Talking About It.

Japan is really fun to talk about, to remember, but it's when you're done talking about it, when it's filled you up, but there's nowhere left for it to go, and no one around who gets it, that it starts to cut and bleed out. It takes a million memories, and a thousand regrets, and a hundred dreams to bleed out. Till you can push it back again behind your eyes.

Nihon Bungaku

I've almost finished my website. It was supposed to be finished about a week ago, but it's just taken a lot longer than I thought to organize everything, and even though I'm sending the link to my adviser tonight, I'll still be updating it throughout the next couple of weeks, and maybe into the summer if I feel ambitious. I'd love to make some silly movies to help describe some of the novels and historical events.

http://nihonbungaku.x10hosting.com

Your confusion is the size of SIX felt-tipped markers.

I'm reeeeeeeeady for school to end. I'm pushing myself forward, of course, always making sure I have a goal to work toward, something to look forward to in the next year or two, but for now I'd like to catch up on family, writing, and sleep. That would be nice.

I have an addiction to the internet. Namely Facebook and Fanfiction.net, but really I could stay online for hours or days even without those websites. I don't always waste my time on the internet, just I only do productive things about 25% of the time. It's a problem I wish would go away, but I've recently discovered that I've been addicted longer than I'd first thought -- about 8 years, in fact. I'm surprised I still have a life. Not bad.

I just like to be brain dead. I like a constant flow of entertainment going into my eyes or ears all the time, and if that's not happening, then it flows out. If classes get too unbearable, lately I draw. I used to write, I used to write really really fast while taking notes in class. Sometimes I'd write in French in case the teacher walked by. Lately it's just jotted notes that amuse or amaze me.

1. My hair always looks shockingly blonde after I watch a Chinese or Japanese movie.
2. What would the teacher think if I left due to a coughing fit and came back with a muffin?
3. I feel half intensely dense and half like I'll float away. Like a balloon tied to a stone.
4. Humans used to live in caves, still do, just make them bigger, better.
5. If a human bites a vampire, does it turn back into a human?
6. Mexicans should use hot sauce packets from Taco Bell to burn through the border fences.
7. Do they have Taco Bells in Mexico?

Sometimes I make lists of all the really amazing things that happened to me while I was in Japan, like talking to the old Japanese man about his obsession with Les Mis, or ordering an ice cream in Japanese in Chinatown from a Chinese woman, or just people watching with Eyrun and David on Bakayama as the sun went down. I wonder if things like these will ever happen to me again, or if it's all passed and I'll just live the rest of my life like I did before.

I wish I was better at making new friends. Something about being in Japan made it easy, way easier than it was before or after. I'm really really thankful to have Michelle; no one else in the world would do with me what she does. That sounds dirty. Nevermind.

gap

She’d received half a dozen messages, some mocking and teasing, some blunt in their insistence that they “see other people,” none sounding like Mark. The messages came from his phone, and were just like the messages from his Facebook account. But they were all in lower-caps, awkwardly worded, distant…and when was the last time Mark used the word “dude”? “other dudes in the see, yknow” he’d written. Someone had written.

So one of Mark’s friends was using his phone, had logged into his Facebook account. That’s what the rational and annoyed part of Phoebe assumed, but the other part, the over analytical and uneasy part of Phoebe was already assuring her that there, in fact, were other dudes in the sea, and that her 3 year relationship with Mark had only been a fling anyway.

Mark (or whoever was pretending to be Mark) hadn’t answered his phone in almost two days. They’d been fine when they’d talked the night before last about Mark’s work and Phoebe’s plans for Thanksgiving Break, and thirty hours later Phoebe is ignoring the poetry discussions in English class and wondering if she should let her parents know that it’s over with Mark when she saw them that weekend. Or drive the 200 miles to Milwaukee to confront him in person.

She tried calling him again on her way home after class, but it rang four times before going to voicemail. Fear and frustration curled into anger as she slammed her phone shut and shoved it into her purse.

“Phoebe-weebee.”

Phoebe stopped mid-march, startled at the familiar voice. She swiveled around and to see a disheveled youthful-looking man in shorts and a t-shirt lying on a hill next to the sidewalk.

“Henry.” Phoebe raised a brow as she carefully approached her brother. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Henry smiled easily, resting his head on his hands and leaning back in the damp grass. “I am watching the leaves change.” Phoebe glanced up to see a young ash tree towering over them, the left side of which had gone bright orange.

“Yeah,” she frowned, almost grimacing, “the leaves are going to start falling soon, huh? The campus grounds crew will come around this week and start pulling off the dead leaves before it makes a mess.”

“How…humanitarian.” Henry crossed his legs and sighed as he gazed up at the leaves.

“I meant, what are you doing here?” Phoebe specified. “What are you doing in this state? At my college?” She hadn’t seen her brother since summer, maybe June, when he stopped by their mother’s house to pick up his summer clothes. Before that, and since then she supposed, he’d been wandering from town to town, state to state. Without phone calls, emails, or even postcards their family had yet to figure out what he was up to between visits; it was as though he didn't exist when he wasn't standing right in front of them.

“I was just wandering through,” he stated as though it explained everything. “I remembered you were still going here and thought I’d stop by, check out the sights.”

“The sights,” Phoebe repeated. Suddenly the annoyance she felt from earlier was back.

He glanced over at her. “You don’t mind if I stick around for a couple of days, do you?”

Phoebe shrugged and it started to drizzle. “I have a couch,” she offered, already making her way across the grass, back to the sidewalk. “But you could have called first.”

Henry was suddenly beside her, still smiling. “No phone.”

“There are payphones everywhere,” she pointed out.

He shrugged. “I don’t know your number. Or anyone’s.”

“You could have….” She struggled to find something to catch him on as he followed her across the street. “You could have found an internet café and emailed me!”

“Ich, computers hurt my eyes,” was his only excuse.

Phoebe rolled her eyes and checked her phone. Mark hadn't called. She went around the sprinklers that her brother ran underneath as she led the way to her apartment.

“My roommate isn't home,” Phoebe informed Henry as soon as they entered her dreary living room/kitchen/dining room. The curtains were all drawn and dirty dishes and used paper plates took up most of the surfaces in the room, but Phoebe quickly cleared the desk and turned on her computer. She didn't know what to say when she turned around in her chair to see Henry piling all the dishes into the sink and bagging up pop bottles.

She shook her head. “What are you doing?”

“It's kind of smelly in here,” Henry 'explained'.

“Well you can't recycle the water bottles,” Phoebe told him as she typed in her password. “Just toss them.”

Henry gently lobbed the empty water bottle into the back of Phoebe's head. Phoebe took a deep breath and ignored him, signing into her email, then to Facebook to see if there was anything from Mark.

After straightening up the kitchen (for whatever reason), Mark bugged Phoebe about taking a walk and looking at the leaves, arguing that she could do her homework at the park. Phoebe patiently explained that all of her homework as on her computer, and he settled for opening the curtains and watching the trees from the couch.

Once the apartment was silent, and she still hadn't received a message from Mark, Phoebe felt she couldn't hold it in any longer and explained the weird messages to Henry.

“He keeps breaking up with me through text messages and on Facebook,” she explained, partly wondering if Henry knew what Facebook was, “but none of the messages are him, and he hasn't actually called me so that I can be sure, and he won't answer his cell phone, and I just don't know what to do.” Henry seemed surprised – and a little confused – at the situation, but he didn't have any advise beyond, “Go ask him yourself.”

Henry watched the sunset from the balcony while Phoebe read an article for Journalism, switching between and Facebook every few minutes. He eventually wandered back in and flopped down on the couch.

“I was in Wisconsin last week,” Henry told her, “but not Milwaukee, I never got to Milwaukee. There's this place called the Wisconsin Dells, and it's kind of a touristy thing; there are amusement parks and water parks and campgrounds full of plastic cabins with faux-wood siding, but beyond all of that, the place itself is breathtaking. There are these cliffs where the forest just cuts off and drops straight down, hundreds of feet into the river. It's like the earth got bored and decided to take a different path. Some of the rock faces are sanded smooth from the water; they look like clay. Anyway, I was there for a while giving private tours for food and spending money, but people don't seem to want things like that anymore. They want the water parks, the ferries, and the tour guide with the megaphone and name tag. It's fine anyway; I want to go further west. The Dells are nothing compared to the Rocky Mountains, jutting up in millions of layers, trying to escape the planet. I think I'll go to Colorado next. After Thanksgiving, of course.” He yawned. “Run up the first towering cliff I can find and see much of the world is reachable from there.”

Phoebe stared at her brother for a few minutes before she realized that he'd fallen asleep, stretched out along her couch still in his faded sweatshirt and jeans. His words echoed in the room even after she refreshed the page. Still no message. Her stomach sank.

She was woken at nine the next morning by her vibrating cell phone: a text from her boyfriend, grammatically correct, period and all: “Call me as soon as you get up.“ She did. He answered.

“I've had the stomach flu the last couple of days,” he explained, “and it got really bad yesterday. I guess my roommate got ahold of my cell. This morning I saw the texts he sent, I'm so sorry.” He sounded sorry, and despite the nervous doubt still fluttering in her stomach, Phoebe accepted his apology. Relief didn't flush her like she'd expected.

She wandered into the living room as Mark described the way he'd payed back his roommate by waking him up at six this morning by blaring speed metal right next to his ear. Phoebe was surprised to find the couch unoccupied. She glanced at the window, curtains still wide open from last night and letting in the midmorning sun. Just down the street, the maintenance crew had begun pulling the dead leaves from the tree branches on campus; she could hear the engine of the cherry picker from where she stood. As she began to move away from the window, Phoebe spotted a solitary figure hunched on the sidewalk in front of the next building. It was Henry, watching the crew work.

Let's Not Be Friends

I've recently decided that I don't like people.

I know that might be something that gets thrown around a bit in jest, but I really believe that I could go live in a cave somewhere alone and be happy.

There are three categories of people: ones I don't know, ones I'm acquainted with, and ones I'm friends with. If I don't know you, 90% of the time I'm automatically annoyed with you. If you're an acquaintance and we only talk about school/work/however we know each other, that drops to 50%. If we're friends, chances are we haven't seen each other in over a month (maybe more than six), and I'm depressed about it.

(Family, of course, is an entirely different category; they're only at 20%).

So OF COURSE I don't want to make new friends. We'll become acquaintances and I'll not hate you for a few weeks, then we'll be close and I'll be thrilled for however long that lasts and after a year or two (five max probably), one or both of us will wander off and I'll be all up night getting nostalgic and punching my pillow. All manly-like.

It's the same reason I can't have pets, really.

Reverse Culture Shock

My credits were transferred a couple of weeks ago and JUST showed up on my transcript, it's so exciting! I have a total of 24 credits of Japanese language, and then 3 credits of linguistics just thrown in there for the hell of it. It's such a relief to have it down on paper, proof of all the work I did (especially in J4, that class killed me). I was so stressed out about credits spring term!

So I spent the summer being stressed out, annoyed, and disappointing people. Yeah, I wasn't into doing things that I did last summer, maybe I didn't act the same, maybe I wasn't around as much as I normally would have been, but...you've got to believe me, EVERY day of the summer (save for the few weeks when I was either working my ass off at Susan's day camp or exhausting myself at Indiana Beach), I felt differently about my experiences abroad and about being back in America. I was processing it, all the time, comparing everything, wondering what my friends were doing, wishing that I was back in Japan (sometimes even back in J4!), and trying to figure out how I could somehow make the changes in me work while I was in America.

SUMMARY: REVERSE CULTURE SHOCK IS WORSE THAN REGULAR CULTURE SHOCK

Before I left for Japan I read pamphlets about culture shock, about how I was supposed to feel during my first four months abroad, and it said that I would wonder, "Why can't they just do it this way instead?" about the Japanese. I NEVER thought that. I think it was easier going in because my expectations were completely open. Whatever weird customs or surprising differences I found, it never bugged me because I expected things to be different. I rolled with all the punches.

But coming back to America, I had expectations. I expected to be able to combine my Japanese life with my American life, to eat katsudon once in a while or make okonomiyaki for my family, that people would WANT to try out these foods, or want to hear me speak Japanese, or want to know more about my friends, or even want to talk about the differences I found between life here and life there. But, surprise surprise, no one wanted to eat Japanese food, no one cared about my friends, speaking Japanese just annoyed people, and every time I pointed out a difference they just looked at me like Japan must have been so horrible if things were like that. It felt like everything I tried to take with me from Japan just slipped away, and I was the only one who knew what was being lost. And THAT was a horrible horrible feeling.

So because of those failed expectations, it wasn't until I was back in America that I thought, "Why can't they just do it this way instead?" Why can't all bikes have locks and baskets built in? Why can't burnable and non-burnable garbage just all be separated? (still feels weird to combine them) Why can't there be a train running from city to city so I don't have to take a fucking car everywhere? Why can't people in the dorms leave their doors open so anyone can walk in and hang out? Why can't boys strip down and play soccer in the hallways? Why can't things be cleaner, closer together, more organized, plain, simple, straightforward???? Things are so complicated here, so messy and full of useless extras, wasted space.

I don't WANT to feel like this, I'm not doing it because I'm some fan girl who thinks anything Japanese MUST be better. It just makes more sense to me, things like they were in Japan. I hope I get used to it again here. It's very frustrating.

So I hope my friends and family will forgive me. I do enjoy being with you, I love you all, but I feel very alone with all these thoughts nagging at me all the time and knowing that no one wants to hear them. No one would get it anyway, I'd just sound annoying.

Les Mis

There was a man in Tokyo, a really old man, who I sat down next to one day in the lunchroom on campus between classes. I opened my textbook and started going over -teoku congugations, and he scooted closer and asked if I spoke English.

His English was stunted but he carefully and enthusiastically explained what he was doing there.

The old man had never left Japan; when he was young, he read Les Misérables in English translation, and he cried. He could feel what the characters felt, he said as he pulled out a worn paperback 5 inches thick and, cradling it in his hands, tipped it so that I could see the title. He had never been so touched by anything in his life.

"Is French book," he told me. "English has different meaning. French has original meaning."

He took French classes for years in order to read the original French version of the book.

The man grinned proudly as he emptied one French-English dictionary and half a dozen notebooks out of his bag and flipped one open, angling them toward me so that I could see the tiny English scrawls. He pointed out the date and page number on the top of each page as he explained that he was slowly translating the book from French to English.

"Very slow! You help me!" He laughed as he said it, a self depreciating and overwhelmed grin hiding his eyes.

I laughed with him, tried to tell him that I'd never read Les Misérables, that my French was probably no better than his, but that I would help him with whatever he needed. He just laughed again and showed me the hundreds of pages of translations, notes scribbled into the margins, page numbers only into the 300's for a fifteen-hundred page book. He'd been translating for years.

He told me more about his project and showed me some magic tricks he could do with hair ties. He taught me how to do them, and gave me two of the ties to show my friends.

I saw him often in the eight months after that: in the library, in the cafeteria, in the commons, always pouring over his monstrous volume of Les Misérables, French dictionary at his elbow.

I'm not sure he remembered me. Maybe he talks to all the foreign girls. I don't know how far he's gotten by now, and I never got his name.

Giant Dancing Kittens

"The curry is pimped this time!" ~ David


I experienced a wide variety of prototypical "Japanese" things today that I decided to document, such as a giant kitten dancing to happy parapara music at THE most random "museum (???I don't know if it should be called that???)" that I've ever been to. The first floor was half rain forest filled with massage parlors and half Ghost Town. This floor also included Gyouza Heaven, which made up for any and all confusion and hardship caused by moving from relaxation to terror.

I freakin' love gyouza.

The second floor was slightly more confusing as the themes were less clearly defined; it seemed that half was Random Ice Cream Heaven, and half was the American old west. The old west theme managed to incorporate "Engrish" into my day, which is imperative in any stereotypical romp through Japan, including such famous Old West storefronts as "Restaurant Napalm" (that one made me nervous).

Random Ice Cream Heaven was a nice place to wander through, and Eyrun and I even managed to taste some new and exciting flavors. Ice cream is so overdone as a dessert, so we tried out Beef Tongue and Garlic flavored ice creams. I have nothing more to say about that except that it tastes exactly like you'd think it would taste. And that, yes, there were pieces of beef in the Beef Tongue flavored one.

Leaving the "museum (???)", we wandered by a few stores which bring up another important part of the Japanese experience: foreign imports. No one plays traditional-while-still-incorporating-EVERYONE-else's-stuff like the Japanese, and playing around in a Build-A-Bear Workshop and a GAP really help to put that in perspective for me once again.

Being overly-confident about speaking aloud is also important when in Japan; chances are juuuuust slim enough that no one will understand you that you easily slip into not caring if they actually do. Which is why I called out "My bear is gay," while cruising the Build-A-Bear Workshop, and I am still unsure whether or not the small girl who glanced over at me did so because I spoke Foreigner or because she wanted to see my gay bear.

But the largest part of being in Japan is, of course, being confused. So the most definitive moment of the day really was when, after staring at a size conversion chart in the Gap for about 30 seconds, all I could think or say was, "Hm. Centimeters huh?" It had taken me that long to realize that the numbers in front of my face were useless to me.

Thank you, Ikebukura, for summing up the entire last 8 months of my life into one day.

2 pass 1 fail

So yesterday I got all happy during class when everyone was reading aloud together. I don't remember what the sentence said because I was barely following along, but the verb at the end was something-o shiteimasu, and David next to me (who was also probably not paying attention) said, instead, o shitteimasu. Oh fascinating. Right. So it was such a tiny difference, but (possibly because I hadn't been paying attention to the context) I immediately heard the verb for 'to know' instead of 'to do'. The conjugation makes them sound so very similar that I don't think I would have normally picked it up, but I IMMEDIATELY heard the difference, and then I got all excited about it, but how am I supposed to giggle over something so small? And with David, who would probably be confused and a little insulted that I brought up his mistake.

Then today we were playing a game in class called shiritori, which I've seen on Japanese game shows but never played. One person says a word and the next person takes the last syllable of that word and has to say a word using that as the first syllable and so on, like "shiritori" then "ringo" then "golf" or something like that. Anyway, I realized tonight while I was doing my homework (which includes a small game of it) that while we were doing it in class, with the teacher standing right next to me, I had no apprehensions or troubles coming up with words. My vocabularly is for shit, but it's a least big enough to continue the game, and the two guys I was playing with each lost once while I kept going without a problem. It's nice to know that I can at least do that much in Japanese.

And to bring it all to a point, some Japanese guys came and sat with Eyrun and me today to interview for us for a paper their writing, and during the maybe two hours of conversation, despite the urging of them AND Eyrun, I refused to speak Japanese. I just didn't want to start something I couldn't finish. I understood them when they were talking to each other in Japanese, and the few things they said to me, but not enough to be able to respond appropriately. I am feeling more confident...just not that confident.

Just Like the Brochures...

I think I just realized how much a part of me all of this is now.

I just remembered writing Michelle's name in katakana on her whiteboard and being so impressed and surprised when she revealed that she'd already looked up all of the symbols for it. I think I felt flattered at that moment, like she'd just paid me a compliment by showing an interest in Japanese. I realized that I felt like it was a part of who I was, and then I wondered if I would always feel that way. I had been practicing some kanji.

Will I one day miss the feeling of writing in Japanese?

I think it was a couple of weeks ago that I was moving between writing a word in hiragana and one in English and it stunned me that the sounds the pencil made were completely different. The way I wrote the Japanese word sounded as short clicks against the paper while the English word was rapid scribbles. It's amazing for me to write in two completely different ways within seconds of one another, and with the same hand.

Will I miss that one day?

Miss attempting to write a Japanese word in romaji for the sake of my family and screwing up the first 3 or 4 times and writing こ　instead of k or something. It's happened a few times.

I don't want to give up this knowledge, but I don't think that I'm ready to make the sacrifices required in order to keep it.

Clicky People

I'm learning more and more the difference between relationships of choice and relationships of convenience and how the proportion of each in my life (and everyone's lives) makes such a big difference in the level of contentedness/happiness I have in my life.

I guess that I've just met so many new people in the past five months and ... when you have no base for friendships or any relationships at all and you're starting from scratch it's like each person you meet has the potential to be your best friend or the love of your life. It's exciting on one hand, but on the other hand it makes it so clear how rare it is to find someone you ACTUALLY click with. I had an idea about this before I came to Japan, but it's just so clear now; every day I may talk to a dozen people and visit or hang out with three or for and it's likely that I have nothing more than a relationship of convenience with all of them. They're close to me because they live in GH or on campus or they're in a class with me or they're from the same place as me or something that makes it easy for us to be around each other, but that doesn't make us mesh. I can still spend all night talking to someone and not feel close to them.

I think it's like that for everyone. I think I know people who I was friends with for years without ever clicking with them. I guess it's sad, but I don't regret the time I spent with them. I just wish our relationship had been more real. And I feel that way about a lot of people right now...maybe more and more people every day. But what can I do except continue to meet and get to know more people and hope that something clicks? I mean, what other solution is there?

Fortunately, there are a couple of people who I have clicked with. Even a boy. :D But that doesn't mean that our relationships are perfect, just that I feel closer to them than I do with the people I spend hours with every day. I just hope that they feel the same way.

I2 or J3

I think I've decided once and for all to drop out of Intensive Japanese. I feel like a coward for throwing in the towel, but it's just too much stress, too much pressure to keep up with the darn Korean kids...damn those Koreans...because I'll always be ten steps behind them and just doing well enough to be acceptable in class. I mean, I passed Intensive I with a B and even then I knew half the stuff we learned the first month and a half. Probably the only reason I really want to stay anyway is because of the other students. We were so close last semester and I would feel left out if I left them behind now.

So I'm going to switch into J3, which is only 6 credits instead of 12 meaning that I have to pick up two more classes: history and French. w00t. Well, Advanced French Writing (which I've already done at GVSU, just never with Japanese as the default language) and Modern Japanese History (with Eyrun, yay!) and hopefully after I get back into writing papers and speaking in English in class once in a while I'll feel better. Not that it will do a lot of good for my Japanese ability...but at least I'll have time to actually process the things that I'm learning in class.

I guess there's another reason why I wanted to stay in I2 but it doesn't matter anyway because...things never quite work out the way you plan anyway.

I Heart Kanji

I fucking hate when there is kanji on the homework that we aren't supposed to know. It's so annoying when I have to go through the stupid book to find one kanji to do one problem. And sometimes, it's not in the book. It's not exactly like I can type it into the fucking dictionary and see what it is. Kanji dictionaries are not required to take this class, therefore I should not HAVE to use one while doing my homework. It's a waste of my time, and it's frustrates me to no end! Then I end up skipping the question and getting it wrong. I know that while studying a foreign language it's best to teach the students from one step ahead of where they are, but it doesn't work when they can't figure out what the fuck is going on, and they get so frustrated that they just give up.

I guess I'm just in a bad mood. I'm so oversensitive.

I Break for Linguistics

There was a bug in my room a few minutes ago. I sort of wandered away (deathly afraid of it flying at my face or something) and wandered the halls until I finally grabbed Eyrun and made her get rid of it for me. She's such a good friend. ^_^ I was actually considering spending the rest of the night in the study room....

Anyway, on to linguistics. One of the Korean kids in my Japanese class has the hardest time making the z-sound, it's adorable. He also doesn't distinguish between ch- and sh-, so instead of saying 'chigai' (different), he says 'shigai' (corpse). But the best thing is that he really really tries to pronounce it well, and when he says a word with a z- or ch- sound he smiles and sort of looks around at us and repeats it to make sure he got it right. It's adorable.

It's easy to hear the differences between Japanese pronunciation and non-Japanese pronunciation of Japanese words in other foreign students, but it's difficult to hear it in my own speech. It's been brought to my attention, though, that my most blatant give-away (not that I could pass for Japanese, but anyway) is my pronunciation of d- in the middle of a word. American English (standard and most non-standard dialects) replace the d-sound with a flapped r in the middle of words -- consider the difference in the d's between the words dime (hard d-sound) and puddle (flapped r). Unfortunately, in Japanese the flapped r-sound is practically identical to the actual r-sound, so I pronounce words like 'kudasai', 'kurasai'. It's physically difficult for me to make the d-sound in the middle of the word! It just seems like an odd problem to have, since the d-sound is such an easy one to make. It sure isn't he French r- or u-. I just naturally do the flapped r-.

You Are All Free

"I am not afraid to keep on living
I am not afraid to walk this world alone
Honey if you stay you'll be forgiven
Nothing you can say can stop me going home."
~MCR

"Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you."

"Your ignorance is measured by the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly."

"You are free to smile in the midst of massive tests and challenges knowing that you have chosen to play this game."

"You are all.
Free.
To do.
Whatever.
You want.
To do."
~Richard Bach

Japan Stories II

"I will sit in front of you for 4 hours. As long as you don't talk to me."

Cori is the only student in her Comparative Religions class, as in she sits in front of the teacher and he lectures -- at her -- for four hours. Naturally, a college student doesn't have the ability to focus for that long, and she actually ZONED OUT only to realize that he had asked her a question and was waiting for the answer.

Just outside the south gate, on Mitaka's main street, there are two ramen shops side by side sending the steamy smell of oily brother wafting down across the sidewalk, momentarily filling the air as we shoot by on our bikes.

Today I got upset when the dictionary.com translator wouldn't translate Icelandic to English.

"You can lie in class, but you have to live with the reputation." ~Ichikawa sensei

"I'm a black person." ~ Z

I think that I made progress in Japanese language today: I found that my roommates and other people from Global House would often speak to me in Japanese and I would completely understand and respond in English. That's a step in the right direction, right? I'm a little hesitant about responding in Japanese because so far I've only learned formal Japanese and it sounds kind of stupid. But tomorrow in class we'll learn short form so hopefully I'll be able to start using it soon.

10/5/08

"Sorry, I'll give the book back as soon as I can."
"I can't read your apologies at night before I go to bed!"
~Me and Erykha

"I wanna be a ... ペンギン。”　(penguin, with Japanese accent)
~Cory

"I feel like we're foreign."
~Eyrun in Shibuya

What the hell is Tokyo Tower? Is it really a copy of the Eiffel Tower? Does it have a function? Are Japanese people proud of it? How does it relate to Western culture?

10/6/08

Eyrun told me all about her culture's (Iceland's) belief in fairies while we were studying last week. They lure people into large rocks, so the government actually builds roads around rocks rather than moving them.
"Never follow a fairy into a rock."
She also said that Santa Clause's mother eats children? And her cat too.

Japan is such a homogeneous, group-oriented society that there are countless grammar structures based solely on asking for agreement. Even giving information in Japanese should be followed by "でしょう” or "I think" (whether you're sure or not) in order to lighten the blow of one person knowing more than another.

I'm thinking about writing really formal looking letters to my family in Japanese and including a dramatic translation that has nothing to do with the actual content.

10/10/08

The natives can take pictures of the gaijin!

I started a bucket list last night. It includes so far:

random long-distance bike ride
live in France more than one year
Visit New York
Visit Iceland
Visit Rome +
Learn 5 languages by 30 (at least advanced level)
Finish 'Running' (old story from high school)

The kanji for medicine is in two parts; the symbol for gross and the symbol for fun. o_0

Z dropped a paperclip down her shirt in the middle of class one day and she quite discretely laughed about it and fished it out. I mean seriously, we were sitting in a circle and I was the only one who noticed. Kudos to Z.

The same day as the paperclip incident (I think), I was pretty giddy so as the teacher went around the room showing the class the kanji on her chapstick, I pulled mine our and showed it off to Z who oohed and aahed.

ーせんとうからかえってからごはんを食べます。
lit: bath from returning after food eat
<-----You read it this way in English! <---

I read an article back home arguing that English and Japanese grammar were complete opposites. This amazes me, especially now that I can completely see it!

Japan Stories

Stories I've recorded the past two weeks of living in Japan.

9/10/08

One of Tyler's roommates keeps falling asleep in Tyler's bed. Tyler says they're just talking, then they wander into his room, still talking. Then Ko lays down and covers up, still talking. Then they stop talking for a second and when Tyler turns around, Ko is fast asleep. So Tyler turns off the light, locks the door, and leaves like he's not even there.

There is a legendary dog statue in Shibuya. Apparently about 70 or 80 years ago, a man's dog used to wait for him there every day after work, and when the man died, the dog continued to wait. So they built a statue in the station to commemorate the dog.

In contrast to Tyler's roommate, Erik (a classmate) gets no sleep! He lives in a men's dorm (which has no private rooms or air conditioning) and he's busy all day and can't go to sleep until his roommate does, usually around 2 a.m. He says he sometimes naps during the day, but only sleep for about four hours a night. I'm so lucky to have my own room!

Zee is Italian, has been in Italy all her life save for one years in Chicago for college, and because her mother and aunt are American and helped raise her and spoke English to her, she has a nearly flawless American accent. it's disconcerting when she says she's Italian and she sounds so American, or at least it was at first. I think I'm getting used to it now.

For the first time today, I sat with friends in Japan and laughed and mad stupid jokes and was completely at home. I can't believe I've only know these people for 9 days! We get along like we've known each other forever.

9/14/08

Erykah, Eyrun, and I ended up at a shrine festival yesterday when we were visiting Kichijouji. it was amazing; I'd seen shrine festivals in anime and manga, full of food and half the people in traditional clothing, but seeing it come to life was almost a shock. We even had some of the food and it was different. one thing we had was pretty much grilled bread with BBQ sauce.

A bunch of us went out for an Italian restaurant for dinner Friday night and Dominique next to me said something of which I only picked out the words "librarian" and "cute." Now the librarian at our school is cute, so I quietly agreed and Dom was confused so I was confused until finally I realized that she'd said his daughter was cute, because he was at the table right next to us. We had a laugh, (all this time I think he knew that we knew him because he kept his face turned away -- he's shy about his English) and we talked about something else, until Cori, across from us, who was apparently the only one at the table who didn't get the whole conversation, blurted out loudly, "So you think the librarian's cute?" And then everyone starts laughing as quietly as possible and Dom, red in the face, whispers, "No, I said his daughter is cute!" And we all try to gesture to his table until she realizes what she did and she starts laughing and gets red too. he left soon after that and I never saw his face even halfway turn toward us.

We had our first official dorm meeting today, and since two thirds of the students are Japanese and most of the remainder speak Japanese, much of the discussion was in Japanese. They translated everything they could, but when students started asking questions and arguing, there was no time to translate what was going on. So there were long stretches when maybe 15 or 20 of us couldn't follow. One OYR, a Middle-Eastern students who I don't know well, stood and asked that all discussion be conducted in English. There was an awkward silence and then the people in the front row explained to the leaders that he had requested more translation (they couldn't understand him for his accent) and the leaders sort of whispered amongst themselves about it and the whole thing felt really awkward. But then it seemed ok, because the leaders genuinely accept his concern, and there actually was more translation for the rest of the night. I look forward to spring, when we'll all know enough Japanese to ignore English.

9/15/08

"No offense, Eyrun, but Spanish poeple are dicks."

Z told us a story today about a friend whose boyfriend followed he to England (from Italy), and it was really romantic at first but then they got into a fight and he kept following her and they ended up arguing in the rain and finally he says, "You know what your problem is? You like me. But I love you." Apparently they started making out soon afterward. ^_^

9/16/08

I found out today that the microwave in my kitchen is also an oven, a boiler, and an ice cream maker. An ice cream maker.

On Friday during writing class, the teacher asked Cory to read the directions, which were in English. It was weird. We're so used to reading Japanese. He kept messing up.

Eyrun is the only person in this whole school who is from Iceland. She whispered something to herself in Icelandic, and it shocked her -- she isn't used to hearing it anymore.

9/17/08

Last week I had a cool moment; a Japanese girl and I bumbed into each other and at the same time she said "I'm sorry," I said "Sumimasen."

Today we had our bakayama performance, which went well. Afterward, our 'cool' teacher, Komatsu-sensei, told us about when she was a student at ICU. She had bright pink hair, loads of earrings, and always dressed punk. When she returned to teach, her former teachers didn't even recognize her! She told us that she once burned down the bakayama! She and a friend built an igloo there and doused it in water, freezing it solid. It wouldn't melt, so campus police were getting angry and were going to smash it in with axes. Komatsu wanted to do it herself, but they decided it was too much work to smash it. So they filled it with newspaper and set it on fire. The fire spread through all the grass! The campus police started to come -- they could hear the siren -- so they both ran! No one ever kew it was her, and she made us swear not to tell anyone. She used a mixture of Japanese and English when she was talking, and it was very cool.

I had just finished telling a story today at a Ramen place when Z said I had a really good American accent. She said it was clear and easy to understand and that I enunciated well. I was kind of shocked at first. It's something I've never heard before. But it made me happy.

Tyler didn't get much sleep last night because Ko fell asleep at the end of his bed. So Tyler had to curl up at the head of it.

Global House

So I've been in my new dorm, Global House, at ICU in Tokyo Japan for five days. But it seems more like a month. Classes haven't even started yet, and already I feel like I've been here an entire semester. The week was filled with orientations and orientations and introductions for every part of the campus and lifestyle and programs and clubs and the dorm has meetings every day or twice a day and we're working on an initiation project involving mummy wrap and dancing on a hill during lunchtime for the other students. It's...fast-paced. Add to all of this that I know enough Japanese to introduce myself and talk about the weather, and it's been quite a week. Or five days.

And the thing I find the most annoying is that whenever I send a message or e-mail to someone in the US, I still keep expecting them to reply right away. Time after time, I forget the time difference (^_^), which is 13 hours, which means that right now it's almost 7 p.m. here but 6 a.m. in Michigan. No one will reply to my e-mail!

I have so many friends already; all of the members of Global House tend to stick together, especially the international students. I know almost everyone's name by now (which is amazing, I'm horrible with names), plus there are two French guys who I became friends with and an American girl who went to my home university who I've been hanging out with, so I always have someone to talk to and to do things with! It's weird, because there's so much to do and I'm so used to being bored and doing nothing all day after a summer of idling. The dorm has parties every night!

I already have a Japanese bike, cell phone, and bank account. It just doesn't really seem real...but now it seems so natural. Classes start on Monday and I'm taking an intensive Japanese course; it lasts 6 hours a day, five days a week! I'll improve quickly! A lot of the material, though, is for beginners, so I don't think I'll be too bogged down by material, at least not at first.

So...this is crazy.

Change

You learn something new every day:

In the past few days I've learned that people can change. That I can change. Not from good to bad or vise versa, but just change from who I was to who I am today, quick enough to make me wonder what the hell happened. A deep seeded fear can suddenly just fade away one night and I can wake up the next day with only a lingering sensation that it should be there, that it once was there, and that it's gone. And I start doing things I've never done before and talking in ways I've never spoken before, shocking even myself at how unlike myself I am.

And I think maybe one single person could have shifted me like this, popped out that awkward fear and made me someone different. Not someone I've known forever or even someone I'm in love with. Just a person I began spending too much time with, who rubbed off on me and became my best friend in three months and who I see every day and who I experience new things with, with whom I'm not afraid to experience new things. And isn't that strange? That things could be so different so quickly with seemingly so little effort?

Now onto the physical rant:

I got drunk for the first time in my life last week at a party hosted by my good friend, Michelle. Her boyfriend's friend, Victor, -- who she attests is my perfect match romantically -- was there and was pining for my attention as much I was for his. It was immensely flattering, enough so that I had no problem slamming down shots, especially when, toward the end of the night, he began pouring them for me and taking them with me as we toasted to Dennis Kucinich. By 3 a.m. the party had broken up and most people had gone home (including my catalyst mentioned above) and just before I left, the object of my affection kissed me once, then again and again and I raced out the door smiling to crash on my bed, fully dressed, when I arrived home moments later.

It was a fantastic night. And ever since then, all I've wanted to do is see him again, to talk to him and to connect with him the way we did at the party. Of course, there is the anxious tug that perhaps our getting along so well had more to do with the vodka than actually liking one another, but it was worth finding out, right?

But my catalyst. Oh, I'm pushed and pulled from either end in such a confusing game of attention that no one really seems to be playing but me! My catalyst pines also for my attention, though not in a romantic way. He and I have our own dreams of a future together, living in a large house in France and drinking wine every night after working at our shared book store in downtown Paris. This, of course, after we attend college together (graduate school for me) at MSU as flower children and experience as much of life in the states as we can handle before leaving it all behind. Only a month ago, he and I would openly disdain romantic relationships as a waste of time, energy, and most of all imagination. We already understood each other perfectly, we could read one another at a glance, we shared the same hopes and saw life the same way and every piece of evidence around us attested to the futility of being attached to someone "romantically".

It was just this extra, annoying and unnecessary thing. Why bother?

And then I met Victor and I had a great time and after that kiss, after spending most of the next day feeling like shit and lounging around the house trying to be comfortable, all I wanted to do was talk to my catalyst about what it could mean. And, stupid and slow as I am, it took me two days more to figure out that Victor ruined all of our plans.

"I just can't see either of us in a relationship," my catalyst proclaimed. I agreed quickly. I'd never been in a long term relationship, though I often excused that with the fact that all the men I've dated have been hillbilly assholes. And today I had told my catalyst of my desire for something more.

We had just downed a bottle of wine between us and we were sprawled out in his front yard bantering at each other about nothing and everything, and I stumbled through describing to him my need for my exact relationship to him to be mirrored in the one with Victor -- or some man -- with the added bonus of "making out" (as I had put it). In other words, I wanted a best friend plus. I wanted to be in love with someone who was in love with me. And that just didn't work with what my catalyst and I shared.

I know he hadn't meant to, but when he opened me up and took away that poking, prodding fear, he also made it possible for me to open up to other people. And perhaps if he hadn't changed me so drastically, our future-dreams would still be pulling us through the summer, instead of being squashed and stomped on by my basic need for more. More and more and more. Selfish and selfish and justified.

That's what I learned today. I hate change.

Global House

I got two big pieces of information today about my study abroad. One, I received my certificate of eligibility from Japan, which allows me to get a visa which allows me to stay in the country for more than 90 days. Yay! Very important paper. Grand Valley is sending it to my mom's house, so I should have it within a week, then I have to take it to a Japanese consulate either in Detroit or Chicago.

The other thing was that my dad got a package from ICU about my housing. Apparently, I've been accepted into the Global House, which is an on-campus dormitory. It's kinda cool, but I was actually assuming that I'd get an off-campus student apartment in downtown Tokyo...which is what I applied for...I thought...but anyway, the dorm requires a lot more community living (like having chores, group meetings, and wearing giant teddy bear costumes the first week of classes), but I think I'll be alright. I look forward to it.

The Global House is the newest building at ICU. It's also the biggest dorm, housing 64 people. Which isn't a lot in Grand Valley standards. Most of the dorms at ICU have around 24 people. It's insane. Anyway, about half of the people staying in Global House are international students, so I can only hope that I'll be living with people who are going through the same new experiences that I am. We may even have the same classes, since there's only one class for each level of Japanese!

I've been feeling a lot better about going lately. Ever since Kanako-san started e-mailing me (the girl picking me up from the airport and showing me around the first day), I've been much much more at ease about the whole thing. I've even had a lot of good dreams about it. Plus, I've been chatting with this French guy on Facebook who is also going this fall. It's very reassuring to know that I will at least have a couple of connections when I go there. ^_^