Conveyor sushi

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days. Things have been going pretty well and I'm settling down into more of a routine.

I learned yesterday that many people in Japan believe that clothes dried in the sun are healthier to wear versus machine-dried clothes. Good thing, too, given that space is always at a premium and consumer goods are generally expensive here. Growing up, we had a clothesline that we used about half the time, and I've used one on and off through college. Here, we dry our clothes exclusively on a line and I think I'll continue that practice when I return home. I was thinking about all the lifestyle changes I've had to make here and it made me feel good. That's part of the whole reason why I came here: to see how other people do it and try it myself.

Last night, Alisha and some of our friends went to a conveyor sushi restuarant (a first for the two of us). For those of you who don't know what conveyor restaurants are: you come in an queue for a table just like any other seated restaurant. Within the restaurant are booth style tables with all the little stuff like chopsticks, free green tea*, etc. Once sitting, at about shoulder height, there is a conveyor belt that snakes around every table in the place. On the conveyor belts are individual plates of sushi or other small items (like a hunk of sweet potato cake last night). When an item passes by, you simply grab it and eat it. When you're done, you're left with a pile of plates which will determine your bill. Every item is the same price (dessert was a little more last night), so you know what you're paying and you can eat right up to your level of hunger and/or finances in a fairly precise manner. You're also not constrained by having a large portion of one thing, so it's a snap to try new things, nor are you limited by any linear progression of courses. If you're still hungry after dessert then it's not a problem for anyone. When you're done you just hit a button/ring a bell and they tally your expenses right there. I've greatly enjoyed group dining in Japan so far because (in my limited experience) it's normal for everyone to pay individually.

On Friday we had another little welcoming party. This time, it was to introduce the ryuugakusei to the tutors that will be assigned to help us with anything from homework to translating the electric bill. It was a pretty low-key event with good food and we all did oral introductions which is a little stressful for everyone. I think everyone had a good time.

At the end, we all got together for a group picture. The manager of the international center here, who we discovered is a huge Star Wars/Harry Potter/you name it nerd, got everyone to smile by pulling a Harry Potter wand from his jacket pocket and waving it while saying "Wingardium Leviosa!" I got a good laugh out of realizing that he'd been carrying it around all day.

I also just recently learned how to express varying probability that an action or event will occur. Thanks again to Haruka for helping me out so much. Before coming here, I only knew how to express absolutely that something would or would not happen. Right after I arrived, I picked up たぶん(tabun, "probably") but I still found a need to express a low probability. Things are moving right along.

Not much else to report. The weather here has been on-and-off beautiful and miserable. I'm just waiting for the punishingly humid summer that everyone has warned me about.

*Green tea is the free beverage of choice here. If a restaurant doesn't have free water, they will have free green tea.

Busy afternoon

Whew, long day today. Alisha and I got up at 7:00 for Beginner Japanese in the morning, which is three awesome hours long. (I'm not being facetious; it rocks). We know from doing speaking drills involving food vocabulary that Tabata-sensei is usually hungry before class is even over, so we invited her to go to lunch with us. Near school is a place called Jusco, which is like a shopping mall that is, it being Japan, really damn tall. I can't remember if I've mentioned it on here before, but for lunch we all had oomoraisu ("home rice" I think"Omu-rice" from the French word for omelet. Thanks, Haruka! はるかさんありがとう！), which is seasoned rice and corn with an omelet-like egg sheet draped over it, with the whole mess smothered in a tomato sauce, plus cheese for a little extra. Why, yes, it does taste amazing. We made what little conversation we could with sensei over food, which is to say not a lot but I take a huge amount of satisfaction from communicating anything at all.

As an aside, I realized yesterday that no matter how tired or cranky I am, speaking Japanese has yet to feel like a chore. Sometimes the written homework gets a little tedious, which is unavoidable, but I've been so pleased to realize that this language makes me feel good about myself and is a valuable skill to boot.


After lunch, we parted and Alisha and I went to go look for a 書道の筆 (shodounofude, calligraphy brush) for me. We ended up wandering through most of the store, just to get an idea of what all there is in the store. We bought some school supplies that we were lacking, but also stumbled across fitted sheets! This is a big deal, because when you're in a country where most people sleep on a futon but your International Student Center staff have kindly provided you with a western style mattress, finding a fitted sheet for it is no easy task. I also bought my first, and certainly not last, t-shirts with humorously misused English on the front. Alisha got one, too, and they're awesome. Photos aren't up quite yet, but will be in the future.

While Alisha was trying on her shirt, I was looking around at the clothing section we were in. I got a small chuckle over the jeans selections: loose cut, baggy cut, and boots cut. Also, I was treated to a J-Pop* rendition of "Walk This Way" by Aerosmith. I must admit that Steve Tyler has a little more punch than the unknown-to-me Japanese woman singing in the song, but that's just my own cultural bias showing through.

Overall a good day, and I was able to ask a clerk what floor I could find aforementioned brush on in Japanese. I realized after walking away that I phrased it poorly, but that's what mistakes or for.

*J-Pop is a contraction of Japanese Pop, referring to a very wide musical genre.

Party! パーティ！

Last night, all the ryuugakusei were invited to a party at Makoto Tone's house, the manager of the International Center at Chukyo Univeristy. Alisha and I got on the subway early to make sure we were there on time, and arrived a little bit early to be greeted by a Chukyo alumnus. While we waited for the others to arrive, we introduced ourselves to Seiji, who was kind enough to speak as much English as he could to us, and the rest in very slow Japanese. Everyone showed up in short order and we all had a great evening of great food, drink, and dessert. We learned that Tone-san is a huge nerd (just like us, yay!); check out Alisha's Flicker stream for a picture of his almost life-sized R2-D2 DVD player. Many other fun pictures are up, as well. I had a great time, and also learned through observation how to eat sushi with chopsticks. I already knew how to eat onigiri sushi (seaweed wrapped sushi), but now my table manners are even better.

Oh, yeah, I also had salmari schnapps for the first time ever. Wow.

Seals and mushrooms

Don't worry; it will make sense in a few minutes. First, seals:

So, Alisha and I live in minato-ku, which is on the meiko-sen (Meiko subway line). On one end is 金山駅 (kanayama-eki, Kanayama Station), on the other 名古屋港駅 (nagoyako, Nagoya Port Station). Alisha and I have noticed that sometimes when riding the subway, every time the doors open, over the speakers are played seal noises. This is a fairly regular occurrence, but I still haven't quite gotten used to hearing ocean animals on a train 50 feet underground. We've been trying to figure out the reason for it, and the best we've been able to come up with is the fact that the end of the line is Nagoya Port where there might be seals (I haven't been there yet). I'll keep you all updated when I find out if there are actually seals or if it's just one of those things that sets this country apart from my own.

Next, mushrooms:

On Fridays, Alisha has no class so I ride the subways by myself. This morning, I think I left shortly after a school near my apartment let out. Behind me were 4 little girls, all decked in brightly colored clothing with equally clashy umbrellas. What made this so humorous is that each girl, who couldn't have weighed more than 60 pounds or exceeded 3 feet tall, had adult-sized umbrellas* which from my viewpoint at just under twice their height, made them looked like a brightly colored clump of mushrooms scurrying down the sidewalk. Their high-pitched chattering only made them more endearing but I did worry a little when they all started running full bore down the very wet sidewalk.

*Japan doesn't seem to sell anything but decent, useful, reasonably constructed umbrellas. I have yet to see any of those umbrellas that allows you to keep your legs or your head dry, but not both, that seem so prevalent in America.

Keep on Trucking

Hmm, I actually don't like that expression very much. Anyway, things have been pretty good these past few days.

When moving in smaller spaces, I have encountered a curious phenomenon. If I'm not right up against the back of the person in front of me in line, someone will almost inevitably cut in front of me. This has happened getting on and off subway trains, entering escalators and elevators, and traveling up and down stairs staying to a side because there's traffic both ways. I don't know if this is because I'm a gaijin or if that's just the normal mentality of "better fill this gap." I'm getting more and more used to packing it in, though, when things get crowded. The Japanese are extremely conscientious about the feelings and space of others, but the "personal space bubble" is much larger in American culture than it is here. Here, it's perfectly normal for people in the elevator to have their bodies pressed together (not smashed, but it's certainly snug at times). I'm also trying to re-train myself in how I deal with strangers since I get a lot more attention in public places. I have likened this situation to seeing a giraffe walking down the street in America: what you are seeing makes perfect sense intellectually, it's just the last thing you were expecting. Like all of my cultural and personal experiences here, that's certainly not the case 100% of the time. That being said, I still don't have a reflexive smile-and-say-daijoubuu(Are you okay?) response prepared when someone turns around, sees me, and puts on their best "Don't scare me like that!" face.

I finally have internet access in my room thanks to the efforts of Alisha. We both did our best to configure a modem and router in Japanese but in the end, as usual, she was the persistent one. Bravo!

Classes have been going well. Wednesday was Intermediate Japanese with Ono-sensei, the second session I've had with him. It went really well. I felt like I learned a lot and got some great practice from the class. Additionally, I felt that I came off as a struggling learner, as opposed to a bumbling idiot like last week. Don't worry, mom, I don't actually think I'm an idiot. Let's just say that I was very pleased with myself. Calligraphy class was also awesome this week. We got to use brushes for the first time. It was very much a hands-on lesson. We put our hands on the brushes and started drawing characters. I have the feeling that brush calligraphy is going to stick with me for a long time. It's a very meditative exercise and, for me at least, is a great way to practice slowing down. I found that when I made a mistake (which was quite often, it being the first time) my only option was ignore it until I was done drawing the whole character. Each time I had the urge to finish up so I could try that particular stroke again, I'd just make more mistakes. It takes the phrase "haste makes waste" to a whole new level. You can feel yourself losing control of the brush each time your mind wanders from the task at hand.

Finally, when Alisha and I were waiting for the bus to leave Toyota campus on Tuesday, we kept hearing the most bizarre noises coming from a nearby building. Over and over, we'd hear a group of people screaming and a bunch of loud cracking noises. This would go a for a few minutes, stop, then resume again. We absolutely couldn't figure out what it was until I caught a glimpse through an open window of feet shuffling around in a combat stance (wide and sideways for balance and to present a smaller target) and the tips of kendo swords swinging around. It was at that point that I decided that I'm going to do kendo next semester.

Not much else to report. I did get my commuter subway pass today, so I won't have to drop $5.80 on travel every day. The way it works here, you either buy a ticket for your destination or you pre-pay 1,3, or 6 months for an entry, exit, and transfer station(s) commuter ticket that you then simply use every day like normal. This ticket saves you a lot of money unless you lose it, in which case you can't get a refund and you become a sad, sad panda.

Catch you later.

Breakfast and escalators

2 things I've experienced here that I've forgotten to share:

First, in Nagoya there is something called mooningu setto (the "Morning Set") which is very common for breakfast. The Morning Set consists of a cup of coffee, a hard-boiled egg, and toast. So if you walk into a cafe or some such in Nagoya, and they ask you if want coffee and you say yes, there's a good chance that you'll end up with a Morning Set. This is a tradition that gets 100% of my support.

Second, I noticed today while riding the escalator out of Minatokuyakusho-eki (Minato Ward Office Station) that the wall of the escalator right next to the steps doesn't have that little brushy thingy that you'd always use to pretend you were polishing your shoes with when you were a kid. I do not know why.

Okay, more than 2 things. One of the myths about Japan is that everyone is short. My experience so far has been that the average height of Japanese people is a little shorter than Americans, but I've also encountered quite a few people, men and women, who had at least 2 or 3 inches on me (I'm 5 foot 11 inches). I have read, again I can't remember where and again I regret that I cannot cite it, that the average height of a person in Japan is increasing with a suggested link to the increased consumption of milk, and thus calcium. Perhaps someone can back me up on this (or not; I'm not all that worried about research for this blog).

Also, today I picked up my Certificate of Alien Registration, commonly referred to as gaijin card, today. It's basically a card that all foreigners are required to carry with them at all times, and serves as identification as well as proof of your legal presence in the country. This practice first struck me as draconian, but in thinking of Japan, it really is paramount to consider just how small this country is. In the USA, efforts to establish a standardized federal ID (REAL ID) have met with extreme backlash, which makes sense to me considering that my country is a) geographically huge, b) hugely divided on nearly every political issue (though not as much as most media outlets would have you believe (in my opinion) and c) a state system with a federal system floating on top of that which as apparently unwilling to back their REAL ID imperative with funding to make it happen. Japan, however, is more tight-knit. There are states of sorts, referred to as -ken (or "prefectures"), and my understanding is that they do have their own policies of sorts. But Japan really is quite unified in governmental jurisdiction, especially considering that government and business are intentionally tied together in ways that are illegal in the US. Long story short, I'm not happy about having to truck my gaijin card around all the time, but the reasons for its existence are no mystery, at least.

Big weekend, big castle, big tower

Today was field trip day for the ryuugakusei at Chukyo University. Three of the staff members from the kokusai sentaa (International Center), Tamaki-san, Katou-san, and Asako-san, took the 9 of us into the heart of Nagoya where we visited Nagoyajou (Nagoya Castle), Toyota Tower, ate buffet lunch at what I think was a hotel, and finally were dropped off the go shopping at the Bikku Kamera (Bic Camera) store.

We got to Nagoya castle at approximately 10 am. At the base of the exit stairs in the subway was a map of the whole layout of the castle. For those of you don’t know, feudal Japanese castles were built much in the same way as European castles. The lord (or in this case the daimyo, literally “big person,” “big” in the social sense of the word) made the castle his place of residence as well as his base of operations. Like all feudal societies, a good policy is to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Thus, along with a vast number of other functions, some government persons could keep their potential rivals (who were likely members of their cabinet or otherwise) and their families in or close to the castle. Being there today, I could also really see why strong tacticians chose to starve their enemies out. The whole castle complex is surrounded by a moat with steep stone walls (hence, no digging through it or climbing it without taking massive casualties) which is itself no less than 30 feet deep (hence, very difficult to bridge without taking casualties). Assuming you’re able to breach the first gate of Nagoya Castle, your infantry and possibly cavalry would then have to negotiate the winding (and therefore disorientating, especially in the dark) path leading up the main structure of the castle itself. Most of the way there, you’d have archers shooting at you from very high ground, as well as quite a few choke points where ambush tactics would likely cause heavy losses. Then, if you actually manage to reach the castle itself your choices are either to continue fighting uphill as before or try and set the castle on fire. If you succeed with option #1, your army is likely exhausted at that point and the allies of the castle’s former occupant pose a great threat. If you succeed with option #2, you still aren’t guaranteed victory, and if you win you’re stuck with a burned out castle and an exhausted army.

So, knowing what Japanese castles are like only on an intellectual level, when we came up out of the subway station, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. In fact, the first thing I noticed were all the tall, modern buildings that have spring up around the castle since it was built almost 400 years ago. However, once we came around the corner in view of the main structure, I have to admit I was at a loss for words. The castle grounds are beautiful. If I lived near there, I would visit every weekend. As we approached the boundary of this majestic place, I tried to picture what the surrounding land might have looked like so long ago. Even the small reminders of modern life, plastic twine training a tree limb or the food vendors on the sidewalk, could not shake the sense of awe I felt looking over the tops of brilliantly pink sakura (cherry blossoms) and the gnarled umbrella shapes of Japanese elm trees at the 2 golden shachi (dolphins) that adorn the roof of Nagoyajou. Alisha took many pictures while we were there. You should check out those and other great shots out on her Flickr stream: http://flickr.com/photos/thalli. It was somewhat bizarre once we were inside the walls, hearing only people and birds singing but always glancing up and seeing the glass and steel behemoths of Japan’s fourth largest city. On the way to main building, I learned that many of the original structures of the castle (thankfully not the central one) were sadly destroyed by fires from Allied bombs in World War II.

Today, the castle houses its own museum, including a meticulous scale model of the buildings and the surrounding area, as well as many original artifacts from the castle itself. Among these were handle guards and blades from a number of swords and painted shoji (partitioned screens). These two craft objects reflect well on the Japanese drive towards perfection. The care and dedication of each object’s creator is very clear not only in the objects appearance, but also given the fact that they are nearly 400 years old and the survivors of military conflict. The castle consists of many floors, the topmost of which is open to the public and has been fitted with modern glass windows, allowing one to look in comfort from the same vantage point taken by Ieyasu Tokugawa himself so many years ago. Very briefly, Tokugawa is one of Japan’s 3 heroes of history, in that he was instrumental in uniting a country which was up to that point torn ragged by civil war.

One very charming part of this trip was a group of what had to have been schoolchildren on assignment. Alisha and I were approached by 3 little bundles of children who couldn’t have been older than 8 or 9 who all asked us, verbatim, “Excuse me. What is your name? What country are you from? Do you like Japan?” “What is your favorite color?” “Do you have any pets?” “What is your favorite sport?” They asked with the terrified conviction that only a small child confronting the monster under the bed (or in this case, a towering white giant) could possess, and the obvious pride they felt in themselves over victory was both entertaining and comforting. If only everyone had chances like that to test their mettle and learn from the experience.

Anyway, once we finished at Nagoya Castle, it was off to lunch. We walked a few blocks to a bus stop, where we were able to use our weekend transit pass to board. Oh, good tangent: weekend passes. Holy crap, so awesome. For 600 yen, which is about $6, you can buy a pass for any Saturday, Sunday, or government holiday (there are a lot of them), which allows you to use the Nagoya subway and city bus an unlimited amount for that one day. So today we went from home to school, school to the castle, the castle to lunch and shopping, then back home for $6.

Right, so, lunch was awesome. On today’s field trip, none of us had to pay for anything; the school picked up the whole tab, including an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch with really high quality food. In the states, my experience with buffet dining is that it’s usually not all that great. Sure, you can stuff your face, but that’s all it is: stuffing your face. Since the food’s just okay, you eat what you want and then leave. But damned if this particular buffet didn’t have amazing beef curry, many varieties of fresh fruits and vegetables, sushi, pastas, and rice. Oh yeah, and mango ice cream. So good.

An interesting part of Japanese dining is the use of a hot towel before a meal. Apparently it’s traditional for a host to offer their guests a hot towel which they can use to clean their hands. In this case, it being a restaurant, our hot towel was instead a hygienic paper napkin. I really like this practice since it means that your none of our guests have to worry about remembering to wash their hands before the meal, and they don’t even have to get up.

After lunch, we went back down to street level and walked about 50 foot from the building and stopped. I thought we were just vaguely congregating until our guides coordinated our next move, but as it turns out we were waiting to cross the street over to Toyota Tower. Toyota Tower is an office building that’s about 50 stories tall, quite a remarkable piece of architecture for a region that is, compared to most places on earth, plagued with earthquakes. While waiting for the walk signal, our guide, Tamaki-san, explained a little bit about the tower, namely that “we’re going to the top.” Sure enough, 10 minutes later we were in a glass elevator watching the streets of Nagoya fall away from us. At the very top, we were admitted to the “Sky Promenade,” a catwalk that extends around the inside perimeter of the building, set against huge windows.

As I came out from the darkened escalator into this open air observatory (no ceiling), a very unexpected feeling came over me. In this place, you can see Nagoya, an enormous urban center, for miles all around: office buildings weighing many thousands of tons, the Shinkansen, the fastest train in the world, houses, cars, and tiny dots scurrying around on the sidewalk. All this was made possible only through cooperation and determination among people. These things, which I normally take for granted, really struck me from this new vantage point hundreds of feet in the air and in that moment it really occurred to me just how stupid our species can be sometimes. Imagine what the world would be like if, instead of fearing the differences in other people, we learned from them. What if everyone (and I mean everyone) made just a little extra effort to try and understand what the big picture looks like to the other person, and to realize that sometimes you just have to compromise and move on. That’s what came over me while I was up there and, as you can tell, I think it was one of the most important moments of my life and I wish that everyone could know what it’s like. Killing each other was a great way to survive when humanity was scraping an existence on the savannah, but it’s time to use these big brains for something better.

Anyway, that thought has gone on longer than I planned. After Toyota Tower, we were taken to the Bic Camera store where activities officially ended and we were all left to our own devices. After saying goodbye to everyone, Alisha and I shopped around in what is one of the most intense, compact electronics stores I’ve ever been in. We were able to pick up a wireless router, a protective case for my music player, a wristwatch for me, and a protective case for Alisha’s game system.

While browsing through this store, I noticed two things quite different from my home country. In Japan, the price difference in consumer electronics is quite high. Most items cost quite a bit more, while others a great deal less. A $20 Xbox 360 game in the US is ~$30 here, whereas a $25 ethernet network cable from a big box store in the US cost about $3.50 here. The other thing I noticed was how disparately priced products were placed on the same or very close shelves. In the US, shopping in terms of price brackets and the different tiers of brands is highly compartmentalized. That’s true to a certain extent here, but, for example: the $40 watch that I bought today was 4 feet away from a case containing aviator watches that were 10 times the price. For fun, Alisha and I looked through the toy section of the store. In here, too, you had funny little $2 Pokemon toys on the same shelf as the hardcore, limited edition, $200 collector’s items.

All in all, it was a very good day today. I got to spend a little bit of time with the International Center staff in a more casual environment (which really showed in their behavior and speech). I also got a small taste of the bigger city, which I now know how to access by subway whenever I want. It was also a great chance to take in some Japanese culture, both ancient and modern, and all very interesting.

Oh, yes, and I had my second and final session of intermediate Japanese last week. I finished class with that same foreboding feeling as on Wednesday, but it occurred to me that this is the point reached by most people in life where you simply just crash into your limitations and it’s up to you to keep pushing. Besides, the worst thing that could happen is that I could fail the course and have to try again next semester. I’ll still learn a hell of a lot, and what kind of student would I be if I gave up now? Bearing that in mind, I felt that Friday was something of a turning point for me on a larger scale than just one class, and I feel very good about it, if not somewhat queasy.

That’s all for now. Until next time.

The WC

I got the thinking about how my bathroom is set up after a comment on a previous post asked if I had a toilet when I got here or if I had to buy one. In response, yes, I did already have one when I arrived. In fact, my bathroom appears to be a self-contained unit with a few water pipes and an electrical connection. Let me explain.

Japan, being a very small and therefore very space conscious place, has gifted we with an ingenious setup. Since the rooms are single occupant, you would obviously never really need to use the sink and shower at the same time. Thus, there is a valve that one uses to divert the flow of water coming into the bathroom either to the sink faucet or to the showerhead. Moreover, there are drains in all the normal places, but an additional one against the wall in the floor. So, if a person were to fill the tub entirely too high such that the overflow drain couldn’t take the displaced water when they got in, any large volume that went over the edge of the tub would fall harmlessly on the seamless floor and drain down into the same pipes that the tub and sink use normally. I promise I’ll post pictures of the whole set up once I’ve bought a new camera. In the meantime, though, you’ll just have to use your imagination. Oh yeah, and the flush handle on the toilet twists on 2 directions. Left for chiisai (small) and right for ookii (big).

Food, numbers, and rain

So, right now I’m eating zunourooru, which literally means “brain roll.” Before you recoil in horror, let me describe it: It’s a sweet roll, about a foot long and averaging 1.5 inches in diameter. This roll is split along its length with cream and some other flavoring layered down inside. There are many different flavors, including banana, apple, chocolate, coffee & milk (don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it), and the one I’m eating at the moment, honey. As you can imagine, this is basically a carbohydrate loaf ergo an effective pick-me-up. Brain roll.

Alisha and I were talking about Japanese foods today and we both noticed that in our (limited) experience, the Japanese don’t really seem to go for sour flavors overall. There is lots of sweet, along with bitter, salty, oily, and rich foods. That is not to say that nobody in Japan likes sour. I’ve seen all kinds of citrus and it’s my understanding that oranges (orenji) are a big hit with most people. In fact, when I tell people I’m from California specifically, they usually mention fruit right away.

Thinking more about the differences in culinary practices between these 2 countries, it occurred to me the other day just how drastically my sugar intake has been reduced since I got here. It dawned on me that even on days when I’d had 8-10 hours of sleep, reasonable exercise, and plenty to eat, I was still feeling exhausted by 4 or 5 in the afternoon. And this included days where I did and didn’t need to use Japanese a lot. I once read a statistic, whose source I can’t remember at all and I apologize for that, that around 1/3 of Americans suffer from low levels of glucose poisoning almost constantly. Even if that’s an exaggeration, have you ever stopped and thought about how many calories from sugar you consume in a day? How about the percentage of your diet that contains a derivative of corn? If you’ve noticed an increase in the price of cereal based groceries recently, you might be interested in researching the socio-economic effects of corn ethanol. Anyway, that’s not what this is about. I’m thinking that I and some of the other American students who I’ve talked to about this are going through sugar withdrawal. It’s interesting to consider.

Today for lunch I had cabbage salad, curry on rice, fried chicken, and custard for dessert. It was amazing and dirt cheap for the quality and quantity of food. Everyone tells me that Japan is generally more expensive than anywhere. In some ways, that’s true. Also in many ways I am protected from a lot of expenses. I lived in an apartment building for international students with rent that is 3 or 4 times cheaper than surrounding domiciles and I pay tuition through Chico State and not through Chukyo University. In my experiences buying food and household items, however, prices have been comparable if not less than where I live in the US. It could very easily be that I’m missing the big picture, but it’s just something I’ve noticed.

In class today we practiced counting in Japanese. This is not as trivial as it may sound. In the US and many other places in the world, in order to count to very high numbers we count in units of thousands. The counter word changes every factor of 1000, which can be seen in the way we place commas: 1000 thousands is a million (1,000,000), 1000 million is a billion (1,000,000,000), 1000 billion is a trillion (1,000,000,000,000), etc. In Japan, and perhaps other Eastern countries (I don’t know), the high number counters roll over every 10,000. So 1000 thousands isn’t a million, but rather 100 ten thousands. I had prior knowledge of this, but was never really forced to practice it, or even apply it before now. Not only does Japan have 2 phonetic alphabets and an enormous (30,000+) pictogram set, it also has a different way of counting past 1,000. Talk about getting your money’s worth.

Not much else is going on. I’m starting to get homework, which is nice for establishing routines. The weather today was drab but I snagged an umbrella at the suupaa (supermarket) for about $3 that’s better than the one I have back home. Hooray!

Bye for now.

In Which Our Author Has Culture Shock, and other tales

The school that I’m attending in Japan has 2 campuses. One is located in Nagoya, about 20 or 30 minutes (depending on foot traffic) away from where I live by subway. This school houses the foreign language college, the college of business, and others. The other campus is located in Toyota, the neighboring city and namesake of the world’s recently crowned #1 car company, which houses the college of computer science (though encompassing all digital disciplines), physical education, and sociology. When we received academic advising last week, I spoke with Dr. Miyata from that school about my major, Applied Computer Graphics, and what I might take at the Toyota campus. Part of the advising session was time spent learning about his work and projects, which all revolve around designing and facilitating communication and interaction across age groups and cultures.

As it turns out, he is responsible for what is called a zemi, (after the German word for seminar, I’m told) which consists of a very small, usually 6-12, group of students who engage in project-based education for the semester. Initially, only Alisha was on board for this as part of her Master’s work, while both Alisha and I are in another course together learning how to use SoftImage|XSI for compositing. The compositing class starts at 9 am and it’s a 90 minute commute by subway and bus from where we live, so yesterday I got up at 6 in the morning, which was not only unpleasant, but was also the start of Act I of my somewhat awful day today. So after the compositing class ended, I found myself with nothing else to do except go home, whereas Alisha had a two and a half hour break and then 3 hours of class for the rest of the day. At her suggestion, I tagged along to Miyata-sensei’s zemi just to check it out and maybe use the Internet for a few hours. As it turns out, Miyata-sensei is doing some very interesting work that I could probably fit into (and in the very least, it’s an incredible and unique language-learning opportunity), so I asked if I could enroll in the course as well which was met with an emphatic “yes.” The way this zemi is structured, the students run the class. They are responsible for all elements of administration and organization, so the group dynamic goes far beyond a normal class. Consequently, when we left at 7:30, they were all still hard at work from when we started at around 1:30 in the afternoon. Commuting back and then eating dinner, we finally collapsed into bed at around 10:30 or so, ending Act I of bad day (where the hero is having a great time, having no idea that things are about to hit the fan).

This morning we got up around 7 or so. Any of you who know me well enough can attest to my somewhat otherworldly metabolism. Food goes in, food burns up in a few minutes, Nathan gets cold and cranky a few hours later because he’s out of blood sugar. Hence, I ate as much as I could for breakfast without making myself sick, knowing that I had a big day ahead of me (my schedule is in a spreadsheet format with each day being a column, time slots in rows; Wednesday is one solid block). Two and a half hours later (that’s 30 minutes into Intermediate Japanese for you detail-oriented folks), breakfast calories have just about run out and our hero is 20 or 30 lines into Act II, the part of the Hero’s Journey where all the really difficult challenges start to kick in. To add a little perspective, this class is conducted 100% in Japanese. The only English to be heard are those improvisational phrases uttered by us gaijin when we’re at an utter loss for Japanese words mid-sentence. So here I am in a class with content skirting the knife-edge of my comprehension, attempting to write an interesting description of myself entirely in Japanese and understand what my teacher is saying while my brain is desperately trying to go to Defcon 3 for hunger. I stuck out the rest of class as best I could, but walked out after 3 grueling hours feeling utterly defeated and realizing that class went 10 minutes over, so I had even less time than I should to order food in the cafeteria by myself (hence no language assistance) for the first time. This is sort of the part where Hercules goes “WTF Zeus? Could I get a little help here?” and gets the silent treatment.

Anyway, to make a long complaint short, things were looking pretty grim as I couldn’t stay awake after lunch, which I ate by myself, during Japanese Culture (a topic that I enjoy very much!) and then couldn’t understand a lick of what my shoudou (brush calligraphy) teacher said. He’s very jovial and obviously has a great sense of humor and perspective, but at a certain point in the Hero’s Journey there’s not a single thing any of the other characters can do or say to make things better. The hero just has to figure it out on his own (which is the point of the story anyway).

Act III, where the Hero’s transformation/redemption begins and things start to generally improve, started at the end of the day when one of the other residents of the ISC and fellow ryuugakusei, a Korean girl whose name is spelled “Byol” but is not quite pronounced that way, helped Alisha and I fill out application cards for subway commuter tickets (which will save us quite a bit of money in the long run). The line for commuter tickets turned out to be about 100 people long, so we decided to come back later, and instead accepted an invitation from Byol and the 2 other kankokunoryuugakusei (Korean exchange students) to go out for dinner. We were able to borrow bikes from the ISC and rode a few blocks over to… McDonalds. Or, as it is called in Japan, Makudonarodo. (Genius marketing, I know.) Some of you already know that I never eat at McDonalds; never, ever, ever. Any archetypical hero worth his salt understands, however, that you shouldn’t refuse what your companions have to offer, even if it is dinner at McDonalds.

It turns out that McDonalds in Japan is quite different than America. For starters, and I’m assuming you’re all secure in your understanding that everything I say here is just my opinion, the food doesn’t suck. Just for the hell of it, I ordered a megamakku, which is basically a Big Mac times 2. The beef actually looked and tasted like beef, the lettuce was reasonably fresh, and the bun didn’t leave any questionable grease-like substances on my hands. I have no further plans to patronize McDonald’s ever again, but the Mega Mac was in no way the highlight of the trip.

The third and final act of my Hero’s Journey concluded when I realized that today was no big deal. I won’t be tired forever. Hunger is just a temporary state of an organism. My Japanese will get better. And most importantly, I’m surrounded by incredible opportunities that I will probably never have again in my life. Byol speaks 3 languages and has traveled to many countries. She, Yuujin and Jina represent of wealth of easily accessible experiences and knowledge; I was able to learn about some of the pop culture and politics of South Korea, and to see some of the parallels to my own country. In short, I survived my trial and was better for it. I have yet to see if I’m ready for the Intermediate Japanese class, but the future is a poor substitute for the present if you’re really that determined to be worried.

I’m off to bed now. Stay happy and healthy everyone.

My first day of school

Today was my first day of class. We got on the subway a little early to meet our guides at the International Center at school. As it turns out, there aren’t a lot of Japanese students in my university who need Japanese IA. In fact, there are none at all, so 5 of the foreign students, me included, trucked along to our first lesson with Tabata-sensei. It was an excellent class, and really the first time I’ve ever had someone sit me down and start with the basic of basics. Japanese education at Chico State is great and there’s tons of information to be found, but it still doesn’t take into account the fact that Japanese is so different from English. So much so that, in my opinion, you just can’t teach yourself this language.

In the class are Alisha, myself, John (the third student from my school), Timo (from Finland, totally cool guy), and Andrea (from North Carolina). Tabata-sensei got us started immediately and we covered a ton of material, some of which I knew, some of which I didn’t. On paper it wasn’t a lot, but we spent about 80% of our time in the classroom speaking to one another. Even if it was just “What is that over there?” “That is a book.” “What kind of book?” “A book about cars,” it made me realize just how bad I am at this language. I’m looking forward to Wednesday to see what the intermediate classes are like. I’ve heard that the instructor has little experience teaching English students, so I’m a little apprehensive but excited about future challenges.

Today was the first time since I arrived that it hasn’t been sunny. It started raining around 2 in the afternoon and seems to be sprinkling still. The wind gets pretty intense here, enough to lean into at times. I’m grateful for the subway system, even if it is slightly claustrophobic at times.

I still haven’t purchased my new camera. That will probably be a weekend chore. Chukyo has the most aesthetically pleasing buildings I’ve ever been in, so look for some panoramic pictures in the future.

One thing I’ve noticed in my short time here so far is that when dining, it doesn’t appear to be normal practice to have napkins. This makes sense for eating with chopsticks, since you’re not supposed to touch anything with your bare hands. However, it starts to not work out so well when you’re dipping naan in curry, or eating Western French fries with your fingers. Let’s just say that I’m very conscientious about how I eat (when not using chopsticks) after having just cut off my fingernails because they were stained from aforementioned (and yummy) curry.

I’m not homesick yet, keep your fingers crossed. It’s starting to become annoying not being able to use Japanese in any truly useful capacity; good timing with my academic schedule. I hope everyone is well.

About the blog

2 things:

1) I promise that at some point you'll come back here and the default blogger template will be gone.

2) I initially had this grand idea that this blog would be reserved for things that would entertain readers: cheeky observations, funny stories, and shocking cultural differences between Japan and the United States. Like most grand ideas, however, that turned out to be silly so I've contented myself with dumping the contents of my brain into a text editor and then slapping it up on the web for my own edification and, quite possibly, your enjoyment.

2a) Also, this is a great way to keep people up to date with my general state of being and goings-on without having the same IM conversation 50 times. And don't worry, mom, we'll get videoconferencing up and running once I have internet in my room (which hasn't happened yet).

EDIT: I'm not sure if it's a setting I can change on my end, but for now, add 16 hours to the time at which the post has gone up as displayed below.

EDIT: Okay, fixed. You can subtract all those hours you added before.

Garbage disposal here is...interesting

Wow, so much to catch up on. Over the last 2 days I’ve had academic advising, gone to a giant shopping mall, eaten naan bread the size of my head (not exaggerating), and I’m now getting ready for classes to start tomorrow.

We met with Matsui-san (our co-ordinator) and Tamaki-san (his soon to be replacement) to talk over what classes we’d be taken based on our Japanese language placement test scores. As expected, I scored about midline and was pleased to hear that they suggested I take beginner and intermediate course loads. All in all, I have 12 classes on my schedule. Before you freak out, here’s how language classes work at Chukyo University: the “beginner” track consists of 4 courses, Japanese IA-IV4. Intermediate is the same, with VA-VIIIA. Each of those classes meet for 90 minutes per week. So really, by American university standards I’m taking about 5 classes. And really, intensive language education is why I came here to begin with. So if IA is boring and redundant, it won’t take up a lot of my time and if it’s not, then I’ll have the privilege of patching some of the major cracks in my fundamental understanding of the language.

Life has been altogether good in the last few days. On Friday (Thursday in the US), some of our nihonjin tutors took the ryuugakusei (“foreign students”) to shop for cell phones. This is not as simple as it sounds.

In Japan, contract services, such as cellular phones, cannot be acquired without proof of alien registration. Backing up a bit, when a foreigner comes to Japan, they are required to register their presence at the nearest Ward Office (sort of like DMV and city hall combined). While Japan is a highly advanced society in many respects, there are still some xenophobic elements present (which I’m in no place to judge, I just want to make it clear). So basically, in order to establish any kind of presence in this country, you have to report yourself to the government who will then issue you an ID card which you must carry around with you at all times. If you are asked for this card by a police officer and you don’t have it on you, big trouble.

So, in order to make a contract with a cellular telephone provider, that’s one of the things you have to show them. Once you’ve picked out the phone, filled out the paperwork, and presented a credit card or cash, you then have to wait for the a verification and activation period of about an hour or so. That means we spent about 3 hours at the mall making this all happen and got out of there at about 10 pm. We were very lucky to have 2 of our tutors, Yuki and Haruka, who stayed with us the entire time to make sure everything was okay. Exhausted, we rode the subway home and collapsed in bed.

Yesterday, we slept in until the luxurious hour of 8:30 (still a bit jet-lagged) and had a nice breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, yogurt, and almond butter and jelly on bread. After that, we walked down to Big Live, which is basically a grocery store with a small clothing and housewares section and a funny name. You never really notice how inconvenient it is not to have a plate to prepare and eat food from until you don’t have one, a situation which has since been remedied.

After shopping, we went to orientation for the ICS building that we live in. Fortunately, everything said was documented in English and Japanese and my language is just good enough to understand the questions people asked of the building staff. One of the things they went over was how garbage and recycling is handled in Nagoya, which I think is pretty fascinating.

Japan is a small country, about the size of Montana. Of the entire landmass, 95% of it is mountainous and uninhabitable. Hence, there is no room to make enormous landfills to stash tons and tons of garbage that will then sit there decaying for the next 4,000 years. The way that my city here addresses garbage on the consumer end is a somewhat complicated system, but one that seems like a good idea given that it all has to be handled eventually. Around many public places, there are garbage pick-up areas. There are 5 areas: red bags, blue bags, green bags, cans, and PET (material type) bottles. Red bags contain burnable material, such as food scraps and light paper like store receipts. Blue bags are recyclable material, but it’s up to you sort them properly. All recyclable plastic has to go in a single blue bag, whereas all recyclable paper goes in its own blue bag. Non-burnable items such as flatware go in the green bags. PET bottles either go in the recyclable plastic blue bags, or you can take them, along with paper cartons that you have rinsed and flattened, to special bins at the supermarket. Aluminum cans go in a basket at the dump site, and recyclable glass bottles, with caps removed and insides rinsed, go in another basket at the dump site. Additionally, there are certain days and times that each type of trash is picked up and if you screw it up then your garbage will sit there for a week and the building owner will get a nasty note. The city of Nagoya has printed these instructions in multiple languages, including English, which is the only reason why gaijin like me don’t end up putting bags of fish bones in the can basket. Good times.

Not much else to report since classes haven’t started yet. I have noticed that my neighborhood, and from what I’ve read most neighborhoods, are structured such that most necessities are within walking distance. Indeed, from my apartment on foot I can reach (that I know of) 3 grocery stores, 2 department stores, 2 cafes, 2 restaurants, 3 barbers, a bicycle shop, 3 public parks, and the subway station. I’ve always had a vague sense that America is an automobile based society, but that point is really driven home by the proximity of all these things. I think I’m going to miss this country dearly when I have to leave.

That’s all for now, more later.

The plane didn't crash into the ocean, yay!

(This post was written on April 4th, before I had access to the Internet.)

Phew, made it.

Saturday morning, Alisha and I started packing our things for Japan. In the afternoon, we had an excellent going-away celebration (read: Smash Brothers and snacks), then finished packing in the evening. We finished folding, bagging, arranging, and weighing our bags at around 1:30 am on Sunday morning.

Alisha put on Bruce Campbell vs. The Army of Darkness and we crashed for about an hour and a half. At 3:00 am we got up, grabbed a bite to eat, then sat around for a few minutes before loading our things into the car. Alisha's mom and Stan were very kind to drive us to Chico Municipal Airport at 4:00. We arrived just in time... for the airport terminal to open. One inordinately long hour and a half later, we were enjoying the airplane safety talk from our very creepy flight attendant (I'm sure she's very nice once you get to know her) and then we were off.

If you've never flown in a propeller plane (puddle-jumper), they aren't exactly the pinnacle of mid-air comfort. It's sort of like sitting in a massaging chair that's malfunctioning. Anyway, it was a thankfully short flight from Chico to San Francisco Int’l Airport which I probably wouldn’t have minded nearly as much if it weren’t at 4:30 on the morning.

The walk from our terminal over to the international terminal was a surreal experience. When you think of international airports like SFO, you think crowded: lots of people from all over the USA and the world bustling around, eating over-priced foods and wrangling children who are even more thrilled about their 6-hour layover than their parents.

However, it’s a different story at 7:30 in the morning. From where we disembarked to our destination terminal, the number of people dropped and dropped until it was just the two of us, staring out the enormous windows of Terminal 102 in SFO at the brilliant morning sun. Anyway, it was an interesting experience being there alone and then watching all the people filter in after us.

Our plane was a Boeing 777 (three 7’s mean damn big) with these nifty LCD screens in the back of each seat. By virtue of these screens I was able to see a dynamically updated map of our plane’s heading and position on the map, as well as other interesting numbers such as our altitude and ground speed.

Many fitful naps and five-thousand, something-hundred miles later, we landed at Chubu Centrair, Japan’s newest international airport, which is built on an enormous man-made island. If you put Nagoya, Japan into Google Maps then search around a little bit, you’ll see a large, perfectly rectangular shape connected on one corner to the coast. We disembarked without any hitches, retrieved our luggage, and were taken to our apartment/dorm by 2 Chukyo University students, Ami and Kyoko. They were very nice and sympathetic to our fatigue, speaking mostly English and gesturing profusely to indicate what direction we needed to go and what train we needed to board.

For the next 9 months, I am a resident of the International Student Center in Minato-ku (minato means “port” and ku is a delineation of an area within a city, sort of like “district” or “ward”).

Since then, I’ve been through a whirlwind of registration and orientation activities, met many nihonjin (nihon is “Japan” and jin, in this context, is “people” or “persons”), and started getting a sense of my surroundings. We’ve learned how to use the subway system to get to and from school and Alisha and I have been able to visit the grocery store and department store to pick up essentials for daily living.

An interesting note: unlike the US, most of the world uses electric water heaters, which simply heats the water on the fly rather than keeping a large reservoir hot and ready. If you don’t take extremely long showers, this is generally a lot more energy efficient and is certainly more space efficient since you don’t need as much space for a larger water tank. This being the case, the water heaters in our building are very, very effective and you can easily burn yourself if you aren’t careful. In the US, I’m quite used to cranking the hot water tap and waiting a few seconds before the water starts to sluggishly warm up. Here in Japan, doing the same thing will yield water hot enough to scald you. So many little things to get used to.

By and large, the mythological elements of modern Japan have been true to a certain extent. No one locks up their bike, the streets are very clean, the people are quiet and withdrawn except for shop owners who generally barrage you with “irashaimase!” (an archaic and traditional way of saying “Welcome!”) and “doumo arigatou gozaimasu!” (“Thank you very much!”) at all times during the transaction. Fortunately, being a foreigner here provides a thick layer of insulation between you and others in terms of social expectations. Even though it’s sometimes a cop-out, it’s nice to know that I can progress through activities like properly ordering food or meeting strangers at my own pace while the color of my skin and facial structure is all the explanation required for stupid or ignorant mistakes.

I’ve decided to just buy a new camera while I’m here, a small one for taking snapshots day to day. I’ll connect a Flickr account to this blog ASAP so you can catch a glimpse of my new world.

Things are good so far for me. No significant culture shock to speak of, due in no small part to the efforts of my hosts to see that I’m as comfortable as possible. I figure that things will get more stressful once classes start and more expectations are placed on me given the amount of time I will have been here. Stay tuned for my “Waaaaaaa! I wanna go home!” post in a few weeks, perhaps.

I hope everyone is doing well and I’m thinking of you all. Catch you later.