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.