4 posts tagged “culture”

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’.

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.

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 extreme long length of this post. No, I don’t expect that my entries will usually be nearly this long. However, there are a lot of little adventures and initial impressions to describe, so I guess that’s why this ended up this lengthy. Future posts will probably contain fair fewer words and more pictures. I haven’t really bothered much with taking photographs yet, because I’m too busy taking in all the sights and sounds to reach for my camera. Pictures will hopefully start coming soon, though.

 

 

In Transit (Friday, June 20^th~Saturday, June 21^st)

Mom and I left for the airport at 5:30am on Friday morning. My plane left at 7:30am, and by the time we figured how to check in (I was flying Korean Air but leaving from the Continental terminal because the first flight was a Continental code-share, which was a little confusing), it was already pretty late. Still, when I got to the gate, the plane wasn’t even there yet. The previous flight had a slight delay, and we ended up leaving with an even longer delay because they were waiting on people from other flights and for everyone’s luggage to get there. They managed to make up most of the delay in the air, though.

 

The flight was fairly uneventful. It was just about three hours long, so we actually got breakfast and an in-flight movie (Fool’s Gold). However, the audio for the movie didn’t work, so aside from occasional glimpses at the screen, I didn’t watch it. I sat in a row of three seats with a man; he had the window and I the aisle, and the seat in between us was empty, which was nice.

 

We got to LA around 9 local time, where I had to deal with the frustration of navigating LAX on my own, never having been there before. They had said that there would be a Continental agent outside to give information about connecting flights, but I couldn’t find anyone. My boarding pass which I’d printed in Houston said that neither the gate nor the terminal had been announced yet, so I completely had no clue where to go. After finding a restroom, I went back to the desk by the gate and asked the lady there for directions. She was not particularly friendly and just said, “Go straight and then turn left.”

 

So I tried that, and all I found were more gates, belonging mostly to domestic airlines like Delta and United. All the flight information monitors were United, and when I finally found a Continental one, it was only showing domestic flights. Clearly, I was in the wrong terminal, but I didn’t know how to figure out which terminal I should be at. Besides, I was in terminal 6, and the only connection to another terminal that I could find was to terminal 5, but the sign that that was only for flights to Jamaica and somewhere else southbound. When I looked at the United monitor again, it did show a flight to Tokyo, though not mine. There was no gate given, and for the terminal it just said “TBIT”, which I assumed was some kind of version of “TBA” that I couldn’t decipher. In frustration, I sat down and powered up my laptop, and luckily the LAX information page had flight schedules with gate information. Still, my flight had no gate, and for terminal, it said “TBIT” on one screen and “B” on another. I didn’t understand how it could be terminal B when the terminals here seemed to be numbered, not lettered.

 

Not knowing what else to do, I continued down the terminal toward the baggage claim, where I finally found a map of the entire airport. At that point it finally became clear that all the terminals were numbered except the Tom Bradley International Terminal… TBIT (and possibly occasionally abbreviated just B). However, the map still didn’t make it clear how to get there. The only connection I’d found was to Terminal 5, and the only other exit was toward the baggage claim and street level. Call me spoiled, but I was expecting a big, busy airport like LAX to have an inter-terminal train. When I asked one of the security guards, he said that I indeed wanted to head out to the street and then head left, so I did. Once there, I had to have another guy explain to me that I needed to be heading along the street and walk to TBIT, where I needed to enter through the main entrance and go through security again.

 

Once I’d made it to TBIT, things went pretty well, although there was some confusion just where exactly to line up for security. Overall, the entire experience was frustrating and upsetting, especially because I’d been looking forward to flying through LAX for the first time, since it’s one of the biggest and busiest airports in the US. Part of it is Continental’s fault for not having a gate agent with connecting flight information, but LAX loses major points for lacking clear information and signage and generally being one of the most confusing airports I have ever been to. And I’ve been to a lot of airports, so I think I have some expertise when I say that.

 

When I finally made it to the gate, I didn’t have to wait very long before my flight started boarding. I had been lucky enough to get assigned a seat pretty far in the back, so I was in the first group called on to board. However, when I got to the front of the line, they took me out of the line because they were checking passports as people were boarding. Apparently, because I have an EU passport, they wanted to verify that I had my green card and could get back into the US. Despite the annoyance of being picked out of the line, Korean Air does win points, because if United had only done this, it would’ve saved us a lot of trouble last Christmas.

 

I was lucky enough to get a window seat. I sit next to an older Japanese lady who seems intent on not conversing, but that’s just fine with me. The plane is a Boeing 777. While the 747 will always be my first love as far as airplanes go, I have to commend the 777 for having possibly the smoothest take-off I have ever experienced. Take-off usually gives me the jitters, but this time, I didn’t have any reason to.

 

The entire flight crew is Asian, a mix of Korean and Japanese women, though they all speak both Korean and Japanese fluently. Their English is acceptable too. I’m pretty impressed to have a flight crew versed in 3 languages. You never get that on Continental. Aside from the crew, one of the first things I noticed is that we don’t have individual TV screens. I always thought this is the standard on long international flights (this one is 11 hours long), so I was surprised.

 

To make up for the lack of individual screens, perhaps, the food is simply amazing. We had an extensive lunch about an hour after take-off. We had a choice between seafood curry or Korean food. I went for the curry. The seafood consisted of squid and scallops. It was accompanied by salad with two slices of smoked salmon. We also got a dessert cake that looked like it came from an expensive French cake shop. I was thoroughly impressed. It also made me happy because I remember that as a kid I used to get really excited about airplane food. Of course, lately, airplane food has been nothing to get excited about anymore. This was pretty exciting though.

 

 

The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that they don’t charge for alcohol—not beer, not wine, not liquor, not cocktails. I don’t get the impression they’re carding, either, though I wasn’t brave enough to try. (Anyway, I realized I wasn’t appearing very grown-up, with my penguin blanket and all.) During dinner, they even came down the aisles advertising certain wines. It was pretty unusual.

 

They did show two in-flight movies. They started off with Fool’s Gold, which, from the glimpses I’d seen on the other flight, didn’t interest me, even though I could watch it with audio this time. It was followed up by a Japanese movie about lawyers, which actually seemed very interesting. However, when it started off, I thought it was a TV show and not a movie, because it had an intro like one, so I decided not to watch it, though I did basically follow the action without audio, while listening to my own music. When I later realized my mistake, I regretted it, but by that point it was far enough into the movie that I just decided to watch the rest of it without audio. Still, what a bummer.

 

Aside from listening to music, I haven’t done much. I studied for our placement test on Monday for a bit. I think I slept for a total of one hour, while they were showing Fool’s Gold, but I’m too awake and uncomfortable to sleep any more. We’re in the very last leg of the flight, anyway. I had to power up my laptop to charge my mp3 player (I bought a little Samsung before I left… 15 minutes hooked into a USB port and it was charged; pretty impressive) so I decided to start this journal. I’m guessing we’re going to begin the initial descent soon, so I’d better stop here. When I next write, I’ll be on the ground in Japan! Amazing.

 

Arrival (Saturday, June 21^st)

My first impressions of Japan are hard to describe. During the entire descent and landing, it was so cloudy that it was impossible to see anything except the airport. Aside from the many kanji signs and the predominance of Asian people at the airport, it wasn’t really … Japan yet. Airports are this weird no-man’s-land that aren’t truly representative of the country or culture they’re in, so it didn’t really feel like I’d arrived anywhere out of the ordinary. This wasn’t the country I’d been waiting so long to visit, not yet.

 

Unfortunately I ended up having to spend a lot of time at the airport before I even began to get a glimpse of that country. They’d told us to be there by 4pm, and my plane landed shortly after 3, but several others had delayed flights or just weren’t able to make it here that early. The rest of us had to wait on them so we could all go into the city together. Some people immediately started meeting and socializing, but I honestly wasn’t in the mood. I actually dozed off a couple of times.

 

When everyone had finally arrived—between 20 to 25 or so of us—we dropped off our luggage to be taken by truck into the city (not by courier as they’d originally said; they’d rented a truck instead) and boarded the train ourselves. The first part of the ride was underground, so there was still a lot of anticipation.

 

When the train finally left the tunnel, we found ourselves driving through the Japanese countryside. It was hilly and very, very green. Not nearly as hilly as Pennsylvania, but infinitely more green. I don’t think I’ve ever seen grass such a vivid green color—and yet there’s nothing unnatural about it. It was still light outside, but completely overcast, yet it seemed almost appropriate, because if we’d have been greeted by clear blue skies, I think it would have seemed artificial. The grey skies also helped emphasize the green. Here and there, the landscape was dotted with houses and elements of Japanese architecture. I don’t think I’ll ever forget one of my very first sights: rolling hills, and in the foggy distance, the vague silhouette of a pagoda. I think most are familiar with my sentimental nature, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone when I say that it brought tears to my eyes. It’ll be etched forever in my memory.

 

They’d warned us that the train ride was long, and they weren’t joking. It took about an hour and a half in all, partly because Narita Airport is very far from the city, but also partly because the train wasn’t particularly high-speed and made a lot of stops. When we finally approached the city, most of the train ride was underground, so I didn’t really get a chance to see metropolitan Tokyo at night. Once we disembarked, we walked a short distance and then split up into groups according to which dorm everyone was going to.

 

Our dorm is in Itabashi-ku, a very residential area near Ikebukuro. Although in the initial e-mails they had emphasized that we all have a long commute every day, it seems that our dorm is fairly close to the school. Only 4 of us were lucky enough to be placed there; everyone else seems to have a commute of an hour or more. The other lucky 3 are Cathy, Shaunte, and Michelle. Cathy and Shaunte are from Dallas and go to UNT together. They took Japanese together and signed up for this program together. I guess they also requested to be placed in the same dorm. Michelle is from Hong Kong but goes to college at UMich. A couple of her Hong Kong friends are also in the program, though they’re in a different dorm because they’re guys.

 

The dorm is small, but not really smaller than I expected. Fewer residents, maybe, but the size of the rooms and such was about on par with my expectations. We have singles that contain only a bed, bookshelf, desk, and a wardrobe. There is one communal kitchen-slash-dining-room. There is one shared bathroom (for bathing) on the top floor, although there are powder rooms on each floor. The dorm is run by a middle-aged couple. The dorm mother cooks our meals (if we signed up for the meal plan, which I did). Also, mom, it turns out that we didn’t need indoor slippers; despite the instructions to bring our own, our dorm mother had provided them for us. They had asked us for our shoe size on the application, so they actually fit well and everything.

 

We were given a bit of time to unpack before the dorm mother gave around to let us know about the general rules and the way things are run. She herself doesn’t speak any English, but one of the other residents, Shiori, does, so she helped translate. We had heard about many of the rules already, and were actually surprised to find that they were slightly less strict than they had seemed in the e-mails. For example, we do have an 11pm curfew every night, but you can actually stay out as long as you can provide the name and contact information of the person you’re with. Breakfast is served from 7-8am and dinner is served from 6-7pm, but while the e-mails had made it sound like if you didn’t show up to the dining room during those exact timeframes, you wouldn’t get food, the rule is actually that you can still get food afterwards, but you just have to do your own dishes. I also could swear that the e-mails had said that meals are only on weekdays, but it turns out we get meals on Saturdays too. Sundays are the only day we have to take care of our own food. The only rule that’s as strict as in the e-mails is that the bathroom is only available from 5:30-11pm, which is going to be a bit of an adjustment for me, since I’m used to showering in the mornings.

 

Aside from that, no Internet, no phone, and no TV. Internet we could theoretically get by signing up for a contract with a company that has dial-up service, but since we’re only here for 2 months, it doesn’t seem like it’s worth it. On the one hand, I realize that it’ll be good for us to have fewer distractions so we can focus on our studies and interact with the Japanese girls in the dorm, but I still don’t like this sensation of being cut off from the rest of the world.

 

After that, they gave us an option of eating dinner or taking a shower first. I think all of us were more in the mood for a shower than dinner, but we ended up having dinner first because all the girls were in the dining room at this point and it seemed kind of like they were expecting it. So we ate, even though Michelle was the only one who was actually hungry and managed to clean her plate. We had curry, which was good, but just too much. I ended up being the first to leave, because I was simply dying for a shower.

 

Now that I’m squeaky clean and unpacked, I have a feeling I’m going to pass out very soon. I haven’t been this exhausted in a very long time.

 

Sunday, June 22^nd

I managed to make it until around 9:30~10pm last night, which I thought was impressive given how little sleep I’d gotten on the plane and how utterly exhausted I was. The bad news about going to bed that early is that I was wide awake around 4:30~5 am. I trained myself earlier this summer so that, despite not having to be up at any particular time, I’m not used to much more than 6 hours of sleep, 8 hours at the very most, so that I don’t have as much trouble adjusting when I go back to school in the fall. The combination of that with jet-lag told my body that at 5 AM I had had enough sleep, despite how tired I had been.

 

I honestly didn’t do very much today. I didn’t have the energy to walk around and explore the town. On Sundays we have to take care of our own food, so I ate the snacks I had brought and the leftover food I had refrigerated from the day before. I wasn’t very hungry anyway.

 

I spent most of the day reviewing for the placement test, especially kanji, because I feel that that’s what I’m most likely to have begun forgetting since class ended in early May. I also read a bit, listened to music, and lounged around my room. Although the Japanese girls in the dorm seem to be very social, it seems that everyone uses Sunday as a rest day. Nobody was hanging out in the dining room and there wasn’t much noise, nor a lot of traffic in the halls.

 

It rained almost all day. It stopped for periods at a time, but it never seemed to take long before the rain resumed. Tokyo is in a rainy season right now where it’s expected that it will rain pretty much every day until mid-July. I think I heard something about a festival when the rains stop.

 

Everything still feels very surreal. I think it might be because we haven’t really gone sightseeing yet, or anything like that, where we can touch and really experience what I’ve always mentally associated with Tokyo and Japan. Even though there are certainly things in the dorm and the neighborhood that are very different from the West, it’s still another dorm, still another residential neighborhood. It’s too… normal. Right now I feel like I’m in this limbo place where I’m half-expecting to wake up one day to find everyone speaking English, to go along with the overall normalcy of everything else. It’s almost like I need to see some crazy things that are completely different from the West in order to believe that I’m actually here, in Japan.

 

Maybe I just need more sleep.

 

Monday, June 23^rd

We had to be at the school today by 9 AM for orientation and the placement test. They had warned us on Saturday that we would have to deal with rush hour traffic and that it was better to leave early while we are not completely used to the transportation system yet.

 

I was awake around 4:30 AM again, and dressed by 6. I spent the morning continuing to study for the test. At 7, I went to have breakfast. Before leaving, mom had asked me if I had any idea what breakfast in Japan was going to be like. I told her, “Well, I’m not sure, but the traditional breakfast in Japan consists of rice and miso soup.” It turns out I was right. She had made us breakfast bentos (rice, some kind of deep-fried fish wrapped in eggplant, an egg, tomato, and a piece of broccoli) and we could help ourselves to miso soup. Although very different from what I usually have for breakfast, it was delicious.

 

All 4 of us seemed to have wordlessly agreed to leave right after breakfast, an hour earlier than we probably actually needed to leave. It’s a short walk to the subway and then only about a 10-minute ride, followed by a slightly longer walk from the station to the school. Once we get completely used to everything, we can probably do it in 20 minutes. As it was, today, we took our time, which was good because we had a lot of trouble finding the right exit to street-level at Shinjuku San-chome station. Still, we arrived at the school about 45 minutes early. Shaunte took the time to call home, and the rest of us walked to 7-11 to buy juice and coffee.

 

One interesting thing to note: before leaving for Japan, when I was talking to my mom and sister and mom wondered how much I’d get to speak Japanese with random people in the city, my sister said, “It’ll probably be like when I was in France; everyone will just speak English to you.” This is actually not the case at all. Of course, it might be different in a very touristy area like Shibuya, but overall, people here (such as the cashiers at 7-11 and the guides at the subway stations, for example) just speak Japanese to us, though they often use a lot of exaggerated hand gestures to try to help us catch their meaning. At first I wondered whether they assume we speak Japanese, but I don’t think that’s quite it. The cashiers must definitely have realized we’re foreigners by how much time we spent selecting what we want and then trying to figure out which coins to use. It’s also true that not that many people seem to speak English, but no one seems to be embarrassed about that. It seems to be more of a general “we’re not going to cater to you Americans and will continue to speak our own language, thankyouverymuch” kind of attitude, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. At any rate, it gives us more of an opportunity to test our understanding and really learn the language.

 

The orientation wasn’t too extensive. They mostly talked about the placement test and what would happen afterwards. We had already received a schedule of the program from now until the end, but I think it had confused a lot of us. In its description, the program had boasted “over 200 hours of class time”, but according to the schedule, official classes do not start until July 9^th. All it said about the period until then is that it consists of “orientation and group sessions”, with no real description of what that involves, and an overnight trip to Yamanashi.

 

It turns out that these group sessions are actually classes—but twice as long and more intensive than the normal ones. The other (mostly Asian) students we are going to be in classes with starting July 9^th are ones who are here for multiple terms, and they are on term break right now. The purpose of these group sessions is to basically make sure we are up to their level when we start. Of course, there are still different levels of classes (1 to 6, to be precise), but the program directors believe that we Westerners are highly disadvantaged when it comes to learning Japanese. They said that American students who have been taking Japanese for less than 2 years should expect to be placed in level 1. The good news about the group sessions is that even if you fuck up the placement test and get placed in a lower level than you possibly should, you can use the group sessions to prove you are ready for the next level. This was of some comfort to me, because I did not at all feel ready for the test and I have only taken Japanese for one year (even though I know for sure I am at least on the same level as, if not higher than, Shaunte and Cathy, who have taken it for 2).

 

I wasn’t wrong in my apprehensions about the test. It was pretty bad. It consisted of three portions: a listening comprehension test, a writing test, and an interview, in that order. The listening test started off okay, but it progressively got faster. The last section was a complete disaster; it was just way too fast. The writing test was only a little better, because there was a lot of grammar we’d never learned. I did answer everything, trying to use educated guesses whenever I could. The interview was probably the worst part. By the time it was my turn, I was feeling stupid and dejected, having lost whatever confidence in my Japanese ability I’d had remaining. It also didn’t help that I got assigned to the one interviewer I’d been hoping not to get, because he seemed kind of condescending from what I could see of his interviews with other students. He was not particularly nice, and it didn’t help how dreadful I was feeling about everything. I stumbled my way through my answers, had to ask for clarification several times, and probably didn’t help my already what I assume to be poor performance. When he finally asked what level I thought I should be in and I told him level 2, he didn’t seem convinced, although he said he would think about it.

 

We were free to go home once we were done with the interview, and since Shaunte and Cathy had been done with their interviews for probably over an hour, I figured they were already gone. Michelle was outside talking to her Hong Kong friends, so I didn’t feel like it was my place to interrupt them and ask her if I could go home with her. She probably wasn’t even going straight home. So that left me to find my way back to the dorm by myself.

 

Finding the subway station wasn’t too difficult. The problem was remembering which train to go on. I had two choices, but it wasn’t clear which one I should be taking because both were headed toward Ikebukuro. However, for one of them that is the final stop, while the other goes beyond Ikebukuro, and the latter was the one that I needed. I had a 50/50 chance and guessed wrong. Not only did my train stop at Ikebukuro, but it took the long way round, taking more than twice as much time to get there.

 

However, maybe halfway along the subway ride, a (Japanese) girl came up to me and asked if I speak Japanese. When I told her I did, a little, she began talking to me, asking if I was a student here and so on. She ended up asking me about some of my hobbies and things, and told me a little bit about herself as well; she’s 22 and a university student, and in her spare time she likes to play volleyball and hang out with her friends. She said she has several American friends, which is probably why she’d approached me and why she seemed used to speaking slowly and rephrasing her questions when needed. She was very sweet. I never got her name, but then I doubt I’ll ever see her again. Even another chance encounter on the subway seems unlikely, what with there being 12 million people in this city and all.

 

At any rate, that encounter made screwing up and taking the wrong subway totally worth it, in my opinion. I got off at Ikebukuro, bought another ticket to transfer trains, and managed to make my way to the right line. I got lucky this time, though, because it turned out that the subway I boarded was an express train which didn’t stop at every stop, but it did stop at the stop I needed, so I was okay. The next challenge was figuring out which exit to take to get to the street-level. I had four choices, and I couldn’t remember for the life of me which one it was. Once again, I guessed wrong, picking instead the exit furthest from the dorm, and found myself in a completely different part of town, although it did give me a chance to look around the neighborhood a bit while I used my map to make my way back to the dorm. When I finally did make it back, it had taken me almost an hour and a half to get home.

 

Still, it was only about 3 PM, and I really had nothing to do for the rest of the day. I ended up settling in to read for a while and was just considering taking a nap when Shaunte and Cathy knocked on my door. “We looked for you after the test,” they said, “but Michelle told us you’d already gone home.” I felt really bad, then, because I had just assumed they weren’t going to wait for me. Even though I know that nothing good ever comes of making assumptions, I’d done so anyway.

 

They invited me to go and explore the town with them. They’d actually made the same mistake I did when getting off the subway and taking the wrong exit, so they, too, had noticed that there was a little more to the town than we’d initially thought. We agreed to check it out and in the process hopefully find a wi-fi hotspot or an Internet café. We ended up walking all the way to Senkawa (the next stop on the subway), which has more shops than our area does, but it’s still very residential, meaning that the stores are mostly konbini (convenience stores), suupaa (supermarkets), bookshops, hair salons, and the occasional depaato (department store). We saw one hotel, and Cathy wondered if it’s a “love hotel”. We weren’t sure how to figure that out, but the sign outside did say that you could pay for a 3-hour “rest” as well as an overnight stay, so we figured it might be.

 

At any rate, no Internet cafés, and nothing advertising any wi-fi hotspots, either. We made our way back to the dorm and arrived there about 5:30. Dinner was at 6, and it was quite delicious: meat and tofu and vegetables that you dipped in raw egg (like sukiyaki), some kind of tuna and noodle salad with Japanese mayonnaise, miso soup, rice, and a milk caramel pudding for dessert. I’m so glad I signed up for the meal plan. The food is really exciting.

 

After dinner, I once again had nothing to do and ended up reading again… which was a bad idea, because soon I found myself nodding off. I ended up taking that nap I’d postponed from earlier. Bad idea. I’d set an alarm for 10 pm, intending to stay up until midnight or 1 AM after that and then sleep until maybe 6 am, but when I did wake up at 10, all I could think about was how I wanted to sleep for the rest of the night. Is it weird that I can’t wait until we have homework so I have a reason to stay up later at night?

 

Tuesday, June 24^th

Nope. No luck. Still wide awake at 4:30 AM. I knew that nap was a bad idea. It also doesn’t help that it’s already completely light outside at this time. I’m not one of those people who staunchly believes everything is better in the West, but I’ll never understand why they refuse to switch to Daylight Savings Time here. It would make a lot more sense.

 

Aside from that, the vague unreality of being here is beginning to wear off. I suppose that establishing and growing used to a sense of daily routine helps with that. It still bothers me that I feel so cut off from the rest of the world. I really wish I could get in touch with my family and friends. I’m not homesick, but I wish I could tell people back home about my experiences… share it with somebody. I know there’s this journal, but it’s not the same as a conversation. It’s also frustrating that there’s no TV anywhere in the dorm. Even just being able to see glimpses of world news would help remind me that I’m just in a foreign country and not isolated on some alien planet.

 

Since we left for school way too early again, I used the extra time to call home from the pay phone near the school. It’s not super expensive, but not cheap either. It felt good, though, even if it was for only a couple of minutes, just to hear my mom’s voice and once again establish a connection with someone elsewhere in the world.

 

At any rate, when we got to school we found a sign announcing who was assigned to which group. They’d split us into 6 groups, A through F, in (as we later found out) roughly increasing order of ability. Shaunte and I were assigned to group D, which was quite an achievement because groups E and F consisted mainly of close-to-native speakers and people (such as Michelle) who have been studying Japanese for many years or who have the advantage of being Chinese and already knowing all the kanji. They are the people who are expected to be placed in levels 3 or above. My group was told that we are very close to qualifying for level 2, but that we need to prove ourselves during this group session period, or we will get placed in level 1. The group consists of a guy who lived in Japan off and on for a total of 6 years over the course of his life, a couple of students of Japanese descent who grew up with a bit of the language but never learned it formally until they recently began taking classes, one guy who’s been studying it for 5 years but never excelled at it, and everyone else except myself and one other girl has been taking it for at least two years. The other girl is clearly in the wrong place; she couldn’t write her own name in katakana, can’t answer simple questions, and can’t formulate a sentence on her own to save her life. Despite everyone else’s superior experience, I seem to be in just the right place, though. My pronunciation is better than most, and I probably know more kanji than everyone there except maybe the guy who’s a Chinese major. If I’m lacking in anything, it’s probably vocabulary (especially names of things and places, like ‘grapes’ or ‘embassy’), and that’s easy enough to pick up. At any rate, I’m glad, because I’m definitely determined to get into level 2.

 

We had class from 9:30am to 12:45pm and then from 1:30pm until 4:45pm, with different teachers for each period. Our morning teacher, Konno-sensei, is young, energetic, and extremely funny. Everyone quickly fell in love with her, and we were all pretty bummed out when we discovered we had a different teacher in the afternoon. Takahashi-sensei is quite funny too, but she is a little less easy-going. Overall, both classes were a lot of fun, especially because my groupmates are fun people. I consider myself very lucky for being placed with them.

 

The content of the classes was at times frustratingly easy though, and I can’t say I really learned any new material other than a couple of random vocabulary words. Today’s classes were mainly a review of fairly basic Japanese. There was a lot of vocabulary, grammar, and some basic conversation practice. They barely touched kanji, which was frustrating because I’m just not used to writing things in hiragana anymore when I know the kanji for them. However, some of the students in the class (like the 6-years-off-and-on guy) don’t really know many kanji at all, or they are familiar with the characters but don’t know exactly when and how to use them. I hope this won’t slow us down too much, because that would be frustrating. In general, I hope classes don’t continue to be this slow because I really do want to make sure I get to learn everything I need to qualify for level 2. I won’t be stuck in a class with complete beginners. I’ll never learn enough.

 

Overall, I’d say it was a good day. During our lunch break, Shaunte and I met up with Cathy (who’d been assigned to group C) and bought ready-made lunchboxes and snacks from a konbini. After class was done for the way, we went to the computer lab, which was open from 5 until 5:30pm. It ended up not nearly being enough time to check and do everything we wanted to do on the Internet, but at least it felt good to get in touch with the “outside world” again.

 

After that, we went home, having to deal with rush hour at subway station, though thankfully our train wasn’t very full. We got home just after 6, so we went straight to the dining room and had dinner. Afterwards, we took turns taking showers and then went to Cathy’s room to do homework, study, and watch a bit of the weird and grotesque movie The Suicide Club. The Japanese have very, ah, interesting imaginations.

 

 

Wednesday, June 25^th

The day started off about the same as usual. We got up and had breakfast. We decided that, since we’re usually there way too early, we would leave at 8 am today instead of 7:30 like we’ve been doing. Everything was going well. When we got to the station, rush hour was in full force, so we had to pack into an extremely crowded subway car. Still, everything seemed to be fine… until we found ourselves passing through an unfamiliar station. There are two different subway lines that pass through the station by our dorm, and apparently they both depart from the same platform. We didn’t know this because we’d always gotten lucky and boarded the right train before. It’s not really obvious from the outside that it’s a different train. Anyway, we realized our mistake two stops too late, so we had to backtrack to Ikebukuro and then transfer to the other line. It ended up being okay and we still made it to school by 9 AM when class started at 9:30, but for a second there, it was kind of scary.

 

Yesterday, I’d really made an effort to speak up in class whenever I knew the answer and prove to the teachers that I am definitely no longer a beginner. This turned out to be a good thing, because several people had requested to change groups, so they had shuffled around the group assignments again. About half our class, including Shaunte and the completely clueless girl, got “demoted” to group C, while 3 group C students got moved up to our group. We were also joined by two students who had been (we assume) accidentally placed in group E when they were definitely not 3^rd-year level. Luckily, I was kept in the same place. Our new group is okay, and I am happy the clueless girl (who was incredibly annoying and nerdy) is gone, but overall, the group isn’t nearly as fun. Several of the new additions to the group are the kind of noisy, giggly, vain primadonnas who are the reason why I tend to hate my sex. Lucky me, I got to sit beside them, too.

 

Unfortunately, the class shuffling also meant that the teachers got switched around. Our new teacher is somewhere in between Konno-sensei and Takahashi-sensei in terms of both age and energy. She doesn’t really make jokes as much as either of them, which is why there was a lot less laughter and the class overall seemed a lot less fun. We only had class in the morning and not in the afternoon today, so we didn’t get to find out if we have a different afternoon teacher too.

 

On the bright side, even though we’re still reviewing stuff I already know, I felt like we covered a lot of material today, some of which was in the last chapter we covered before the end of the semester this past school year, so maybe that means that we’ll move on to new stuff soon. Although, we don’t seem to be covering every topic as in-depth as we could. For example, we were going over describing what’s in a room, but we just used「がある」instead of using placement words like「が置いてある」which is frustrating when you know the more proper way of doing it. We also went over「あげる」and「もらう」(giving and receiving), but she didn’t at all mention「くれる」and then when we went over「がほしい」and the -たい form of verbs, she didn’t go over how you have to use「ほしがっている」and「たがっている」when describing the third person, which was again quite frustrating. I don’t get why these group sessions are supposedly more intense than regular classes, because so far I’m not very impressed. You could argue that we do still have a week and a half of these group sessions to go, but next week we don’t have class for two days because of the trip to Yamanashi, and we have half-days again that Thursday and Friday, so I’m not sure how much they’re expecting to cover when they’re not even going nearly as in-depth as they could.

 

Having a half-day was nice, though, because it gave us the afternoon to explore. We decided to head to Shibuya, which is one of the most touristy areas of Tokyo. Lots of shops and things. We ended up walking around the Shibuya~Harajuku~Aoyama area, which includes the Tokyo version of New York’s 5^th Avenue. We didn’t go into too many shops, but we did go into Kiddy Land, a famous Harajuku store which contains five floors of the ridiculously cute merchandise Japan is famous for. What a crazy awesome place. I bought a penguin umbrella for myself (only about $6, not bad at all!) and a couple of things for friends, but I’ll probably be back. (Mom, remember the penguin rolly carry-on suitcase I saw at Schiphol over Christmas Break? They had them here. If I need an extra suitcase, I totally know where I’m getting it.)

 

Aside from that, we also spent a good amount of time at a bookstore. Cathy wanted to buy a sightseeing guide, and I ended up buying a Japanese grammar reference guide because we never used a textbook in class, so I have no easy way of looking things up when I don’t remember something. It also contains quite a lot of material we never covered in class, so I guess if we don’t start covering new material in these group sessions, I can try to use this book to teach myself some new things.

 

We managed to make it back to the station just before rush hour started, and got back to the dorm around 5pm. We relaxed a bit, took turns showering, and had dinner. Today’s menu included breaded chicken with this mayo-and-egg “sauce”. Super delicious! I love the food so much.

 

But now, I guess I’d better go do homework.

 

Thursday, June 26^th

I ended up making it until after midnight yesterday, for the first time since I got here. I slept until around 6am, which is much better than 4:30, at any rate.

 

Today hasn't been filled with too much excitement. We made it on the right train and managed to make it to school just fine this morning. Class has been okay. More fun than yesterday. We played some games with colors, and we did a skit where we pretended to be at a restaurant and one person in our group played the waiter and we had to order food. Other than a few useful phrases to use while at a restaurant, I still haven't learned anything new, though. I wish they'd get on with it!

 

I'm on lunch break now. Hopefully I will still have time to get food before class resumes at 1:30pm...