Four months in Japan
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
I have determined that there are two ways to go about learning Japanese while at JCMU. The classes are grouped into levels 1 to 4 based on the placement exam, but becuase they allow you to go into basically the class of your choosing, it's possible to get in a class where everything is review. There are some people like that in my 2nd level class, and at first they were the objects of my scorn because of how badly they were screwing up my grade curving opportunities. But, after I let that all go and decided I didn't care to get a 4.0 here and just wanted to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam, then I found myself still resenting their damn language-proficient asses in class.
But I've now realized that there are two basic approaches to taking classes. You can do it like me, and get in a class that's right at or a little above your level, and then struggle and fail repeatedly despite hours and hours of studying and memorzing words and dialogues alone in your room. Or, you can sit in class as a nice review for three hours and then spend your afternoons and freetime reviewing the little you don't know while making Japanese friends, having a Japanese social life, and generally actually living here. I realized that my approach was flawed, and I'm now trying to combine both approaches. It still sucks to have to study all the time, but instead of going into my room to study on my own, I've been going out into the lobby to be more social. Even though it takes 2 times as long to get the work done (basically all afternoon and evening because of the distractions), I think it's a better approach to improve.
I don't want to be in a lower level class and learn nothing new, so I still have to spend an inordinate amount of time studying the material. But there are signs that in the near future I will be interacting with more Japanese people and will have more of an opportunity to practice my feeble skills. First of all, my long-awaited Japanese roommate will be moving in tomorrow. It's actually his birthday, and he will be turning 27 tomorrow. He's in his 2nd year of graduate school studying Economics. He (ironically) wants to get into Berkeley's PHd program, and seems like a nice enough guy. I just hope he'll help keep the apartment relatively clean.
I also got a notice in my mailbox that Kendo will be starting next week, and that they meet 6 days a week; even when there is no class. So I guess I won't be doing much travelling from now on if I have to stay here in Hikone. It'll be a good way for me to save money, too. And hopefully not all the sessions will be a 5:30 AM, because that's going to take a brutal adjustment to my sleep schedule (which is sleep from 1AM-7:00AM, then nap at night from 7PM-8PM). I look forward to the involvement and being immersed in Japanese, although there is one American 1st year student who will probably depend on me and Joe, the other American who signed up for Kendo.
The other thing is that I've begun to spend a lot of time with Yoppy-chan, Ritsuko-san, and some of the other Japanese-speaking women (including one Chinese) who've moved into the dorm building and are studying English. It's been good for me to see their difficulty studying English and to see their dedication to learning. It's inspiring me to work a bit harder. The other thing is that it's allowed me to have some time where I'm entirely immersed in Japanese.
Today, I got a ride into town to pick up my Alien Registration Card from Hikone City Hall. After a nice lunch mostily in Japanese with about 7 of the English language students, a few of us decided t run errands into town. We also had soom good jokes about the difference in translation between Japanese and English words for "Alien Registration". In Japanese, it literally translates into "Outside Country Person Registration". However, in English it also has the aditional connotation of extra terrestrials. So I joked that I'm actually a citizen of the Moon, and the Chinese girl also claimed to be a Moon person, and had an Alien Registration card to prove it.
So the real "Japanese Moment" came after I was crammed into an impossibly small Nissan (so small it had no room for badges on it's trunk proclaiming which model it was). I was sitting in the back seat of this 4-door car, which was smaller than the smallest Geo Metro, experiencing typical Japanese life. There was a vanilla air freshener in the shape of a leaf attached to the grab handle above my head and it kept banking into my face with the scent of vanilla. There was a Mifi-chan blanket spread over the back seat and several hello-kitty-esque stuffed animals sitting there. In front, there was a DVD-navigation screen with a flower wreath surrounding it, and various Snoopy and other cute little animal accessories. The navigation system seemed a bit out of place in a car that small and ostesibly cheap. Of course, we were driving on the wrong side of the road, which still invokes momentary terror when making turns because I never see the driver looking in the "wrong" direction when turning. (although, on a side note, I've seen Americans nearly taken out when walking across the street and looking the actual wrong direction). We were only talking in Japanese, and between the vanilla scent and the whole experience, I felt like a total foreigner and completely just wanted to quit fooling myself and get done with this and get back to my old life.
But as quickly as that thought came, I also had a sense of peace because despite the strangeness of it all, I was still doing fine. I guess I need to not stress about anything and just enjoy my time here, becuase it'll be over before I know it. In the pre-departure information packages, the University provided some information on what it's like to live abroad for a period of time. I guess at this point, I'm past the first "honeymoon" stage and am setting into the "adjustment" phase. Okay, back to work.
Monday, September 29, 2003
Life is going on all the time, regardless of the fact that I'm over here in Japan away from it all. I was reminded of this fact here ten minutes ago when James was sitting next to me typing on his computer, when someone IM's him and tells him that a friend of his back home got hit by a drunk driver while walking home from a party and died. After the first line of the message James said, "dude, my friend got hit by a truck". I replied, "That sucks. Usually people aren't okay when they get hit by trucks." Then James read the next line, and said, "he died". I felt like an idiot at that point, and tried to come up with a suitable reply, although in hindsight I should've just shut up. I think I said something like, "I'm sorry. That sucks". I'm sorry, that sucks just doesn't convey the right sentiment. I mean I'm really, really, really sorry. I'm sorry you're all the way over here in Japan when your friend was killed walking home from a party. I'm sorry you just found out. I'm sorry you have to deal with this and you still have a shitload of homework to do tonight and a dialogue to memorize despite it. I'm sorry you don't have a phone card to call home. I'm sorry your friends who've known you more than 1 month aren't around to talk about it. I'm sorry death is always a shock. I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry that you came all this way for a new experience and life continued while you're away.
Sunday, September 28, 2003
My crack addiction to fucking stupid video games just won't go away. I don't know how or why I let myself waste so much time playing Civilization III again, because on Friday afternoon with nothing to do I borrowed the game CD again. Well it's now 12:31 am and I haven't yet completed my Monday homework assignment. Although I did study for a few hours today and have memorized most of the new vocabulary words except for "scholarship" and "alarm clock". At least I can remember which vocab words I can't remember. That's a helpful thing to remember; it comes in handy when I'm in a situation out in everyday life here in Japan where I say to myself, "shit, I know distinctly that I am supposed to know how to say that." Alright, well I resolve here and now to put the game CD away and I will not look at it until next weekend, if ever. I have absolutely no willpower -- it's like gambling. I'm compelled to keep pressing those damn buttons. I think there's something about my personality that makes me prone to such addictions. I better stay away from Pachinko here (another long story to be told later). G'nite.
Saturday, September 27, 2003
I just saw perhaps the worst movie ever. It was called "Cannibal Holocaust", and it had a lot of gratuitous nudity and violence. I am not in to horror movies in the first place, but this had some really bad rape and artrocity scenes, and a lot of full-frontal male and female nudity. It was not one of those feel good horror movies; this one just makes you feel like crap. I think I'm going to go to bed now, but first an update on my Saturday. Pardon me 'cause I'm a little inebreiated right now. I'm amazed I can type and spell right now, although my fingers feel a little sluggish.
Today I bought myself some wheel spacers for my car at the bargain price of 980 yen (about $9). So I can sell the spacers I bought eariler for $60 that turned out to be too thick. In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, these are some very specialized parts for my Stealth that allow me to put really freakin big wheels and tires on it, and they cost a fortune in the US so I'm getting them here.
I also decided that I don't like "Chu-Hi", which is sort of a Japanese answer to Mike's hard lemonade except it comes in various flavors. I had two really good beers and then all I had left in my fridge was this grape "Chu-hi" crap and so I drank it and now I feel ill. I even asked if someone wanted to trade it for a beer, but nobody took me up on the offer that was watching the movie. It seems the preferred non-beer alcoholic drink is the Coctail Partner. I sure wish I had a Coctail Partner right now.
Thursday, September 25, 2003
So I perfected a new method of studying. I went to bed and set my alarm for 6:30 AM, and then when the alarm went off I pushed the snooze button, and grabbed my textbook. I opened my eyes long enough to look at a Japanese grammatical construction and get the pattern and meaning stuck in my head. Then I closed my eyes again and tried to repeat the construction over and over again in my head until I fell back asleep again about 2 minutes later. Then, 8 minutes after that, the alarm went off and the pattern continued thusly for the next hour and forty minutes. By the time I actually crawled out of bed at 8:00, I had mostly memorized 5 different grammatical constructions and, I also had some fuckin weird dreams, but I can't remember them now and they were all in Japanese anyway (I think) using grammatical constructions I now forget.
The test was over fairly quickly and seemed easy, but the other ones I failed seemed easy at the time as well. Then we had our weekly cultural class and this time we had the traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony prepared for us in the tatami room in the academic building. I took a ton of pictures and movie clips, so I'll probably make a movie out of it somehow. Now I have free time until Monday, so I guess I'll study some and maybe go buy food at the local "U-SuToa" grocery store.
Oh, I forgot to mention one thing about the Kyoto movie I made. Kyoto is a city of real contrasts between traditional Japan and modern Japan. I think you'll see that in the video, because on the one hand you see these giant department stores and buildings and modern skyline, and then nestled within are these amazing 600+ year old temples and buildings. It's an amazing contrast, and I think it comes across quite well in the video as I take you on a tour through the city.
Tomorrow morning is the weekly comprehensive exam, which I will probably fail again. I got a 65 on the first test and a 64 on the second, so based on my past performance I would expect to get approximately exactly 63 on this one. The one difference is that this week I'm not going to Sugimoto's to drink, and apparently a lot of the regular Sugimoto's attendees aren't going either. I went last week for like 1.5 hours and then left, like a good boy, but it didn't help my score anyway. This afternoon I ate some weird refrigerated dinner called Okonomiyaki. The chick behind the counter asked me if I wanted it warmed, so I said yes. It's basically a thick potato pancake made with cabbage and some kind of pork. On top there is some sauce and then there were 3 little packages of stuff: one was mayonnaise, one was some green flakes that looked exactly like a gram of pot, and the last was something that the other students described as fish flakes. I wasn't too sure about the fish flakes so I only used some of them. It was yummy. It struck me as a good idea to maybe come out with some kind of dried cereal like Corn Flakes, but you could call it Fish Flakes. I bet it would sell here really well.
Did I mention that I have a test tomorrow? Well I seriously procrastinated as usual and this time I made another movie. It can be found here . This footage was from last Wednesday when I took the train to Kyoto in search of a book store to buy a test package for the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam. I ended up going to 5 different bookstores before I found the biggest one in town. Then I took the afternoon to wander around Kyoto a bit and see the sights. Strangely enough, and I realize it's somewhat antisocial, I just like to travel and sightsee by myself. I feel free to see anything and everything I want at my own speed. I have done this a lot, although not so much here in Japan. Mostly back home. When I included a soundtrack, I pcked Coldplay because I've been listening to them a lot the last few days and their song Spies seemed like a suitable background for a creepy haunting wander around some strange foreign land. You'll notice that nobody ever looks at the camera or notices me -- that's Japanese society, not my editing. They don't acknowlege another's existence unless you're part of their "in" group. It makes for a very isolationist sort of feeling when you walk around the big cities like Kyoto. Of course, they're actually very friendly here in Hikone and will stop and talk to you if you initiate conversation. But mostly I've observed most people ignore those outside their main groups. Anyway, take a look at the video if you can handle a ~28 meg file. Bye.
9/24 - Edited link address -- I had the wrong extension. Sorry. And thanks, Ron, for the correction.
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Today I had my first class at Shiga University (Shiga Daigaku, or Shiga Dai) on Japanese Business. Until this afternoon, it's was raining pretty much constantly and had been for the past two days, and I don't mean just a light drizzle. So I was not pleased to have to get on my bike to go all the way to the University for the class orientation. By the time I got there, my pants were thoroughy soaked despite the windbreakers I was wearing over them. The class itself was pretty cool, and I think I'm going to like it. We formed groups and my group gets to do a presentation on Nissan and Carlos Ghosn. Many of you probably have no idea who that is, but trust me it will be easy for me.
Afterwards, our group went out for food and we had Gyudon at the Shiga Dai, which is basically some kind of beef over rice. It was a bargain at 350 yen ($3.50). I will probably be eating lunch there twice a week whenever I have class at Shiga Dai. The others in my group include Streeta-san, and 3 Japanese people. One is on the rowing team and had to be up at 5:00 AM for practice, and had to cut out of lunch early to go practice some more. One lives in Osaka, which is 2 hours away by train, and the other lives in a castle town that's far away that unfortunately I can't remember. They tried very hard to speak English, and I tried very hard to use what little command of Japanese that I have. In all, it was a nice lunch and I look forward to working with them and getting to know them. On Monday, our first class is a field trip to the Canon corporation factory in Nagahama.
Everyone else was walking back (they took taxis to class), so I got on my bike and headed home. On the way back, I ran into Andrew-san, Muriel-san, and company, and we rode back together. On the way back, we stopped at the local porno hut. This was an interesting invention of the Japanese. Basically, it's a little shed filled with vending machines that sell porno and various sex paraphenalia. There were 3 separate vending machines in there and a money change machine. It was well lit inside and obviously there's no one working there. Basically you go in and buy your porno, then leave. No fuss.
The first machine looked like it was once a cigarette machine, but instead of cigarettes they had little boxes with various types of women's underwear in them. Based on the pictures on the box, the underwear looked pretty skimpy. It'd have to be to fit inside a cigarette box. The next machine had all kinds of videos/ DVDs. Most were your standard heterosexual Japanese porn, with the occasional bestiality video thrown in. Most were selling for 2,000 yen, which is about $20. I couldn't tell what I was looking at on one of the boxes, but fortunately I can now read the Kanji for dog, and so I'm pretty sure that one had women having sex with dogs on it. The 3rd vending machine at first glance was filled with anime titles, but on closer inspection there were vibrators and other sex toys filling those cartoon-imprinted boxes. Interesting.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
I just realized that Blogger is malfunctioning and the archives button doesn't work. It's not my fault, honest. It's a blogger problem.
I got some good replies to my mass e-mailing announcing that my website was updated. Thanks friends. I was getting homesick. One message I wrote back included an account of my further hiking plans. Now that I climbed Mt. Fuji, here were my thoughts on hiking (sorry to post this private e-mail reply, but it's generic enough, eh?):
I decided to hold off on planning any further hiking trips until the autumn weather really kicks in. First, the Rough Guide book I bought on hikes in Japan was throughly wrong about how to climb Mt Fuji after the normal climbing season was over. So I don't trust the book, and some of the comments about the hikes nearby here got me worried. I'm in the Kansai area, which is a very scenic and hilly area near a big lake. I went up the hill behind my school taking a path through a temple and up into the hill. There were some enormous mushi there (bugs). Starting with a large and colorful spider that was approximately 5" wide, with a thick green and silver body. I started using a stick to wave in front of me after walking accidentally through other webs where I didn't see the spiders. Then there were the butterflies. These suckers are the size of small sparrows and are jet black and flit around like bats. There were tiny hummingbirds, too, but I often confused them for moths and swatted at them. The moths were there too, and unusually huge. Then there were the pesky ka bugs (mosquitoes), and I constantly thought something was getting on my skin. Which was usually the spider webs, but could have easily been some other flesh eating bug I haven't met yet. At the top, I was rewarded by a nice view of the lakes and approximately 50 hawks circling overhead. I was told perviously that sometimes hawks will dive at women's necks, and although I'm obviously a guy, I wasn't sure how a hawk would know or care about a human's gender. I left there quickly. All in all, it was very unsettling.
So this stupid Rough Guide guidebook, which I have already proven inaccurate on Fuji, had some warnings about the serious hikes nearby in the region. They said, watch out for hornets. And watch out for the leeches getting in your boots. They recommended you put salt in your boots to kill the leeches. There are also poisionous adder snakes. All of this, coupled with my experience with harmless spiders, moths, butterflies, and hummingbirds on our nearby hill, has convinced me that maybe I don't want to go hiking in Japan until fall or winter when all the critters die or go into hibernation.
It really gets you to understand how and why this nation industrialized and urbanized so much. Plus it explains things like Mothra and Godzilla would come from the imagination of Japanese people. Those damn woods were scary.
For the past few days I've felt a need to be connected back to my friends and relatives again, so I was glad to receive 7 new e-mails this morning before class. It definitely made my day. Thanks everyone! I love you too. Anyway. I need to get my online act together still, but to complete my online presence I need to get AIM up and running. This means I have to choose a new screen name, since I forgot/lost all my CD-roms with all my computer info on them. I was asking a fellow student what I should choose, and he suggested "BitterChryslerEngineer". AAAAgggghhh. Is that really me? Man am I glad I don't work there anymore, but obviously my job affected me somewhat deeply that it should continue to hang around as emotional baggage 5 months after I quit. What does this tell me about myself? I remember being very bitter for a few years about that stupid International Church of Christ that fed me all kinds of lies and tried to control my life back in '97-98, but I'm certainly over all that. I just needed about a year and a half to recover and determine which direction I wanted to take my life.
I think Chrysler had the same effect on me -- as an organization, they had their plans for me and those plans didn't match what I expected out of my own life. While this unsettling feeling was tolerated for a long time, I did nothing about it and the pain festered and grew. Why didn't I leave such an unhealthy situation earlier? I know from my travels this summer that a huge thing for me to overcome was the fear -- fear of quitting, primarily. Somehow I got through that and life has generally gotten better ever since. I just need to avoid getting into another situation like that ever again, and I'm not sure where that point of no return was. Without being able to recognize where shit starts to suck, I risk repeating this pattern again and again. But okay, enough of that. I am a positive person with a future, and the past is of no consequence. I must learn from it and not dwell in the past.
So I need a better screen name than "bitterchryslerengineer", and I'm thinking something more along the lines of "godzirra", although that's actually the name I gave my computer. Maybe I should be "mothra"? Or how about "mothrafucker"? No, that doesn't sound good, either. I just can't think of a single word that sums me up. I'll have to ruminate on that a bit more.
Today I actually studied immediately after class, but then it made me sleepy and I took a nap from 12:45 - 2:15. I need to fill out a questionairre form to participate in Kendo club, and I keep procrastinating for some reason on it. I think it's because one of the questions is "the reason you want to participate", and I don't know if they want Japanese or if English is okay and I think it would take me like 2 hours to write responses in Japanese. I guess I should just bite the bullet and do it in Japanese and be done with it. But the nice thing about life here as a student is that it's 3:23 in the afternoon and I have absolutely nothing on my agenda for the rest of the day except study some Japanese, do some homework, eat, and generally enjoy life.
All in all, this is a very nice day for me. It's also been pouring down rain all day, reminding me of my childhood home in Seattle. It cooled off a bit, so now it feels just like the weather back there this time of year, too. I must be a freak for liking rainy weather. I didn't even have to leave the complex -- I walked to class, then walked through the building to CoCo's, the restaurant attached to the academic building, then walked back to my room, studied, napped, and now I'm on the computer. The only time I ever hated rain was that one year where it rained from September to April, like it usually does in Seattle, but then it continued to rain all summer and actually rained an additional April to April. It was something like 21 months of bad weather, and that was a bit hard to take (okay, we had occasional 3-5 days of good weather in a row, but nothing significant). I think that was 1989 or 1990 or something like that. I think rain beats 6 months of guaranteed frigid temperatures like you get in Michigan. But I like the weather here in Japan. We had swelteringly hot & humid temperatures until last weekend, and everyone else hated it but I loved it. I like hot weather a lot. Cold and snow are for mountains, not to live in.
So today is a Japanese holiday and we had no class. As a result, last night basically everyone decided to get drunk. I started by going to the local Lawson's convenience store across the street and bought six different individual Japanese beers. I thought I should take the opportunity to find out which ones I like the best, and there's so many different kinds. The best one had something written on the can to the effect of "this refreshing taste is good alone or in groups", but in much worse jingrish. I still have one left that I didn't drink: "Kirin's technology creates happo-shu with 90% less Purine. Discover the unique value of Tanrei Alpha". Anyway.
So we went to Karaoke again last night. I ended up singing Eminem "the real slim shady", and a bunch of others. We ended the night singing a duet of "heat of the moment" by Asia. It was ridiculous. We had about 18 people in the little room this time, and it was almost as fun as last Friday. I think the group was a little too big, because it was better in the smaller room.
Today instead of doing homework, I completely added music and edited in some still shots of my Mt. Fuji climb. The finished product is now on my completely updated website. Check out the site... at this link
The full Fuji movie (28 megs or so) is here . Enjoy!
I am glad to have my site fixed, and now I just need to publicize this fact to all my friends back home so I don't have to email them all the time. My computer additction to video games has been replaced with the serious distraction of the web site and movie editing. I guess basically I don't have the self discipline to study constantly. Oh well.
Edited 9/28 -- I had the file name extension wrong, so sorry if that was a bad link before! Damn Windows XP.
Sunday, September 21, 2003
Today I visited a Japanese auto parts store with Reid-san and his new girlfriend. It was pretty cool. They had all kinds of crazy car parts. The highlight would have to be the Pokemon Pikachu key blanks. They were pretty cool, but I liked the ones with fake wood grain instead of the normal rubber grip. I ended up buying a $35 car parts catalog so I could look through it and see if there were any Mitsubishi parts I could buy. Fortunately, Reid-san promised to buy it off me as soon as he gets the money for it. There were a lot of Nissan Sylvia (240sx in the US) parts in it, and that's what he has back home. He wants to buy some things there and ship them back to his friends. I will probably buy some of the real cheap wheel spacers I found there so my wheels don't rub on the brake caliper anymore, and I'll probably get a new shift knob and pedal pads. But otherwise, I don't think I can afford anything. Although the turbo timers were really cheap ... like only $80 or so.
I also cleaned the apartment a bit today because I'm getting a Japanese roommate tomorrow. I hope I can practice Japanese a bit with him. I'm currently really bummed about studying Japanese because it's so miserable for me in class because I don't know anything. I need to really step up my studying, but I am so behind I don't know if I can. Fortunately, I'm actually getting more confident speaking Japanese (my real goal here) just by using it with the various Japanese people that have been spending time here this weekend. The small group from Waseda university (#2 university in Japan, evidently, after Todai in Tokyo) went to Karaoke with us and also hung out in the lobby a bit yesterday. It was good to attempt conversation with them. I also spent some time yesterday evening discussing random things with a few of the women that will be moving into the apartments next week when the English language program starts. Since John, Jordan, and Reid were also there with us, the random things ended up revolving around sex and drinking and other related topics. For example, I learned the counter for "-somes", like threesomes and foursomes. It's "pi", so a 3some would be "san-pi", a 4some would be "yon-pi", and so on. I explained that in English, we pretty much stop counting at foursome and just categorize it as an orgy.
Friday, September 19, 2003
Last night I had my first experience with Japanese Karaoke. They do it a lot better here in Japan than in the States. The main difference is that instead of having a karaoke machine in a crowded bar and letting random patrons come sing, in Japan you go with a group of friends and rent a small room with two couches and a coffee table and a TV/ karaoke machine at the end. When you want beer, drinks, or snacks, you pick up a phone and call the bartender and ask for it to be brought in. It's a much more comfortable atmosphere and takes away a lot of the inhibitions that I've always had at US karaoke bars. My voice is a bit tired today, but it's not from drinking (I only had 2 bee-rus). It was a huge ton-o-fun. The highlight of my night was singin "End the End" by Linkin Park with DeShawn as backup. It sounds ridiculous, but it was really fun. Trust me.
So yesterday I gave back the game CD of Civilization III with instructions for Charles to not give it to me. This is the only way I could break the addiction, as I was spending several hours a day attempting to conquer the world before and had no self discipline. I had a test Friday and I was woefully unprepared because I didn't study enough. So now I'm serious about studying and won't waste my time on completely useless things. I figure how many times am I going to be in Japan? Why squander this opportunity because of a video game?
Wednesday afternoon I took the train into Kyoto to purchase an application form (500 yen) for the Japanese Language Proficiency Exam. This exam has 4 levels, with 1 being the best, and I planned to take the level 3 test in December. I find it very ironic that the Japanese Language test for foreigners is held on Sunday, December 7th. "Lets make the foreigners ry to prove they've mastered our language on December 7th". Anyway, I met with Nishikawa-sensei (one of the instructors) and she convinced me to try the level 4 exam. I also vented to her about how frustrated I am with the class and how hyper-competitive it seems to me. I feel a little guilty about venting now, because in reality I was just a bad student who was playing video games all the time.
Yesterday I ended up doing all the crazy forms to take the proficiency exam and got the passport-size photos to include (!) and sent the 5300 Yen fee through the post office. My feeble Japanese abilities are evidently enough t accomplish such tasks, but the transaction sure wasn't elegant.
Today I don't know what I'll do, since it's kind of rainy outside and I've been spending tons of cash lately. In this first 3.5 weeks I've been here, I've spent approximately $800. This is going to have to slow down a lot if I'm going to get through the whole term and have any money left. Maybe I'll study some.
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Well, it’s Tuesday night and my long-weekend adventure is now over. Friday night we all got a bit toasty drinking sake and watching a movie in the lounge. I was a bit futsukayoi (hung over) the next day, but nothing too bad. I played a lot of Civilization III, my newest addiction, and ended up wasting most of the day doing that. I had been checking the weather forecast all week to see where the typhoon was heading, and it ended up missing Japan for the most part. It had gone just west of Japan, and appeared to be heading up over the Japan Sea to the north. It was looking promising to do our Fuji ascent on Sunday. Dave and I went to Sports Depo to buy Power Bars and other last minute hiking equipment. Alex asked me to pick him up some, since he had other things to focus on. This should have been a warning to me, but I didn’t think much of it. We agreed to meet in the lobby at 7AM and head out for Fuji-san.
I woke up early, finished packing, and ate a quick breakfast. I then went out to the computer lab to wait for the others. The satellite pictures showed the typhoon was completely away from Japan! It had settled over the Sea of Japan. After 20 minutes of waiting, I wandered upstairs to Alex & David’s room. After banging on the door a little, I realized they weren’t up. Alex answered the door and immediately said, “Sorry, I can’t go. My girlfriend got in a fight with her parents and now they won’t let her come home to Japan for Christmas. So if I want to see her at all before she leaves for America, I have to see her this weekend. I’m really sorry.” Sorry my ass, he just didn’t want to do the climb. Whatever.
David was still asleep, so we woke him up. He wanted to take a quick shower and would be right down. At this point, I contained my disappointment lest he back out too. I went and made myself a cup of coffee, since I didn’t have time before. Finally he was ready and we rode our bikes over to the train station. It was raining a little, but I was confident the weather would be good for us by the time we got to the mountain. It was also a good chance to try out our rain gear and see how prepared we were.
We decided to take the slow local trains rather than the Bullet Train in order to save about 4,000 yen (about $35). This turned our 2 hour train ride into a 5 hour ride, but we didn’t mind because it was nice to sightsee a bit. We had to transfer trains a couple of times because the local trains don’t go all the way to the end of line. The slow trains are old, and one had no air conditioning so all the windows were open. The sound of the clicking tracks mixed with the warm, humid morning air rushing in made for an enjoyable ride and I was excided about the climb to come later on in the evening. At Fuji station, we transferred to another line altogether and rode up a spectacular river valley. The verdant hillsides were misty and fog covered, and the unique Japanese architecture and agriculture (rice paddys) gave the whole ride an exotic feel. By late afternoon, we caught our first glimpse of the perfect cone peak of Fuji-san. A break in the clouds revealed it briefly, and its barren rocky slopes stood in stark contrast to the green hillsides far below. After a minute, the clouds covered it up again.
We arrived in Kohu just after nightfall and decided to take a bus instead of the train. This gave us 40 minutes to kill so we went to the illustrious “Mos Burger” joint I had heard so much about. The Mos burger was good but kinda small. It tasted like a normal fast food burger but with some kind of Mexican salsa poured on top. I wasn’t sure it was ideal food to eat before a night climb of Mt. Fuji, but you take what you can get. I used Dave’s cell phone to secure reservations at the hostel using my meager Japanese. We wanted a place to leave our extra non-essential stuff and also have a place to sleep in the morning after returning from the climb.
The bus from Kohu to Kawaguchi-ko took about an hour. We were getting weary from traveling 10 hours, and finally made it to the hostel. In conversing with the proprietor, we learned there was no more night buses to Kawaguchi-ko Guchi Go-gome (5th station). That meant either a $140 taxi ride or a 25K hike to the 5th station. We decided to wait for the first bus the next morning and get a good nights rest. We wouldn’t see the sunrise, as per the tradition, but at least the climb would be easier to see during the day and we’d be well rested.
After a morning meal consisting of a boiled egg, some salad, rolls, and coffee, we set out for the bus station at Kawaguchi-ko. We said goodbye to our new friends, our Japanese roommate and an English guy who was clueless about climbing, and headed out. We talked about our bus strategy with a Dane on the bus ride up. We concluded that we’d have to head down at 2 or 2:30 PM in order to catch the last bus from Kawaguchi-ko Guchi Go-Gome at 4:10. This meant that we’d get only about 3 hours to climb, from 11:30 to about 2:30. So basically our chances of making the 4-5 hour climb to the top in time to catch the last bus weren’t very good.
The climb started out easy and gradually grew steeper. I took a million pictures, and they do a better job telling the story than I can type it out, so I won’t go into the details of the climb, except to say that at 2:20PM we decided to go to the top regardless of the consequences. Since the buses stop in the afternoon, we planned to hike down to town or hitchhike. At the time, we didn’t realize it was a 25K hike out from the 5th station. Anyway, we made it to the summit and down. Some helpful Germans who were caught hiking without flashlights after night fell gave us a ride down to town in their rental car. We were extremely grateful for the ride, and they were glad we had lights on the mountain.
We waited a half hour for a train to Nigiri. From there, we ended up taking the last train to Tokyo. It was a local train and it took about 2 hours or so. We made a cell phone call back to JCMU for some help in figuring out the night bus and train schedules, but they couldn’t help. We arrived at 11:30 and most of the people were scurrying around the station trying to catch the last trains before they all shut down for the night at midnight. We quickly realized all the Bullet Trains (Shinkansen) had stopped around 9 or 10 PM. In order to not get stranded at Tokyo Station, we caught the last train back to Shinjuku where I knew of a capsule hotel we could stay at. I stayed there 2 years ago on my first trip to Tokyo.
By the time we spoke with the bus counter people and figured out buses were not a possibility either, we gave up and resigned ourselves to staying in Tokyo for the night. The first bullet train in the morning bound for home would leave at 6:15 and get home a bit late for the first language class of the morning. We confirmed when the subways started up again -- 4:30 AM -- just to make sure we could get back to Tokyo station where the Shinkansen leave from. By then it was 1:30 in the morning. We went to a ramen shop and ate some food. At that point, we had to decide if we wanted to stay out all night and save on room costs, or stay for cheap at the capsule hotel. We went with the capsule hotel since I was able to loan David some cash after his ATM card wouldn't work.
The next morning, we took the train back as planned. Because David had no money, I loaned him all I could and at this point I have exacty 4 yen of Japanese currency. That's about 3 cents. We missed the first class, as expected, which included a quiz, and I also didn't get any of the homework done because I was hung over Saturday and played video games. Oh well, that's the price to pay for laziness and a climb of Fuji san. I proceeded to take a nap all afternoon, and now it's midnight and I am wide awake. That's a good thing because I still haven't started studying yet...
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Instead of growing and changing for the better, I seem to be regressing. As noted in a previous post, I have started to feel like I'm re-living my college years. Well it seems to be true in more ways than one. Today I played Civilization III on my new laptop for approximately 4-5 hours, when I should have been studying. I chose not to go out to the bar tonight just so I could study, or so I told everyone, and actually went and played that darn video game instead. I am pathetic, and will probably fail the test tomorrow. On the bright side, I did kick some Babylonian and German ass, and my culture is second only to the Iroqois. And now I'm blogging. See, I told you I'm a loser.
I have a confession to make: I went without a computer for a few years just so I wouldn't play Civilization II. And when I bought a new computer I gave the program away so I wouldn't be tempted. The problem now is that a fellow student here gave me a copy. That's like giving crack to a crackhead. As I was riding my bike to go study at the local coffee shop this afternoon (yes, I did actually study for about 3 hours earlier), I explained to a fellow student, James (www.coaxme.com), that playing video games is worthless and that no one should waste their life doing it. I explained that life is too short to spend on video games.
He replied something to the effect that "as long as you're having fun and enjoying it, it's okay." I then explained that living real life is what's important -- having real, visceral experiences, because you only live once. Yes, I even used the word visceral in a sentence. His reply was "So it's not a waste of time to drink coffee at a coffee shop?" His valid point was that what matters is that you enjoy your life and the actions you do everyday-- regardless the action's value to society or to the betterment of your mind. It's an interesting philosophy. James is not the first person I've met to try and convince me that I shouldn't feel guilty about playing video games. I guess I'm just not ready to believe it yet. My tombstone will read: "Kicked some Babylonian ass." Now you try and tell me that's not pathetic.
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
For the first time in a long, long time (5 or so years?), I actually woke up and felt good or content about getting up. Mind you, this is not because I wasn't tired -- I only am getting about 6 hours of sleep every night. So in that regard, I get even less sleep than when I was working. Nope. Today I was somewhat excited to get up at 6AM to do homework in Japanese! It sounds crazy, and it's definitely work, but it's a worthy challenge and makes for some satisfaction in my life. I also know how fun the language will be to use as I continue to live here and start to travel around more, interact more with the locals, and get more involved in the community. This morning I almost (but not quite) had the feeling I used to get waking up at 5AM to drive up into the mountains to go skiing back when I lived in Seattle. In a long time, I haven't had that feeling even when on a week's vacation from work and in the beautiful mountains of Utah. It was always still an unpleasant effort to wake up and start the day.
What's strange to me is to have this contented feeling now, when I didn't have it all summer. Then, I had nothing at all required to do, so I should have been excited to have complete freedom. But instead, I often just slept in and then puttered the day away doing nothing. Maybe the funk has finally passed that's been plaguing me for so long. In Japanese they have two different words for happiness -- one for lasting happiness, and one for temporary happiness. I'm hoping this is the lasting kind.
I got my new computer today! Thanks, John, for taking care of that for me! The price of my stupidity of not looking at the expected delivery time on the order screen is an extra $71 to ship the darn thing to Japan. Oh well, live and learn. If only I hadn't forgotten my entire CD rom collection (or lost it... I still don't know where it is). If I can first find it, and then have somebody send it, I'd really be back in business.
Monday, September 08, 2003
Man, this program is making me study hard. I am not used to doing homework for 3-4 hours a day. My main problem is that I have an attention span of about 30-40 minutes, and then I have to take a break. Thus, I end up spending all afternoon and evening studying a relatively short amount of time. And I don't know it all that well, either. When I was working, I did best on large, convoluted projects that allowed me to focus for short periods of time on a lot of different things and it never got stale. Here, I get mentally drained by the 3 straight hours of class time in the morning, and then by the time I'm recovered a few hours later, I have to start studying for the rest of the day. Kinda sucks. But I asked for it.
Today I ended up napping all afternoon after I literally fell asleep on the textbook. Maybe studying in bed was a bad idea, but I was so tired after studying late last night.
Anyway, here I am, on another study break.
Talked with Alex again today about climbing Mt. Fuji. It sounds like we're going to take a bus from Kyoto to Tokyo on Saturday, and then go from there to Fuji-san, as it's called. We should arrive by bus at station #5 at about 8000 feet by nigtfall. Then, we hike all night and see the sunrise from the top. We agreed that it would be best to stay in the Fuji Five Lakes region Sunday night rather than try and live it up in Tokyo because we'll probably be dead tired. It's nothing as extreme as Mt. Rainier, but it will still be a physical challenge. So we'll stay at an onsen (hot spring) or at a hostel or maybe one of Alex's friends nearby. We'll have to do the rest of the planning later in the week, including the bus reservations.
Earlier in the day, I met with the director about outside activity possibilities. Basically, I concluded that an internship would be pointless because with my Japanese ability, I'd end up teaching little kids English or I'd be a radio DJ in English or something. The ones that would be in my profession require business level Japanese, and last year the level 4 students had difficulty communicating (I'm level 2 - for 2nd year of study). So then we talked a bit about the clubs available at Shiga University, where I'll be taking a business class later in the month. Basically I said #1 would be to try and get on the Kendo team, #2 would be to row for the university, and #3 would be to join the "tennis circle", which is a noncompetitive tennis club. They'll get back with me to let me know which, if any, they want to allow foreigners on. I am hoping to develop some Japanese friendships through these other activities, and I won't be tempted to hang out with Americans all the time who speak English all the time.
Friday, September 05, 2003
Now that my hangover has abated somewhat, I have decided that I will not drink alcohol more than once every two weeks. In keeping with this new resolution, I went and played tennis (cost: 2100 yen -- about $18 for an hour) with a group from the residence hall here. Good non-self destructive, healthy, athletic fun. Now we're going to go down the street to the sushi bar/ restaurant (Ashiri Mon) for some dinner. I feel so much better than this morning and afternoon.
Today was the official opening ceremony for JCMU. Many dignitaries were there and this was the typical Japanese way for everyone to be formally introduced to the community. In Japanese culture, introductions are very important to insure that you're "part of the family". By having all the important people there, we are officially part of all of their respective institutions. Aside from the fact that I was extremely hung over, it was a very nice ceremony. I would have mingled more with the guests and practiced my Japanese, but that requires mental effort that I just couldn't manage hungover. This is why I will not drink more than once every two weeks.
Okay, I figured out how my huge post the other day got erased. I hit the escape key accidentally. It destroys the entire entry of text. I know this because I just zapped another post explaining my night at the bar from yesterday. Arrgh.
So, anyway. I am really hung over right now. The reason was simple: "smoo-thu" sake. While it was very smooth, it was also a bad idea after a night of beer drinking. I will explain later because I am too frustrated now to regurgitate what I had just written and erased.
Thursday, September 04, 2003
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
This morning, Wednesday, I got up at 6 o'clock to do the homework I should have done the night before. But I attempted to take a nap at 8 pm and couldn't rouse myself an hour later. So instead I snoozed for 45 minutes before resetting the alarm for 6 today. Class was held all morning, and the vocab and kanji quizzes were brutal. I resolved to study a bit more and earlier next time.
The rest of today I spent basically working now and again on homework and alternating with relaxing and goofing off. After an hour or two of actually doing work, I took a break to watch the movie 28 Days Later in the lounge room courtesy of my fellow student John, the program Kazaa, and high speed internet. What a great movie. While on the surface it's a zombie movie about a distopic universe (opposite of utopia) where people are turning into viscious animals due to a highly contagious virus and they can only be stopped by killing them, it also appears to have a symbolic message about following the crowd and what it means to go against the crowd and society and chart your own course in life. I'm starting to get to know the other students, and I can tell that they are making assumptions about me based on their own experiences and prejudices. I also see myself repeating the patterns that I've followed in similar social situtions -- i.e, when I've taken classes in the college environment as a teenager and young adult.
In most university settings I've been in, there are cool kids and not so cool kids. I know both types, so I can spot them a mile away. In the past, I always tried to hang with the cool group, although in reality I identified more with the less cool because that's how I always felt. But now, from my experienced viewpoint at age 29, I really shouldn't care what any of them think of me, since I'm not a peer and don't need to be part of their peer group. But, I also have been reminded how much I enjoy being part of such a social group, especially in this group living arrangement, and I can see myself falling into old patterns as I interact with these students. One of my biggest complaints about life after college is how isolated I felt most of the time due to the huge geographical and time constraints imposed on us by our individual choices of living arrangements and work. If I wanted to hang out with friends, it was a major effort and required coordination followed by a 20 minute car ride to that person's house. Or, as was often my case, I just stayed antisocially at home or went somewhere alone because it's just easier than overcoming the time and geographic problems.
Which brings me to my dilemma here. Without the geographic and work-eating-all-time problems, I'm getting to know some of the students quite well. I am almost to the point where we're actually getting kind of personal. It's much easier to sideskirt real issues and not deal with such questions. The cool kids understand how things work socially and care about such things, while the uncool kids don't. The advantage of the uncool kids is that their friendship is much easier and carefree -- they don't ask highly introspective questions about relationships and intimate details of my life. This is because they're too immature for the most part to have figured out those things for themselves, so these aren't major issues in their lives to talk with me about. But the cool kids are socially adept and generally more aware of things, and by our interactions I am pretty sure that they have their assumptions about me. This is why the familar roles are such a trap for me, because it allows people to pigeonhole me into a stereotype or role.
So I don't know. It's still early in the semester, and I'm going to be in a close living arrangement with 40 other people for the next 4 months. Do I really care to make close friends with these people? Or on the other hand will me avoiding conversations and topics turn me into a mute half the time I'm with these people? At one point I was tempted to be myself, at another I was tempted to become a recluse and just go to my room and study Japanese, which is the actual reason why I came here.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Arrghhh! I wrote a huge post updating you on Saturday through today, Tuesday, and hit the wrong button before getting it to post. It got completely deleted! It was my longest post yet! Arrgh. This sucks
I had this much saved:
Before I tell about the weekend, I wanted to tell about my jogging trip Friday morning. Thanks to jet lag, I woke up involuntarily at 5:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. I decided to take a run along the lake, since I hadn't really seen it yet. It was a beautiful 30 minute jog along the road by the shore. As I jogged past a temple, an older Japanese man walking on the sidewalk turned to the temple across the street and bowed briefly in the direction of the temple. The path winds along the shore, which consists in some cases of natural sandy beaches and in others of large pre-fab concrete structures that look like we giant jumping jacks. Eventually the path turned into a small fishing village, with a picturesque harbor filled with sailboats and pleasure boats. A few people were fishing here and there from the walkway. It was a peaceful run and a good way to start the day.
Okay that's it unfortunately. I'll have to type it all again when I am not so frustrated.
As for today, Tuesday, after class, we went to get our alien registration cards and I went shopping afterwards. I bought a great t-shirt with some Engrish writing. Here's what is printed on the T-shirt:
jolly roger GARMENT
These's something that we want to keep
good company with forever even when
rhythm of time change
This wear is just for a man have active mind.
Design looks easy to move
and having much of stylish mind.
Isn't that just the coolest shirt you can possibly imagine! I am still laughing. What's even more funny is that I have only 2 t-shirts with me, so I'll be wearing this every third day for the rest of the semester! Anyway, I promise to write more often, so I won't end up writing huge long posts that are major productions to recreate when I'm an idiot and press the wrong buttons. Bye.
**** 9/23 I had to make an edit -- the shirt is called jolly roger GARMET, not GARMENT. My bad.
