In the meantime, we toasted to his birthday. He said he was really touched that I’d insisted on celebrating his birthday because he hadn’t done so in years. Aside from having few friends, he told me that his father usually forgets when his birthday is, or how old he is. Not only that, but it turns out that his mother had died in 1995 during the big earthquake in Kobe. (We’d read an article about it in class and I’d thought about asking him if he’d been there at the time, but I’d held off, fearing that maybe somebody he knew had died. I’m glad I’d decided not to ask.) He has an older sister, but they don’t get along—to the point where he doesn’t know where she is or what she’s doing, and he doesn’t want to know. I was quite shocked. I’d gotten the sense that he’s a slightly lonely person, but it turns out he’s a lot lonelier than I’d thought. Unfortunately, I did not know sufficient words in Japanese to express my sympathy.

 

His revelations made me all the happier, though, that I was able to do something for him and to spend my last night in Tokyo brightening someone else’s life, rather than selfishly indulging myself with something or other. Of course, the act was by no means entirely selfless. I was glad to have such good company for dinner, as well as such good food, which I’d rounded off with my favorite green tea ice cream while sensei had cheesecake.

 

To my relief, sensei allowed me to pay for dinner. I grabbed the tab before he could and though afterwards he tried to talk me into letting him pay for half, I insisted, and he didn’t argue. I felt much better about things then, because his paying for everything on Sunday really had made me very uncomfortable and unhappy. Now I felt like I didn’t owe him quite so much.

 

On the walk back to the subway station, I grew very quiet. I tried to find things to say, to try to remain cheerful, but it was hard, knowing that I was seeing and walking through Shinjuku for the last time. It took most of my strength not to cry, but I was determined not to. Today was for sensei, not for me.

 

We parted at the station, at the crossing where the paths for our two subway lines diverged. I still couldn’t manage to say much, but I think sensei understood that it was hard. He said that when he’d left Germany, he’d felt the same way. He hadn’t wanted to leave, but he had to. Anyway, he promised me that next time I come to Japan for an extended period of time, we’ll go to Osaka and he’ll show me around. In return, he said that if he ever makes it to the Netherlands again (he’s been there once, on a day-trip to Groningen), he expects me to show him around, to which I said, 「はい、もちろん。」 (“Yes, of course.”). And then it really was good-bye.

 

…But not really. I knew he’d text me by the time I got home, and he did. And even after I really leave tomorrow, I know we’ll still e-mail, probably fairly frequently. This is by no means the end. So I don’t feel too sad, aside from regretting the missed opportunities to hang out on Sundays and help each other feel a little less lonely. I do worry about him a little, and I hope he can make some good friends soon. Otherwise, I might feel just a little guilty for leaving.

 

At any rate, we’d taken our time with dinner, but by the time I got home, it was still only around 9:30pm or so. Evan had invited me to join Kevin and he as they planned to cross the Rainbow Bridge and walk around Tokyo all night. I’d told them I’d see how much energy I had when I got home. Turns out the wine I had with dinner went to my head more quickly than usual, meaning I feel pretty tired. I think I’m gonna have to pass on the all-nighter adventure, however much fun it sounds, and try to get some sleep. After all, knowing me, even if I did stay up all night, I probably still won’t manage to sleep much on the flight tomorrow.

 

 

Thursday, August 14^th
Before I begin writing, I will admit that this is being written retroactively. As such, it may be more or less detailed than it would have been had I tried to write this at the time. I don’t know, but the fact is, by the time I’d made it home (when it was still August 14^th, though I’d spent a good 15 hours traveling) I was too tired to write this, and it has taken me a few days to find the time and the energy. Just as an FYI.

 

I woke up around 6:30am to finish packing the last few remaining things. I ran around the dorm taking a few pictures, which somehow I’d never gotten around to. At the very beginning, I’d been too jet-lagged to deal with it, and after that, it had always seemed like there was still plenty of time left for things like this. And then, before I knew it, it’s the last day and I still hadn’t taken any pictures of my living environment. So I set about to rectify this at the last minute.

 

My train was leaving Ikebukuro at 9:30am, so even though it’s only a 3-5-minute subway ride, I left the dorm at 8:30—I’d planned to take a whole hour for the trip from the dorm to Ikebukuro. After all, I had two suitcases to transport by myself, and there were a lot of stairs. Kotake-Mukaihara (my station) doesn’t have any elevators. Though I love them to pieces, I will say that the Japanese are not the most helpful people in the world. Only once did a man passing by offer to help, and he happened to also speak English very well.

 

Taking out an hour for the trip to Ikebukuro turned out to be a very good idea. By the time I’d made it to the platform for the Narita Express train, it had been a good 40 minutes. The hardest part had been getting my suitcases up the stairs to this platform. All the other places had either been stairs going down, or there had been elevators going up.

 

The good news was, once I’d made it to that platform and then onto the train at 9:30am, my luggage did not pose any more problems, and getting to the airport was very easy. I suppose, in the end, I’m still happy that I’d decided to forego the expense of paying a courier to take my luggage to the airport, and had decided to take the most expensive train instead. Reserved seats were a godsend, and the train itself was very spacious and nice. They even came by with a cart selling drinks and snacks.

 

The total train ride took about 80 minutes. I wasn’t sure whether to get off at the Terminal 2 or Narita Airport stop, so I made a lucky guess and got off at the latter. Korean Air did indeed leave from Terminal 1. Lucky me.

 

Check-in didn’t take too long. My flight left at 3pm, and I was a good 3-4 hours early, so there weren’t many people in line. After that, since my stomach was growling, I decided to go search for lunch. I ended up indulging myself just a little by having takoyaki and beer. I wandered around the souvenir shops but didn’t see anything of interest, even though I had some ¥3000 left to spend. I later used the remaining money to buy McDonalds fries and another beer, and changed ¥2000 back into dollars just so I’d be carrying a little change when I got to the U.S.

 

At the gate area, I ended up meeting up with Kevin, who was on the same flight. (This wasn’t a surprise to either of us. We’d been on the same flight coming here as well.) We chatted a little. He told me about his nighttime adventure with Evan. We also discovered we were only sitting one row apart, though once we got on the plane, somebody asked him to switch seats with her so she could sit by her friend, and we ended up being pretty far apart. We were both pretty unlucky, too. We both sat in the middle section and had families with kids on either side. Kevin’s were babies, while mine were a girl of about 3 and about 6 who decided they wanted to be friends, and spent most of the flight trying to get over to each other’s side of the plane. I don’t know who had worse luck—Kevin or I.

 

There isn’t too much to say about the flight. It was only 10 hours this time instead of 12, but that’s still a long time. I decided to take advantage of the free alcohol this time, hoping that if I drank enough, I’d just pass out, but I only slept for a little bit, after which I just had to use the bathroom a lot, so it wasn’t that effective. For in-flight movies, they showed What Happens in Vegas and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. I hadn’t seen either, but I’m not a big fan of romantic comedies, so I only watched the latter. Aside from that, I just listened to music a lot and tried my best to go back to sleep, which didn’t happen. I guess the flight also didn’t feel quite as long as I’d been expecting. Before I knew it, we were on the ground.

 

I was happy to have the long flight over with, but I still had a good five hours to go. I had about a two-and-a-half-hour layover at LAX, after which it was a little over two-and-a-half hours to Houston. I also got to deal with the joy of going through customs (first time doing so with my green card—it took all of 10 seconds, which was a big relief), waiting for my baggage (huge-ass flight so it took forever), rechecking my bags, and then navigating LAX to the Continental terminal (pain in the ass). At the other terminal, the lines for security were very long, and by the time I made it to my gate, my flight was about to start boarding. Quite a fortunate turn of events.

 

The second flight was fairly uneventful. We got a small snack, and they showed Kung Fu Panda. I tried to watch because I hadn’t seen it but really wanted to, but I only made it about 2/3 of the way through before dozing off. We touched down in Houston at almost exactly 5pm local time. Recall that I’d left Tokyo at 3pm local time. It was the longest day of my life.

 

August 14^th also happens to be my mom’s birthday, so aside from the heartache at having to leave Japan, it was nice that I was able to be there—to be my mother’s birthday present, in effect. She came by herself to pick me up at the airport, though my sister was waiting at the house by the time we got there.

 

Though I was tired, I forced myself to stay up until past 11pm, to try to get into a normal sleep schedule as quickly as possible. Watching the Olympics helped; I got caught up in watching the gymnastics finals, and actually ended up making it past midnight, though I crashed immediately after that.

 

 

I’ve been working on a follow-up post, wrapping up remaining business (such as pictures and videos that I wasn’t able to post earlier) and dealing with the overall aftermath of returning to the States—my thoughts and feelings since then. However, to prevent this post from getting too long, I’ve decided to post the two separately. I’ll put this up for now, and the other post will follow probably within the next day. I want all this stuff cleared up and squared away before I head off to Pittsburgh on Thursday—though, as I’ll explain in my next post, this is likely not the end of my posts here. But I’ll save that for later. For now, apologies for the delay, and thank you all for sticking with me this long.

Friday, August 8^th

We tried to wrap up as much as we could in Newspaper Club, but in the end, we didn’t manage to finish either my computer version or the accompanying hand-drawn poster/collage that were supposed to be done by the end of today. So, all of us with afternoon classes stayed after class to work on it some more. It was 7pm by the time I finally left.

 

I was hungry and, above all, tired. I’d still been half-debating going to Yana’s birthday shindig, but when I finally made it home, I realized that I just wasn’t up to it. If I’d had time to take a nap, it might’ve been a different story, but by the time I’d showered and eaten, it was almost 9pm, and they were meeting in Roppongi between 11pm and midnight. So, I decided to forego the party.

 

Instead, I’m heading to bed early, and I’ll probably go to Odaiba tomorrow, since I haven’t heard back from sensei and my Sunday plans are still up in the air.

 

 

Saturday, August 9^th

The weather was fairly sunny and bright, so after having breakfast at the dorm, I decided to indeed head to Odaiba today. I left the dorm around 10am.

 

Odaiba is surprisingly easy for me to get to. You have to somehow get to the coast and then take a monorail from there. I’m lucky in that both the Fukutoshin and the Yurakucho lines stop at the subway station near the dorm, and the Yurakucho line goes all the way to the coast. So, I simply took that almost all the way to the end and then transferred to the monorail from there.

 

Odaiba is a very touristy place. Attractions range from a small water park to a giant ferris wheel from which you can see the Tokyo skyline pretty well, a scaled-down replica of the Statue of Liberty, a couple of small arcade-style amusement parks, and a lot of malls and shopping centers. I wasn’t there to do anything specific, so I just walked around a lot and took a lot of pictures. I walked around the shopping centers and went into various stores, but not much really caught my interest. I bought a shirt, and that was it. At the Decks shopping mall, they also had a Sony showroom, where you could see and try out all of Sony’s latest electronic gadgets for free. It was really cool, especially since I’m a total Sony whore.

 

For lunch, I ate takoyaki (fried octopus balls) for the first time. I’d been holding off on trying it because someone had told me that they taste slightly potato-ey, and I hate potatoes. But a stand by the Decks mall was selling them, and they looked too delicious to pass up. They were indeed delicious, and not at all potato-ey. I enjoyed them very much.

 

After leaving the Decks mall, I headed toward the ferris wheel side of Odaiba. I didn’t end up riding the ferris wheel because I figured it was probably expensive and wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without another person there. However, I did go into Venus Fort, another giant shopping mall. However, this one is special because the interior is modeled after that one street in Venice—I forget the name—where the ceiling is an artificial sky that changes colors to mimic the changes in the sky at various times of the day. It was incredibly beautiful and slightly disorienting, as well as amusing to me because I’ve actually been to the real thing in Venice. I didn’t end up going into many of the shops at this mall because they weren’t very interesting. I just walked around and took a lot of pictures of the mall itself.

 

Around 4:30~5pm, I was pretty much done doing everything I could think of to do, though. The only other thing I could’ve done was the big Toyota car showroom, which is free, but since I’m not at all interested in cars, it didn’t seem very interesting to me. I didn’t really want to head back to the dorm yet either, though, so I decided to walk around for a little while longer, just to see if I could find anything else to do.

 

It turned out to be very fortunate that I decided to do that instead of heading for home, because I ended up stumbling upon a tiny omatsuri that had been organized by one of the foreign exchange centers in Odaiba. It was designed as somewhat of a world cultural fair, with different booths representing different countries, as well as a celebration of the upcoming Obon holiday here in Japan. Most of the attractions and booths were being shut down by the time I got there, but they had been saving their main event for nighttime: Bon dancing. Obon is one of the holidays celebrated by going to festivals, usually clad in yukatas, and there are special dances that the festival attendees do together called Bon dances. I had heard of them but never seen them before. The dancing started at 6pm, so I decided to stick around and wait for it.

 

The omatsuri’s attendees were largely foreigners, so during the Bon dancing, the Japanese people who knew the dances took the time to teach the foreigners how to do it. There are many different dances, but they played every song twice to make sure everyone got to practice a dance enough before moving on to the next one. At first, I had planned to only take pictures, but then I realized—I have the opportunity to learn Bon dancing without being the only awkward foreigner in the crowd. What am I still standing around for? So I joined in, and had a lot of fun, even if the dances were more complicated than they seemed, and practicing each of them twice wasn’t enough time to really commit any of them to memory.

 

Though the dancing was supposed to go on for another hour or two, after learning 4 dances, I decided to head for home. I was hungry, and I didn’t want to spend money on dinner since there was dinner waiting for me at the dorm. I took the long way ‘round to go home, though, because I wanted to ride the stretch of the monorail that crosses the Rainbow Bridge, so that I could see the city and the bay at night. I got off at Shiodome and had to transfer subways twice, but the extra time out was worth it, because the view of the city at nighttime from the monorail was gorgeous.

 

Once home, I ate dinner, showered, and did homework. It’s still pretty early, but there’s not enough time to go anywhere or do anything else. I’m fine with that, though, because I want to save some energy for tomorrow. Sensei and I are doing *something*, though we’re still in the midst of working out the details. Should be fun, though.

 

I’m also happy that I managed to survive the day without getting too emotional about this being my final weekend. I think it helps that the past couple of days, instead of dwelling on the fact that I’m leaving very soon and thinking to myself, “This may be the last time I’m doing this,” I’ve been telling myself, “This is NOT the last time I’m doing this. I’ll definitely be back.” Soon. Hopefully next year. At any rate, I’ve basically decided not to say goodbye. I’m just saying, “See you later.”

 

 

Sunday, August 10^th

I got up fairly early this morning, even though it’s Sunday, meaning there’s no breakfast. I got dressed and left by around 9, 9:30am. I headed to Ikebukuro for a little bit of shopping. Mom and Debby’s birthdays are this month, and though I’ve bought various souvenirs on many of my little trips, I didn’t have any real gifts yet. I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to buy them, but I had an idea of where I was going to succeed, and luckily all those stores happen to be in Ikebukuro, which is close and an area I know very well. I was right—shopping was a great success, and I was done by 11:30am. I grabbed a bite to eat and then headed back to the dorm to get ready to go out with Fujimura-sensei.

 

The way my plans with sensei had changed and evolved both amused and confused me. Recall that the original plan was just to go drinking—which probably involves eating, too, but that’s about it. When sensei hadn’t responded after asking me what my weekend looked like, I later sent him another text saying, “So, are we meeting on Sunday? If there are other things you’d like to do, I don’t want to intrude. In that case, have a good weekend!” He’d responded while I was in Odaiba yesterday, saying, “No, no, let’s meet on Sunday. I’m busy until 10, so let’s discuss the details after that. Is there anywhere you’d like to go?” I wasn’t sure how to answer that question because I wasn’t sure if I was just picking an area of town to meet to go drinking, or actually a place to go and visit. I still expected us to maybe meet for dinner and then have some drinks, and that’s all.

 

Anyway, I’d answered by listing all the places within Tokyo where I have been, and said, “If sensei knows any other interesting places, let’s go there!” I had a sneaking suspicion he was going to suggest Asakusa because he’s always talking about it, and he did. When he‘d asked what time, I told him that I had to do a little bit of shopping in the morning, but after that I was free all day. He’d said, “OK, since you have to go shopping for a bit, let’s meet after noon.” I was like—if I hadn’t said that I needed to go shopping, would we have met before noon? I was surprised, but amused.

 

So that’s how our planned and often-postponed drinking date had evolved into almost an entire day outing. We’d agreed to meet at Asakusa’s subway station at 2pm. Sensei was a little late—apparently he’d run all over town looking for a bank that would take his card. I’m glad I’m not the only one who that happens to.

 

The first thing we did was go to a big temple. I hadn’t heard of it, but it’s extremely famous—and quite deservedly so, because it’s both huge and gorgeous. The temple complex also includes a 5-story pagoda much bigger than the one at Ueno. We were also lucky because apparently the temple isn’t accessible to the public all the time, but today was one of the few days people were allowed to go inside. Sensei and I prayed at the shrine, and then we went to buy our fortunes. This temple is so touristy that the fortune papers actually included an English translation, so I could read it this time. Unfortunately, both sensei and I were extremely unlucky; today was supposedly one of the worst days of the year for both of us. All our hard work and plans are supposed to fail, etc. So, in order to try to prevent these bad fortunes from coming true, we folded them up and tied them to these special stands at the shrine. I pointed out to sensei how few other folded up fortunes there were. He was like, “Yeah, why the two of us have such bad luck today, I don’t understand either.”

 

I’m not sure what bad luck the fortune was talking about, though, because I had a really good day. After visiting the shrine, we looked around the souvenir shops in the area for a bit and then sat down to have tea. The weather was hot and muggy, as usual. Sensei asked me if there was anywhere else in particular I wanted to go. I told him I don’t know Asakusa at all, so he should lead the way.

 

We ended up going to this tiny little theme park called Hanayashiki. It looked more interesting from the outside than it actually was on the inside. Though there were teenagers and adults hanging around, it was clearly a theme park for little kids, and all the rides clearly reflected it. There were only a couple of thrill rides, and sensei quickly admitted that he’s not a fan of rides and scary things—which is fine by me, because I’m not, either, especially since my tendency toward motion sickness seems to have gotten worse over the last several years.

 

We started off doing this haunted house ride where you sit in a little car and it drives you around in the dark, and then an actual haunted house where you walk through it at your own pace. Neither were at all scary, and we were both pretty disappointed. After that, we walked around the park looking for another ride to go on. Our eyes finally fell on a ride that’s kind of a cross between a roller coaster and a swinging ship ride. You sat on a large spinning disk, and it basically went from side to side in a half-pipe motion. I felt that that ride was the only one I was pretty sure I could handle within my own limits (the only scarier ride was one of those big tower rides that drops you from really high, which I know I can’t handle) and that seemed at all exciting. So, when sensei asked if I wanted to ride it, I said yeah, let’s go! He seemed a little hesitant, but finally agreed. I asked him several times if it was really okay—I wasn’t going to make him ride it if he really didn’t want to—but he said he was pretty sure he could handle it. I was glad, because I figured that if we didn’t do something at least slightly thrilling that pushed both of us just a little bit out of our comfort zones, we weren’t really going to have a good time at this kiddy theme park. At least now there could be stories.

 

Sensei wibbled the entire way leading up to the ride and while we waited. When it was finally our turn to sit down, he said his heart was beating really fast and he was pretty nervous. He screamed the entire way through the ride, too, while I just sat there cracking up. I thought the ride really wasn’t that bad. The disk spun faster than I’d expected, and the ride lasted fairly long, but I wouldn’t call it scary. It wasn’t the ideal ride for someone with motion sickness, but since my stomach was basically empty, there wasn’t a big risk of me getting sick. I got vaguely nauseous, but that was it. It was fine.

 

Sensei had thought it was pretty scary, though, so we agreed that we were done with thrill rides and would just ride a couple more “easy” rides. We went on this ride called the Bee Tower, where you sat in a little house and it took you up really high and then spun you in a circle so that you could get a good view of the area. I got a couple of decent pictures of the Asakusa skyline this way. After that, we went on a fairly boring ride where you sat in a ship and it took you around the little theme park, monorail-style. In a bigger theme park, it would’ve been a fine ride, but the park is so small that the ride was extremely short and not at all entertaining.

 

We decided we’d had quite enough of kiddy rides after that, and left the park. I was quite relieved. I was worried that sensei felt bad about bringing me here when it didn’t turn out to be very exciting, even though I reassured him that I’d had fun just because it was a cute place. I’d also felt bad because even though I’d paid for the entrance fee on my own, sensei had bought all the ride tickets. They weren’t cheap, and as I mentioned, I *hate* people paying for me. Unfortunately, he’d gone ahead and bought the tickets before I’d even had any idea that they were necessary, and there wasn’t really much I could do about it after that.

 

Even though it was still pretty early (5pm or so), we decided to go and have dinner. The part of Asakusa we were in has a lot of these little restaurants where the tables extend out into the streets, and they serve various kinds of meat and fish dishes, most of which I wasn’t familiar with. We decided to sit down at a restaurant whose main dish was something called suji, which sensei wasn’t familiar with either, so we both wanted to try it. While we waited for the food, sensei told me that because his second job is in Asakusa, he often rides by these little restaurants on his bike, and every time, he’s jealous of the people sitting there, drinking beer and eating all the delicious food and enjoying leisurely conversations on warm summer evenings. However, he’s never had the free time to be one of those people, so he was doubly happy—both because today had been a rare opportunity for him to go out and sightsee and do fun things with a friend, and because by going to one of these restaurants, he got to do something he’d so often longed to do.

 

It gave me really warm fuzzy feelings. Recall that I mentioned in an earlier post that though overall I’ve loved every minute of my stay here in Japan, a part of me has felt unfulfilled—the part of me that centers my world around people I love and care for and strives to make them happy. There isn’t anybody I love here, and I haven’t felt like my presence has made anybody particularly happy. Not unhappy, but not happy either. Because I tend to be more quiet, even when I do find myself in a group of other people, I tend to feel auxiliary and unneeded. The group would have just as much fun without me there. Though I try not to dwell on these thoughts, occasionally it does gnaw away at me.

 

This time was different, though. For the first time since coming here, I had the opportunity to make someone happy just with my company. The language barrier did make conversation difficult at times, but my presence alone also made a difference. Sensei probably wouldn’t have done the things we did today on his own. He admits that on Sundays, his only day off in the week, he rarely leaves the house. He sleeps late, relaxes, cleans, plays keyboard, watches TV, and that’s about it. I really feel for him; I can sense that, beneath the friendly and occasionally strict teacher exterior, part of him is still a 27-year-old, only a few years out of college, living very far from his family in a very, very big city without any real friends. Just for a day, I’d had a chance to brighten this person’s world—and for the first time, that part of me felt fulfilled.

 

The entire situation was slightly aggravating too, though, because as we were talking about the things I’ve done and seen in Tokyo, and I mentioned that lately I’ve done most of these things on my own because my friends are always drinking and partying, we discovered that many of these things are ones sensei hasn’t done yet, either, and really wants to do. For example, he hasn’t been to Odaiba, or Kamakura, or the museums at Ueno. Had we discovered this earlier, we could’ve (should’ve?) gone together. Why did we have to find this out during my final weekend here? Now, there’s no time.

 

Anyway, since I’ve strayed from the original topic quite a bit—we had dinner, and tried suji as well as many of the restaurant’s other dishes, ranging from octopus sashimi to fried squid and cold tofu. Meanwhile, we drank beer—finally living up to our promise to go drinking together, though the drinking part was probably the least memorable out of all of today’s experiences.

 

We left the restaurant around 7pm. (To my aggravation, sensei once again paid the entire tab before I’d even known what he was doing or had the chance to insist that we split the check. Grr!) We briefly went back to the temple to see it lit up at night. The pagoda, especially, is really beautiful at nighttime. Then we headed back toward the subway station. I admit I was a little disappointed that our day was ending so early, but sensei seemed tired and there wasn’t really anything else for us to do around Asakusa, except maybe drink, but while we’d only had 2 drinks each at the restaurant, I get the impression sensei can’t drink very much.

 

So, around 7:30pm, I headed for home, having to make an effort to blink back a few tears. For the first time, I felt real regret. Up until now, I haven’t really regretted anything I’ve done or not done while here. There are things I haven’t done which I wish I had the time to do, but overall I’d say I’ve done the things I wanted to do most, and I’m content. But now I regret—really, really regret—not getting to know and spending time with this person sooner. The fact that today had been really fun made it even more bitter to discover that so many of the things I’d done alone are once we could’ve done together.

 

Back at the dorm, I lounged around my room for a while and then started packing. It’s not hard in the sense that at least this time, I’m not having to make difficult decisions about what I may or may not need. It’s simply a question of fitting everything into my two suitcases, which shouldn’t be too hard because one of them was mostly empty when I brought it for just this reason. Packing is hard, though, because it makes everything so final. I don’t want to be leaving, but I don’t have a choice.

 

 

Monday, August 11^th

I continued packing for a little bit this morning, then left the dorm early to head back to Ikebukuro once again. There were a few more little things I needed to buy which I’d forgotten to get when I was here yesterday. Among other things, I finally got an obi to go along with the purple yukata. I also bought a couple more things at Mandarake. After I finally got that taken care of, I had lunch at McDonald’s. I’d decided that I didn’t want to leave Japan before enjoying the delicious shrimp burger one more time.

 

Class was fairly normal. We had a grammar test, which was easy, after which we just continued learning new material. Though the exam is on Wednesday (for the people staying here, it’s the midterm, while for those of us who are leaving, it’s the final), they’re not stopping to review or anything. We’re just continuing with the book, even though the exam only covers up to chapter 28.

 

It was also my last class with Fujimura-sensei. I’d been surprised when he told me this yesterday—I fully expected to still see him on Wednesday, but apparently they’re completely randomizing which teacher proctors which class’s exam. I’d already made up my mind, though, that today wasn’t going to be the last time I saw him. I’m not ready to say goodbye yet, and after class was over, I dashed out of the room as quickly as I could, just in case he’d decided that today was good-bye and tried to pull me aside, or something.

 

Aside from that, though, I was also in a hurry to get to Harajuku. There were a couple of things I needed to get there for a couple of friends, and I wasn’t sure what time those stores were closing. I succeeded and was headed back to the dorm by 7pm.

 

I stopped by Ikebukuro station on the way to buy my train ticket to the airport on Thursday. As I’d mentioned in my first post, Narita Airport is very far from the city, and even by public transportation, it’s not the easiest place to get to. There are several different buses and trains you can take, with travel times ranging from an hour and a half to two and a half hours, and fares ranging from about ¥1300 to ¥3200. I’d decided to take the most expensive train, just because it’s the most convenient—it leaves right from Ikebukuro station and then goes directly to the airport, so the only transfer I have to make is from the subway to the train at Ikebukuro. It’s also the fastest ride, and unlike on other trains, I have a reserved seat, so in my opinion, it’s well worth the money—especially since I’m not sending my luggage to the airport by courier, so transferring multiple trains would be a hassle.

 

Then I headed back to the dorm, where I studied for a little bit and continued packing. The vast majority of it is done now, and I only have little odds and ends left to take care of, which I’ll do tomorrow night. I really need to be done packing by Wednesday morning. I texted Fujimura-sensei earlier asking him if he’d like to have dinner before I leave. I told him that I want to celebrate his birthday, which is on Saturday, when I won’t be here, so I told him to choose between Tuesday or Wednesday night. He chose Wednesday because he wants me to spend Tuesday night studying for the final. I’m fine with that. This gives me something to look forward to right up until I leave.

 

 

Tuesday, August 12^th

Only two days left…

 

There was no breakfast at the dorm this morning. It’s summer vacation in Japan this week, and nearly all the Japanese girls are gone. It’s just the 4 of us KCP students and 3 of the Japanese girls. We’re not getting any more meals between now and when I leave on Thursday.

 

I got up early, packed a little more, and intended to be out of the door early so I could go to FedEx and figure out how to mail my rice cooker home. There is definitely not going to be room in my suitcase for that. However, I ended up leaving too late, so there was no time to both mail the rice cooker and go to the computer lab. Whatever. It’s not such a big deal. I still have time tomorrow.

 

Anyway, this’ll probably be my last post from Japan. However, considering I still have a couple of days left, there will be at least one more post after this. I just know that I’m not going to have time before I fly back, so my final post(s) will have to come from the States. It may also not be until the weekend, considering the fact that I’ll probably be fairly exhausted and jet-lagged.

 

So, this is not goodbye quite yet, but just a “see you later”. Pray for me that I have a safe flight!

Tuesday, August 5^th

Saitou-sensei’s class today was a lot of fun. She can be unexpectedly strict at times, but in the end she’s really good at making us laugh—and putting us in situations where we make each other laugh. I can’t even remember specific incidents, but today there were just a lot of moments when we were all in hysterics.

 

The bad news was, I talked to Sang Mook and asked him if people were still up for a nomikai with Fujimura-sensei today, and… they weren’t. Nobody gave any specific reason, they just didn’t want to go. I was bummed out as well as angry; after all, half the point of the nomikai would be to celebrate my victory at the speech contest, which I didn’t do for myself but for the entire class. I was also angry that instead of saying outright, “We just don’t want to go,” they just keep on postponing, like they do intend to go at some point. When Sang Mook said, “Maybe tomorrow, or Thursday,” I realized that it’s probably never going to happen, because people just don’t really want to go.

 

Luckily, I had talked to Soo Young yesterday, who had suddenly realized that I’m leaving next week, and he complained that there wasn’t enough time left to hang out and get to know each other better. As I mentioned before, because he has a part-time job, he works every night. However, this Wednesday (tomorrow) happens to be one of the few days a month he has the night off, so we had agreed yesterday that we should meet up after class on Wednesday and hang out. Hold this thought for now—we’ll come back to it in a minute.

 

After class, I did my weekly pronunciation and intonation test, and then I headed over to the main building. Since I’m leaving next week, I have to take an oral exam before I can officially complete the program, and mine had been scheduled for this afternoon. I got lucky; the two interviewers were Kinbara-sensei (the school principal) and Konno-sensei, and I got to have my interview with Konno-sensei. It was very easy; we just talked about my hobbies, things I’ve done in Tokyo, fun experiences and the like. I was a little bit thrown off because Konno-sensei didn’t always use formal Japanese, so I wasn’t sure whether my answers should still all be formal or not. At any rate, I think I did okay, though. Not spectacular, but okay.

 

After that, I had nothing to do but head home. Once there, I called Soo Young, asking him if he’s still up for meeting tomorrow. He sounded hesitant, so I asked him why. He said, “I don’t think other people are going to be up for it. Would you still want to go if it’s just the two of us?” I told him that I’m fine with whatever and whomever, even if it’s just the two of us. I’m just so sick and tired of doing nothing but going straight home these days. I don’t want to spend my final days in Tokyo like this.

 

We agreed to meet up in front of the school around 6pm, since I was planning to bring in my laptop tomorrow and discuss the school newspaper with Fujimura-sensei and Takahashi-sensei after class. Happy that I finally have plans, I sat down to do my homework and work on the school paper.

 

Sometime later, Fujimura-sensei e-mailed me back. I had sent him an e-mail earlier saying there once again wasn’t going to be a nomikai today, and he was also a little bummed out about it. So, I replied, saying, “Well, Soo Young and I are going out after class tomorrow. There’s not going to be many people, but if you want to, you’re welcome to come with us. Both of us would love it.” I fully expected him to decline, since I’d thought he had wanted to go drinking with the entire class, but he surprised me by responding fairly quickly, saying, “Tomorrow? Got it. I’ll try to be done with work as early as possible and come join you guys.”

 

So I’m cheerful again, since now I’m fairly sure that we’re going out tomorrow, no matter what happens or whether other people want to go. Finally! Yay!

 

 

Wednesday, August 6^th

I came to school early to do more of the e-learning, bought lunch, and studied while waiting for the previous class to leave. Today’s class included a conversation test, where we were given different scenarios and had to construct a conversation between 2 people, which we then had to perform in front of the class (without reading scripts). Mi Hee and I were given the scenario that I’d borrowed a camera from her for a day and wanted to keep it for another day, while she needed it back for her own use. I think our conversation went fairly well, although it probably wasn’t as long as it should’ve been. They wanted us to talk for three minutes. After a while, it was hard to come up with anything else to say but, “I need the camera more than you do!” and slight variations thereof.

 

After class, Fujimura-sensei and I sat down and looked over my work on the school paper with Julie, the other girl who was supposed to be helping with the designing but whom I hadn’t been able to get in touch with because I never see her. Takahashi-sensei came by a little later. Basically, everyone’s very happy with it already, but I still needed the photographs, which I copied over today. There’s also information that I can’t get until Friday—the teachers haven’t been very good at keeping track of who wrote which article, so half the author names are missing. I guess I’ll be bringing in my laptop again on Friday. It’s kind of a pain, because my bag’s already heavy enough without it, but I can’t deny that it’s necessary.

 

Soo Young waited for me the whole time. I felt kind of bad, but I’d told him that I wouldn’t be ready until at least 6pm, and he didn’t have anywhere else to go, so… yeah. Fujimura-sensei said, “It’s okay. He’s a guy. He’s used to waiting for women.” Hahaha.

 

After I got done with school paper stuff, Fujimura-sensei had to go to the other building. He said that we should find a place where we could eat dinner, and to call or text him to let him know where we were waiting. But Soo Young had asked sensei earlier how long he’s lived in Tokyo, and sensei answered that he’s been here less than a year, so Soo Young was like, “I don’t want to go too far from the school. Otherwise, he’ll never find us.” So, in the end, we stepped into a coffee shop and had iced maccha lattes while we waited for sensei to finish. It ended up being a good decision, because not too long after, it rained really hard for about 20 minutes.

 

Meanwhile, Soo Young finally had the chance to really chat, which was nice. Although we come from very different places and have had very different experiences, we share a lot of the same views on things. Soo Young also taught me a few useful Korean phrases. I really do want to learn Korean at some point.

 

We were really hungry, and though I had texted sensei to let him know where we were waiting, there was no response. Soo Young tried calling him twice, but sensei didn’t pick up. Finally, we decided to leave the coffee shop and look for somewhere to eat. I said that we could always order appetizers or something while we waited. In the end, though, both of us agreed that because we were still planning on going drinking afterwards, we wanted to spend as little on dinner as possible. So, we had just hopped into a nearby Matsuya, a gyuu-don (beef bowl) franchise, when sensei finally called. By this time, it was already well past 7:30pm.

 

Soo Young tried to give directions to where we were waiting, but as it turns out, sensei really didn’t know the area very well. It also didn’t help that there are multiple Matsuyas in Shinjuku, so in the end, sensei ended up waiting for us at a different one, and then called asking where we were. Realizing that it was going to be difficult for him to find us or for us to find him, we decided it would be better to head to a central meeting spot. Since the school is the area we all know best, we decided to meet in front of there.

 

This turned out to be a bad idea. I’m guessing that what happened was that sensei headed back inside the building to wait, or that they saw him approach, because Takahashi-sensei had grabbed him and sat him down for a conference when Soo Young and I got there. They told us to sit and wait. “Two minutes,” they said. Except it turned out to be more like 15. Meanwhile, we got a lot of funny looks from the other teachers, who all seemed to think that it was highly amusing that we were waiting to go out with our teacher.

 

In the end, though, sensei managed to escape (hahaha), and all three of us being starved and no longer having the energy to walk very far to search for a place to have dinner, we hopped into an Indian restaurant nearby. It’s part of a chain, and sensei goes there often enough that he actually has a membership card and everything.

 

It was 8:30pm by the time we sat down, though, and though the place serves fairly cheap alcohol, we decided to hold off on ordering drinks until after we ate. Meanwhile, we chatted a lot. Sensei told a lot of stories, about growing up in rural Japan, going to college in Osaka, and then his time abroad in Germany. Soo Young asked him a lot of questions, some a little personal. At one point he asked sensei if he has a girlfriend, and in response, sensei gave him the funniest look ever—I don’t think I’ll ever forget his face. It was a cross between a scowl and a glare, and because sensei is usually almost always smiling, it was so contrary to the expressions he usually has… it was great. Soo Young and I almost died laughing.

 

Anyway, the answer to the question was no, and when Soo Young mentioned that a lot of girls give him their phone numbers at his work (he’s a waiter at a Korean restaurant), sensei asked him to share them with him. Then Soo Young said that the next time he gets invited out by those girls, sensei should go with him. I almost cracked up at the mental image of the two of them going out together to try to score with girls. They’re just so different. Sensei is so mature, and Soo Young is so… not, ahaha.

 

At first I was a little worried that sensei might be just a little bit annoyed with me for e-mailing him so many times recently about our failed attempts to go out, but thankfully, he doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, I got the impression he was really happy we asked him to come with us. He mentioned in passing that because he’s only lived in Tokyo for about a year, he doesn’t have very many friends yet. Also, because he’s usually at school until past 8pm on weekdays and even works on weekends, I’m guessing he doesn’t get to go out that often. And he’s only 27. It must be rough. I feel for him.

 

Dinner was delicious, though it was slow to come, and we were slow to eat because we were so busy talking. We didn’t finish eating until around 10pm, and I needed to head for the subway station by 10:30pm at the very latest in order to be back in time for curfew, so in the end there wasn’t even time to order drinks. I don’t think anyone was particularly upset that we hadn’t gotten around to it because we’d had enough fun talking as it was, but I did mention as we were getting ready to leave, “Sensei, all this time we’ve been trying to go drinking, and now we still haven’t!” to which he responded that there’s still time, and that we’re still rain-checking it.

 

Because he’d made us wait so long for him, sensei insisted on paying for dinner. Soo Young and I tried to argue that it was fine, and that we could each pay our share, but sensei insisted, and had already grabbed the bill, so in the end our attempts were futile. I felt pretty bad, especially because Soo Young had paid for the iced maccha lattes at the coffee shop earlier, so I’d gone out tonight without paying a cent. That actually didn’t make me happy at all. I absolutely hate having other people pay for me. It makes me really uncomfortable.

 

We walked sensei to his subway station, which was closer than mine, and then Soo Young walked me to my station. I had to hurry because it was already past 10:30pm. I wasn’t lucky enough to catch an express train, either. In the end, I arrived home about 5 minutes or so after curfew, but it turned out to be fine. The door wasn’t locked yet, so it seems that the dorm mother didn’t care.

 

Unfortunately, of course, that means no shower tonight, and it was gross-hot today. But at least I can say that it was totally worth it. I had so much fun—and I’m glad, because I’ve been wanting to go out with sensei for such a long time now that I’d kind of been building up high expectations and had every chance to be disappointed. I wasn’t disappointed at all, though. My only regret is that I didn’t talk even more than I did—but it’s hard sometimes, when you don’t know the right words to convey what you really want to say yet.

 

I just sent sensei an e-mail thanking him for coming with us and telling him that it had made me really happy. He responded almost right away. Apparently he’s completely serious about rain-checking the drinking part. He said to call or mail him anytime I’m free. Does that mean that it’s okay even if it’s just me alone? I’d always expected it to be me and sensei and the rest of the class. Well, I have a week left. I guess we’ll just have to see.

 

 

Thursday, August 7^th

I admit that lately I’ve been crying every day, usually in the morning, when I check my cell phone or turn on my computer and realize that I’m one day closer to having to leave. I’m down to one week exactly, and I feel like my heart is breaking. I don’t want to part with this place.

 

I once again went to school early to use the computer lab for e-learning. After that, I had over an hour left before class started, most of which I spent studying. We had a grammar test today, over grammar which I’d mostly already learned at CMU, but the test was still a little tougher than I’d expected. We also wrote in-class compositions again, and I had a harder time with this one than I usually do. Having an incredibly difficult time finding the words to express my thoughts seems to be a theme for me this week. I don’t know that that’s a good sign. I’m supposed to be getting better, not worse.

 

Other than that, we celebrated Tanabata during class today. The holiday is officially on July 7^th every year, but class wasn’t in session yet, so we celebrated it today because by the old calendar, today would’ve been July 7^th. It was slightly lame reasoning, in my opinion, because almost everyone celebrates it on July 7^th nowadays, but I guess they were just really determined that we’d get to celebrate it at school. We wrote wishes on slips of paper and tied them to bamboo stalks like they really do on Tanabata. My wish is to be able to do an internship in Japan next summer.

 

I had no other plans after class, and I’ve given up on trying to get Sang Mook and the rest of the class to go drinking, so I decided to head to a photography museum in Ebisu. This was the other art museum I’d read about that I was really interested in because they display CG graphics as well as traditional and digital photography. They normally close at 6pm, but on Thursdays and Fridays, they’re open until 8pm. Since Ebisu is not very far from the school (a 10, 15-minute train ride), I went there after class today.

 

The bad news was, the museum doesn’t have a permanent collection; they basically just display special exhibitions, and none of the current exhibitions included CG graphics, which was what I had really come there for. Also, they had three exhibitions in three separate galleries, and they charged per gallery. It wasn’t cheap (though I did get the student discount), and I didn’t know how much time it’d take, so I decided to buy a ticket for only one gallery.

 

The good news was, the exhibition I chose was pretty damn amazing. I had a choice between a show on insect photography, a show with photographs of America, and a show displaying the World Press Photography Prize winners of the past year. The former two didn’t sound interesting, so I went with the latter. It was a very good decision. I admit I don’t really pay too much attention to press photography, so it was a really eye-opening show. Subjects ranged from the war in Afghanistan to violence in Africa, rape victims in Colombia and poverty in Eastern Europe. Truly fascinating, and stunningly beautiful photographs. Some of the pictures and their descriptions made me a little emotional. Not really having had access to world news for almost two months now, it’s easy to forget about some of the horrible things that are going on elsewhere in the world right now. The exhibition really brought me back to the reality of the world today.

 

So, despite not finding what I had come there for, it was definitely a worthwhile trip. It was also interesting to get a glimpse of Ebisu, which from what I could tell is a very upscale neighborhood. I looked and felt very out-of-place.

 

I took the train back to Ikebukuro, where I discovered that the Fukutoshin line, which I always take to get home, had broken down and wasn’t running. Luckily, I can also take the Yurakucho line from Ikebukuro to get to my station, and my commuter pass worked on that line as well, so I didn’t have to pay extra or wait for very long.

 

Once home, I ate dinner, took a long shower, did homework, and studied for a bit. I also e-mailed Fujimura-sensei about our drinking plans. I said that I’m not at all opposed to going, but with my curfew and his work schedule and the fact that I have only a week left, it’s a little difficult. I asked him when within the next week he thinks he’ll be done with work earliest, and he replied saying Tuesday. I messaged back, “B-b-but sensei, Wednesday’s our big exam!” My own teacher would go drinking with me on the night before an exam…!? Hahaha, the Japanese (and their love of alcohol) are so great.

 

Anyway, sensei e-mailed back saying, yeah, maybe Tuesday’s not such a great day after all. I asked if the weekend was out of the question, and he answered that he has work and an errand to run on Saturday, but he’s actually free all day on Sunday. I don’t know what that means yet. He asked me what my weekend looks like, so I answered that although there are things I want to do, I have no concrete plans, so anytime is good for me. He hasn’t responded, though. I really wish he would, because I want to start filling in the details of my weekend, and his response might have an impact on that.

 

 

Friday, August 8^th

My last Friday in Japan. Last day of Newspaper Club, and last class with Iki-sensei. It all feels bittersweet.

 

Today’s interesting events included finding myself on the same subway car as Saitou-sensei this morning. I didn’t realize we take the same subway to school every day. More than that, though, it was another one of those strange coincidences where, if I’d gotten into any other car on the subway or come into this car by any other door, I probably never would’ve seen her. It’s weird, especially with 12 million people in one city, but crazy coincidences like this seem to happen quite often here in Tokyo. I love it.

 

I came to school way too early, but I needed to use the computer lab before Newspaper Club. Still, by the time I’m done in the lab, I’m going to have almost an hour to kill. That’s not too bad though. Gives me time to study for today’s kanji test without too many distractions.

 

I’m still undecided as to what my weekend plans are. I still really want to go to Odaiba if I can, and I also need to take out half a day or so to do some last-minute shopping, mostly for other people. Since sensei still hasn’t responded after I answered his question about what my weekend looks like, I can’t really fill in my schedule for Sunday yet, and that has an impact on my plans for Saturday. And what I want to do tomorrow impacts what I do tonight. It’s Yana’s birthday, and she wants to go clubbing in Roppongi. I’m not opposed to going clubbing, even if it’s a hip hop club, but I don’t know if I want to be out all night, especially if I might go to Odaiba tomorrow… there’s no point if I’m not energetic. I also didn’t sleep well last night, so I’m already not energetic to begin with. On the other hand, Yana and the others all turned out for my birthday, so I’d feel bad if I don’t go. I just wish it didn’t mean having to stay out until 6am…

 

Well, I guess I still have almost the whole day to decide.

Something new today: I have two short video clips to post. The quality is by no means great, but it’s something new. However, the files are pretty big, so I’m not sure if I can manage to upload them within my hour in the computer lab. I guess we’ll see by the time I have my pictures uploaded and am ready to post this, whether I was able to or not. If not, I’ll try to upload them at a later date.

 

 

Friday, August 1^st

Unfortunately, my wish didn’t come true. Evan already had plans for Friday night, so I hoped to talk Soo Young into going. Since he also really wants to go drinking with Fujimura-sensei, I was hoping together we could convince the other Koreans to go. But Soo Young didn’t even come to class today. Finally, I talked to Sang Mook, but he said that even though most people are likely free, they probably wouldn’t want to go if Evan’s not going. The fact that we’d be celebrating my victory at the speech contest doesn’t seem to matter—Evan is the whole reason the Koreans in our class go to these nomikai events, so if he doesn’t go, they don’t want to go.

 

Couple this with the fact that I had no other plans for Friday night, nor for the weekend in general, and I was once again frustrated and upset, bordering on another breakdown. Cat’s still going out of her way to avoid me. Shaunte still goes along with whatever Cat does. Caslyn, Yana, Kelcy, and Robyn are climbing Mt. Fuji. Evan is renting a car and driving to the mountains with Sang Mook and some of the other Koreans in our class. I knew they’d been planning something all week, but I wasn’t sure what until Ji Young told me. She asked me if I was going with them. When I tried to explain to her that I hadn’t been invited, she looked really confused.

 

I travelled back to the dorm with a growing sense of dread. I know I should look forward to weekends because I actually have time to explore more of the city, but although I know I am capable of amusing myself on my own, the loneliness that’s been gnawing away at me for a couple of weeks now makes it impossible for me to look forward to the prospect of another weekend spent by myself.

 

So, it’s been another boring Friday night. I briefly considered going out on my own, but what’s there to do? Most shops still close at 8pm, and anything else wouldn’t be fun without companions.

 

The only thing to cheer me up was that I had e-mailed sensei earlier to let him know there wasn’t going to be a nomikai tonight, and he e-mailed back a little while ago. We e-mailed back and forth a couple of times. I asked him if he had any fun weekend plans, and he said he’s working the entire weekend. (I think he has a second job, because I can’t imagine he’d be doing work for school all weekend, when the teachers at KCP only teach half days.) He told me to make lots of memories and tell him about it afterwards so that he can live vicariously through me. D’awww.

 

I know that lately I’ve been sounding like I’m obsessed with him, but I’m not. Okay, well, maybe a little, but it’s not that serious. It’s just that he’s so kind, and when I feel down like I have been lately, I have a tendency to cling on to whatever kindness I receive. I think he understands that I’m not a very chatty person, but when I do talk, he cares about what I have to say. And it’s really nice to feel like someone cares right now.

 

 

Saturday, August 2^nd

Shaunte and I ended up having breakfast at the same time this morning, and she asked me what my plans were. I told her I had no idea yet, as I honestly didn’t. Two of the main things left on my list are Odaiba and art museums. However, as mentioned yesterday, I also didn’t really want to be by myself the entire weekend. So, when Shaunte said that she was probably going to go with a group of people from her class to see the fireworks tonight, I told her I’d probably go with her.

 

She said the group was probably meeting around 4:30pm, which meant that I couldn’t really go anywhere or do anything else. I was all right with that, though. Instead, I did homework, so that if I want to, I can go out and do something all day tomorrow and not worry about having to find time to do that. I also just lay back and reflected for a long time, which I guess was nice, other than the fact that afterwards I couldn’t help but feel a little bit annoyed that I’d spent 3 hours doing nothing other than thinking.

 

Around 4, I started getting ready to leave, but Shaunte texted me saying she was going to be a little late because she was still out shopping with Cat. She told me I could go ahead and meet up with the other people from her class, but since I don’t really know them, I told her I’d rather wait and go with her. She said that that was fine, but that Cat was coming too. Given the fact that Cat hasn’t said a word to me for almost two weeks now, I realized that this was going to be interesting. However, since I’d already given up on doing anything else today, I decided to still go.

 

We left around 5:30pm. Cat and Shaunte filled out the little forms that we have to turn in if we want to stay out all night because they were fairly sure they were going to go clubbing after the fireworks. I wasn’t sure whether I was invited, or whether I even wanted to be out all night, but I figured it was always better to fill out the form just in case. Doing so doesn’t mean that I can’t come in if I’m back before 11pm like normal. So, I turned in a form as well.

 

We took the subway and then the train, and met up with the others—Manny and two Korean girls—at Sugamo Station, where we had to transfer to another subway and travel another 15 minutes or so to Nishi-Dai. Manny and the girls were wearing yukatas. I had brought mine in my bag to change into later because I didn’t want to be the one awkward white person on the train in a yukata. You see people like that occasionally, and they always look incredibly out of place, and everyone always stares.

 

The fireworks were starting at 7pm, and we got to Nishi-Dai around 6:30. Everyone was starving, so we ran into a nearby McDonalds and got some food. I also took the opportunity to run to the bathroom and change into my yukata, which was a little difficult because it was so cramped in there, but I managed. I was wearing the blue yukata I don’t like that much because I still don’t have an obi to go with the purple one, and the red one that goes with the blue yukata wouldn’t look good with it.

 

The fireworks had already started by the time we left McDonalds, but the show was two hours long, so we weren’t concerned. We just took our time and followed the crowd. The fireworks were big enough that they were visible from most parts of the city, but we still tried to get as close as possible to where they were being shot off. It was a fairly long walk, but it was worth it. They truly were some of the biggest and most impressive fireworks I have ever seen.

 

We took a lot of pictures. I had unfortunately forgotten my camera at home, so I took a lot of pictures with my phone instead. It actually worked pretty well, although I only belatedly realized that I had the phone’s camera set on low quality with a small size, when it’s actually capable of taking 1600x1200 pictures in fairly high quality. I’m not going to bother posting many of them, though, because I realize pictures of fireworks are not the most exciting thing in the world. I also don’t really have any good pictures of myself in the yukata, unfortunately. Hopefully somebody else will post their pictures, and I can take advantage of that.

 

The fireworks ended around 9pm, after which there was a massive wave of people heading back toward the station. There were definitely at least ten thousand people there. Rather than get crushed in this crowd, we decided to take our time heading back. There were a lot of stalls on the side of the road selling various kinds of food and drinks, and a lot of them were reducing their prices now that the fireworks were over because they wanted to sell out. So, we sat in a parking lot and feasted on cheap yakitori.

 

Finally, though, we decided we needed to head back toward the station. However, I was out of money—I didn’t even have enough left on me for the train fare. I tried to find a konbini where I could use the ATM, but I didn’t manage to find one. Finally, Shaunte told me she’d just spot me the train fare. She still owes me money from when we went to the butler café, anyway, so that worked out.

 

I think we boarded the subway around 9:50pm. It was jam-packed full of people. There hadn’t been time to take off my yukata, but since there were lots of people on the train wearing yukatas, I didn’t feel so terribly out-of-place. We got off the subway at Sugamo and boarded the train. Shaunte, Cat and I got off at Ikebukuro, while Manny and the Korean girls were heading toward Shibuya to go to the club. Shaunte and Cat were going as well, but they wanted to stop by the dorm first. Manny had invited me, but I’d decided I wasn’t in the mood. I wasn’t opposed to the idea of staying out all night, but since Cat had been continuing to ignore the fact that I even exist, I realized I probably wasn’t going to have too much fun if I went. Instead, I’d tried to get in touch with Soo Young, since he’s been insisting that he wants to go drinking or dancing with me sometime. However, he wasn’t answering his phone or his texts, which meant he was probably at work, where he often doesn’t get off until 1 or 2 am. Since it was about 10:30pm, I resigned myself to the fact that I was just going to head home.

 

Unfortunately, as I may have mentioned before, Ikebukuro Station is huge, and I got separated from Cat and Shaunte. This wasn’t a big deal until I reached the ticket gate for the subway line I always ride and realized… my subway pass was gone. I checked my bag several times, taking everything out at least three times. Still, it was nowhere to be found. I was incredibly frustrated—especially because I knew I’d brought it because I’d used it on the way to the fireworks, and I’d put it in the inner pocket of my bag, from which it’d be hard to disappear. But no matter how much I searched, it was gone.

 

Still, this would not be a big deal, because I could just buy a regular subway ticket… except that I had no money. I had, at most, about ¥60 on me, and the fare costs ¥160, so I was at least ¥100 short. My agitation increased when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to get home until I found an ATM—and if I didn’t want to stay out all night, the clock was ticking. It was already 10:40pm.

 

ATMs are not too terribly hard to find, but the big problem is that the vast majority of them don’t accept any American debit/credit cards except for CitiBank. The only places I’ve found where I can consistently use my card are at CitiBank, 7-11, and Lawson ATMs. I tried a couple of the ATMs at the station, but none of them worked. I ended up going into Ikebukuro city to search for a CitiBank or a konbini. I found several Sunkus and FamilyMarts, but the ATMs there didn’t take my card either.

 

Meanwhile, I was still wearing the yukata and getting funny looks and occasionally whistles and cat-calls from men hanging around the city. I was hot, sweaty, angry, frustrated, panicked about the prospect of possibly not being able to get back into the dorm, and I still couldn’t locate an ATM I could use. I finally decided I should head for the part of Ikebukuro where I knew there was a Lawson—but it was way on the other side. I had to walk very far, which was a pain because the yukata restricted my motion, and the shoes I was wearing are not ones I can walk for very long in. My legs and feet ached.

 

At long last, I managed to find a 7-11, where I finally managed to be able to use the ATM and withdrew money. It was now 11:05pm. I dashed back to the station, bought a ticket, and got on my subway.

 

I had texted Shaunte earlier explaining my situation and asking her, before she and Cat headed out again, to let the dorm mother know I was intending to come back before 11pm but was stuck at Ikebukuro. I hadn’t really received a positive confirmation, though, so I wasn’t sure what I was going to find when I got back and was still pretty panicked. In my head, I tried to figure out a back-up plan—what to do, who to call. Since I only got my phone a couple of weeks ago, the only phone numbers I have are Shaunte’s (who was now on the way to Shibuya), Evan’s (who had gone to the mountains), Tyler’s (who lives two hours away), Soo Young’s (who hadn’t been answering his phone or texts), and Fujimura-sensei’s. So, none of those were really usable. I finally decided that my contingency plan, if I did find myself to be locked out, would be to go to an Internet café, pay for 6 hours of time, and spend the night in one of the booths there. It wasn’t the optimal solution, but it would be cheaper than a hotel and relatively safe.

 

Luckily, when I arrived at the dorm (around 11:20pm), the door had been left unlocked and the hallway light was still on. Utsugi-san herself was nowhere to be found—I had planned to apologize to her and explain the situation if needed—but after I had gone to my room and came back into the hall, the light was off and the door had been locked and bolted, so I know she’d been waiting for me. I guess the situation had been explained, and everything was all right.

 

The final frustration of the night was that, because I’d come in after 11pm, despite how sweaty and gross I felt, I couldn’t take a shower because of the stupid 5:30-to-11 rule.

 

I suppose all’s well that ends well, but I did realize once again that although I don’t really want to go back to the U.S., I also couldn’t stay here with the way things are now. If I’m going to live here, I need my own apartment, where I can come and go as I please, and where it’s okay to take a shower after 11pm or in the morning.

 

 

Sunday, August 3^rd

Since I hadn’t really done too much yesterday, I was determined to do something today. Sundays (in my mind) seem to be well suited for museum visits, and since the weather was nice (if a little too hot for my liking—the high of the day ended up being around 35°C), I decided to head to Ueno, where most of Tokyo’s major museums are located.

 

Ueno’s not too far from where I live. I had to transfer from the subway to the train at Ikebukuro. Total travel time was less than half an hour. It wasn’t very hard to make my way to Ueno Park and the museums, either. It’s a very popular place both among tourists and regular Tokyoites.

 

I had previously read up on the different museums in Tokyo and decided that the one I’d most like to visit was the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. It features mainly contemporary work, including Japanese modern art and graphic design, which was what I wanted to see. I enjoy older Japanese/Asian art, too, but those are more accessible in the West, and I have studied them a lot. I really wanted to have a chance to see some work that I might not otherwise find out about in America.

 

The TMAM (as I’ll call it from here on out) has special exhibitions as well, and starting yesterday, they were holding a highly-marketed exhibition on Vermeer. Yes, the Dutch painter. I’d seen the posters advertising the show around the city, and it was clear when I got to Ueno that the vast majority of the visitors were there for that exhibition.

 

Unfortunately for me, once I got inside the museum, figuring out where to go was difficult. There was some English signage, but the vast majority of it was Japanese, with way too many kanji I didn’t know. The problem was that I wasn’t really interested in the Vermeer exhibit, but rather wanted to see the museum’s permanent collection. They were selling tickets for the Vermeer exhibit, but I wasn’t sure if that included the permanent collection or not. There was only one other register selling tickets that weren’t for the Vermeer show, but from the signage, I couldn’t tell what exactly those tickets were for. I’ve usually found that in these situations, you just follow the crowds. So, I got in line behind everyone else and bought a ticket for the Vermeer exhibit. Besides, I recalled the time when I’d gone to the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in April, and tickets for the special exhibition had included the permanent collection as well. Since these tickets were slightly expensive—¥1600—I figured this museum likely worked the same way.

 

After buying my ticket, I made my way over to the Vermeer exhibit, intending to take a quick walk through it and then find my way to the rest of the museum’s exhibits. I’m not claiming to be extremely knowledgeable about Vermeer, nor have I seen very many of his works in person, but it’s just that I didn’t come to this museum to see Western art. It was pretty cool to see such an extensive homage to my countryman, though. They only had about 8 or so of Vermeer’s works to display, but the exhibit also included a lot of works by several of his pupils and contemporaries—all of them Dutch. It was a pretty nice exhibit, even though I breezed through it.

 

However, after making my way to the end, I found myself at the museum exit instead of at a point where I could access the rest of the museum. Confused, I headed back toward the lobby and wandered around for a while, trying to figure out where to go. I finally found an entrance to a gallery that looked interesting, but they were taking tickets. That’s when I realized I’d gotten in the wrong line earlier after all, and really should’ve gone to the other register. I went back, bought the other ticket (another ¥800, after spending ¥1600 on an exhibit I hadn’t wanted to see—I was pretty frustrated), and went to the other gallery.

 

On the bright side, this second exhibit was definitely worth it. It featured a mix of contemporary Japanese art, ranging from paintings and drawings to photography, sculptures, collages, and even calligraphy. Not all of it was necessarily good, or I didn’t always like it, but a lot of it was work that I knew would likely never go on display in the West, or at least not outside of New York City and LA, so I had gotten my wish of seeing something special, seeing art unique to Japan.

 

I spent quite a long time checking out this collection. When I was finally done, I found myself back in the museum lobby. However, the museum still had other galleries I wanted to check out, but I didn’t see them selling any other tickets. Once again confused, I walked to one of the other galleries to see what other people were doing. There were museum staff sitting by a table near the entrance, but it turns out that they were only handing out informational flyers, not taking tickets. As it turned out, the rest of the museum—aside from the Vermeer exhibit and the gallery I’d just come from—were free.

 

Both relieved that I wouldn’t have to pay any more and angry that I’d already paid much more than I’d actually needed to, I found my way to a calligraphy gallery. Or, rather, one of the museum’s five calligraphy galleries. I think Asian calligraphy is beautiful, and it was interesting to see all the different styles and approaches, but by the time I reached the end, I realized I’d had quite enough.

 

After that, I made my way over to two adjacent galleries that were both displaying landscapes and sumi-e paintings—paintings done solely in black ink; you’ve probably seen them. There’s a strong relationship between calligraphy and this style of painting. I love this style and studied it a lot in high school, so it was nice to see the real thing. It was also nice to see so many different views of Japan and Japanese culture. In the contemporary gallery I’d gone to earlier, many of the paintings were of Japanese artists’ views of Europe, especially France, so I was delighted to see more of Asia. I also enjoyed having the galleries mostly to myself, since everyone else was apparently just here to see the Vermeer exhibit.

 

There was a very small gallery showing more modern works and a bit of graphic design. Unfortunately, they were apparently getting ready to change the exhibit, because they were already taking down a few of the artworks.

 

There was only one more gallery left after that. I was tired and needed to sit down, take a break, and eat lunch, but since I was so close to finishing seeing everything there was to see, I figured I would do this one more gallery and then go eat. It was mostly more ink-brush painting, but some of the paintings had more modern twists and used color. My favorite was a painting of three penguins done in black ink, with just a little bit of yellow for added detail. Very realistic, and very beautiful.

 

I kind of breezed through that last gallery, though, just because I was so tired. The museum didn’t have the air-conditioning turned up high; the temperature was all right, but the air wasn’t circulating very well, so I found it stuffy and hard to breathe. I was happy when I was finally back out in the park, even though it was extremely hot and humid, just because there was a light breeze.

 

After eating my lunch, which I’d brought from home with the foresight that everything sold at the park would likely be ridiculously overpriced, I needed to decide where to go next. It was around 1:30pm, and the museums all close around 5pm. The other major museums at Ueno include: the Tokyo Western Art Museum, a natural history museum, and the Tokyo National Museum. Out of all of them, the latter was the one that interested me the most because it boasts the largest collection of Japanese art in the world, but most of it is historical/non-contemporary art, and besides, the museum is so vast that I feel like you should take out an entire day just to visit that museum alone. I also felt like I’d drank my fill of Japanese art and was sated for a while. No need to overdose.

 

So, no more museums. I was fine with that, but it did mean I had to decide what to do instead. Aside from the museums and the park itself, Ueno is famous for its zoo, but although I like zoos (and the Ueno zoo definitely has penguins), I didn’t much care for the prospect of going to one by myself. Also, it was just much too hot to spend that much time walking in the sun.

 

Instead, I decided to go explore Ueno Park a little, taking lots of breaks in the shade to relax and watch people. There are several shrines in the park, and even though by now I feel like I’ve drank my fill of shrines and temples, I decided to check them out, just because they’re always interesting to see. No two look exactly the same. The park also includes a beautiful five-story pagoda which is not accessible to the public, but I did manage to see it and take pictures from fairly close by.

 

Other than that, there’s a large pond where you can rent various kinds of boats. I suppose it’d be a nice thing to do on a date, or something, but even if I hadn’t been alone, it was far too hot. (Yes, I know I’ve said that several times now, but I’m going to keep emphasizing it because it was disgustingly hot—quite possibly the hottest day I’ve experienced here thus far.)

 

In the end, I walked a lot. Apparently there’s a recommended walking/jogging route at Ueno Park, and I walked that route and more, which meant that in total, I probably walked some 3km. Of course, I did take a lot of breaks. I took a lot of pictures, sketched a little, and spent some time listening to a couple of street musicians. It was a satisfying and relaxing afternoon.

 

By 4pm, though, I had to get out of the heat, so I boarded the train and headed back to the dorm, where I took a much-needed shower. I lay in bed and relaxed for a while, half-considered napping, then walked to the suupaa to buy food for dinner. I ate, studied for a while, and started on the next chapter’s homework.

 

At one point, I was transferring everything from my “weekend bag” (which I take when I go shopping, exploring, etc.) to my “school bag” (the messenger bag I take to school with me every day) when I came across a pack of gum in the inner pocket of my weekend bag. I decided I was in the mood for gum, so I slid the tray out of the package (it’s the Japanese version of Eclipse gum, called Excel here, if that gives you a mental image of the packaging) only to find… my train pass had been stuck inside! I was, of course, elated to find that it wasn’t gone after all, because otherwise I would’ve had to fork over ¥380 every day just to get to and from school, though I really wish I would’ve found it on Saturday and been able to save myself all that trouble I went through to find an ATM.

 

Even though it’s only 10pm, I’m pretty damn tired, so I think I’m gonna hit the sack.

 

 

Monday, August 4^th

I almost cried when I woke up today and saw that it’s already August 4^th. The time is going way too fast. Are there really only 10 days left? It’s still a little hard to imagine.

 

I went to school early to do more of the e-learning stuff. Then I went to class as usual. Fujimura-sensei’s class was fun, but I think everyone was suffering a little from a Monday slump. A couple of people fell asleep in class. It was probably also partly due to the weather. It was gloomy and dark all day, and it looked and smelled like rain, yet it didn’t rain. Nothing is worse than when it looks exactly like it’s going to rain, but then it doesn’t. Something about days like this just saps all your energy.

 

I stayed after class for a little while to talk to Fujimura-sensei about Newspaper Club stuff. We want to put out our first issue on Friday so that those of us who are leaving next week still have a chance to see and read it before we go. That means that I need to work on the layout and put all the articles together before Friday. The newspaper’s only two pages, but that actually makes it harder on me because there are a lot of articles that need to be entered. Takahashi-sensei told me I can cut out text at my own discretion, but I feel a little bad for the author(s) if I do. It’s going to be a challenge, but I’m up to it.

 

I had nothing to do but go home after that. I’d already finished tonight’s homework, so I continued to work ahead for a little while, sent out a couple of e-mails, and started on the newspaper design, even though they haven’t sent me the articles yet. I have a feeling Takahashi-sensei probably sent it to my Gmail account, even though I told Fujimura-sensei that my Softbank account is better. I can just transfer the attachments to my laptop using Bluetooth. But if she sent it to my Gmail account, I can’t get the articles until tomorrow morning.

 

 

Tuesday, August 5^th

Yet another day closer to my departure. A sickening sense of dread is settling in my stomach. I know I’ve been feeling conflicted, between my desire to stay here and my recent loneliness and sense of isolation, but in the end the desire to stay here wins out. Unfortunately, I don’t have any choice in the matter. I have to go back.

 

I went to school early again to use the computer lab, for posting my blog and pictures this time. I’m also trying to upload my videos that I took at Ueno Park, but the files are pretty big (about 100 megs each) so I don’t think it’s possible to do so within my hour in the lab. If I can manage to post them at some point, I will.

 

Other than that, I have class, and then my oral proficiency test that’s part of my final grade around 5:30pm. I’m not a big fan of oral exams, but there isn’t really a way to prepare for them, so I’ve managed to not really stress out about it too much. No use worrying about it until it happens.

 

On a bright note, today could be the day I go drinking with Fujimura-sensei. Everyone had agreed that Tuesday works for them, although we didn’t really iron out the details yesterday because everyone was so brain-dead, so there’s a small chance it might not happen. Hopefully it will, though, because I’ve waited long enough. The other problem could be that sensei said that he usually doesn’t get off work until 7pm at the earliest, possibly 8 or 9. With my curfew, depending on where we go drinking, I can’t really stay out past 10. Given how long I’ve waited for this, it’d be hugely upsetting if we get to spend less than an hour drinking together. Damn curfew! I’ve been getting really annoyed with it this past week.

No pictures this time, sorry! The only thing that’s happened that was worthy of pictures was the school speech contest, and I wasn’t in the mental state to be photographing. However, Un Young took a lot of pictures, so I’m going to ask her to send those to me, and then I’ll post them as soon as I can.

 

 

Tuesday, July 29^th

When I posted my previous entry this morning, I still felt okay. It was just going to be an ordinary school day. Nothing special about it.

 

But as the day progressed, I felt an increasing sense of… unease. It’s hard to describe. You may have felt it before—it’s this sensation where you feel like there’s something unexplainably wrong with the world today, or with you, or both. Something is decidedly off. And the more aware you become of it—the sensation, not the cause, because you don’t know the cause—the more it builds and builds inside of you.

 

It all came to a head when I suddenly burst into tears on the subway home. Nothing bad or unusual had happened. Class with Saitou-sensei had gone fine; speech practice with Takahashi-sensei afterwards had been short and painless. Nothing had happened on the subway, either. I had just been sitting by myself, zoning out while listening to my mp3 player, when I just suddenly started crying.

 

When I got to the dorm, I ate dinner and did my homework quickly, then lay on my bed to give myself a chance to reflect and try to figure out what the problem is. My thoughts are a mess, but I will try to convey them as coherently as possible.

 

In the handbook that we received prior to our departure for Japan, there’s a section that talks about the different phases of a study abroad experience—culture shock, adjustment, return anxiety, etc. Though I’ve only read through the handbook a couple of times, one sentence from that section has stayed with me: “Upon your return, you wonder if your family and friends will recognize you because you have changed so much.”

 

I wonder if that will be true for me. I don’t feel like I have really changed very much as a person. I don’t mean to sound pretentious, but think I already had a pretty good idea of who I am and who I want to be, so I didn’t come here in search of that person. This is also not my first time abroad, nor my first time being away from home for so long, so those aspects of this experience haven’t fazed me. Sometimes, I’m strongly reminded of when we first moved to Germany. Of course, I was much younger then, and had my family with me, but there are a lot of parallels. I had begun to learn English about 6 months before we moved, but I still remember realizing the hard way as early as the first day of school that I did not know nearly enough to express myself. The frustration of being in a place where you don’t really speak the language very well is nothing new to me.

 

At the same time, something must have changed. This is not by any means an insignificant experience—I am fairly sure it is one of the most significant in my life thus far—so, by definition, something must have changed. But what?

 

The only answer to that question that I’ve been able to find so far is that this experience was for me an affirmation, an answer to a question I’ve been asking myself for nearly ten years. From the first time when I began to develop a serious interest in Japanese culture, I’ve wondered about this place. What’s it really like? Can I fit in? Might I be able to feel at home there? Of course, you could argue that after ten years of anticipation, the chances of me being disappointed were slim, but you must also consider that such anticipation leads to high expectations, so I did have every chance of being let down.

 

The Might I be able to feel at home there? question is closely tied to the question I most often ask myself, and the one I also briefly discussed here once before. It is, ironically, also one of the questions I am most frequently asked, and yet I still always have trouble deciding how to answer. “So where are you from?” I think I give a different answer every time. Sometimes I say I’m from the Netherlands, but that kind of gives people the wrong idea if I don’t mention that I currently live in America. I don’t like just saying that I’m from America, though, because I don’t feel that way—I don’t feel at home there, and I don’t consider myself an American. (I am also, technically, not one. I am not even eligible for U.S. citizenship until next year.) So then I sometimes say some variation of, “I live in America, but I’m originally from the Netherlands,” but that sounds a little pretentious and long-winded if I’m introducing myself to a stranger. Also, lately, I have the difficulty of trying to decide how to answer when people ask me, “Where in America?” Where, indeed? I feel more at home in Pittsburgh, and I currently spend more of the time there than in Houston, but overall I’ve spent more time in Texas, and that’s where my family lives. Because of this, lately, I find myself often using the very vague, “I’m kind of from all over.”

 

And what about now? What should I say when I go back to America and people ask me that horribly difficult question? Would it be so terribly wrong to answer “I’m from Japan”? True, I only stayed here for two months, and I technically have nothing tying me to this place other than my own personal attachments. But what do you do when you feel like you’ve found a place where you feel at home, you just don’t live there yet?

 

A friend of mine studied abroad in Shanghai, and it changed her life. After she came back to the U.S., she changed the “Hometown” field on her Facebook profile to “Shanghai, China”. At the time, I remember thinking it was a very pretentious thing to do because she, like me, had only been there for about 2-3 months. But now, I can understand why she did it, how she must have felt.

 

I don’t want to go back. I’m not saying America is a bad country. I don’t absolutely loathe it. I know I’m fortunate to have lived there, especially in terms of the top-class education I’ve received. And yet, there is a sense… The closest word to describe it would be “regret”, though that is not really an accurate description. After all, how can I regret something I had no control over? Still, I find myself wishing I could rewrite the earlier years of my life, locating myself in Japan instead. I am not angry with my parents for not bringing me here; it is not their, or anyone’s, fault. And yet there is this futile sense of frustration that I’ve spent 20 years of my life not being here.

 

That sense of frustration is heightened when I realize that it might easily be another couple of years before I finally can be here all the time. Not only do I not want to go back, but how can I? How do I pick up the threads of a life that I don’t want to live?

 

And yet, that is not entirely true either. Though I have always felt that I have nothing to look forward to if I stay in America, especially beyond college graduation, I do have some lingering attachments—not really to the places, but to the people. Though I do have a high degree of personal independence, part of me also builds my world around the people I love—my family and my friends. I suppose that is the one problem with my current life here; there is no one whom I love. I believe that the opportunity to brighten someone I love’s day is the one thing, above all else, that makes life more livable, more enjoyable, and that part of me is, at present, unfulfilled. With that in mind, I try to tell myself that going back to America is not an entirely bad thing.

 

Still, I dread it, and I find myself envying my classmates, most of who will stay in Japan to study for at least another year and a half. I almost wish I was living their life—almost wish I could just quit college and come here and live the same way, working part-time jobs, studying Japanese all day, every day, and just being here, in Tokyo. In the end, I do want to finish college, though. Getting my degree is at the top of the list of things I want to accomplish. But I do know that when I go back, the thought that will be constantly occupying my thoughts is, How soon can I go back to Japan? How much longer do I have to wait until I can live the life I want to live?

 

Since those questions as yet remain unanswered, I suppose I will have to stop here for the time being. All this introspection is not helping my melancholy mood, at any rate. Sorry for taking up everyone’s time with my rambling. I suppose this kind of entry was inevitably going to happen at some point, though. Well, hopefully it’s out of my system now, and tomorrow will be a better day.

 

 

Wednesday, July 30^th

After waking up around 7:30am as usual for breakfast, I started on a drawing. In my speech, I talk about the Dutch tradition/custom of holding an open-air market (青空市場) every week. Takahashi-sensei told me that since most people either don’t understand what that means or how to visualize it, it would be better if I accompanied that line with a visual. Since printing out a photograph large enough for everyone to see, that meant I had to draw it.

 

I had bought a large poster board after class yesterday, and had intended to start on the picture that night, but because of my sudden onset of melancholy, I hadn’t gotten to it. I tend to be very productive in the mornings, though, and today was no different. I had sketched out the entire picture and had started on the coloring by the time I needed to leave for school. I decided to bring the picture with me because I only have colored pencils, so I hoped to borrow the teachers’ markers to for the outlines, to make it clearer for people sitting far away. I admit it was also intended partly as an excuse to stay after school longer and hopefully get to talk to Fujimura-sensei a little more.

 

Class was fun, as usual. We had a grammar test, which was pretty easy, after which Fujimura-sensei went through the usual kanji and grammar lessons quickly to make sure we had lots of time to work on the two ouen performances for Kuma and I. I spent that time working on my drawing because they had needed markers for the ouen props as well, so they were conveniently there for me to use.

 

Even though class was already officially over, before everyone took off, Fujimura-sensei asked Kuma and I to give our speeches in front of the class, since we hadn’t done so yesterday after all. Though it was nice to practice with a larger audience, just to get more of a feel for what tomorrow will be like, I kind of wish he hadn’t asked us to do so. After I gave my speech—all from memory, with gestures, and now with the drawing as a prop as well—my class got really excited, and everyone was talking about how I’m going to win first place. This sucks! Now I feel like the pressure’s really on. Before, I was just worried about not letting Fujimura and Takahashi-sensei down, but now I’m worried about disappointing the entire class if I don’t win. Gah!

 

After that, I went to speech practice, but Fujimura and Takahashi-sensei said that, since they both thought I was in good shape, I only needed to recite my speech one more time, and they’d give me a few final tips, and that was it. Since I’d already used the markers, I didn’t really have an excuse to stick around, and I was actually a little disappointed, until I remembered my article for the Newspaper Club, which I’d finished and printed that morning. I had Takahashi-sensei read it and correct my mistakes, and then she had me have Fujimura-sensei read it over as well, at which point Saitou-sensei became curious and asked to read it after he finished. I had to explain about the butler café a little more because they were all interested.

 

But then it really was time to leave. I was actually upset that I was leaving earlier than normal. The prospect of spending my final night before the speech contest alone in the dorm just didn’t appeal to me.

 

I cheered myself up by going to the big suupaa near the dorm and buying more green tea ice cream, beer, and chips. I practiced my speech a couple more times and then put the finishing touches on my drawing. It’s not very good—I can’t help but think of it as very elementary-school, since there’s minimal shading and the perspective is not accurate—but I suppose it’ll fool people who aren’t artists. Besides, it’s only going to be displayed for about 10-15 seconds, so it’s not worth putting more effort into.

 

It’s still early, but I’m going to try to sleep. I want to be rested tomorrow. The last thing I want to have happen is to have an uncontrollable urge to yawn while I’m giving my speech.

 

 

Thursday, July 31^st

So, this was it: the long-anticipated day of the school speech contest.

 

It was also the first day since the beginning of the month when I actually had to be up early. The speech contest started at 9:30am, and instead of being close to the school, the auditorium they were using was in Choufu—a good ~30-minute train ride from Shinjuku. I woke up at 6:30am to get dressed and put on a little make-up, and then took off right after breakfast. I made it to Choufu shortly after 9am—a little early, but that was better on my nerves than if I would’ve been late.

 

Once everyone was ushered into the hall, those of us giving speeches were segregated from our classes for the rest of the event. They had separated the speeches into two sessions, before lunch and after lunch. Those giving speeches before lunch had to sit up on the stage until then, while those of us giving speeches after lunch had to sit at the front of the auditorium, away from everyone else. It was a little frustrating to be separated from everyone this way, but luckily Yana and I were both giving speeches after lunch, so we sat together for the morning half of the event.

 

I have to say that the speeches, overall, were much better than I’d expected. Almost everyone did have theirs memorized, and many of them used at least a few gestures. The pronunciation and accents were also pretty good, especially the Koreans’. I have to say that the most common problems were lack of energy and making awkward pauses in the middle of a sentence. Aside from that, though, the speeches were well done, even if some subjects were less interesting than others. As soon as the first 10 or so people had gone, I felt a sinking feeling when I realized I was never going to win anything, and my entire class was going to be disappointed.

 

The lunch break was 30 minutes long, though those of us giving speeches after had to be on stage 5 minutes before the end of the break. I quickly wolfed down the bread and juice I’d brought with me and then went back into the (now) empty auditorium to practice one more time. Then I was ushered up on stage, and they seated us in the order we were giving our speeches in.

 

I was 24^th out of all the speakers and about the 7^th or so person after the lunch break. It got to me quicker than I would’ve liked, but that also did mean I got it over with sooner. I also realized the true value of the ouen—you don’t spend the last minute before your speech being nervous because you’re watching your class do silly things to cheer you on. In my case, the boys hadn’t had time to make the blonde wigs after all, but they still did silly dances to the techno music I’d provided. Sang Mook had had to leave early, so at the last minute, Fujimura-sensei had been called on by the class to take his place. I was too busy laughing at his little dance to be very nervous.

 

I can’t honestly give specifics about what happened during my speech, because I don’t honestly remember. It’s like I blacked out. Of course, I was completely aware of what was happening while I was giving the speech, but afterwards, I couldn’t remember a single detail. I didn’t forget anything during the speech, though. I did have the written copy on the podium in front of me in case I did forget, but I didn’t wind up needing it at all.

 

It was over more quickly than I thought it would be, and afterwards, there was a huge surge of relief. I had done okay. Maybe not fabulous, but okay. I was content.

 

There were still a good 15~20 or so speeches after me, and I had to stay seated on the stage, but I was much more relaxed after I’d gone. Yana went towards the end, and she did a good job as well.

 

Once all the speakers were done, we were ushered off the stage. There were various musical and dance performances while the judges tallied their scores. There were also several scholarships awarded, and once of the judges gave a short speech about what he’d thought of the overall event.

 

Then it was time for the awards. Six different awards were given out: the ouen prize (awarded to the entire class for their ouen), the performance prize (for a speaker, not for the ouen), the student prize (for a speaker voted on by the students), the KCP prize (for a speaker voted on by the teachers), and the first, second, and third place prizes as determined by the judges’ scores.

 

I ended up tying with another girl for the third place prize, which I thought amazing enough considering all the other prize winners (except for a Level 1.5 student who won the performance prize because of the little skit he’d worked into his speech) were Level 4 and above. The girl I tied with is Level 5 and has the best pronunciation of all the white Japanese-speaking people I’ve ever met. They actually called her name before they called mine, so when they said that she won third place, I thought, “Okay, if she’s only third then there’s no way I’m ever going to win.” Imagine my surprise when they called my name right after hers.

 

All the prize-winners had to go up on stage, where we received certificates and large gift boxes from the school’s president. Then everyone else was dismissed, while we had to stick around for pictures and interviews with the other members of the Newspaper Club. The Newspaper Club members were pretty excited that one of their own had won a prize, although my answers to their questions were pretty nonsensical because I was so overwhelmed. It was a blur of congratulations, bowing, and thank-you’s.

 

Finally, the Newspaper Club people trickled out of the room, leaving only Un Young, Fujimura-sensei and I, as well as Ji Young, who had stuck around because she and Un Young were going home together. I asked Fujimura-sensei what we were going to do about our planned nomikai, and he, too, was very disappointed, but there wasn’t really anything that we could do since everyone else from our class had already taken off. I was a little frustrated because half the reason I’d worked so hard and done so well was because I’d wanted us to have something to celebrate, but now there was no one to celebrate with.

 

Takahashi-sensei came and congratulated me briefly and then disappeared again. Un Young, Ji Young and I took our leave of Fujimura-sensei and headed for the train station, but halfway there, he caught up with us and said that since he was leaving as well, we might as well all go together. We rode the train back to Shinjuku Station, and then the others talked me into taking the Marunouchi subway line to Shinjuku-sanchome station (where I catch my usual subway line back) just so we could all travel together a little longer. It was nice to have travel buddies again, and I enjoyed the extra opportunity to talk to sensei, even if I was too flustered by everything that had happened to say much of anything coherent.

 

It was frustrating to go straight home on an afternoon when I should’ve been celebrating. Unfortunately, I had little else to do. Everyone else had taken off, and given the big gift box I was carrying, I wasn’t really in the condition to go adventuring on my own. So, back to the dorm it was.

 

Once there, the first thing I did, of course, was open the box. Turns out my prize is a rice cooker. Perhaps a little weird of an award for a speech contest, but I can’t complain, because it’s very useful. I had, in fact, been thinking of buying a rice cooker just before I came to Japan, but luckily had decided to hold off. Now I don’t have to!

 

Other than that, I haven’t really done much of anything. I relaxed for a while, ate dinner, showered, and relaxed some more. I still haven’t started my homework, but there’s time for that in the morning. It won’t take long, anyway. I have a kanji test tomorrow, too, but I can’t get myself to care very much. Right now, the last thing I want to be doing is studying.

 

Fujimura-sensei told me that we still have to go out for a victory nomikai sometime, although I don’t know when that’ll happen. We were talking about maybe tomorrow, but people might already have plans. Then, of course, there’s next week, but I don’t want to have to put it off for that long. Call me impatient, but like I said, this is half the reason I did so well! Now I want to celebrate, dangit!

 

 

Friday, August 1^st

The fact that it’s August saddens me. Less than two weeks now until I leave. I’m not at all happy about the prospect.

 

The fact that it’s almost weekend again also doesn’t really help my mood. Yeah, it means I won’t have class and I can go exploring, but chances are good I’ll be doing it alone, and I don’t know that that’s really something to look forward to. One day of exploring by myself is fine, but I don’t want to be alone for the entire weekend. But what can I do when everyone else has already made plans, and I wasn’t invited?

 

This blog isn’t supposed to be my own private pity party, though, so… moving on.

 

This morning was basically the usual story. I got up for breakfast, finished homework, slowly got ready for school, and left early to use the computer lab. I have Newspaper Club again, where I get to see my favorite teacher and read my article about the butler café, so that should be fun. Having Iki-sensei for class will likely not be so much fun, but there’s nothing I can really do about that. And then, afterwards… I have no idea. I really hope people are up for going out with Fujimura-sensei, and I don’t want to spend another Friday night being stuck at home by myself. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Friday, July 25^th

After my last post, as mentioned, I went to Newspaper Club. A lot of people didn’t show up; it seems like our membership has dropped by almost half. The bad news is, they seem to have given up on the idea of the small groups going places together, so the suggested outing to an omatsuri probably isn’t happening. The good news is, everyone approved of the idea of me writing an article about the butler café. No one had heard of it before, and I had to give everyone a brief explanation. When I tried to explain that it’s similar to a maid café, Fujimura-sensei asked if you had to dress up to go to the butler café. When I explained that, no, regular clothes are fine, he said something along the lines of wanting to see me in a maid outfit. I wasn’t sure how to take that comment. In my opinion, I’d look pretty terrible in a maid outfit, or any kind of Lolita-esque clothing. I’m too tall.

 

Anyway, after that, we had class as usual, with Iki-sensei, the Friday teacher everyone hates. Today seemed to be a particularly bad day, because not only was she as boring as usual, but she kept making these awkward mistakes when she was writing on the board. Watching a teacher repeatedly screw up gets to be pretty painful. After a while, I even stopped feeling sorry for her and just wanted class to be over with already. Luckily, she ended class pretty early (around 4pm or so) so everyone could work on the ouen.

 

I had speech practice again after that, but luckily it was with Takahashi-sensei instead of with Iki-sensei. At first, she was busy working on various things, though, so I worked on memorizing it and had it all memorized by the time she had time to listen to me recite it. She seemed extremely pleased; it seems that I’m ahead of schedule, so now she wants me to work on using more gestures when I speak. I don’t normally speak with my hands, so it’s very unnatural for me and will be pretty difficult. I do have almost another week, though, so I can try to make it work.

 

Overall, speech practice went more quickly than usual, and for the first time, I was out of there before 6pm. The bad news was, I had no plans. Shaunte hadn’t even come to school today because she was still out with Cat and her college friends. For as far as I knew, Evan had just gone straight home after class. Kelcy, Caslyn, Yana, Kevin & co. seemed to have been talking about plans to go out earlier, but nobody had filled me in or explicitly invited me. I started walking to the station when I ran into the awkward situation of being only about 100m behind Kelcy & co. and being headed in the same direction. In other words, I had a choice of joining up with them. However, I didn’t want to seem like I was inviting myself along; since they hadn’t filled me in, that probably meant that they didn’t particularly want me along, and I didn’t want to force my company on them. So, I ended up purposely walking slowly so they wouldn’t spot me and ended up going home by myself.

 

Once there, I didn’t really do too much. Shaunte was finally home when I got there, so we had dinner together. Then I showered and spent some time e-mailing a few people. Overall, I’d say buying the phone was a good idea after all. Feeling connected to the people back home makes the moments of loneliness much more bearable.

 

 

Saturday, July 26^th

When I saw Shaunte at dinner last night, she had been in her PJs, so I had assumed that she was staying in. Besides, she’d been complaining about being tired. However, when I woke up in time for breakfast, I saw Cat’s slippers weren’t by her door, and when I went to go check, I could tell by the name sign board downstairs that both she and Shaunte had spent the night out again. I was a little annoyed because I’d been hoping to convince Shaunte to go to Odaiba with me today, since she’d said earlier this week that she really wanted to do some more touristy things.

 

However, I wasn’t going to let that stop me from doing something today. The list of things I still wanted to do included going to Odaiba, visiting a few art museums (probably around the Ueno area), going to an omatsuri, and (if time permitted) going to Kamakura. There are more things on the list, but these are the things that require a whole day, i.e. not things I can do before/after class sometime.

 

I had heard yesterday during Newspaper Club that there’s an omatsuri in Asakusa today, complete with fireworks. Asakusa is pretty close to Ueno, so I briefly considered combining that with a museum visit. However, omatsuri within the Tokyo city limits are usually attended by tens of thousands of people. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with that many people on a day that was bound to be hot and humid enough already, so I decided to scrap that idea. I also didn’t feel inclined to head to Odaiba because from what I’ve heard it’s not really touristy in the sense of actual sightseeing, but more browsing/shopping, hanging out by the sea, and going on attractions like the famous ferris wheel there. In other words, it seems more like the type of place you want to go with a friend. So I’d rather hold off on that and see if I can still manage to convince Shaunte to go with me sometime. I’d also prefer to go to Odaiba on a sunny day; today the sky was overcast.

 

So, Kamakura it was. At any rate, out of all of the things on the list (except maybe the museum visits), it’s the one that most lends itself to a solitary visit. I didn’t know much about Kamakura, but from what I’d heard, it’s mostly temples, shrines, and nature. Lots of sightseeing, walking, and maybe a little reflection and introspection. I decided I was quite in the mood for such a journey, so I got dressed, packed a backpack with a bottle of water, my sketchbook, camera, and wallet, and set off by myself.

 

To get to Kamakura, I had to take the subway to Ikebukuro and then take a train from there. Kamakura is located pretty far outside of the Tokyo limits, south of Yokohama. (For those of you who aren’t familiar, the relationship between Tokyo and Yokohama is somewhat comparable to the relationship between Houston and Galveston.) Even though the train didn’t make too many stops, it still took well over an hour to get there. Also, because it’s far, the train fare wasn’t cheap—¥890 for a one-way ticket.

 

I’d left around 10am, so I got to Kamakura around 11:15~11:30. So far, I’ve been navigating Tokyo without any sort of tourist maps or guide books, and since I’ve lasted this long without them, I don’t feel like getting any now. In any case, the idea of exploring places on my own appeals to me much more than following a tourist guide book’s instructions, and I’ve always had a passion for traveling by my own instinctive sense of direction. However, it’s true that when I arrived at the station, I had no earthly idea where to go. Luckily, there was a map just outside the station which I spent some time thoroughly examining.

 

I had known that Kamakura’s main attraction was the large number of temples and shrines, but I’d had no idea just how many there are. As it turns out, there’s a good 30 or so, and they’re not just regular shrines—many of them are very old, and some have a distinct place in Japanese history. I also had not known just how close Kamakura is to Sagami Bay. A large number of the people on the train, as it turns out, were headed for the beach. I ended up following a group of them, because as soon as I realized that the sea was within walking distance, a wave of homesickness washed over me, and I longed to splash my feet in the water.

 

I spent almost an hour walking along the beach, enjoying the water and the breeze and a bit of people-watching. The sight of the sea always calms me, and soon I felt happy and at peace, my troubles of the past week or so forgotten. It was an excellent start to the day; when I headed inland again, I felt ready for an afternoon of visits to temples and shrines.

 

The first shrine I headed to didn’t turn out to be anything too special, and I left pretty quickly. After that, I was smarter and followed large groups of tourists who were all headed in the same direction. There’s a very large temple near the center of Kamakura that seemed to be the first place everyone goes. The complex was very large, and the buildings were beautiful. I prayed at the shrine—my first time doing so, because previously I’d never known what to ask for.

 

I probably spent a good hour or so at this one temple alone, because the grounds were so large and contained a couple of beautiful gardens, including one with the most massive water lilies I have ever seen. I took a lot of pictures and sat in the shade for a while, soaking in the beauty.

 

Afterwards, I had a choice of either heading east or west of this temple. The east side of Kamakura appeared to have more temples and shrines in slightly closer proximity to each other, while the west side, which is more mountainous, features a more natural setting, including a hiking trail that leads to the large Buddha statue, called the Daibutsu, which is one of the things Kamakura is most famous for. Rather than trying to cram in over 10 different shrines and temples in one afternoon, I decided I would much rather do a couple more shrines and temples and then take the hiking trail to the Daibutsu. So, I headed west.

 

I visited three more temples. The first, En-noji Temple, was rather small, but the cool thing about it was, it was built to worship the god(s) of the underworld, and inside the main shrine (where we couldn’t take pictures), they had statues of these gods which were quite interesting to see. The second, Ken-choji Temple, was much larger and spread out. I had to pay ¥300 to get in, but it was worth it. It was another temple with a long history, especially with regard to Zen Buddhism, and included several famous artifacts, like a large bell that bears some importance in Japanese history and some really famous juniper trees. It also had a beautiful temple garden whose sight alone was well worth the entry fee. I saw several Zen Buddhist monks who had apparently come on pilgrimages here, which also reaffirmed that I had picked a temple worth visiting.

 

The last temple, Chi-oji, was located right by the start of the hiking trail. I got close to it and took several pictures but didn’t actually go inside. They, too, charged an entry fee, but I didn’t see any other tourists there, so I didn’t get the impression that it was worth the money or the time. So, I just took a few pictures of the outside and then headed for the woods to begin the hike.

 

The hike wasn’t particularly difficult, but it was satisfying. The trail was fairly clear—there weren’t many signs marking the path, but there was usually only one direction you could go, and even if the path split, eventually they would all end up in the same place, so I didn’t really have much trouble finding my way. It was also much cooler up in the woods than on the sidewalk along the road, making me doubly glad that I’d chosen to take this way to get to the Daibutsu.

 

As an aside, let me just mention that I was not at all dressed for hiking. Because I’d known I was going to visit many shrines and temples, I’d decided to err on the side of being slightly dressed up. After all, they’re religious places, and I didn’t want to be the ugly tourist in a T-shirt and jeans. So, I was actually wearing a skirt. As for shoes, I was just wearing regular canvas flats. Perfectly fine for walking long distances, but not exactly designed for hiking. I got a few weird looks from people I passed along the trail—probably due to the combination of being a young female hiking a mountain on her own, and not at all being dressed for the task.

 

After about 1~1.5km, I arrived at a park near the top of the mountain. At least, they called it a park, though it wasn’t particularly park-like (how do you designate a park when you’re already in the woods?) aside from the fact that it had restrooms, a water fountain, and a few vending machines. They also had a shrine, though it wasn’t a particularly interesting one to see, so I only took one picture of it. In addition, the park included the grave of Yoshitomo, some important historical figure from Kamakura—do not ask me his significance, because I do not know. I only know the broad outlines of Japanese history.

 

Luckily, they had an area map and more signs here, because beyond the park the road split into several directions. Though there were several other shrines nearby that I would’ve loved to visit, the hike was taking longer than I’d expected, and I decided not to tarry and head straight for the Daibutsu. The trail headed a little further upward, and at one point, the trees cleared enough that I could see the town of Kamakura below. It was a very satisfying sight, especially because I could clearly see the beach I’d walked along that morning, and realizing just how far I’d walked since then gave me a sense of pride and accomplishment.

 

After that, the trail was mostly downhill. Another kilometer or so in, there was a rest stop with a café that sold expensive drinks. The scenery was lovely, though, so I decided to invest, and was particularly gratified when the little girl helping out at the family-owned restaurant brought me mosquito repellant and lent me her paper fan. She called me oneechan (big sister). It was cute.

 

Feeling invigorated after my brief respite, I headed down for the last leg of the hike. The trail came to a pretty anti-climactic end—it led to some stairs which led to a normal sidewalk. The last 300m or so to the Daibutsu were along the road. At this point, there were a lot more signs pointing the way.

 

Once again, I had to pay to enter, but it was well worth it. They weren’t lying when they said the statue is large; it was pretty imposing. The most interesting thing about it, though, is that the statue is hollow. You could actually pay another ¥20 to go inside (which I did), where you could get a better view of exactly how it was constructed. It was interesting to see, though I didn’t stay inside for more than 5 minutes because it was so hot.

 

After leaving the Daibutsu, it was already after 4:30pm. Most of the larger temples and shrines—the ones actually worth visiting—close to visitors around 5:30pm, so if I wanted to see anything else, I needed to do it within the next hour. However, there were no other temples or shrines within the proximity, and the only other shrine I’d really wanted to see, Sasuke Inari Jinja, was too far to walk to in less than an hour. Besides, I was beginning to grow very tired, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to walk much further, so I ended up heading toward the train station.

 

I was a bit disappointed to be leaving so early. I’d been planning on spending as much of the day outside the dorm as possible. However, with the shrines closing, one of the only other things left to do would be to head back to the beach, and even that would quickly grow boring. I was also quickly running out of steam and decided that above all, I really wanted to shower. So, there wasn’t really anything left to do except head home. However, I was growing hungry, and knowing it’d be another 1+ hour ride back to Ikebukuro, I stopped by a suupaa and bought some bananas before boarding the train.

 

By the time I’d make it back to Ikebukuro, crossed all of Ikebukuro station, took the subway, and walked back to the dorm, though, it was almost 7:30pm. I took a long and satisfying shower, ate dinner, and headed to my room. Shaunte and Cat were still out; from the looks of it, they hadn’t been back all day. By 9pm I was already ready to go to sleep, but I’ve forced myself to stay up until at least 11pm. I’m still not used to getting more than about 6 hours of sleep a night, so I don’t want to risk screwing up my sleep schedule.

 

 

Sunday, July 27^th

I woke up around 7am and just lay in bed for a couple of hours, relaxing. My body was pretty sore from the day before. I probably haven’t walked that much since I went to New York City in April.

 

Mom called around 9:30am, and we spent a while catching up. After that, I got dressed and ready to go. Shaunte and Cat still weren’t back (surprise, surprise), but I wasn’t going to let that keep me from going to Harajuku today, since the weather was dry and I felt reasonably energetic.

 

Rather than taking the subway and then walking to Harajuku, I took the train from Ikebukuro that stops at Harajuku station. I figured that would give me the best starting point, since I wasn’t sure exactly where to go. Like any other neighborhood, Harajuku is fairly large, but it seems that the touristy area it’s famous for is concentrated around one little street they call Harajuku St. It’s a very narrow street, with mostly clothing stores running along both sides. It was around noon when I got there, and the street was completely packed with people. The sight of the mass of people crammed into such a small space almost made me want to bolt, but I pressed on.

 

For those of you who aren’t familiar, aside from the shops, the reason Harajuku is famous is the Japanese youth who frequent it on Sundays. Clad in the strangest outfits inspired by music and/or otaku culture, they basically hang around showing off their style and artistic skills. It’s hard to describe if you haven’t seen the pictures. If you Google something like “Harajuku fashion”, I’ll bet a few will pop up. If you’re very interested, you may want to see if your local Barnes & Noble carries a copy of Fruits or Fresh Fruits. It’s usually in the photography section. Anyway, though the shops at Harajuku are open every day, these youths only come out in these strange outfits on Sundays, which is why I’d been so determined to go. I own both Fruits books and have seen many other pictures, but I wanted to see them for myself.

 

It took me a long time to find any, though. At first, I just walked down the little street, checking out a few of the shops on each side. The clothing isn’t cheap unless you can manage to buy something on sale. T-shirts, for example, cost, on average, ¥2000-¥2500, but if you hunt for sale items, you can find them for ¥500-¥1000, which is about as much as I’m ever willing to pay for a shirt. I didn’t have much cash on me, so I couldn’t really shop much, but I did find a shirt I really liked. It’s a green and pink tube top with yellow lettering that says “Ambition makes people diligent”. I liked the colors and the text, and it was only ¥399, so I couldn’t pass that up.

 

I’d almost reached the end of the street and still no sight of any weird people. The only people with slightly out-of-the-ordinary dress were a few Lolita girls, whom you’ll occasionally see around other parts of the city as well, so I didn’t consider that a particularly unusual sight. There were also quite a few tourists who had come dressed up, with several girls in their own Lolita dresses. In my honest opinion, I don’t think non-Asians can pull off Lolita clothes, especially if the girls are not short, and it kind of aggravates me that they’re completely oblivious to that. But, rant aside, it was an amusing sight.

 

I eventually wound up at the Omotesando without having seen any weird people. The souvenir shop that sold lots of yukatas happened to be right across the street, so after detouring to an ATM, I went and bought the purple yukata I’d seen last week that I’d been considering buying. I still wavered for a little while, but eventually went through with the sale.

 

I wasn’t sure where to go after that. I didn’t want to go back to the dorm without having seen any weird people, but it was swelteringly hot, and I didn’t think I could endure the masses of people for much longer. Still, I told myself that I would press on. So, I went back to Harajuku St. and started from the beginning.

 

I had just stopped to buy myself a crêpe when two very distinctively oddly clad girls walked by me. With my crêpe in one hand and my shopping bag in the other, it was impossible to reach for my camera without risking dropping the crêpe, and at any rate, they were gone in a flash. After I finished the crêpe, I walked down the street to look for them, and successfully managed to locate them sitting down on the left side of the street near the end. I don’t really know what the protocol here is with pictures, so I ninja’d a photo and quickly walked away. Since they were sitting down, you can’t really see their full outfits, but you can still get a good idea of their interesting fashion sense.

 

On my way back toward the station, I began to notice more strangely-clad girls. A few were picture-worthy, but since they were moving along with the crowd, it was impossible to grab a shot unless I decided to stalk them, which I wasn’t in the mood for. There seemed to be more oddly-clad people around now (it was after 3pm already), so I considered sticking around for a while longer, but I was growing faint and realized I had to get out of the heat. In the end, I decided to return to the dorm. I have two more Sundays left here, so I can always come back.

 

Back at the dorm, I didn’t really do too much the rest of the day. I napped for about a half hour, briefly talked to Shaunte, who was back (Cat had gone out again), and went to the suupaa to buy food for dinner. Since I was in the mood, I decided to buy myself a can of beer to go along with dinner. When I get back to the U.S., I’m going to have to get used to not being able to buy alcohol again. The prospect is slightly frustrating.

 

I showered, did my homework, worked a little more on my article about the butler café, and just relaxed. My legs are still sore, and lying in bed feels very good. I’m not at all tired, though, so I think I’m going to go read for a while. Ja, mata.

 

 

Monday, July 28^th

I went to school a little bit early today to use the computer lab, though not for the usual purposes. One of the other things we’re required to do as part of the program is something called e-learning, where we use the TUFS website to supplement what we’re learning in class by doing reading and listening exercises. They log our hours, and those of us leaving in August are required to do six 45-minute sessions before we leave. I’d been putting off starting on it, so today was my first time going. Honestly, though, I’m not sure if I’m going to do all six sessions. The software is not very interactive, so it’s not nearly as useful as it could be. I’m not convinced it’s really helping me learn.

 

Anyway, after that, I headed to class. I really hadn’t been in the mood for school today, but we had Fujimura-sensei, so I quickly cheered up. He was especially funny today because he acted out a lot of the things he was trying to say. He’s so fun! I really want to take him back to America and have him be my Japanese teacher forever, hehehe.

 

During class, the class ironed out the details of another nomikai we’d planned to have tonight. We agreed to meet at Shin-Okubo at 7pm. Shin-Okubo is kind of like Tokyo’s Koreatown, and several of the Koreans in our class who wanted to come have part-time jobs around there, so we agreed to meet there so that they could join us after they got off work.

 

After class, Soo Young, the boy who sits next to me, talked to Fujimura-sensei, I’m not sure what about, but Fujimura-sensei ended up writing his cell phone number and e-mail address on the whiteboard. I asked Soo Young if he’d invited sensei to the nomikai, so Soo Young went back and asked. He sounded like he really wanted to go, but since he has to teach a morning class tomorrow, he decided it was not a good idea.

 

I once again had speech practice. Takahashi-sensei was busy again, so Fujimura-sensei took over the job of practicing with us, which was just fine with me. While we were in the elevator going up to the 3^rd floor to find an empty classroom to practice in, he asked me if I was going to the nomikai with everyone else. When I said that I was, he said, “Dangit! I really want to go!” and he did this thing he sometimes does where he stamps his foot and looks like a little kid about to throw a temper tantrum. I told him we were going to dinner before we were going drinking, and that he could always just join us for dinner, but he said that it still wasn’t a good idea. He sounded genuinely upset that he couldn’t go, though, and said that if only we’d gone tomorrow, when he doesn’t have a morning class the next day, he definitely would’ve gone with us.

 

We finished around 6pm, but I ended up sticking around until 6:30pm because I was having so much fun talking to him. I love hearing his stories about his time in Europe, and I really want to hear him speak German. He’s too embarrassed, though. I wonder if I can get him to speak German if he goes drinking with us.

 

Speaking of which, at one point, Kuma, the Chinese kid, asked him if he likes to drink, and he said he does. He said that if we invited him out on a weekend sometime, he’d definitely come. Then Kuma asked him, “How about after the speech contest?” To which Fujimura-sensei actually said, 「ああ、スピーチコンテストの後で、みんなでお酒を飲まなければなりません。」 Translation: “Ah, after the speech contest, we have to go drinking with everyone.” Yes, he actually used the phrase “have to”. I asked him if that’s a promise, and he said yes. I’m pretty damn excited. This actually makes me want to do well in the speech contest. It’d be awesome if we actually have something to celebrate.

 

I had to leave for the train station at 6:30pm. Shin-Okubo is only one stop away, and I timed it perfectly, arriving at exactly 7pm. Mi Hee came a few minutes later, and together we waited for Evan, who had brought along Brad, Miguel, and Yosh, his high school friend. Then we walked to the Korean restaurant where the others were waiting for us. They had already started eating, and the table was too small for all of us, so we had to sit at another table. This meant that we basically got split into the American table and the Korean table, until several people moved around and Ji Young invited me to come sit at the Korean table. It ended up being just me at a table full of Korean women. It was interesting.

 

The Koreans took care of ordering all the food again, and just like last time, it was delicious. The others seemed surprised at how much I liked it, especially kimchi. They told me that I’m a Korean at heart and that I need to come visit them in Korea as soon as possible. They promised to show me around and take me to all the best restaurants to try all the food. I’m totally game. Korea is definitely on my list of places I want to visit, though I don’t know how soon I’ll be able to make it out there.

 

Along with the food, everyone was drinking soju. Though at one point I really did like it, and can recall on one occasion doing 15 shots of it, for some reason, it didn’t sit right with me today, even after I ate. I was afraid I might get sick, so I didn’t end up drinking a lot. The original plan, at least, was to go to a bar after dinner, so I decided I’d much rather wait for that and drink something else.

 

Soo Young joined us around 9:15pm, after he got off work, and seemed especially delighted that I was there. He encouraged the others to speak less Korean and more Japanese, and we had a good time talking. Soo Young is particularly upset that I’m leaving in August and says that he wants to go clubbing together before we leave. I do still want to go to a techno club, so maybe I’ll go. I don’t know. We’ll see.

 

Because we were still waiting for Sang Mook to get off work, we were still at the restaurant at 10pm, at which point I unfortunately had to part with the others. I knew it’d only take me 30 minutes at the very most to get back, including walking, but I wanted to make sure I had time to take a shower tonight. I was slightly disappointed that I hadn’t been able to drink much, since it was supposed to be a nomikai, but I’m also not sure if the others still planned to go to a bar afterwards. A few of them, Hee Jeon especially, seemed to be pretty gone after the soju alone. Soo Young was disappointed that I had to go so soon after he got there, but there wasn’t really anything I could do about it.

 

 

Tuesday, July 29^th

So once again I’m at school early to use the lab. I’m trying to fall into a Tuesday-Friday posting pattern, I guess, to try to keep my entries from getting too long. This one still ended up being fairly long, though. My apologies, and thanks to everyone who stuck it out this far.

 

As far as class today goes, I don’t think we have anything too special planned. I do need to recite my speech in front of the class to practice with a larger audience, so hopefully that will go all right. I’m guessing I’ll be heading straight home after speech practice so I can get in some decent studying, but you never know what will happen.

So I learned from my mistake from last week and am posting an entry now, to avoid having to wait until Monday or Tuesday and potentially having another extremely long entry. Not too much has happened, but there’s nothing wrong with a short post, I guess.

 

Also, since I guess this is the announcement section of the post, since I realize not everyone may want to read the entire thing—as you may go on to read, I did end up getting a cell phone. The main benefit is that I can now send and receive e-mails all the time. My cell phone’s e-mail address is nara.chan@softbank.ne.jp so feel free to use that to pop me a note if you like.

 

 

Tuesday, July 22^nd

The test didn’t end up being very hard, or very long. Aside from that, we spent class time learning some grammar and then working on the ouen for the speech contest. The fun thing about being chosen for the speech contest is that everyone else in my class has to do some sort of elaborate cheer, called an ouen, of about 1 minute in length, before I come on stage. I had already heard from Lane that these are usually highly choreographed affairs, because all the classes want to try to outdo each other with their crazy antics. For my cheer, the class decided that since my speech is about the Netherlands, it’d be good to use the ouen to introduce the students to a little bit of Dutch culture. One idea that they seem to be interested in pursuing is that all the guys in the class are going to be wearing blonde wigs and then dancing to Dutch techno music, which I’m supposed to bring in.

 

After class, I walked to the main building to look for Shaunte and Cat. They were both still there this time. Cat was talking to a couple of people but Shaunte didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular. I waited for them to finish, but even when Cat was done talking to people, she didn’t seem to want to leave. Finally, Shaunte said, “Okay, we’ll just go.” We walked to the station and went home by ourselves.

 

When we got to the dorm, one of the first things we did was go to the dining room for dinner, as usual. Cat walked in just minutes after we got there and sat down. Now, let me explain a little bit about our dining room. There are two separate tables, with 3 stools on each side. However, the stools are very close together, so it’s customary not to sit on the stool directly next to someone unless there are no other places to sit, because you’d just be butting elbows with them the entire time. Also, since the beginning, we’ve made it a habit of always sitting at the same table at mealtimes. Sometimes one of the Japanese girls will come sit at our table, but it’s not common. Usually, we sit at one table and they sit at the other. Not that we dislike each other, and we’ll still talk to each other across the dining room. It’s just become our habit.

 

When we came in and sat down, Shaunte and I sat at our usual table, in the same spots where we often sit. (On my little diagram below, ‘s’ is Shaunte and ‘n’ is me.) There was also one Japanese girl sitting at the other table (marked ‘x’). Then Cat walked in. There was a spot open (marked ‘*’ on my diagram) on my side of the table, across from Shaunte, where Cat normally would’ve sat down. But this time, she very demonstratively sat down at the other table, next to the Japanese girl.

 

s o o

-------

|%%|

-------

* o n

 

o o o

-------

|%%|

-------

c o x

 

It was a very obvious way of saying that she was angry at Shaunte or I, and I’m not stupid—I realized that it was far more likely to be me. I thought about calling her out on it and forcing a confrontation, because I still don’t know exactly what her problem with me is, but her action was just such a totally middle school way of handling the situation, I couldn’t even find words to express my frustration and disappointment. I finished my food quickly and went back to my room. I just didn’t even know what to say anymore.

 

While I was working on my homework, I made the decision to buy a phone tomorrow. It’s becoming very clear that Cat wants nothing more to do with me, and I don’t know where Shaunte stands, since she ultimately generally winds up going along with whatever Cat does. I tried to get her to tell me what exactly Cat’s problem is, since I feel like she knows, but she couldn’t/wouldn’t say. On the other hand, Cat wanted to go party again tonight (even though we have school tomorrow) but Shaunte refused to go with her. I’m glad she stuck by her decision not to party anymore for a while. Cat ended up going alone.

 

Anyway, point being, I’m getting a phone. True, we’re down to less than three and a half weeks left, but if I spend another weekend like last weekend, feeling so incredibly lonely, I would die. I feel like my heart’s being torn in two. I want to be here, in Tokyo, and I can easily picture myself staying here forever, but I also long for the people back home. I’ve fallen in love with this city, but in the end, home is where the heart is, and my heart is always with my family and the people I love the most. Maybe that’s why I never feel at home anywhere—because the place where I want to be and the place where my family and people I love are never seem to coincide.

 

 

Wednesday, July 23^rd

Shaunte and I went to school pretty early. I wanted to use the computer lab before the how-to-wear-a-yukata session, and Shaunte had to retake a test. When we left around 10am, Cat still wasn’t back.

 

We had already made it to Shinjuku station when I realized I’d forgotten my yukata at the dorm, even though I’d had it sitting in a plastic bag next to the messenger bag I use to carry my books in for school. I had a choice of either going back for the yukata or using the computer lab, and I ended up deciding to go with the latter. I was really determined to use the computer lab today, not to check e-mail and such like usual, but to research some of the places I still want to go and things I want to do before I leave.

 

One of the things I still want to do is go to a butler café, the girl-oriented version of a maid café. Maid cafés are coffee shops and little eateries found commonly in Akihabara (there are a few in Kabuki-cho as well) where the waitresses all dress up as maids, mainly geared toward guys and the otaku culture’s obsession with young girls in French maid outfits. There isn’t anything really sexual about these places though. You order coffee and maybe some food, and the maids will come and chat with you a little and maybe play a game of jan-ken-poi (rock-paper-scissors). At the one Alex and Robert went to several weeks ago, the maids drew little pictures with chocolate syrup on top of their coffee. At any rate, these are perfectly acceptable places for girls to go, but in the end, they are very clearly guy-oriented.

 

Because of this, a few years ago, a woman decided that it was about time that there were equivalent places for girls to go, to be waited on and get their share of eye candy. So, she opened the first butler café, where the waiters (all male) take on the roles of butlers, costumes and all. Because these are a lot less common and not often known about by Westerners, it took me quite a bit of research to find out where they were located. It turns out that there are only 2 legit ones, one in Ikebukuro and one in Akihabara.

 

The one in Ikebukuro, as it turns out, is pretty famous—so much so that they require reservations (which you can make at their website) and, except for a few random open time slots, are essentially booked full until the end of August. The random open time slots were mostly on weekdays, around 3~4pm, when we have class. But they just happened to have a time slot open tomorrow at 11:15am. Realizing that this might be the only chance I have, I decided to just go ahead and make the reservation, not even knowing for sure if Shaunte would be up for it (though I was fairly sure she would be). It took me ages to figure out the registration site because it was all in Japanese. It turns out that registrations need to be for groups of 3 or 4, and you need to come with as many people as you signed up for, or be charged ¥1000 for every extra/missing person. I signed up for 3. I figured I could get Shaunte to come, but I wasn’t sure if I could find a 3^rd person. Still, I figured that I might not get another chance if I waited, so I just went ahead with it.

 

After my hour in the lab was up, I went to the how-to-wear-a-yukata session. They didn’t have any extra yukatas for you to try on, so, since I had left mine at home, all I could do was watch. I tried to etch the process into my memory as best I could, but tying the obi is going to be difficult.

 

Before heading to the other building for class, I went to look for Shaunte to tell her about it, and to ask her to ask around for a 3^rd person as well. This was also partly my way of saying she could invite Cat, and then it’d be up to Cat to decide which she’d rather do—continue to be angry at and ignore me, or be waited on by cute Japanese guys in butler outfits. Her choice.

 

Class was not too eventful. Fujimura was fun, as always. Other than the class working a little more on the ouen and picking a song from among the music I brought in, nothing too out-of-the-ordinary happened, so I’m not going to waste space talking about it. During the break, I asked the other girls if anyone was interested in going to the butler café. Robyn seemed very interested, but she has to come in early to practice her speech. (She’s also in the speech contest.) Bummer!

 

I had to stay after class for two things. First, I had to take an ondoku test, where they check your pronunciation and whether you put accents in the right places. Japanese is not a tonal language, but the placement of accents, I’ve learned, is very important. We didn’t spend any time on this at all at CMU, which is one of the many reasons why some days I feel like I don’t ever want to take Japanese at CMU again. Our program is so completely unbalanced, it’s not even funny.

 

Then, after that, I had to practice my speech for the speech contest. The good news was that practice was with Fujimura-sensei as well, so it wasn’t a huge punishment to stay after class so late. It turns out that he lived in Germany for a while, so in between practices, he told me stories about trips he took and things of that nature. It was fun.

 

It was 6pm by the time I got to leave, though, so I was hungry and tired and no longer so sure I still wanted to go and buy the cell phone. It’s a fairly long walk to Don Quixote, and it was hot and humid, so I was half-tempted to give up on the idea. However, remembering how miserable I’d been feeling and my resolve from last night, I decided that I needed to just do it.

 

There was a fair amount of paperwork involved, and to my chagrin the price had gone up since I was there with Cat and Shaunte (from ¥5900 to ¥8900), but in the end, I succeeded in getting the phone. I couldn’t wait to play with it and ended up testing it out on the subway, not even waiting until I got home. Cell phones here are just so crazy. They can do things cell phones in America can’t even dream of doing. And I just have a regular, cheap prepaid phone. I can’t even imagine what the top-of-the-line models can do.

 

I’ve ended up spending most of the night playing with my new phone. With Shaunte’s help, I managed to get e-mail set up, so now I can e-mail people at home. I sent out a few test e-mails but no one’s responded yet, so I don’t know if it’s working. Then again, it is very early morning there.

 

Addendum: I had just finished writing this entry and logged off and was lying on my bed playing with my phone some more, when everything started rumbling and shaking. It lasted long enough—maybe 45-60 seconds—that there was no doubt in my mind this time that I was experiencing another earthquake. It was by no means violent, but it lasted long enough that I wondered whether I needed to get under my desk just in case. Just as I was about to, the earthquake stopped. I doubt any damage was done.

 

 

Thursday, July 24^th

When I went to have breakfast at 7:30am like usual, Cat walked in a few minutes after I got there. She sat across from me and started talking to me like normal. I have no idea what’s going on anymore. Girls are so fickle. Shaunte and I had to leave around 10:15am to get to Ikebukuro and look for the butler café. Shaunte had asked Cat if she wanted to come, but Cat said she wanted to sleep in. Her loss.

 

We didn’t end up having any trouble finding the place because it turned out to be very close to the Ikebukuro Mandarake, so we were in familiar territory. We were quite early and had to wait a while. At 11:15am, we went to the man waiting by the entrance and checked in. We had to wait a few minutes and were then ushered into a long hallway, where we were introduced to the steward and the butler who would be taking care of us. The butler insisted on taking our bags, after which we had to follow him to the tea room.

 

The room was decently large, with maybe 20-25 tables of various sizes, though none seating more than 4 people at a time. Everything was done in a Victorian style. All the furniture was (or at least looked) antique. There were mirrors along several of the walls, chandeliers, old clocks, and several of the booths were curtained. Everything, including the butlers themselves (who were dressed in full tuxedos), walked the fine line between tasteful elegance and gaudiness.

 

We were seated at a 4-person table (probably because they’d been expecting 3 of us). The butler pulled out our chairs for us and even placed the napkins on our laps. Then he gave a brief explanation of all the menu items, most of which was lost on us because it was all in Japanese. I doubt any of them speak English, but that didn’t surprise me, because I doubt Westerners know about this place. It made the experience even more unique and exciting; I’m fairly sure none of my friends at home, even though a fair number of them have been to Tokyo, have ever done the same thing.

 

It turns out that, unlike a maid café, where it’s perfectly acceptable just to get something to drink, they expect you to order a full meal. They don’t even sell drinks separately. The tea is included in your meal. The menu was rather expensive—I didn’t see any meals under ¥2500. Shaunte and I both ended up ordering afternoon tea sets, because those included a mix of different sandwiches, scones, and desserts and seemed like a lot of fun.

 

While we waited for our food, we checked out the butlers and observed what was happening around us, occasionally bursting into giggles. It was hard not to giggle in this environment. The guys were just so cute yet so formal, and the entire thing just felt like something straight out of a manga. Almost like Antique Bakery come to life. It’s also funny because they seem very determined to imitate European styles and manners, but the experience was still completely Japanese. I am fully convinced that you couldn’t experience this anywhere but in Japan.

 

When our butler brought out our tea sets, which came in a rack that could stack three plates one above the other, we couldn’t just take the plate we wanted—we had to indicate to him which one we wanted, and he would take it and set it in front of us. He also poured the tea for us. Before he walked away, he gave us a little golden bell that we were told to ring if we needed anything. Shaunte was tempted to a couple of times, just to try it, but I was more hesitant, not wanting to make him feel like he was doing something wrong by not waiting on us carefully enough.

 

Because we were sitting at a 4-person table, our butler had placed our bags on the other 2 chairs, but at some of the other tables, where all the seats were filled, the girls’ purses were placed in baskets on the floor. If a girl wanted her purse, she couldn’t just take it herself—she had to let her butler know, and he would get it for her. Neither Shaunte nor I needed the restroom, but the girls who did had to ask their butler to lead them there, and the butlers would discreetly ask whether the girls needed their purses before leading the way. Again, the butler, instead of the girl, would carry the bag.

 

The nice thing was that although they clearly have long list of reservations, nothing about it was rushed. Every reservation is entitled to an hour and twenty minutes, unless you choose to leave earlier. It turned out to be plenty of time to eat, drink our tea, watch the scenes around us, and just enjoy the experience. I don’t normally enjoy being waited on—it makes me extremely uncomfortable—but I had tons and tons of fun. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures at all. This was not a big surprise because it is the case at many maid cafés as well, but it’s still a pity. I do realize that lots of flashing cameras might distract from the elegant ambience a little, though.

 

After we finally left and were back out on the street, Shaunte and I could not stop laughing. It had all just been so bizarre but fun. We both agreed that despite how expensive it was, it was worth every penny we paid. We had to hurry to get to school, though. It was a long walk to Ikebukuro station, so it was 1:15pm by the time we got to Shinjuku. I had to leave Shaunte behind and power-walk because my building is further than hers. It was difficult, because it was extremely hot and humid, but I made it on time.

 

The only notable thing that happened in class was that we got our compositions from last week back. I’d gotten a 98/100. It was apparently one of the best in the class; Takahashi-sensei said that she wanted to read it to the class, but there wasn’t time. It made me happy, though, because there are days when I feel like I suck at everything, so it’s nice to be the best at something again. And it’s nice to find that regardless of which language I’m using, I can always write well.

 

I had to stay after again to practice my speech. I was there until almost 6:30pm this time. I ended up being so hungry that I couldn’t wait to go home and eat, and ended up grabbing a bite at the first fast-food place I could find. Then, since Shaunte had texted me that she and Cat were going out for the night and I didn’t have much homework, I headed to Shibuya to look for the souvenir shop with the purple yukata. Mom says she wants the blue one, so I can get the purple one. Unfortunately, the store was already closed when I got there. Most stores here are open until 8pm, sometimes 9pm, but for some reason, this one closes at 7pm. Kiddy Land was open, though, so for lack of anything better to do and not wanting to have completely wasted a subway ticket, I ended up walking around there for a while before heading back.

 

 

Friday, July 25^th

Nothing much to say about today. As usual, I’m at school early to use the lab. I also have Newspaper Club after this. I’m going to ask Takahashi-sensei if she’ll let me write an article about the butler café. It is probably the most fun experience I’ve had in Tokyo, so I really want to share it with others and encourage them to go.

 

As for the weekend, I have no idea what my plans are. Evan said that hiking is probably not happening, so maybe this weekend I can head to Odaiba. I also really want to go to a couple of museums before I leave here, so maybe I’ll do that. And I still haven’t been to Harajuku on a Sunday, because it always either rained or we were passed out from partying all night the night before. Hopefully I can go this week. That should be fun.

My apologies in advance for the lengthiness of this post. I had briefly debated posting before class last Friday, but not too much had happened between Tuesday afternoon and Friday morning, so it didn’t seem worth the effort. But then the weekend turned out a little crazy, and suddenly this post is ridiculously long. Not much I can do about it now, though.

 

 

Tuesday, July 15^th

After I posted my last entry from the computer lab, I studied for the kanji test and then went to class as usual. The kanji test was easier than I’d expected. Also, our Tuesday teacher, Saitou-sensei, turned out to be a very fun teacher as well. This was the first time I’d had her, but it seems that some of the Koreans have had her as a teacher before. Something about her attitude and the way she conducted the class seemed to get everyone to loosen up a little, and people began to talk to each other more. It’s like the class bonded a little. It was a good feeling.

 

I left straight for the subway station after class with Sean and Shaunte and the rest of the people going to see Wicked. I had thought that the show was fairly close by, but it wasn’t. It was in Shiodome, which is pretty close to the bay. We had to transfer trains three times to get there. The show started at 6:30pm, and we got there around 6. I was about to die of hunger, so I ran over to McDonalds to grab a bite to eat before the show. I tried the shrimp burger, and it was delicious. Much better than I had expected.

 

As for the show, it was all kinds of amazing. I’ve seen many musicals live, but this wasn’t one of them. I was familiar with most of the music and had a vague notion of the story, but that was about it. I was really impressed. The singers were top-class, the acting was good, and the technical production of the show was just hands-down amazing. The costumes, the make-up, the lighting, the sets… all of them were SO good. It was interesting seeing a musical in Japanese. Aside from the fact that of course there were a lot of words I didn’t know, the actors’ speech and singing was very clear, so the stuff that I did know was easy to understand. It also helped that it was all in formal Japanese, which I’m more used to hearing because that’s what you use in the classroom. I find listening to and processing informal Japanese a lot more difficult, so I was glad they used formal in the show. I managed to grasp the general gist of what was happening, and luckily Sean has seen the show 6 times (in English), so his explanation of the story helped fill in some of the gaps.

 

Afterwards, we tried to find out if they were selling CDs of the Japanese version of the musical, but it turns out those aren’t going on sale until next week, for some reason. Sean said he’ll probably go back just to buy the CD because he really wants one.

 

We got back on the subway and headed home. Luckily, this time, Shaunte and I only had to change trains twice. Still, we got back very close to curfew. We pulled into our stop at 10:40pm, and then we still had to walk from the station to the dorm. It made me a little jittery. Yeah, if we showed up 5-10 minutes late, I’m fairly sure the dorm mother would still let us in, but I don’t want to test that theory and find out that I’m wrong.

 

 

Wednesday, July 16^th

Today, starting at 11:30am, they were selling yukatas (summer kimonos, made of thinner and cheaper fabric) at school for cheaper than you’ll find them pretty much anywhere else—¥4000 for women and ¥6000 for men. That price includes the obi, obi ties, wooden geta sandals, and a purse for women, so it’s a very, very good deal. I figured I should take advantage of it, so I got there right at 11:30 to make sure I got first choice. The good news was that unlike many stores, which carry only one size, they also had longer yukatas for taller women. The bad news was that tall women only had 4 different designs to choose from, while they had many, many designs and colors for the regular size yukatas. I’d really been hoping for a green or purple one, but I could only choose from red, pink, dark blue, and black. I ended up going with the dark blue one because I figured it was the one that would look best on me. I was a little bummed out about not being able to get the kind of design and color I’d been wanting, but I did realize that it’s great to actually find a yukata long enough for me. I don’t know how to wear it yet (because I don’t know how to tie the obi), but there’s a special session for that next Wednesday before school which I plan to attend.

 

Other than that, there’s not too much to say about today. Having Fujimura for class was fun, as usual. There was a funny moment when Evan complimented his new shoes and he did a slightly girlish pose for the class to show them off. He also admitted to always being very nervous before class starts. I’m guessing he hasn’t been teaching for all that long. He is only 25, after all. I think it’s adorable, though.

 

After class, I walked back to the main building to go home with Shaunte and Cat like I always do, but they weren’t there. When I asked Lane, he said they’d already taken off. He said they were planning to go to some indie concert with him later that night, and he invited me to come as well. However, I hate both indie rock and Japanese bands, so the combination of the two was entirely unappealing to me. I stopped by Tokyu Hands to buy more flashcards and then headed straight home. It’s been a disappointingly boring night because I don’t really have anything to do but homework and studying.

 

 

Thursday, July 17^th

I had no reason to be at school early today, so I wasn’t planning to leave until around noon, but Cat and Shaunte came to get me around 11:30am. Lucky that they did, because it turned out that the subway line we usually take to school had broken down. We had to take the Yurakucho line to Ikebukuro and then transfer to the Fukutoshin (the line we usually take), which was running fine between Ikebukuro and Shibuya. It didn’t end up costing us that much extra time, but we ended up picking up chien mei shou, which are little forms to turn into your boss/teacher that legitimize the delay and say how late you’re allowed to be. In our case, we could’ve been 60 minutes late, according to the forms. It seems it was no minor problem.

 

We had Takahashi for class again. We did the usual kanji and grammar and such, and then we had to write another in-class composition. This time she assigned us the topic (something about our childhood, a memory or something like that) so I found it a little bit easier to do, I guess because I’m more used to working within constraints and restrictions.

 

After class, Evan and I were invited by several of the Koreans to a nomikai, which is basically Japanese for “to meet for drinks”. At first, they wanted us to meet them in Shibuya at 7pm, but when Evan and I explained that we’d like to have dinner first and that there wasn’t enough time for us to go back home, eat, and then make it to Shibuya by 7, we decided to all go to dinner as a group.

 

Evan said that he really wanted to eat some good Korean food, so Sang Mook (who was the main organizer of the entire shindig) took us to a Korean barbeque place in Shibuya. He also did all the ordering for us. I’ve gotten used to not knowing what I’m eating and being fine with that, but when the waiters brought out plates of decidedly-not-meat-looking red spirally things and said it was pork, Evan couldn’t resist the urge to ask Un Young what part of the pig it was. When she rubbed her belly and I realized we were looking at pig intestines, I got a little queasy. When they later followed up the pork with a plate of chicken, I told Evan, “Please don’t ask them what part of the chicken this is.”

 

The food was really good though, aside from the pig intestines, which weren’t really disgusting, but they didn’t really have much flavor and were very chewy. Putting sauce on it helped a little, but the chewiness just wasn’t my thing, so I didn’t end up eating a lot of them. The chicken and beef were delicious, however. Truly some of the best meat I’ve had.

 

After dinner, we headed to a bar Evan likes to call “his” bar because it’s where he likes to take people anytime they’re going for a drink. It’s a kind of hole-in-the-wall place whose main attraction is the fact that during happy hour (6-9pm every day), all drinks are ¥500. Beer, cocktails, shots… everything is ¥500. That also includes these half-liter glasses of real Paulaner (German) beer. Evan highly recommended the latter, so for the first round, everybody got one of those.

 

Both at dinner and at the bar, I spent a lot of time talking to the Koreans, especially Ji Young, who sits next to me in class and seems to find me very interesting. It was good practice because they speak very little English, so we have to speak Japanese to communicate. Also, unlike with the Japanese girls at the dorm, we use mostly formal Japanese, which, again, I tend to find much easier to understand. When they brought us the Paulaner at the bar, I also discovered that Un Young studied German in high school and has been to Munich (where I lived in Germany) and the Netherlands before. It’s moments like this—when you find yourself sharing broken German with a Korean in the middle of Tokyo—that you fully realize that you can never predict where life will take you.

 

We also spent quite a bit of time playing the “game” of guess-each-other’s-ages. This can be tricky when you’re dealing with Asians, but I guess I’ve learned to notice the little clues. I managed to correctly guess that Mi Hee is 22 and Un Young and He Jin are both 24. I guessed that Ji Young is 35, and it turns out she’s 38, so I was close. I already knew that Sang Mook is 30. The only one I was totally off on was Hee Jeon. I guessed that she was 25 and it turns out she’s actually 30 as well. Most of them knew I’m 20, but Ji Young said that when she first met me, she’d thought I’m about 32. Seriously?! Do I look that old?! It’s a bit disconcerting.

 

I left the bar a little before everyone else did because I still had curfew to worry about. I headed for the subway station as quickly as possible. When I got to my track, I had a choice between a local train that was about to depart and an express train. I figured that the express train would be the best choice because it would allow me to skip 7 stops. However, I didn’t realize that the express train was going to sit in Shibuya station for another 15 minutes before departing. When we didn’t roll into Ikebukuro until 10:45pm, I got really jittery. We made it to my stop at 10:48, after which I jogged back to the dorm. I made it in the door at 10:55. Close, but safe.

 

 

Friday, July 18^th

I went to school early today to join the school newspaper club. The school offers a few co-curricular classes having to do with various aspects of Japanese culture. Many of them sound interesting, but I can’t join most of the classes I wanted to because they’re for Level 3 students and above. I ended up deciding to go to the newspaper co-curricular “class” because Takahashi-sensei and Fujimura-sensei are the two teachers who run it, and Takahashi-sensei encouraged me to join because they need a design person.

 

We didn’t do a whole lot today. Co-curricular classes are always from 12:30-1:15pm, and in 45 minutes you can’t really get that much done. We mostly did introductions, where we said what we were interested in doing. The newspaper articles consist mostly of reports about school events and interviews with the teachers. However, they also encourage us to go beyond the school and write articles about things we see, do, or eat. Towards the end, they split us up into groups of 3, and every group is supposed to come up with some event to go to together and write an article about. I was put in a group with two Korean students I hadn’t met before. The girl and I really want to go to an omatsuri (a traditional festival) but the boy complained that they’re usually far and that there’s too many people. We didn’t manage to decide on something, but that turned out to be okay. Most of the groups couldn’t decide, so we’re supposed to research things we want to do and then get back with the same group next Friday and decide.

 

After that, I had my regular Friday class with our horrible Friday teacher. Everyone hates Imi-sensei, and yesterday at the nomikai it had been suggested a couple of times that we all call in sick today, but everyone still showed up to class.

 

Only one notable thing happened. During the 15-minute break at 3pm, I was called down to meet with Takahashi-sensei. It turns out that one of the Chinese boys and I were chosen to represent our class in the school speech contest on July 31^st. We’d had to read the speeches that we wrote in class last Thursday to the class on Monday and Tuesday, and everybody had rated each other’s speeches. I’m fairly sure that that was mostly bullshit, though, and that the teachers decided on their own who they wanted to have represent our class. Takahashi-sensei explained quite bluntly that one of the reasons the Chinese kid and I were chosen was because we’re not Korean. It’s true that the Korean students’ speeches earlier this week were boring and all sounded the same. Takahashi-sensei told me, “You’re from the Netherlands. Most of us have never met a Dutch person before. You should give a speech about that. I’m sure everyone would love to know more about the Netherlands.” The same thing had happened to Yana (who is from Bulgaria) earlier this week, which was why I wasn’t really all that surprised that I was chosen. I had kind of been expecting it. That doesn’t mean I actually want to do it, though. Public speaking is one of my worst nightmares. I can’t even give speeches in English, let alone in a language I still only barely have a grasp of. Unfortunately, there wasn’t really a way to say no. I thought about arguing that every other class has only one representative, so she should just have the Chinese kid represent our class by himself, but on the other hand, I honestly think that he’s one of the dumbest kids in our class, and I’d feel guilty and angry if he represented us alone. That doesn’t mean that I’m happy to give this speech, though. Aside from my stage fright, the fact that I have to memorize it and can’t use note cards at all is going to be a problem. I don’t know what I’m going to do.

 

After class, I went back to the main building to look for Shaunte and Cat, but just like on Wednesday, they’d taken off without waiting for me or saying a word at all. It honestly kind of upset me. At least when I went to the nomikai yesterday, I had Sean give them the message since he passes by the main building on the way to the train station. Is it weird that I expect my friends to tell me when they’re not going to stick around and go home with me like usual? Am I expecting too much? Sometimes I just don’t know anymore.

 

I ended up walking to the station with Evan, Tyler, Robyn, Brad & co. Robyn, Brad, and Miguel wanted to go bar-hopping in Shibuya and invited me along, but my top priority was to go home and take a shower. Since I didn’t get back until 10:55pm last night and we can only shower before 11, I hadn’t gotten to shower at all, and since it’s been an average of 34°C and humid every day this week, I felt positively disgusting. So, instead, I got on the subway with Evan, who rides the same line as I do, only his stop is further. We talked about various things. He says he might go hiking next weekend with the Koreans, and he invited me to join them. That would be really exciting. I love hiking.

 

Once home, I had a pretty lamesauce night of reading, making kanji flashcards, playing PSP, and feeling bored. Shaunte and Cat were there when I walked into the dining room for dinner, but they left shortly after we all took showers. I guess they’re out for the whole night again.

 

 

Saturday, July 19^th & Sunday, July 20^th

I woke up in time for breakfast and then went back to bed for a little while. When I got up again around 9am, Shaunte and Cat still weren’t back. Rather than sitting around and waiting for them and feeling lamesauce again, I figured I should go do something by myself.  I ended up going to Shibuya, to walk around a little and take a few pictures. There weren’t really that many people around, which is pretty unusual for Shibuya. But then, stores in Japan often tend to open later than we’re used to in the West. It seems that many of the stores there don’t open until 11am or noon, and I was there at 10:30. When it opened at 12pm, I headed into the Mandarake there again. Since I didn’t have to worry about making Shaunte and Cat wait on me again, I took my time to explore the store, to try to find the things some of my friends back home want me to bring back for them. I didn’t really have any luck, but I do feel like I understand the set-up and layout of the store better.

 

I was back at the dorm by 2:30pm. Shaunte and Cat still weren’t back. I was surprised, because Evan was having a shindig at his house at 6pm and I’d told them yesterday they were invited. In order to get there by 6, we needed to leave here by 5:30pm at the very latest. I’d told them that. And yet the hours passed and they still didn’t return. I’m not upset that I wasn’t invited. We don’t have to do everything together, and I knew they were meeting up with a college friend. But I’m still a little bit upset that they didn’t really mention much about it to me—what they were doing, how long they’d be out… I was honestly kind of worried that something had happened to them, but I had no way of contacting them.

 

I ended up running into them just as I was walking to the station at 5:20pm. They said they still planned to go to Evan’s shindig, but they wanted to go and shower and change first. So, I ended up heading for Evan’s place by myself. He was going to be waiting at his station at 6pm, but he said that he wasn’t sticking around for too long to wait for people. I didn’t remember the way to his house and I didn’t have his cell phone number, so I didn’t want to risk being late and getting to the station and not finding him there.

 

I’d timed it perfectly, though, and made it to his stop at 5:57pm, a couple of minutes before he got there himself. Unfortunately, my timeliness ended up being rather unnecessary. Part of the reason Evan had had this shindig at his house was because he wanted the Koreans from our class to come so he could cook for them. 4 of the girls had promised to come. However, he hadn’t thought to get any of their cell phone numbers, so when they didn’t show up around 6pm, we waited. And waited. And waited. At 7, he finally decided to call Sang Mook, who then called the girls and told them to call Evan. They said they were on their way. They had thought that Evan had said 7 instead of 6. Still, by the time they showed up, it was almost 8. We had waited at the station for 2 hours. It was a little frustrating, because I hadn’t eaten lunch and was starving. It also just generally always pisses me off when people don’t have the decency to show up to someone’s place on time, without letting the other person know they’ll be late.

 

Evan had made us Mexican haystacks, which are basically taco fillings on top of steamed rice. Delicious. Since there were considerably fewer people than he’d been expecting, Evan invited some of his old high school friends. (He went to an international high school here, and it seems that many of his former classmates are here for the summer. They all seem to still live in the same neighborhood, too.) I felt vaguely awkward, between Evan’s old friends and the Koreans who were there because they love Evan. I was a little reliever when Cat and Shaunte showed up around 9:30~10pm, and Tyler showed up a little afterwards. Brad and Miguel had planned to come but ended up not being able to make it after all. No one knew what had happened to Kevin. We’d all thought he was coming, but he doesn’t have a phone, so we couldn’t call him.

 

Around 11:30pm, we headed to Shibuya to go clubbing. The Korean girls really wanted to go dancing with Evan, and the rest of us were up for it as well. Evan’s high school friends didn’t go, so it was me, Evan, Shaunte, Cat, Tyler, and the Korean girls: Gyeon Mi, He Jin, Hee Jeon, and Mi Hee. Hee Jeon had suggested that we go to Club Atom, which is the club we’d tried to go to for my birthday last weekend, where they have different music in different floors, including a techno floor. The techno floor was half the reason why I agreed to go. I love dancing in general, and yes, I can dance to hip hop, but I’m just sick of hip hop clubs and grinding and the overall sleaziness of it all. Besides, if I wanted to go to a hip hop club, I’d just go in the U.S. To me, the whole appeal of clubbing in Tokyo is the fact that they actually have big clubs that don’t just play hip hop. You won’t find those in Houston or Pittsburgh.

 

I didn’t remember how to find my way to or around the club district of Shibuya, but Cat said she knew where Club Atom was, so she led us there. When we got there, there wasn’t a sign that said “Club Atom” anywhere, so I was a bit alarmed, but Cat seemed sure this was the place. Hee Jeon had told us that cover would be ¥1000 if we got there before midnight but ¥2000 after. Since it was around 12:30pm, we all expected to pay ¥2000, which was what they charged us, so the price seemed right. However, when we went inside, we were met with blaring loud hip hop music, when the hip hop floor at Club Atom is supposed to be the top floor. We started looking for the stairs, but found none. Evan asked a guy at the bar how to get to the other floors. He laughed at us and said that this was all there was. I realized then that I had been right to be alarmed earlier—we were at the wrong club, and all they had here was hip hop.

 

I was angry, frustrated, and upset. I had had my heart so set on dancing to techno tonight that I had a hard time accepting that I would have to put up with hip hop. The worst part was that there was nothing I could do about it. Even if I left and tried to find Club Atom, I didn’t have the money to pay for cover again, and clubs are not the kind of place where you can ask for a refund. I was pissed off that I’d paid the equivalent of $20 for a place that I didn’t want to be at, especially when I can get into most hip hop clubs in the States for free. But I was stuck. It was after 12:30am, so the subway was no longer running, and even if I’d managed to find the money to pay for a cab (which could’ve easily cost me $100), I’d still be locked out of the dorm until 6am. It was the first time since I got here that I was genuinely unhappy to be here and wished myself away—and it didn’t really have anything to do with Tokyo itself, but it was the frustration of the trains not running and the fucking ridiculous curfew rules of my dorm, which was quickly followed by a wave of homesickness. The prospect of having to spend 5 whole hours at a place I vehemently didn’t want to be at just killed me. I love Tokyo otherwise, but at least this sort of shitty situation would never happen to me in the States.

 

The other reason I got really upset was because it was soon clear that although this hadn’t been anyone’s first choice club, ultimately, all the others were still fine with this. Even if we’d gone to Club Atom, chances were, most of them would’ve ended up spending most of their time on the hip hop floor, so they didn’t have much trouble accepting this other environment. When it sank in that I was the only one feeling miserable, I felt lonelier than I’ve felt since I got here. I also admit to being genuinely pissed at Cat for leading us to the wrong place, much moreso than she deserved. Yeah, it was stupid to lead us into a club without paying attention to the signs, but everyone makes mistakes. Unfortunately, I still had enough alcohol in my system at that point (I’d had 5 or 6 beers at Evan’s place earlier) that the rage built up quickly and made me feel like she had lied to us, especially when I noticed that she was just fine with this club, too. There were also small seeds of jealousy, because she and Shaunte have been to The Womb, an all-techno club, twice. When I’m the one whose musical passion in life is electronica, why was I the only one who hadn’t been to a techno club?!

 

When I realized that my emotions were quickly spinning out of control, I ran outside for a breather. They had a locker area with a bench near the entrance where I ended up sitting for probably a good half hour trying to gain control of myself again. I did my best to shake the vague sense of homesickness but ended up crying a little bit. When I finally felt like the wave of emotions had mostly passed, I went to the bathroom to freshen up a bit. I told myself I’d be fine. The crying had killed my buzz, so I told myself that I just needed a drink. As long as I wasn’t sober, I could try to forget that I was someplace I didn’t want to be, dance, and make the best of it.

 

I went to the bar to cash in my drink voucher for a Tequila Sunrise. The cover charge had included a coupon for one free drink. Some clubs really water down their drinks, but this one was pretty well-made, and I could feel the alcohol start to take effect almost right away. I went and found my friends, who were dancing in a circle near the side. I sat down to finish my drink, just observing the club and watching people dance.

 

To be fair, it wasn’t a terrible club. It was a definite improvement over Gas Panic. They actually had space for a dance floor as well as a stage and a visible DJ booth where you could make requests. More of the people, guys included, seemed to be here to dance/party and not just to hook up. On the bad side, the fact that they had a stage meant that they had go-go dancers, in stripper outfits, doing sleazy things like pretending to whip each other and whatnot. It was one of the most tasteless things I’ve seen. The music also wasn’t spectacular. They played quite a few older hip hop songs that kind of stopped being cool a couple of years ago.

 

At any rate, point being, I was just watching people dance in front of me, not really consciously thinking too hard about anything in particular, when all of a sudden, I started crying again. It didn’t take long for one of the Korean girls to notice and to bring it to everyone else’s attention, and before I knew it, I was causing a scene. This was not at all my intention, but for some reason, I just could not stop crying. I’m aware that alcohol sometimes has that effect, but it had never happened to me before personally, so it was a pretty bizarre experience.

 

A short while after I finished my drink, I managed to calm down. I tried to dance a bit with the others and make sure that I wasn’t spoiling anyone’s night. I honestly didn’t mean to be a brat, but I guess a lot of frustrations were coming to the surface—not just from the club and not being able to go home, but from this entire past week… being forced into the speech contest, getting ditched/left behind by Cat and Shaunte several times, somehow never being able to hold onto money for very long here despite my best efforts to budget all my expenditures carefully, and just generally enjoying myself less than I have been. I don’t know. I’ve just been less happy than I usually am.

 

Sometime later, I had another drink, this time without the negative side effects. I got into the dancing a little more. Ironically, while I was starting to feel better and better, it seemed as though the others were enjoying themselves less and less. There was something weird about this club. People just weren’t really mingling very much. They were dancing in their own little groups or just standing by the side watching and drinking. The guys seemed to be more into the go-go dancers than anyone else. Many of the girls looked bored, but when Tyler (who was making quite an effort to pick up Japanese girls) offered to buy them drinks (which often girls will accept, because hey, it’s a free drink), none of them wanted anything. It was weird. It was like the party never really got started.

 

Around 3am, Evan suggested that we all go to karaoke for an hour. Everyone agreed that we were much more likely to have a good time there, so we all left the club. Many karaoke places charge extra between 2 and 5am, but Evan knew of a place that’s ¥1000 an hour regardless of the time of day, drinks included, so we went there. It was actually a pretty cool place. They had a good selection of English, Japanese, and Korean songs, so everyone was happy. I tried singing a couple of Japanese songs. It didn’t work as well in practice as it did in my head, but then, I was perhaps a little less sober than is optimal for karaoke. Evan and I also sang Incubus’ “Drive” together, which is probably one of my all-time favorite karaoke songs.

 

By the time we left the karaoke place, it was around 4:30am. There was brief talk of going to Gas Panic, since there was no cover, but everyone was getting tired. The Korean girls ended up going home together because one of them has an apartment nearby. The rest of us went to First Kitchen, a McDonald’s-esque place whose main appeal was that they were serving breakfast burgers (though they charged a whopping 15% extra between 2 and 5am—pretty scandalous, but no one was in the mood to argue). We all got food and sat down and talked.

 

I remembered from the first time we’d gone clubbing that the first Fukutoshin leaves Shibuya at exactly 5:20am, so around 5, we headed for the station. We timed it really well, because by the time everyone had used the restrooms there and walked down to the track, the first train rolled in. It was a local train, so it was a 20~25-minute ride to our stop (an express does it in 15 minutes) during which I almost fell asleep a couple of times. The walk from the station to the dorm was tough, too. Luckily, our dorm mother’s mother-in-law happened to be outside taking a stroll when we got there, so she let us into the building. Once in my room, I barely had the energy to change into my pajamas before collapsing in bed.

 

I didn’t bother setting an alarm clock because normally I can’t sleep for very long after drinking alcohol. 4, 5 hours at most and I’m wide awake. To my surprise, I slept until 2pm. Cat sleeps for a long time, while Shaunte is the same as me, so the first thing I did was check whether Shaunte was up yet. She didn’t seem to be, though. I ate lunch, washed my face, and then went back to my room to play PSP for a while, expecting Shaunte to come knocking on my door when she was up like she usually does.

 

Before I knew it, it was around 6pm or so, and Shaunte had never come knocking. I went out into the hall and noticed that Cat’s slippers were no longer outside her door. When I went downstairs to check the name sign board, I saw that not only were Shaunte and Cat gone, but they had put up the forms that we have to fill out when we want to stay out all night.

 

So once again, they had left me without saying a word about where they were going, my one pet peeve. I don’t care if you don’t want me along, but at least freaking tell me that you’re leaving so that I know I should make my own plans or something. Not that I have that many options, given that I have no phone and no one else’s numbers… I once again wondered if it was a mistake not to get a cell phone. I hadn’t thought it would matter because the first couple of weeks, it seemed like Shaunte and Cat and I were going to do most things together. But if they’re going to continue leaving me behind, I’m going to need a phone so I can try to make some of my own plans with other people. Is it still worth it, though? We’re now down to less than four weeks.

 

At any rate, given that it was already after 6pm, it wasn’t really worth it to go out anymore. I was pissed, because it’s a three-day weekend, so the last thing I wanted was to be hanging around the dorm feeling lamesauce again. What else was there to do, though?

 

It seems that some of the emotions of last night carried over into today. I feel moody, lonely, and a tad bit homesick. I still don’t want to leave Tokyo, but I miss people. I miss the people I know care about me. I miss knowing who I can turn to when I’ve had a bad day and need to talk to someone about it—and, hell, having the means to talk to them. This isolation is driving me nuts. I half debated walking to a pay phone and trying to call somebody, but it’s so expensive, you can barely have a conversation. Maybe I should get a cell phone, so I can at least e-mail people.

 

This is not turning out to be a very good weekend.

 

 

Monday, July 21^st

As I mentioned, it’s a three-day weekend. July 20^th is called 「海の日」 (Ocean Day) and is, for some reason, considered a national holiday. Since the 20^th was a Sunday, everyone gets the following Monday (i.e. today) off. No class, and most people have off work.

 

I woke up at 7:30am, only to discover that holidays are apparently like Sundays, and the dorm mother doesn’t cook for us. This was slightly inconvenient because I was starving, and the suupaa doesn’t open until 9am. The Japanese really aren’t morning people, I guess. Everything opens so late.

 

Today was also the last day of the International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival—the one we’d tried to see a movie at two Fridays ago, but it was sold out. Shaunte had asked me to go see one of the movies with her before it ended, so I’d flipped through the booklet and decided that the showing I was most interested in was a selection of 6 different Asian short films about homosexuality that were being screened at 11:30am in a theater in Aoyama (near Shibuya). Given the fact that I wanted to make sure I had enough time to find the cinema and that I still needed to buy tickets, that meant leaving the dorm between 9:30 and 10am. I had put a note outside Shaunte’s door to that effect last night. Cat’s slippers were already outside her door at 7:30, so I guessed they had gotten back around 6am. Still, I knew that the chances of Shaunte being energetic enough to go with me, after three nights of staying out all night, were slim, but I had still wanted to give her the option. I waited until 9:50am and then headed out on my own. Being alone has never stopped me from doing anything, it just sucks when you’ve gotten used to having company.

 

The theater turned out to be really easy to find because it was right on Aoyama-dori near the Omotesando intersection, so I’d been to the area before. There was already a long line when I got there, but I didn’t have any trouble buying tickets at the door. A couple of months ago, mom and I had talked about the sharp rise in the price of movie tickets in the U.S. since we’d first moved there. We complained about having to pay $8, $9 for a regular evening ticket these days. Well, I’m never going to complain about the price of movie tickets in the U.S. again. Movie tickets in Japan cost an average of ¥1500. I was there for the first showing of the day, and I still paid ¥1550.

 

I ran into Brad and Miguel in the lobby, although that was not a huge surprise. I’d known that they wanted to catch several of the movies. I just hadn’t known they were planning to go to this particular one. We all sat together and made friends with this Australian kid called Daniel who was there by himself.

 

The films were very, very good. I thought it was definitely worth going, and even worth the expensive movie ticket. I had picked this showing because A) it seemed like something unusual that I probably wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to see anywhere else, and B) from the pictures and the descriptions in the booklet, the short films all seemed very artsy. They really were very artsy, and they were all very good. At least, none of them were 100% outright bad. Even if the story or the acting weren’t always superb, the cinematography usually made up for it.

 

There was one that I really didn’t like. It was about a guy who goes to these (implied) orgy parties and gets high and sleeps around. It was just awkward and not very compelling, even though the cinematography and music were good. It was the only one that didn’t have English subtitles or wasn’t in English, but I don’t know that understanding what was being said would’ve made me enjoy it more. Then there was one about two guys who have a one-night stand that I didn’t enjoy too much, mostly because the younger guy’s acting wasn’t 100% convincing, and the older guy’s acting was fine, but his character just gave me the creeps. The ones I did really enjoy were a very intense one about a mother slowly admitting to herself that her son is gay (though very cryptically and poetically, with some great one-liners); a cute Spanish one that was included because it was written & directed by a Singaporean, about a boy catching his parents having a threesome with his uncle and how he relives that experience when his little sister asks him what sex is; and a very poetic Taiwanese film about a boy knowing most of his life that something’s wrong with him and then, when a new guy joins his class at school, slowly beginning to realize that he might be gay. That last one was actually 38 minutes, but the others were all less than 15 minutes long. It’s amazing how much more some directors can say with a 15-minute film than others do in an entire feature-length movie.

 

Brad and Miguel were also going to the movie after this showing, so we parted ways. Rather than heading straight home, I decided to walk around the area for a bit. In particular, I wanted to look for a specific souvenir shop. My cousin Annemarieke was here for 6 months doing an architecture exchange program several years ago, so I’d asked her for tips on places to go, and among a host of things, she had mentioned that one of the best and cheapest souvenir shops is located on the Omotesando. Since I was there anyway, I figured I should try to look for it.

 

I think I managed to find the store she was talking about. It wasn’t cheap cheap. You might be able to find cheaper things at Don Quixote or a ¥100 shop. However, the stuff they sell truly looks like good quality, so given the fact that you are actually buying something genuinely nice, it’s not expensive. I didn’t end up buying anything yet, but I made a mental inventory of the place, so I can come back later. To my aggravation, among other things, they sell yukatas and kimonos—with yukatas for tall people, too. They even have them in a size taller than at school, as well. And what’s worse? They have them in the shade of purple that I’d been wanting, and their designs in general are a lot nicer than the ones I’d had to choose from last week. And the yukatas themselves are only ¥3700. It’s true that yes, the school did have a slightly better deal because the ¥4000 I paid included the obi, obi ties, geta sandals (which don’t fit me), and a purse. But had I known that for a little more, I could get the color and design I wanted, I would’ve held off. I really regretted settling for something I’d known I wasn’t 100% happy with, and I seriously debated buying the purple yukata and giving the dark blue one I’d bought to my sister. In the end, I decided not to do it… yet. I’ll go to the yukata-wearing class on Wednesday and see how the blue one looks on me, and if I decide that I don’t like it, I can always go back and buy the purple one.

 

After I finished browsing the store, I headed back toward the Shibuya subway station. I had almost made it to the Omotesando and Aoyama-dori intersection when an Asian girl coming the other way suddenly stopped in the middle of the pavement and pointed and gaped at me. I couldn’t really see her face because it was hidden behind a pair of big sunglasses, so confused as to why this Asian girl was pointing at me, I slowed my walk as I approached her. Only when I came closer did I recognize her: it was So Hyung, a girl who’s in my Communication Design class at CMU. We’re not really friends, but she’s the same year as me, so we’ve had most classes together since Freshman year and I guess we know each other pretty well. It was the most random encounter of my life. It was one of those things where, if I’d left the souvenir shop 5 minutes later, or if she’d been looking the other way, we’d probably never have seen each other and never been aware of the fact that we’re both in Tokyo. Turns out she’s just here traveling and being a tourist. She’s leaving in 2 days. Still, talk about really strange coincidences.

 

I took the subway and made it back to the dorm around 2:30pm. I did homework, took a nap for about an hour, went to the suupaa to buy food for dinner (and more green tea ice cream—yummy!), and hung out with Shaunte in her room for a while. Cat had disappeared again, this time without even telling Shaunte where she was going. Shaunte said that Cat could very well be out all night again, but she herself was tired of partying. She’s done with that for a while. We talked about both making lists of the things we still want to do in Tokyo before we leave sometime within the next few days. Touristy things. If Shaunte’s game, then maybe I don’t need a phone after all.

 

I also rewrote my speech for the speech contest. I was lying on my bed writing when everything shook for maybe 10, 15 seconds. Distracted by the epic sentence I was composing in my head, I simply attributed it to a large passing truck or something of that nature. It was only later, when I stopped by Shaunte’s room again for a little while and she asked, “Did you feel the earthquake?” that I put 2 and 2 together. I know it sounds crazy, but I’d never experienced an earthquake before, so I’d secretly been hoping that I’d get to while I’m here, and I was a little disappointed that it was so short and anti-climactic. I suppose I should be glad no damage was done, though.

 

I have a test tomorrow, so I studied a little, though less than I probably should. I just don’t feel motivated. I’m pretty exhausted from my crazy and emotional weekend. I guess I’ll just try to cram in some studying in the morning.

 

 

Tuesday, July 22^nd

Today, things are pretty much back to normal. Class as usual, though I don’t know how much time the test is going to take up. They didn’t give us any hints as to what the format is going to be like, so I’m not sure what to expect.

 

I’m at school early to use the computer lab again. I just skimmed over this entry again before posting, and I realized it’s sure been an interesting week. Between eating pig intestines, having my first bout of homesickness, and my first earthquake, I guess a lot’s happened. Let’s hope this coming week is just as eventful.

A couple of people e-mailed me to let me know that there was something wrong with my post last time. The text was getting cut off in weird ways. I’m not sure what happened. The Internet café I went to didn’t have Word, so when I tried to copy-paste my entry from their imitation Word program, things went haywire. I was able to fix it the next day, though, by re-c&ping the post from the school computer lab. Hopefully everyone’s been able to read it just fine since then.

 

 

Wednesday, July 9^th

As I mentioned in my last post, today was the first day of the official school term. After I left the computer lab, I had to go to the school office to find out my classroom. The school has grown so much over the past couple of years that they haven’t been able to find a new facility that’s big enough for all their classes yet, and as a result, they are now spread out over three buildings. Two of them belong entirely to KCP, and the third is a single floor above a Chinese restaurant near the second building that they bought. Up until now, all the group sessions had been held in the main building. We weren’t even aware of the existence of the other buildings until we walked past them on our way to the entrance ceremony on Monday. They’re less than a 5-minute walk away.

 

Unfortunately, we all ended up being spread out all over the place. Evan, Caslyn and I are in the same class, in the Chinese restaurant building. The rest of my former groupmates—Kevin, Tyler, Yana, Kelcy, Robyn, etc.—are in the second building, while Shaunte and Cat are in the main building. I can’t remember if I mentioned this earlier, but Shaunte and Cat were placed into Level 1.5. They had tried to test into Level 2, but apparently they didn’t make the cut. I thought it must be frustrating for them because they’ve been studying Japanese for 2 years, and now they’re being forced to do a lot of beginner stuff again, but they don’t seem to care too much.

 

My class seems pretty cool, even if I’m still frustrated and worried that I’m not going to learn enough. I really like our teacher, Fujimura-sensei. He’s gentle, slightly soft-spoken, and very young—according to Evan, he’s only 25. When we went around to do self-introductions and I said that I like video games, he asked me what kind of games I like, so I told him RPG games. Then, during the break, he came up to me and asked me if I’d played the DragonQuest games, because those are his favorites. You can’t go wrong with a teacher who plays video games. <3 We have him twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays. On all the other days, we have different teachers. KCP’s philosophy is that it’s good to have several different teachers so that you can get used to hearing different people’s Japanese. I can understand that, but I still miss having one teacher whom you get to know really well. I wouldn’t mind having Fujimura-sensei all the time.

 

As for the rest of the class, with the exception of Evan and Caslyn and I, and 3 Chinese and Malaysian students, they’re all Korean. They’re all fairly old, too. It seems that most of them are already done with college, and Koreans don’t even start college until they’re 20, so that means that many of them are 24, 25 at the youngest. Aside from that, they’re just kind of your typical Koreans. They’re very cliqueish, sticking closely together and only speaking Korean. Honestly, it’s like CMU all over again.

 

The actual class passed by pretty quickly. We did more housekeeping stuff than actually learning much, but we did go over enough grammar to be assigned homework and everything. After class, I went and met up with Shaunte and Cat, and we ended up going straight home, where we ate dinner, showered, and did homework.

 

 

Thursday, July 10^th

We ended up coming to school early again to use the lab, which was finally open today. Today was the first time when I finally felt like I was able to get caught up on all my e-mails and such. One of the frustrations of being able to access the Internet so infrequently…

 

Takahashi-sensei was our teacher today. We only have her once a week, but she is considered the teacher in charge of our class. I guess that’s nice, considering Evan and I have had her off and on since the first day of group sessions, so we know her and she knows us pretty well. She is pretty strict, but she’s funny and nice. I don’t dislike her by any means, but I still wish we could have Fujimura all the time. I like him!

 

We did quite a lot in class today—dictation, grammar, conversation practice, and an in-class composition. The school speech contest (one of the school’s biggest traditions) is on July 31^st, and apparently we were expected to write pretty much the entire speech in class today. We did quite a lot of essays and compositions at CMU, but that was almost always on your own time, when you could use a dictionary and work at your own pace. Having to come up with a composition during class, without being able to use any reference materials, and with a fixed time limit, was pretty tough. I didn’t feel all that great about my speech—but then, I suppose that might be a good thing, since I don’t want to be chosen for the speech contest.

 

After class, Shaunte, Cat and I went with another group of kids to Freshness Burger, a Japanese hamburger franchise. I wasn’t hungry, so I just had an iced green tea latte while the others all ate burgers. Several of them were still hungry after that, so we walked to a taco place. While we were waiting for the others to eat their tacos, Shaunte and I walked to a place called BookMart, which sells used books, CDs, DVDs, and video games for very cheap. Books, especially, were very cheap; only ¥100-¥200 for most of them. I bought one manga.

 

Then we finally went home, where it was dinnertime—yes, Shaunte and Cat still had dinner, even after their burgers and tacos. Ironically, today’s dinner consisted of hamburger and fries. Ha!

 

 

Friday, July 11^th

Maybe I’m just being fussy because it’s Friday and I didn’t want to be in class, but today’s teacher almost drove me up the wall. Our Friday teacher, Iki-sensei, is so boring and slow that it just gets annoying after a while. We were given a seating chart today, and Evan and I spent much of the class making eye-gouging faces and such across the room at each other. What a frustratingly boring teacher.

 

I was also impatient because today’s the third day we’ve spent on freaking noun modification, which was like beginning-second-semester stuff, so I was hoping we’d move on to the next chapter, but apparently we still needed to beat this topic to death. *insert eye-gouging face*

 

When class was finally over, I met up with the rest of my former groupmates. Brad wanted to go see a movie. This weekend & next weekend, Tokyo is hosting the International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and one of the participating theaters is in Shinjuku, pretty close to our school. Tonight was the first night, and Brad wanted to go right after class to see if there were still tickets for the first movie. Unfortunately, they were already sold out. The only movie in the film festival that sounded interesting to me was playing at 8:45pm tonight (which would be a problem with curfew), and was only being shown in Korean with Japanese subtitles. Hopefully it’ll be released on DVD in the US with English subtitles or something…

 

Cat and Shaunte and a new kid, Pat, joined us, and we ended up going to happy hour at Shakey’s Pizza. ¥300 each for beer and cocktails is a pretty good deal. We didn’t order any actual food, so afterwards, we had dinner at the Japanese version of a food court, which consisted mostly of noodle and curry places. Shaunte, Cat, Tyler, Kelcy, Caslyn and I ate at a delicious udon place. It was cheap food but I really enjoyed it.

 

After that, our group split up. Shaunte and Cat returned to the dorm to get changed because they’re going clubbing again tonight. The rest of us walked around nighttime Shinjuku for a while, taking pictures and enjoying a two-person band that was giving a performance in the street. Then Tyler and Robyn went home. The rest of us—Brad, Miguel, Kelcy, Caslyn, Yana and I—ended up going to a bar called Hub, The English Pub, where we just hung out and talked for a while. Around 9:30pm, the girls headed for the subway, and I returned to the dorm on my own.

 

 

Saturday, July 12^th & Sunday, July 13^th

Like most weekend, I woke up around 7am, had breakfast, and spent the rest of the morning hanging out in my room by myself, since Cat and Shaunte were passed out after partying all night. Shaunte was up fairly early, though, so we ended up going to Ikebukuro, where we spent a couple of hours exploring Kinokuniya, a massive bookstore. I bought another manga and a dictionary. We were never required to have a dictionary for class at CMU, and it was never really necessary. On the few occasions when I needed one, I just used the Internet. Unfortunately, since that resource isn’t available to me here, and since the teachers love giving us homework with words we haven’t seen before, I realized I could no longer go without one. It’s a good purchase, though.

 

Back at the dorm again, we showered, ate dinner, and got ready to go out for my big birthday shindig, which always takes us girls a couple of hours. As most of you hopefully already know, I was turning 20 on the 13^th. 20 happens to be a special age in Japan. They even have a special name for it: 「はたち」 (hatachi). It’s considered the coming-of-age as well as being the official legal drinking age. So, we planned to party it up in style. We were meeting the others in Shibuya at 9pm, which really meant that everyone was expected to be there at 9:30.

 

The group ended up consisting of me, Cat, Shaunte, Yana, Kelcy, Caslyn, Robyn, and Kevin. Evan met us in Shibuya but left, since he couldn’t stay out all night with us. After he left, the search began for a nomihodai place. Nomihodai is Japanese for “all-you-can-drink”, where you pay 1-2 thousand yen per hour—usually 2 hours max—during which time you can order whatever drinks you want. It’s generally a better deal than going to a bar and paying for individual drinks, especially in a part of town like Shibuya, where bars are extremely pricey. In our case, the nomihodai also ended up including some pretty good food. It’s always nice to have something to snack on while you’re drinking. At midnight, when I officially turned 20, they brought out a plate of cakes and such, courtesy of the place we were at. (I can’t really call it a bar, but I’m not sure what else to call it.)

 

Afterwards, the plan was to go to Club Atom, a club with different music on each floor, including a techno/trance floor, which is where I really wanted to go. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, some of us got sick, and the bouncers at the door wouldn’t let drunk people in. In the end, we ended up crashing at a love hotel. (These are hotels where, instead of paying a fixed rate for one night, you only pay for the amount of time that you spent there. They’re very common here.) A few people ended up going to Gas Panic (the club we went to last weekend that I really didn’t enjoy) while the rest of us basically just passed out in various parts of the hotel room. It’s unfortunate that the night didn’t go as planned, and that I never got to dance, but everyone did end up with interesting stories to tell. I suppose that’s something.

 

In the morning, we took the subway home and then passed out again as soon as we got to the dorm. I slept on and off until around 5pm. I had one of the worse hangovers I’ve ever had, characterized mainly by this vague layer of nausea that was intense enough to make doing anything uncomfortable, but not intense enough to force me to throw up, which also meant that the nausea wouldn’t go away, either. It was frustrating to spend my actual birthday debilitated in this way. When I finally managed to throw up, I felt like a whole new person. The nausea was gone and my energy returned. I showered and got ready to go out again.

 

Today’s party was a lot more tame. Along with the Japanese girls from our dorm, we had okonomiyaki for dinner at a small restaurant in Kaname-cho. Okonomiyaki are Japanese egg pancakes which you cook yourself on a hot plate in front of you, similar to teppanyaki. Okonomiyaki doesn’t really exist commonly in the States, though, and this was my first time being able to enjoy it. It was actually funny because when the girls had first proposed going out for dinner for my birthday, since it’s a Sunday and our meal plan doesn’t include food on Sunday, I had thought about suggesting okonomiyaki, but I had no idea if it’s expensive, so I didn’t end up saying anything. Then Mariya and Ayako actually ended up proposing it. Unfortunately, I don’t know Japanese for, “You read my mind.”

 

The okonomiyaki place we went to was all-you-can-eat, in the sense that you pay for a set amount of time (in our case, I think it was 1.5-2 hours), and during that time you can order as much as you like. You had to fill out these little order forms with the ingredients you wanted for your pancake, and then they’d bring it to you in a bowl, and it was up to you to cook the pancake. Mariya and Ayako ended up doing most of the cooking for the group. It worked more efficiently that way, and Shaunte and Cat and I had no clue what to do, anyway. It’s more complicated than it might seem because the egg batter is a lot more runny than flour-based pancake batter, so you actually have to first arrange the ingredients (minus the egg) in a circle and then pour the egg in the middle so it doesn’t run all over the plate.

 

As for the taste, it’s hard to describe. The pancakes themselves are hearty, with vegetables, meat, tofu, and/or fish, but they coat them with this syrup that tastes fairly sweet and tangy. The combination of sweet and hearty is not something I’m really used to, so I can’t say it’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. I think it’s something you grow to enjoy once you’ve had it a few times and you’re kind of used to it. This time, everything was still too new, and my taste buds weren’t sure how to react. I tried as many different pancakes as I could, but I didn’t end up eating a whole lot because I was still a little afraid to upset my stomach.

 

After our time at the restaurant was up, we returned to the dorm, where the girls unveiled the cake they’d gotten me. Actually, I think they just bought the basic cake, and then a couple of the girls made the icing and then put cherries and other decorations on top. It was really sweet. <3 They lit up 20 candles and sang Happy Birthday (in English). I blew out all 20 candles in one go, and then we ate the cake. I guess some birthday traditions don’t change, no matter where you go.

 

I’d luckily had the foresight to do my homework Saturday morning, so I had a free night tonight. I went back to my room and just lay on my bed and reflected for a while. Turning 20 is a little scary. I’ve spent most of my conscious life writing a 1 in front of my age, and now there’s going to be a 2 there. I’m running out of excuses to act like a child. Soon I’ll have to go out into the real world and deal with jobs and such. They say the best years are yet to come, but I don’t know. It’s scary.

 

I guess I’m also feeling a little melancholy because I’m nearing the halfway mark of my stay here in Tokyo, and I’m scared that from now on, things are going to go by pretty fast. I’ve gotten very used to life here, to the extent that it’s often hard to imagine that there was any other kind of life before this, and that it will have to end at some point in the not-so-distant future. It’s already easy to forget that things weren’t always this way. Is that what it means to feel like you’re at home in a place? I don’t really know, because I’ve spent most of my life not knowing what to consider home. At any rate, I’m happy here, and I don’t want to leave.

 

But, I digress. Birthdays are not the time to feel blue. I think I’m going to read for a while and then hit the sack.

 

 

Monday, July 14^th

Monday meant another Fujimura day. Hooray! I also enjoyed class more today because we started a new chapter. The material isn’t really new to me, but at least we’ve moved on from noun modification, and I enjoyed the examples we used. We were going over constructing sentences with 「＿＿＿とき、＿＿＿。」 and we ended up using 「お酒を飲みます。」 (“I drink liquor”) for the second part of almost all our example sentences. 「学校が休みのとき、お酒を飲みます。」 (“On school holidays, I drink liquor.”) 「雨が降っているとき、お酒を飲みます。」 (“When it’s raining, I drink liquor.”) Fujimura-sensei was like, “Wow, you guys love to drink, don’t you?” Hee hee.

 

Other than that, nothing too exciting happened. After class, Shaunte and I walked to Citi Bank so she could use the ATM, and then we went straight home. I need to study for a bit longer than usual tonight because I have a kanji test tomorrow. We have to know the ~25 characters we learned this past week, as well as all of the ones they cover in Level 1. You’d think that, since I already know about 300 kanji, it’d be a breeze, but our kanji textbook is retarded in the order that it has you learn the kanji. They covered some characters in Level 1 that I would never expect beginners to need to know, so there’s actually some new characters that I need to learn, too. I suppose it’s good that I’m still learning new characters, but on the other hand, I feel sorry for the students who are forced to learn how to write 「飛行機」 (airplane) before they learn how to write 「男」 (man) and 「女」 (woman).

 

 

Tuesday, July 15^th

I came to school early again to use the lab. After this, I’m either going to an extra conversation practice session, or studying for the kanji test.

 

Today should be a little more exciting than usual, though, because after school I’m going with Shaunte, Sean, Alex, and two other people I don’t know to see the musical Wicked. Yes, it’s going to be all in Japanese, but it should be fun nonetheless, and it’ll be a good test of our understanding. It’s also one of the few musicals I haven’t seen live, although I’m familiar with the music. I’m really excited!