7 posts tagged “reflection”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

Friday, August 8^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Saturday, August 9^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Sunday, August 10^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Monday, August 11^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Tuesday, August 12^th

Only two days left…

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

Tuesday, July 29^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Wednesday, July 30^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Thursday, July 31^st

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Friday, August 1^st

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Friday, July 25^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Saturday, July 26^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Sunday, July 27^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Monday, July 28^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Tuesday, July 29^th

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

 

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

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

 

 

Tuesday, July 15^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Wednesday, July 16^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Thursday, July 17^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Friday, July 18^th

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Monday, July 21^st

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

Tuesday, July 22^nd

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

 

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

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...