August 17, 7:30pm, Tokyo
Japan’s fauna and I just do not seem to get along. A few days ago, after doing some remarkable-for-a-NYer legal fireworks in a nearby park with Daisuke and Weiyu (Host-Dad and Taiwanese host-brother, respectively), we were biking back home when I noticed something hitting me while in motion. I ignored it and kept going, but when we reached an intersection and stopped, I turned my neck and suddenly felt a sharp pain on my neck. I immediately cried out and swatted the offending object on my neck. It should be mentioned here that, should anyone doubt the tenor of my voice, I actually scream like a lumberjack more than a little girl, as can be testified to by anyone who has accompanied me on any indoor roller coaster that I mistake for safe Laser shooting experiences. This happens disturbingly often in Japan, despite my improving level of literacy, from ‘zero’ to ‘until recently raised by wolves’.
Anyway, after swatting at my neck, what I realized to be a spider landed on my shirt. About two centimeters around with longish legs the thickness of a fork prong, black, and intimidating, the spider leapt out as if from a collection of Victorian animal prints. It was somehow dignified, sitting on the surface of my lilac polo t-shirt, but I had no time or energy to ponder its aesthetic merits, as it remained a spider, and my initial prejudices against such creatures held. I fluttered the bottom of my shirt, and off the spider went, falling onto the asphalt. We left it there, crawling, and sped back the remaining hundred meters home, where I went on Wikipedia and found out that I should have bagged the rascal lest it be poisonous, so as to extract precious liquid for anti-venom. In this state of rising distress and abject fear, I then learned that Japan had no native poisonous spiders. This did much to ease the tension, but it did little to stop the strange tingly feeling on my neck. This too did pass; after all, as the old surgeon’s expression goes: “All bleeding ends. Eventually.”
Oh, and Cicadas are annoying. A bug that can chirp as loud as a jackhammer has no place making Tokyo yet louder.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Shorty
August 10, 9:10 am, Tokyo
Japan may be called the land of the rising sun, but the sun certainly sets early around here, and I am not a night person. Nevertheless, as the days begin to grow shorter, and dusk comes at 6:45, I have had no choice but to come home more often under the cover of darkness. A couple of days ago, as I was walking from the station to the bike parking building, I heard the tell tale screeches and moans of a slowly starting train. I was going parallel to the tracks, separated only by a mesh fence up to my upper arm and three lines of barbed wire that reached just above my head. The train was to my left, not a hundred feet away, and it towered over the surrounding night. It was lit on the inside, but there were no passengers, giving the impression that the train was groaning of its own accord, under its own weight, not tethered to a power line but given to its own snake-like disposition.
As I biked back home, I looked around at my neighborhood. The night, strange enough, hadn’t changed the place; it was the same sort of medium pace one would expect from an urban sprawl neighborhood during the day, except that the neon, what little there was out here, had turned on, bathing familiar blocks in waves of green and orange. People were still going to the large supermarket in the same volume, as could be seen from the filled bike racks. The only reactions people had made to the night were the pedal powered lights on their bikes; powered up, they would blind oncoming bikers, which I suppose was better than not knowing anyone was coming at all.
Life strides ahead in Tokyo, no doubt, no matter what hour of the day.
Japan may be called the land of the rising sun, but the sun certainly sets early around here, and I am not a night person. Nevertheless, as the days begin to grow shorter, and dusk comes at 6:45, I have had no choice but to come home more often under the cover of darkness. A couple of days ago, as I was walking from the station to the bike parking building, I heard the tell tale screeches and moans of a slowly starting train. I was going parallel to the tracks, separated only by a mesh fence up to my upper arm and three lines of barbed wire that reached just above my head. The train was to my left, not a hundred feet away, and it towered over the surrounding night. It was lit on the inside, but there were no passengers, giving the impression that the train was groaning of its own accord, under its own weight, not tethered to a power line but given to its own snake-like disposition.
As I biked back home, I looked around at my neighborhood. The night, strange enough, hadn’t changed the place; it was the same sort of medium pace one would expect from an urban sprawl neighborhood during the day, except that the neon, what little there was out here, had turned on, bathing familiar blocks in waves of green and orange. People were still going to the large supermarket in the same volume, as could be seen from the filled bike racks. The only reactions people had made to the night were the pedal powered lights on their bikes; powered up, they would blind oncoming bikers, which I suppose was better than not knowing anyone was coming at all.
Life strides ahead in Tokyo, no doubt, no matter what hour of the day.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Fuji Part 2
August 4, 7:59 pm, Tokyo
From Station 7 the path became significantly rockier, transforming the zig-zag walk into a nearly vertical climb. On the way to the mountain, the school issued us each a pair of working gloves and an oxygen canister the size of a Febreze can; the oxygen was for later, but the gloves came in handy there and for the rest of the climb.
There are two ways to climb up the rocks on Fuji: one can either climb monkey style, hands on rocks, or with support from anchored chains on either side delineating the path itself. While I am usually more comfortable with the first approach, two things got in my way: first was that the path was never consistent in its pitch, meaning that climbing by all limbs would look very funny at points, and second, my walking stick.
Aww dear walking stick: cumbersome when walking, downright dangerous when climbing. In order to free both hands for the climb, I strapped the stick to my body via my backpack waist strap. The sensation was something between a three-hour good posture exercise and stepping on curved rake-heads in the back-yard. My ability to bend was restricted, each step brought the forward side menacingly close to my face, and anyone behind me faced the prospect of the stick mistaking itself for a tail and them for a fly.
All this aside, the rock climb proved far easier for me than the steep walks, which doesn’t surprise me in hindsight; the one time I did an indoor rock wall several years ago, I pulled myself up almost entirely on my arms, no footholds needed. Still, I cannot get over that given how puny my arms are. Oh, everything on me is puny. Moving on…
The rock climbs from Station 7 were where the final vegetation began to dissipate and we crossed the clouds, one layer at a time. Clouds, at least the ones I passed through, act more like low fog than the all encompassing whiteness we pass through in airplanes; different lever of height, I suppose. As I climbed, I finally found a couple of friends to stick with up the rest of the mountain; a Spaniard, a German, and a Jew are climbing Mt. Fuji…
When I reached Station 8, hachigome, I broke out the oxygen canister, and breathed deeply: one doesn’t truly appreciate air until one needs to get it from a bottle. To my chagrin, the zig-zags began anew, even steeper than before. While I had easily been able to keep mine own when climbing over rocks, I once again struggled to keep up as I trudged along with my lonely, bell-ringing stick. I was using the oxygen canister more and more frequently, and I again began to doubt my resolve. If anything kept me climbing, it was the sight of snow clutching to a long, gash-like depression in the side of the mountain, a welcome sign of nature’s perseverance in July; that, and the silence. When you stopped moving, and kept silent, the mountain would greet you with its own total silence. No sounds disturbed the bare, red mountain surface, and quiet enveloped the world tighter than clouds ever could.
At the end of Station 8’s domain, at the beginning of what might be called the final ascent, we began to worry if we would make it to the summit within the scheduled time limit: we had to turn back and head down by 1:30 pm, and it was already twenty to twelve. Thankfully we were met by one of the school’s teachers who offered to serve as Shurpa until the top. Still, I wasn’t able to keep up with the pace as we tried to make the summit in an hour and a half. Thankfully, I had a slow friend, Maraike, from Germany, and together we managed to climb one step at a time until we reached a pair of stone lions flanking a white gate. We sat on the stone steps, and as I rested I noticed the white-washed wooden pillar. Its cracks were filled, literally to the breaking point, with one yen coins, each new coin splitting out a space for the next. Ruminations were all well and good, but I was exhausted; my legs ached, my head hurt, I was cold but sweaty all the same, and the mountain kept on going as if never to end. Then Maraike pointed up. I followed her finger, and from above entered my vision, in all its glory, the Japanese flag that marked the summit. We had been sitting hopeless only thirty seconds from the top; never doubt real-life’s ability to produce dramatic irony. It has to come from somewhere, I suppose. We reached the summit at 1:20 pm, six hours after we had begun. Some people had made it in as little as four hours. But I didn’t know that yet, as I gazed for the first time on Japan’s highest shrine in its highest village. All I could do was laugh.
From Station 7 the path became significantly rockier, transforming the zig-zag walk into a nearly vertical climb. On the way to the mountain, the school issued us each a pair of working gloves and an oxygen canister the size of a Febreze can; the oxygen was for later, but the gloves came in handy there and for the rest of the climb.
There are two ways to climb up the rocks on Fuji: one can either climb monkey style, hands on rocks, or with support from anchored chains on either side delineating the path itself. While I am usually more comfortable with the first approach, two things got in my way: first was that the path was never consistent in its pitch, meaning that climbing by all limbs would look very funny at points, and second, my walking stick.
Aww dear walking stick: cumbersome when walking, downright dangerous when climbing. In order to free both hands for the climb, I strapped the stick to my body via my backpack waist strap. The sensation was something between a three-hour good posture exercise and stepping on curved rake-heads in the back-yard. My ability to bend was restricted, each step brought the forward side menacingly close to my face, and anyone behind me faced the prospect of the stick mistaking itself for a tail and them for a fly.
All this aside, the rock climb proved far easier for me than the steep walks, which doesn’t surprise me in hindsight; the one time I did an indoor rock wall several years ago, I pulled myself up almost entirely on my arms, no footholds needed. Still, I cannot get over that given how puny my arms are. Oh, everything on me is puny. Moving on…
The rock climbs from Station 7 were where the final vegetation began to dissipate and we crossed the clouds, one layer at a time. Clouds, at least the ones I passed through, act more like low fog than the all encompassing whiteness we pass through in airplanes; different lever of height, I suppose. As I climbed, I finally found a couple of friends to stick with up the rest of the mountain; a Spaniard, a German, and a Jew are climbing Mt. Fuji…
When I reached Station 8, hachigome, I broke out the oxygen canister, and breathed deeply: one doesn’t truly appreciate air until one needs to get it from a bottle. To my chagrin, the zig-zags began anew, even steeper than before. While I had easily been able to keep mine own when climbing over rocks, I once again struggled to keep up as I trudged along with my lonely, bell-ringing stick. I was using the oxygen canister more and more frequently, and I again began to doubt my resolve. If anything kept me climbing, it was the sight of snow clutching to a long, gash-like depression in the side of the mountain, a welcome sign of nature’s perseverance in July; that, and the silence. When you stopped moving, and kept silent, the mountain would greet you with its own total silence. No sounds disturbed the bare, red mountain surface, and quiet enveloped the world tighter than clouds ever could.
At the end of Station 8’s domain, at the beginning of what might be called the final ascent, we began to worry if we would make it to the summit within the scheduled time limit: we had to turn back and head down by 1:30 pm, and it was already twenty to twelve. Thankfully we were met by one of the school’s teachers who offered to serve as Shurpa until the top. Still, I wasn’t able to keep up with the pace as we tried to make the summit in an hour and a half. Thankfully, I had a slow friend, Maraike, from Germany, and together we managed to climb one step at a time until we reached a pair of stone lions flanking a white gate. We sat on the stone steps, and as I rested I noticed the white-washed wooden pillar. Its cracks were filled, literally to the breaking point, with one yen coins, each new coin splitting out a space for the next. Ruminations were all well and good, but I was exhausted; my legs ached, my head hurt, I was cold but sweaty all the same, and the mountain kept on going as if never to end. Then Maraike pointed up. I followed her finger, and from above entered my vision, in all its glory, the Japanese flag that marked the summit. We had been sitting hopeless only thirty seconds from the top; never doubt real-life’s ability to produce dramatic irony. It has to come from somewhere, I suppose. We reached the summit at 1:20 pm, six hours after we had begun. Some people had made it in as little as four hours. But I didn’t know that yet, as I gazed for the first time on Japan’s highest shrine in its highest village. All I could do was laugh.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Fuji Part 1
August 2, 8:51pm, Tokyo
Well, I’m back from Fuji, and I have the stick stamped with “Mt. Fuji Summit” (Fujisan Choujou 富士山頂上), to prove it.
We left the hotel near the mountain at around 5:30 am on Thursday. We ate breakfast at a restaurant on the fifth station of the mountain; Fuji is divided up into ten stations, and most climbers begin were we did. This is less a matter of tradition than of pragmatism; the fifth station offers a large parking area as well as shopping opportunities, making it the best suited as a starting point for large groups and individual hikers alike. At the store below the restaurant in the same building , I bought several packages of Calorie Mate, a filling powdery block that served quite well to assuage the only bodily sensation I had any willful control over: hunger. Pain was something my pride wouldn’t let me stop. In the store, I also bought a five and a half foot walking stick with bells attached to the wood by a purple string. It’s purpose was ostensibly to help climbers scale the mount, but for me the goal in the stick was the stamps I could get burnt into its surface as I got further up.
At 7:20 am, the entire school moved from station 5, gogome, to station 6, rokugome. The pamphlets we had been given told us that this initial walk would be around 45 minutes. Determined to keep up with the leaders of the group, over a hundred strong, I walked as fast as I could just behind them: we made it in 23 minutes. At this point, my I noticed that I was the only one in a radius of about fifteen people who was sweating profusely. I took this as a sign that this pace may not be the one best suited for me. My legs agreed. The path from station 5 to station six began as a walk on a flat groomed path and ended as a ten degree pitch climb on stones through a forest. After station 6, we were on our own, and the paces began to differ drastically. No matter how much I tried, I was unable to keep up with those I had pledged to follow up the mountain. As a result, seeing as how the distance between us was quickly widening, I decided to follow the rule placed in large bold letters in the pamphlet: Don’t push yourself.
From station 6, the trail became a long zig zag that, while clearly the safest and most efficient climbing surface for that part of the mountain, was murderous on my legs. I had to stop several times along the way to refill my water bottle from the 2-liter monstrosity I had brought along. My walking stick proved unhelpful in terms of walking, but the bells did help in keeping the beat to my pacing; again, no direct assistance, but the perception of a beat helped me keep my mind off the strain my muscles were quickly feeling and the heavy presence of the summer sun in a clear sky. It was here, both because I had fallen behind my friends and the suddenness with which the mountain took its toll on me, that I began to believe I would never make it to the top, and though the intensity of that feeling subsided as time went along, the thought itself lasted until the last minute, when I realized the summit was only a couple of steps away.
After what seemed an eternity, but was likely only just over an hour, I made it to station 7, nanagome. I had always imagined the stations on the mountains as somehow on the side of the trail, with small huts of a room or two lining the path. To my surprise, this and all the other stations up the mountain were long structures positioned as integral parts of the trail itself, facing down the mountainside. Looking down the mountain from the benches at each station became a kind of ritual for me; at first I saw forests meld into a panorama of the greater Earth; at the end, I saw sheer red rock pierce into silent clouds.
More later…
Well, I’m back from Fuji, and I have the stick stamped with “Mt. Fuji Summit” (Fujisan Choujou 富士山頂上), to prove it.
We left the hotel near the mountain at around 5:30 am on Thursday. We ate breakfast at a restaurant on the fifth station of the mountain; Fuji is divided up into ten stations, and most climbers begin were we did. This is less a matter of tradition than of pragmatism; the fifth station offers a large parking area as well as shopping opportunities, making it the best suited as a starting point for large groups and individual hikers alike. At the store below the restaurant in the same building , I bought several packages of Calorie Mate, a filling powdery block that served quite well to assuage the only bodily sensation I had any willful control over: hunger. Pain was something my pride wouldn’t let me stop. In the store, I also bought a five and a half foot walking stick with bells attached to the wood by a purple string. It’s purpose was ostensibly to help climbers scale the mount, but for me the goal in the stick was the stamps I could get burnt into its surface as I got further up.
At 7:20 am, the entire school moved from station 5, gogome, to station 6, rokugome. The pamphlets we had been given told us that this initial walk would be around 45 minutes. Determined to keep up with the leaders of the group, over a hundred strong, I walked as fast as I could just behind them: we made it in 23 minutes. At this point, my I noticed that I was the only one in a radius of about fifteen people who was sweating profusely. I took this as a sign that this pace may not be the one best suited for me. My legs agreed. The path from station 5 to station six began as a walk on a flat groomed path and ended as a ten degree pitch climb on stones through a forest. After station 6, we were on our own, and the paces began to differ drastically. No matter how much I tried, I was unable to keep up with those I had pledged to follow up the mountain. As a result, seeing as how the distance between us was quickly widening, I decided to follow the rule placed in large bold letters in the pamphlet: Don’t push yourself.
From station 6, the trail became a long zig zag that, while clearly the safest and most efficient climbing surface for that part of the mountain, was murderous on my legs. I had to stop several times along the way to refill my water bottle from the 2-liter monstrosity I had brought along. My walking stick proved unhelpful in terms of walking, but the bells did help in keeping the beat to my pacing; again, no direct assistance, but the perception of a beat helped me keep my mind off the strain my muscles were quickly feeling and the heavy presence of the summer sun in a clear sky. It was here, both because I had fallen behind my friends and the suddenness with which the mountain took its toll on me, that I began to believe I would never make it to the top, and though the intensity of that feeling subsided as time went along, the thought itself lasted until the last minute, when I realized the summit was only a couple of steps away.
After what seemed an eternity, but was likely only just over an hour, I made it to station 7, nanagome. I had always imagined the stations on the mountains as somehow on the side of the trail, with small huts of a room or two lining the path. To my surprise, this and all the other stations up the mountain were long structures positioned as integral parts of the trail itself, facing down the mountainside. Looking down the mountain from the benches at each station became a kind of ritual for me; at first I saw forests meld into a panorama of the greater Earth; at the end, I saw sheer red rock pierce into silent clouds.
More later…
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Off to Fuji!
I'm off to Fuji, so I won't have a chance to post anything until after I come back on Friday. Wish me luck!
Monday, July 28, 2008
Poolside life
July 28, 8:03 pm, Tokyo
Sunday turned out to be a lesson in Japanese culture if there ever was one; however more convenient a classroom might be, however much easier simple factoids would be to digest, yesterday was evidence that observation of everyday life, perhaps more effectively than anything else, can open doors to powerful truths about a people.
I spent my day in Odaiba with a couple of Russian friends at the swimming pool. “Swimming” may not be the best word: “wading” is more like it. The pool was a circular doughnut no more than four feet deep with the swimmers pulled around it by an artificially produced current. On the outside of the doughnut were stalls selling yakitori, ice cream, ramen, drinks, and the like. Families sat on towels on the brick, facing inward. Inside the doughnut of the pool was an island with typical pool recliners. Confused as to why people would sit on the brick walkway instead of on open recliners, we (Elena, Kyril, and I) went to the inner island. The island was itself split into three parts; one for sunning on chairs, one for yet another, shallower wading pool for children, and finally a hill filled with grass and imported palm trees. Lying on the recliner I gazed up at the palms. They seemed out of place, of course; this is Tokyo, after all, and the leaves looked yellowish from the more temperate than usual clime. It seemed they were here to give an atmosphere to the place, an exotic flavor. To me palm trees seem over-played, but perhaps to those here they send a message of far away places, of well hidden treasures. Indeed, getting here was no easy task. The three of us met at Suidobashi (水道橋, waterworks bridge) station, on the Japan Rail system. We changed trains onto a Tokyo Metro system line, and then finally got on a monorail unaffiliated with either to get into the heart of Odaiba. Odaiba is a relatively new part of the city, and the monorail is telling; it has only one line, is the only rail in the area (unlike in the rest of Tokyo, where trains are the preferred method of travel), and intersects with the rest of Tokyo’s public rails at only one point: its beginning. As a result, the subway map of Tokyo looks like a web in most places, with a single long tendril curving its way through the glittering silver mass that is Odaiba. It was in this setting that I encountered palm trees.
In the water, I took to looking at people as they slowly made their way around the doughnut. There were hordes of children swimming their days away, the occasional person walking against the current, and the hilariously tanned lifeguards in their ridiculously small Speedos ostensibly watching over us. For the most part, though, people were content to be pulled along with the circling waves, pantomiming a normal walk as the water pushed their legs for them, or laying on inflatable tires. One young couple caught my eye. The man was inside a clear plastic tire, the hole around his torso, his arms laying relaxed across the inflated exterior. His female companion was holding on to the tire, herself standing up, slowly spinning him around. His expression was one of deep satisfaction, eyes half shut, lips pulled as if to smile but closed in the acknowledgement that it would be energy wasted to describe what was already understood; her face was filled with smiles, though not, it seemed, prompted by an emotion, but by a message she was sending to all that cared to look her way, including me: I am happy, her smile seemed to say, just where I am, doing what I am doing right now, and don’t you wish you could look as happy as me, doing what I’m doing right now?
Perhaps this is the feminist in me talking, but it almost seemed like her smile came straight out of a 1950’s good wife’s manual. Japan seemed remarkably traditionalist to me from day one: both my host parents are college grads, but only one works. Female teachers are seen as bad mothers because they spend more time with their students than with their children. Though women can be found in positions of significant influence, they are still exceedingly rare, and any women I’ve seen on TV shows in such positions seem portrayed in a sinister way, sometimes even de-feminized altogether. The pieces came together with that woman’s smile. Here it is still the gospel truth that a woman has a place she ought to fill, and any deviation thereof is seen as less than feminine.
Tell that to a female fighter-pilot or astronaut.
Sunday turned out to be a lesson in Japanese culture if there ever was one; however more convenient a classroom might be, however much easier simple factoids would be to digest, yesterday was evidence that observation of everyday life, perhaps more effectively than anything else, can open doors to powerful truths about a people.
I spent my day in Odaiba with a couple of Russian friends at the swimming pool. “Swimming” may not be the best word: “wading” is more like it. The pool was a circular doughnut no more than four feet deep with the swimmers pulled around it by an artificially produced current. On the outside of the doughnut were stalls selling yakitori, ice cream, ramen, drinks, and the like. Families sat on towels on the brick, facing inward. Inside the doughnut of the pool was an island with typical pool recliners. Confused as to why people would sit on the brick walkway instead of on open recliners, we (Elena, Kyril, and I) went to the inner island. The island was itself split into three parts; one for sunning on chairs, one for yet another, shallower wading pool for children, and finally a hill filled with grass and imported palm trees. Lying on the recliner I gazed up at the palms. They seemed out of place, of course; this is Tokyo, after all, and the leaves looked yellowish from the more temperate than usual clime. It seemed they were here to give an atmosphere to the place, an exotic flavor. To me palm trees seem over-played, but perhaps to those here they send a message of far away places, of well hidden treasures. Indeed, getting here was no easy task. The three of us met at Suidobashi (水道橋, waterworks bridge) station, on the Japan Rail system. We changed trains onto a Tokyo Metro system line, and then finally got on a monorail unaffiliated with either to get into the heart of Odaiba. Odaiba is a relatively new part of the city, and the monorail is telling; it has only one line, is the only rail in the area (unlike in the rest of Tokyo, where trains are the preferred method of travel), and intersects with the rest of Tokyo’s public rails at only one point: its beginning. As a result, the subway map of Tokyo looks like a web in most places, with a single long tendril curving its way through the glittering silver mass that is Odaiba. It was in this setting that I encountered palm trees.
In the water, I took to looking at people as they slowly made their way around the doughnut. There were hordes of children swimming their days away, the occasional person walking against the current, and the hilariously tanned lifeguards in their ridiculously small Speedos ostensibly watching over us. For the most part, though, people were content to be pulled along with the circling waves, pantomiming a normal walk as the water pushed their legs for them, or laying on inflatable tires. One young couple caught my eye. The man was inside a clear plastic tire, the hole around his torso, his arms laying relaxed across the inflated exterior. His female companion was holding on to the tire, herself standing up, slowly spinning him around. His expression was one of deep satisfaction, eyes half shut, lips pulled as if to smile but closed in the acknowledgement that it would be energy wasted to describe what was already understood; her face was filled with smiles, though not, it seemed, prompted by an emotion, but by a message she was sending to all that cared to look her way, including me: I am happy, her smile seemed to say, just where I am, doing what I am doing right now, and don’t you wish you could look as happy as me, doing what I’m doing right now?
Perhaps this is the feminist in me talking, but it almost seemed like her smile came straight out of a 1950’s good wife’s manual. Japan seemed remarkably traditionalist to me from day one: both my host parents are college grads, but only one works. Female teachers are seen as bad mothers because they spend more time with their students than with their children. Though women can be found in positions of significant influence, they are still exceedingly rare, and any women I’ve seen on TV shows in such positions seem portrayed in a sinister way, sometimes even de-feminized altogether. The pieces came together with that woman’s smile. Here it is still the gospel truth that a woman has a place she ought to fill, and any deviation thereof is seen as less than feminine.
Tell that to a female fighter-pilot or astronaut.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Some Pictures
I have chosen some pictures to test out on the blog. Enjoy!
Cute Cat
Miu!!!
Asakusa
KamakuraTuesday, July 22, 2008
Catch-up Part 2!
7:18 pm, 7/22/08, Tokyo
One might ask why I do not throw a couple days away and start on today’s events instead. I suppose my answer would have to be that, given how hard these kinds of summers are to come by, no day’s memories are dispensable.
On Friday after school, I went with a group of friends to Ikebukuro, a fashionable shopping and entertainment district. There we engaged in one of Japans most venerated and culturally distinguished pastimes: Karaoke. While I expected a pub-like setting, what I got for my 500 yen was an hour in a darkish private room filled with couches, small tables, and a large TV and an even larger Karaoke machine. The selection was vast, and we had a lot of fun imitating singers from Maroon 5 to Britney Spears; we even tried to do some Japanese songs, but none of us could read the lyrics fast enough, so it came down to “somethin’ somethin’ somethin’, la la la la A-Ri-Ga-To somethin’ somethin’ somethin’…” and so on. Clearly my Japanese doesn’t yet extend to the land of J-Pop.
On Saturday, we headed off as a school to Kamakura, a seaside town full of temples and shrines. It come to its present form through the efforts of a Daimyo, a samurai feudal lord, who in an attempt to make up for past misdeeds and bring his karma to spiritually acceptable levels, invited members from all the major sects of Buddhism and Shintoism to build on his fief. The town was impressive, and the sight of the sea for the first time in weeks, stretching out in all directions, leaving any civilization behind in blue abandon, was comforting to me. As an island boy, I haven’t ever been very far from the water, and though I do not go as often as I could, the sudden realization of how distant a clear beach would be from where I lived in Tokyo, an hour at least, meant that just seeing the water was something I couldn’t take for granted; for all I knew, I wouldn’t see it again for a while. Anywho, y’all will see from the pictures (if I ever get to posting them), that the shrines would make an impression on anyone, but the most impressive sight of the day would have to have been the Daibutsu, the giant statue of the Buddha. It rose at least thirty feet into the air, and visitors were even allowed inside for a look. For twenty yen, it was easily the cheapest thrill of the trip yet. It was dark, cramped, and mysterious, just what you would expect from the inside of an enlightened man, if the human body were tour-group sized.
Sunday I slept, and wrote. It was a good day.
Monday was a national holiday and turned out to be quite action packed. First on the agenda was the Anpanman museum. Anpanman (literally: Sweat Bread Man), is a hit children’s TV show in Japan starring a superhero with a head made out of bread filled with sweet bean paste. Miu is in love with the show, and considering what we wanted to do for the holiday, we decided that a happy Miu would make the day all the pleasanter. Kiddy museums are funny in that though the exhibits are all designed for four-foot tall children, the overwhelming majority of the visitors are adults, but knowing Miu, four people were barely enough to handle her, and we were all exhausted when we left an hour and a half later. Miu, of course, was all smiles. We then drove to Costco. Costco, in Japan? That was the question on my mind as well. However, even after I was able to accept the concept of high end wholesale in an admittedly rich country like Japan, I still was unable to accept that somehow, Japanese were purchasing “Kirkland Signature” products. It seemed so very much like home. Aw well, I suppose I’ll just have to get over it. While there, I saw a rack of English language magazines, and I pounced; I just finished the novel I brought over with me, and I was beginning to feel reading withdrawal.
We then proceeded to a rocky beach, where, for the rest of the day, we marveled at the industrial landscape of Tokyo’s outskirts and took heroic pictures on the boulders. In a lot of ways, it felt just like the rocky beaches on the north shore back home, but I doubt Billy Joel ever wrote a song about this place.
Today. Ah today. Finally I come to a time whose images still come to mind like water in a river, flowing without end; I need not dig a well and pull at the basket lest the bonds break and all sinks into the dark ground of forgotten days. Today class was more challenging than usual, and study will likely only head further uphill; an encouraging development. After class Emmett and I headed for a bookstore we had been told would have a large foreign language section and a Kanji practice text Emmett had gotten in the states and one I vowed to buy in country; I found the book, along with other entertaining volumes, in the store, which turned out to be one of the largest in the city, but the trip there turned out to be half the fun. The bookstore was near Shinjuku station, by the New South Exit; sadly, we arrived in the North-East. Shinjuku is labyrinthine in its complexity and marvelous in its modern, clean, almost futuristic aesthetic. Restaurants and product stalls seem perfectly blended with the myriad flights of stairs leading everywhere and nowhere at once, none of which deterring travelers determined to reach the eponymous turnstiles. At times, I wondered if I was on a space, not a train, station. New as it may be, Shinjuku is classic in the confusion its size causes to the neophyte, and it took us at least half an hour to find the desired exit. When the chance arises, the plan is to revisit the store before leaving Japan; hopefully Shinjuku will open the gates more promptly next time.
One might ask why I do not throw a couple days away and start on today’s events instead. I suppose my answer would have to be that, given how hard these kinds of summers are to come by, no day’s memories are dispensable.
On Friday after school, I went with a group of friends to Ikebukuro, a fashionable shopping and entertainment district. There we engaged in one of Japans most venerated and culturally distinguished pastimes: Karaoke. While I expected a pub-like setting, what I got for my 500 yen was an hour in a darkish private room filled with couches, small tables, and a large TV and an even larger Karaoke machine. The selection was vast, and we had a lot of fun imitating singers from Maroon 5 to Britney Spears; we even tried to do some Japanese songs, but none of us could read the lyrics fast enough, so it came down to “somethin’ somethin’ somethin’, la la la la A-Ri-Ga-To somethin’ somethin’ somethin’…” and so on. Clearly my Japanese doesn’t yet extend to the land of J-Pop.
On Saturday, we headed off as a school to Kamakura, a seaside town full of temples and shrines. It come to its present form through the efforts of a Daimyo, a samurai feudal lord, who in an attempt to make up for past misdeeds and bring his karma to spiritually acceptable levels, invited members from all the major sects of Buddhism and Shintoism to build on his fief. The town was impressive, and the sight of the sea for the first time in weeks, stretching out in all directions, leaving any civilization behind in blue abandon, was comforting to me. As an island boy, I haven’t ever been very far from the water, and though I do not go as often as I could, the sudden realization of how distant a clear beach would be from where I lived in Tokyo, an hour at least, meant that just seeing the water was something I couldn’t take for granted; for all I knew, I wouldn’t see it again for a while. Anywho, y’all will see from the pictures (if I ever get to posting them), that the shrines would make an impression on anyone, but the most impressive sight of the day would have to have been the Daibutsu, the giant statue of the Buddha. It rose at least thirty feet into the air, and visitors were even allowed inside for a look. For twenty yen, it was easily the cheapest thrill of the trip yet. It was dark, cramped, and mysterious, just what you would expect from the inside of an enlightened man, if the human body were tour-group sized.
Sunday I slept, and wrote. It was a good day.
Monday was a national holiday and turned out to be quite action packed. First on the agenda was the Anpanman museum. Anpanman (literally: Sweat Bread Man), is a hit children’s TV show in Japan starring a superhero with a head made out of bread filled with sweet bean paste. Miu is in love with the show, and considering what we wanted to do for the holiday, we decided that a happy Miu would make the day all the pleasanter. Kiddy museums are funny in that though the exhibits are all designed for four-foot tall children, the overwhelming majority of the visitors are adults, but knowing Miu, four people were barely enough to handle her, and we were all exhausted when we left an hour and a half later. Miu, of course, was all smiles. We then drove to Costco. Costco, in Japan? That was the question on my mind as well. However, even after I was able to accept the concept of high end wholesale in an admittedly rich country like Japan, I still was unable to accept that somehow, Japanese were purchasing “Kirkland Signature” products. It seemed so very much like home. Aw well, I suppose I’ll just have to get over it. While there, I saw a rack of English language magazines, and I pounced; I just finished the novel I brought over with me, and I was beginning to feel reading withdrawal.
We then proceeded to a rocky beach, where, for the rest of the day, we marveled at the industrial landscape of Tokyo’s outskirts and took heroic pictures on the boulders. In a lot of ways, it felt just like the rocky beaches on the north shore back home, but I doubt Billy Joel ever wrote a song about this place.
Today. Ah today. Finally I come to a time whose images still come to mind like water in a river, flowing without end; I need not dig a well and pull at the basket lest the bonds break and all sinks into the dark ground of forgotten days. Today class was more challenging than usual, and study will likely only head further uphill; an encouraging development. After class Emmett and I headed for a bookstore we had been told would have a large foreign language section and a Kanji practice text Emmett had gotten in the states and one I vowed to buy in country; I found the book, along with other entertaining volumes, in the store, which turned out to be one of the largest in the city, but the trip there turned out to be half the fun. The bookstore was near Shinjuku station, by the New South Exit; sadly, we arrived in the North-East. Shinjuku is labyrinthine in its complexity and marvelous in its modern, clean, almost futuristic aesthetic. Restaurants and product stalls seem perfectly blended with the myriad flights of stairs leading everywhere and nowhere at once, none of which deterring travelers determined to reach the eponymous turnstiles. At times, I wondered if I was on a space, not a train, station. New as it may be, Shinjuku is classic in the confusion its size causes to the neophyte, and it took us at least half an hour to find the desired exit. When the chance arises, the plan is to revisit the store before leaving Japan; hopefully Shinjuku will open the gates more promptly next time.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Catch-up part 1
3:53 pm, 7/20/08, Tokyo
Okay, y’all, mea culpa for the several day hiatus; I’ve been doing so much that I haven’t had enough time left after studying to write anything; I just pass out at 10:30 for my daily 6:30 rise. Now, however, is the middle of a three day weekend, and today I am just vegetating in the apartment; Monday is Uminohi (海の日), or “Marine Day,” and Daisuke, Mika, Weiyu, Miu, and I are all going, fittingly, to the beach for the occasion. What follows below will be my attempt to describe the last week.
On Wednesday after class, I headed over to Yasukuni Shrine; if the name sounds familiar, it is because the place has sat at the center of international political controversy for years; the shrine has housed the spirits of all of Japan’s war dead since the Meiji Period; as such, it also contains the spirits of over a dozen Class-A War Criminals from the Second World War. Whenever Japanese heads of state like Junichiro Koizumi visit the place they are, whether justifiably or not, accused by neighboring nations in Asia of officially sanctioning the actions of those men. Perhaps because of Yasukuni’s infamy, or because it was only five minutes by foot from the school, I decided to take a look for myself.
The shrine is impressive, like all the shrine’s I had visited thus far, in the sheer length of time it took from the entrance to get to the shrine itself; perhaps this was an architectural commonality that promoted a sense of journey, of pilgrimage, of endurance in the blistering one o’clock sunlight. The wide entrance walkway was barren save for the gray bricks that lay to form it. There were no overhanging trees to provide shade, and the food stands I saw lining the walkway were only for the festival taking place there for several days; by the time of posting, those stands would have long packed up and moved elsewhere, leaving the path even wider than before. The only permanent adornments on the road were the walls of yellow lanterns with names of people and organizations who had paid for a spot in the shrine’s good graces.
The path was punctuated by several plain gates, finally ending at the gate-entrance to the shrine-park proper. Passing through, the sense of hardship melts away as trees spring up to provide protection from the blinding light above. The main shrine was, vsomewhat to my surprise, quite ordinary in size; I had quite naively assumed that the souls of countless thousands of soldiers needed physical room to house them. It was draped in dark blue and was flanked at both ends by purple flags with intricate white patterning. To the left and somewhat further down from this structure sat a white concrete building, I do not know what for, but it was at this spot I saw a Japanese flag for the first time in Japan. Growing up in the United States, I have always deeply identified with the stars and stripes, and instinctively cannot imagine other people holding theirs’ any less dear. How strange, though, that as Americans we get scared when other peoples show any hint of nationalism when we think of ours as perfectly acceptable. Perhaps this discrepancy is one of the many reasons that Japanese prefer to keep their flag far out of the way.
On Thursday, the seven week students went to the Studio Ghibli Museum. The Kudan school is divided into a number of programs: “speaking”, “conversation” and “intensive” courses for adults and long term students, and the “holiday” courses, with class in the morning and school activities several afternoons a week. There are currently four-week students and seven-week students who started class the same day, with the shorter study outnumbering the longer studiers three to one. The great split will happen on Mt. Fuji; as one boy put it, four buses will go to the mountain, but only one will make it back. Anyway, often times it too difficult to send the entire school on trips together, so the school will have us split into the seven and four-week groups.
I am a huge fan of Studio Ghibli; “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Pompoko” are among my favorite movies of all time. The opportunity to see the Ghibli museum (Jiburi Hakubutsukan, ジブリ博物館), got me very excited, and I was not disappointed. The highlights of the fancifully designed building were the huge Totoro figure outside the entrance for picture taking, the roof garden with the doom-bot from “Nausica and the Valley of the Wind,” the children’s Cat-Bus (Neko-Bus) exhibit from “Totoro,” and the reconstructed work room of Hayao Miyazaki, complete with sketches and story boards from all the movies. Most impressive, though, was the twenty minute film produced and played only for museum visitors at the museum; It involved a water-spider and a water-walking insect, and it was, without me getting into too many details, very heartwarming and something anyone should see while visiting Japan.
More to come: Ikebukuro and Karaoke; and Kamakura and the enormous Buddha.
Oh, and I finally made those oatmeal cookies today! I feel useful!
Okay, y’all, mea culpa for the several day hiatus; I’ve been doing so much that I haven’t had enough time left after studying to write anything; I just pass out at 10:30 for my daily 6:30 rise. Now, however, is the middle of a three day weekend, and today I am just vegetating in the apartment; Monday is Uminohi (海の日), or “Marine Day,” and Daisuke, Mika, Weiyu, Miu, and I are all going, fittingly, to the beach for the occasion. What follows below will be my attempt to describe the last week.
On Wednesday after class, I headed over to Yasukuni Shrine; if the name sounds familiar, it is because the place has sat at the center of international political controversy for years; the shrine has housed the spirits of all of Japan’s war dead since the Meiji Period; as such, it also contains the spirits of over a dozen Class-A War Criminals from the Second World War. Whenever Japanese heads of state like Junichiro Koizumi visit the place they are, whether justifiably or not, accused by neighboring nations in Asia of officially sanctioning the actions of those men. Perhaps because of Yasukuni’s infamy, or because it was only five minutes by foot from the school, I decided to take a look for myself.
The shrine is impressive, like all the shrine’s I had visited thus far, in the sheer length of time it took from the entrance to get to the shrine itself; perhaps this was an architectural commonality that promoted a sense of journey, of pilgrimage, of endurance in the blistering one o’clock sunlight. The wide entrance walkway was barren save for the gray bricks that lay to form it. There were no overhanging trees to provide shade, and the food stands I saw lining the walkway were only for the festival taking place there for several days; by the time of posting, those stands would have long packed up and moved elsewhere, leaving the path even wider than before. The only permanent adornments on the road were the walls of yellow lanterns with names of people and organizations who had paid for a spot in the shrine’s good graces.
The path was punctuated by several plain gates, finally ending at the gate-entrance to the shrine-park proper. Passing through, the sense of hardship melts away as trees spring up to provide protection from the blinding light above. The main shrine was, vsomewhat to my surprise, quite ordinary in size; I had quite naively assumed that the souls of countless thousands of soldiers needed physical room to house them. It was draped in dark blue and was flanked at both ends by purple flags with intricate white patterning. To the left and somewhat further down from this structure sat a white concrete building, I do not know what for, but it was at this spot I saw a Japanese flag for the first time in Japan. Growing up in the United States, I have always deeply identified with the stars and stripes, and instinctively cannot imagine other people holding theirs’ any less dear. How strange, though, that as Americans we get scared when other peoples show any hint of nationalism when we think of ours as perfectly acceptable. Perhaps this discrepancy is one of the many reasons that Japanese prefer to keep their flag far out of the way.
On Thursday, the seven week students went to the Studio Ghibli Museum. The Kudan school is divided into a number of programs: “speaking”, “conversation” and “intensive” courses for adults and long term students, and the “holiday” courses, with class in the morning and school activities several afternoons a week. There are currently four-week students and seven-week students who started class the same day, with the shorter study outnumbering the longer studiers three to one. The great split will happen on Mt. Fuji; as one boy put it, four buses will go to the mountain, but only one will make it back. Anyway, often times it too difficult to send the entire school on trips together, so the school will have us split into the seven and four-week groups.
I am a huge fan of Studio Ghibli; “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Pompoko” are among my favorite movies of all time. The opportunity to see the Ghibli museum (Jiburi Hakubutsukan, ジブリ博物館), got me very excited, and I was not disappointed. The highlights of the fancifully designed building were the huge Totoro figure outside the entrance for picture taking, the roof garden with the doom-bot from “Nausica and the Valley of the Wind,” the children’s Cat-Bus (Neko-Bus) exhibit from “Totoro,” and the reconstructed work room of Hayao Miyazaki, complete with sketches and story boards from all the movies. Most impressive, though, was the twenty minute film produced and played only for museum visitors at the museum; It involved a water-spider and a water-walking insect, and it was, without me getting into too many details, very heartwarming and something anyone should see while visiting Japan.
More to come: Ikebukuro and Karaoke; and Kamakura and the enormous Buddha.
Oh, and I finally made those oatmeal cookies today! I feel useful!
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Akihabara!!!
8:50, Tokyo, 7/15/08
After class a friend and I hopped on the subway train two stops to Akihabara, the so called “electric town.” The district grew out of an urban scrap heap following the end of the war, where young students strapped for cash would sell replacement radio equipment. As the years progressed and Japan flourished, the radios turned to washing machines and refrigerators, and those turned into today’s computers, game consoles, and large game arcades. We stepped into a number of game arcades, where we were duly impressed by the quality of the interfaces and the visual splendor on sale, but were turned off by the lack of variety and unfathomably high prices. This didn’t stop dozens of Japanese youth from spending their money, though, or watching as others exhibited their skillful mastery of Tekken 6; don’t get me wrong, for a game with only four, unmarked buttons, and a small joystick, Tekken was certainly worth my ten minutes and one hundred yen. That said, one hundred yen was certainly all I was going to spend on the game, lest I begin to believe that my own martial arts skills included back-flip submissions and energy pulse cross-blocks. Given that assailants do not make exceptions for the deluded, I decided to save my money and not spend eight hundred yen on the Gundam Pod: imagine the womb, except you get to choose guns and shoot robots. If this doesn’t appeal to you, you clearly were never a boy.
Emmett, the friend I went to Akihabara with, goes to college in DC, grew up there, and wants to join the FBI, and laments the lack of the “best and brightest” in government. He has my vote. We were discussing this in what I could only conclude to be a Chinese style restaurant where the only memorable thing I ate was a mango pudding dessert which, as I have just learned from my host mother, is a very famous Japanese dish. Go figure.
I think that I have biked more in the last week than in years back in America. I bike to and from the train station everyday, to the grocery store with Mika, to the mall with Mika, to the post office with Mika, to neighboring “towns” with Mika– We live in Achida Ward (ku, 区), one of the twenty three that compose Tokyo, and each ward has many smaller towns inside. — In conclusion, Mika is trying to acclimate me to Japanese living, and my legs are longing different climes. What keeps me going through all the biking here is just how scary it is all the time; biking in Japan is like driving in China: Winner take all. I have learned to stop on a dime for cross traffic, but I have yet to learn to negotiate head on traffic; one dozen bikes head for another dozen bikes across train-tracks; I was initially disconcerted by this scenario, but then realized I had no choice, as I was already surrounded by a swirling mass of gears and wheels that moved under some unknown force; I call it “The Courteous Way of Two Dozen Bicycles,” and as number 25, I was clearly disturbing the peace. I made it out ok, but I have a feeling that my bike and I have a long way to go before we’re singing in the rain and not screeching with wet brakes.
Oh, and back to Emmett and my adventure in Akihabara. We were in a subway station, reading an advertisement. It depicted six young men running naked, behind which there were hundreds of schoolgirls in uniforms, on bicycles and on foot, cheering them on. Covering the mens’ nether regions was a long black line, upon which was written the sentence “学校じゃ教えられない!” (Gakkou jya oshierarenai!), which translates as “They don’t teach this in school!” Of course, neither Emmett nor I recognized the third character at first, so we consulted my Kanji Learner’s Dictionary. We were arguing about the number of strokes the character had, used for reference in the dictionary. “It’s 7 by 3!” “Nah man, it’s 6 by 4!” “That’s not possible! There is no way that is four strokes!” All the while, a Japanese man in a light blue shirt and khakis was standing near us, clearly amused at the site of two white boys puzzling over a simple underwear advert like it was the key to curing cancer. We eventually located the character, found it was “Teach” and solved the puzzle. I am proud to say I read my first piece of Japanese media, and I feel a mildly less hopelessly illiterate!
After class a friend and I hopped on the subway train two stops to Akihabara, the so called “electric town.” The district grew out of an urban scrap heap following the end of the war, where young students strapped for cash would sell replacement radio equipment. As the years progressed and Japan flourished, the radios turned to washing machines and refrigerators, and those turned into today’s computers, game consoles, and large game arcades. We stepped into a number of game arcades, where we were duly impressed by the quality of the interfaces and the visual splendor on sale, but were turned off by the lack of variety and unfathomably high prices. This didn’t stop dozens of Japanese youth from spending their money, though, or watching as others exhibited their skillful mastery of Tekken 6; don’t get me wrong, for a game with only four, unmarked buttons, and a small joystick, Tekken was certainly worth my ten minutes and one hundred yen. That said, one hundred yen was certainly all I was going to spend on the game, lest I begin to believe that my own martial arts skills included back-flip submissions and energy pulse cross-blocks. Given that assailants do not make exceptions for the deluded, I decided to save my money and not spend eight hundred yen on the Gundam Pod: imagine the womb, except you get to choose guns and shoot robots. If this doesn’t appeal to you, you clearly were never a boy.
Emmett, the friend I went to Akihabara with, goes to college in DC, grew up there, and wants to join the FBI, and laments the lack of the “best and brightest” in government. He has my vote. We were discussing this in what I could only conclude to be a Chinese style restaurant where the only memorable thing I ate was a mango pudding dessert which, as I have just learned from my host mother, is a very famous Japanese dish. Go figure.
I think that I have biked more in the last week than in years back in America. I bike to and from the train station everyday, to the grocery store with Mika, to the mall with Mika, to the post office with Mika, to neighboring “towns” with Mika– We live in Achida Ward (ku, 区), one of the twenty three that compose Tokyo, and each ward has many smaller towns inside. — In conclusion, Mika is trying to acclimate me to Japanese living, and my legs are longing different climes. What keeps me going through all the biking here is just how scary it is all the time; biking in Japan is like driving in China: Winner take all. I have learned to stop on a dime for cross traffic, but I have yet to learn to negotiate head on traffic; one dozen bikes head for another dozen bikes across train-tracks; I was initially disconcerted by this scenario, but then realized I had no choice, as I was already surrounded by a swirling mass of gears and wheels that moved under some unknown force; I call it “The Courteous Way of Two Dozen Bicycles,” and as number 25, I was clearly disturbing the peace. I made it out ok, but I have a feeling that my bike and I have a long way to go before we’re singing in the rain and not screeching with wet brakes.
Oh, and back to Emmett and my adventure in Akihabara. We were in a subway station, reading an advertisement. It depicted six young men running naked, behind which there were hundreds of schoolgirls in uniforms, on bicycles and on foot, cheering them on. Covering the mens’ nether regions was a long black line, upon which was written the sentence “学校じゃ教えられない!” (Gakkou jya oshierarenai!), which translates as “They don’t teach this in school!” Of course, neither Emmett nor I recognized the third character at first, so we consulted my Kanji Learner’s Dictionary. We were arguing about the number of strokes the character had, used for reference in the dictionary. “It’s 7 by 3!” “Nah man, it’s 6 by 4!” “That’s not possible! There is no way that is four strokes!” All the while, a Japanese man in a light blue shirt and khakis was standing near us, clearly amused at the site of two white boys puzzling over a simple underwear advert like it was the key to curing cancer. We eventually located the character, found it was “Teach” and solved the puzzle. I am proud to say I read my first piece of Japanese media, and I feel a mildly less hopelessly illiterate!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Life in the fast lane
8:35 pm, Tokyo, July 12, 2008
An interesting story about the trip I took today. We went as a school on a tour of Tokyo. I left home especially early, around 7:00 am. I only had time to surreptitiously wolf down some cereal (if that image confuses anyone, you aren’t alone), while Daisuke was happily sleeping on the floor of the living room, oblivious to my munching less than ten feet away. As long as I’ve stayed here, a week as short a time as it is, I have yet to quite get used to the fact that first thing I see in the morning, sliding open my bedroom door, is Daisuke lying prostrate right outside. I don’t mind, certainly; in fact, sometimes it becomes very funny. I’ll be in the middle of breakfast, around seven am, usually, and Daisuke will, seemingly like clockwork, wake up and pronounce “goodmorning” (Ohio, おはよう) in his deepest, groggiest baritone. The next thing I know, though, he’s washed and in a suit and awake as a bird, but I never see him move from his sleeping spot behind me to his room at my fore in the first place! Conclusion: sorcery. Anyway, I had to leave early, so everyone was still asleep. I got to the tour launch spot, where we piled in to four coach buses and drove to the Imperial Palace, Asakusa, Odaiba, and Tokyo Tower.
The imperial palace was impressive, certainly; The trees popped out perfectly from perfectly tended grounds, but we never got past the front gate, so I never got a full impression of the place. At Asakusa, though, we got to wander around for an hour. Asakusa is a preserved part of town from the Edo period, with a large shrine and shopping street at its center; very interesting place, but the shrine seemed especially tuned for foreign tourists, and the shops didn’t sell much but marked up chintz, so I mostly reveled I the old architecture and stifling heat. Odaiba is Tokyo’s waterfront district, home to its main TV stations and any number of shopping centers. It was beautiful to look at from a distance, all silver and new and fashionably designed; spheres and suspended cubes and other forms of geometric whimsy all culminating in a seemingly lifeless husk on the Saturdays. We spent most of our time in the shopping center, marveling at the prices; I thought to myself, though, that what differentiates Japan from China is that the prices may be just as high here, but Japanese people actually go here for everyday shopping, unlike in China, where such luxury is far beyond the citizenry’s grasp. Tokyo Tower, however, was the most exciting part of all. The view from the observation deck was spectacular, showing Tokyo in a huge urban Panorama. What struck me, though, was far beyond the view. Somehow, I managed to use my English, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese, all in the confines of that building, in a forty minute period, with students from all over the world who were studying at my school. The Lingua Franca for the students amongst themselves is English, of course, but everyone takes any chance they can not to speak it; good time to be a polyglot, I suppose. There is this feeling of internationalism that pervades every pore of this place, every person in this school; a unique feeling.
An interesting story about the trip I took today. We went as a school on a tour of Tokyo. I left home especially early, around 7:00 am. I only had time to surreptitiously wolf down some cereal (if that image confuses anyone, you aren’t alone), while Daisuke was happily sleeping on the floor of the living room, oblivious to my munching less than ten feet away. As long as I’ve stayed here, a week as short a time as it is, I have yet to quite get used to the fact that first thing I see in the morning, sliding open my bedroom door, is Daisuke lying prostrate right outside. I don’t mind, certainly; in fact, sometimes it becomes very funny. I’ll be in the middle of breakfast, around seven am, usually, and Daisuke will, seemingly like clockwork, wake up and pronounce “goodmorning” (Ohio, おはよう) in his deepest, groggiest baritone. The next thing I know, though, he’s washed and in a suit and awake as a bird, but I never see him move from his sleeping spot behind me to his room at my fore in the first place! Conclusion: sorcery. Anyway, I had to leave early, so everyone was still asleep. I got to the tour launch spot, where we piled in to four coach buses and drove to the Imperial Palace, Asakusa, Odaiba, and Tokyo Tower.
The imperial palace was impressive, certainly; The trees popped out perfectly from perfectly tended grounds, but we never got past the front gate, so I never got a full impression of the place. At Asakusa, though, we got to wander around for an hour. Asakusa is a preserved part of town from the Edo period, with a large shrine and shopping street at its center; very interesting place, but the shrine seemed especially tuned for foreign tourists, and the shops didn’t sell much but marked up chintz, so I mostly reveled I the old architecture and stifling heat. Odaiba is Tokyo’s waterfront district, home to its main TV stations and any number of shopping centers. It was beautiful to look at from a distance, all silver and new and fashionably designed; spheres and suspended cubes and other forms of geometric whimsy all culminating in a seemingly lifeless husk on the Saturdays. We spent most of our time in the shopping center, marveling at the prices; I thought to myself, though, that what differentiates Japan from China is that the prices may be just as high here, but Japanese people actually go here for everyday shopping, unlike in China, where such luxury is far beyond the citizenry’s grasp. Tokyo Tower, however, was the most exciting part of all. The view from the observation deck was spectacular, showing Tokyo in a huge urban Panorama. What struck me, though, was far beyond the view. Somehow, I managed to use my English, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese, all in the confines of that building, in a forty minute period, with students from all over the world who were studying at my school. The Lingua Franca for the students amongst themselves is English, of course, but everyone takes any chance they can not to speak it; good time to be a polyglot, I suppose. There is this feeling of internationalism that pervades every pore of this place, every person in this school; a unique feeling.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
tsuki wa kudanshita desu!
9:23 pm, Tokyo, 7/9/08
I am slowly easing out of jet lag. I cannot seem to get up at 5:45 am like I used to, so I am reverting, like so many Algernons before me, to a more evening oriented writing period. I have finally settled in to what I think will be my regular study habits. The first day of class was uneventful, to say the least. We started from page one of the first level book; even my grammar skills surpass those taught on page one. However, I am so behind on my vocabulary that even the simple words and counters being reviewed are effectively new (Dear Alan, I hate counters. Please inform whatever Chinese grammarian who thought long things needed to be separated from bowls and flat things that his positive contributions to Asian syntax are sorely in question).
Mom: not only am I being fed wonderful dishes ranging from stews to noodles to salted tuna tail, as well as tempura and ramen from great little restaurants (the ramen I will describe later), but I also contributed to the greater well being of my family by teaching my host mom how to make that pasta dish I have historically succeeded in making. For those who are unfamiliar with this particular culinary masterwork, it involves pasta boiled then stirred on medium low heat with garlic (here the domestic garlic is four dollars a head, ever since people stopped buying poisoned Chinese garlic; we used garlic powder) and walnuts; I also added spinach and sliced tomatoes. It turned out to be a very nice lunch. Later in the week I am making a month’s worth of oatmeal cookies to keep Daisuke alive at work; poor Daisuke. I see him in the mornings at breakfast and my immense respect for him grows and grows. I do not know how he is able to keep so clearly happy and light hearted; he may be working hard now, but unlike in America, as he goes up higher in the company, his workload will only increase; this for a man who regularly comes home “early” at 10:15 to see his daughter seems untenable to me, but it’s all part of life for a Japanese man. Indicative of this is that the Japanese have a single word to describe death from overwork: Karoshi (過労死).
8:02 pm, Tokyo July 10, 2008
My day exceeded expectations, certainly. After class, which unfortunately, besides for new vocabulary, seems, as a classmate confided in me later, “a bit remedial”; For my part, I will keep studying; my Japanese will hopefully improve as I get the basics down pat. This aside, the activities afterwards really made me appreciate coming to this country. We set off as a group, split off in sixes with our Japanese “guide”, to Harajuku, the shopping district with fabulously expensive clothes and even goofier fashions and toys. This didn’t make much of an impression on me, but then we went to the Meiji Shrine nearby; this was a new experience altogether. The shrine was built by Emperor Meiji and served as a retreat for contemplation and a setting for some of the most important points in his life, including his wedding. Evidence of this event remains in the form of wooden barrels of wine and spirits presented by breweries and wineries from all over the world, six barrels high and fifteen across, placed along the walking path to the main temple gate; more striking, though, were the hundred kegs of sake placed across from the barrels. Now, I do not know any event that would convince a sake brewer to keg his product save an imperial wedding, but personally, I would not mind the idea of owning enough spirit to inebriate my enemies into submission, all in a portable, nuptial friendly cylinder.
The foot-path to the shrine is wide to the point of vastness; easily twelve strides across at its narrowest, the path, surrounded as it was on both sides by impressive, tall trees, gave the impression of a man who could conquer nature not only by the slow pounding results of one set of feet, but of the millions of them he himself embodied. The path passed through an immense traditional wooden gate. Easily six stories tall, the grey-brown Japanese Cyprus structure melded with the tree-line; unlike a Chinese gate of the same intent, this was simple: Two vertical bars supporting a horizontal bar with the ends tapering up. The effective plainness of the gate made its scale all the more pronounced; I do not know why I had this reaction, but walking under it, it occurred to me that I had seen something that would stick with me for a long time; I suppose only it will tell.
We got to the main shrine, where we went through the traditional process of washing our hands, then our mouths, with spring water coming through a fountain pool, then washing the spoon we washed with. We proceeded to go to the shrine itself, where we placed our donations, clapped our hands twice, and bowed to whatever spirits, gods, G-d, or otherwise we felt we connected to the most.
Before I left, I bought my first present for the folks back home, one I think everyone will appreciate, and I got a small paper roll for myself; it contains a waka poem, one of the thousands written by Emperor Meiji himself: you could say that it is my goal to one day be able to read it with ease.
I am slowly easing out of jet lag. I cannot seem to get up at 5:45 am like I used to, so I am reverting, like so many Algernons before me, to a more evening oriented writing period. I have finally settled in to what I think will be my regular study habits. The first day of class was uneventful, to say the least. We started from page one of the first level book; even my grammar skills surpass those taught on page one. However, I am so behind on my vocabulary that even the simple words and counters being reviewed are effectively new (Dear Alan, I hate counters. Please inform whatever Chinese grammarian who thought long things needed to be separated from bowls and flat things that his positive contributions to Asian syntax are sorely in question).
Mom: not only am I being fed wonderful dishes ranging from stews to noodles to salted tuna tail, as well as tempura and ramen from great little restaurants (the ramen I will describe later), but I also contributed to the greater well being of my family by teaching my host mom how to make that pasta dish I have historically succeeded in making. For those who are unfamiliar with this particular culinary masterwork, it involves pasta boiled then stirred on medium low heat with garlic (here the domestic garlic is four dollars a head, ever since people stopped buying poisoned Chinese garlic; we used garlic powder) and walnuts; I also added spinach and sliced tomatoes. It turned out to be a very nice lunch. Later in the week I am making a month’s worth of oatmeal cookies to keep Daisuke alive at work; poor Daisuke. I see him in the mornings at breakfast and my immense respect for him grows and grows. I do not know how he is able to keep so clearly happy and light hearted; he may be working hard now, but unlike in America, as he goes up higher in the company, his workload will only increase; this for a man who regularly comes home “early” at 10:15 to see his daughter seems untenable to me, but it’s all part of life for a Japanese man. Indicative of this is that the Japanese have a single word to describe death from overwork: Karoshi (過労死).
8:02 pm, Tokyo July 10, 2008
My day exceeded expectations, certainly. After class, which unfortunately, besides for new vocabulary, seems, as a classmate confided in me later, “a bit remedial”; For my part, I will keep studying; my Japanese will hopefully improve as I get the basics down pat. This aside, the activities afterwards really made me appreciate coming to this country. We set off as a group, split off in sixes with our Japanese “guide”, to Harajuku, the shopping district with fabulously expensive clothes and even goofier fashions and toys. This didn’t make much of an impression on me, but then we went to the Meiji Shrine nearby; this was a new experience altogether. The shrine was built by Emperor Meiji and served as a retreat for contemplation and a setting for some of the most important points in his life, including his wedding. Evidence of this event remains in the form of wooden barrels of wine and spirits presented by breweries and wineries from all over the world, six barrels high and fifteen across, placed along the walking path to the main temple gate; more striking, though, were the hundred kegs of sake placed across from the barrels. Now, I do not know any event that would convince a sake brewer to keg his product save an imperial wedding, but personally, I would not mind the idea of owning enough spirit to inebriate my enemies into submission, all in a portable, nuptial friendly cylinder.
The foot-path to the shrine is wide to the point of vastness; easily twelve strides across at its narrowest, the path, surrounded as it was on both sides by impressive, tall trees, gave the impression of a man who could conquer nature not only by the slow pounding results of one set of feet, but of the millions of them he himself embodied. The path passed through an immense traditional wooden gate. Easily six stories tall, the grey-brown Japanese Cyprus structure melded with the tree-line; unlike a Chinese gate of the same intent, this was simple: Two vertical bars supporting a horizontal bar with the ends tapering up. The effective plainness of the gate made its scale all the more pronounced; I do not know why I had this reaction, but walking under it, it occurred to me that I had seen something that would stick with me for a long time; I suppose only it will tell.
We got to the main shrine, where we went through the traditional process of washing our hands, then our mouths, with spring water coming through a fountain pool, then washing the spoon we washed with. We proceeded to go to the shrine itself, where we placed our donations, clapped our hands twice, and bowed to whatever spirits, gods, G-d, or otherwise we felt we connected to the most.
Before I left, I bought my first present for the folks back home, one I think everyone will appreciate, and I got a small paper roll for myself; it contains a waka poem, one of the thousands written by Emperor Meiji himself: you could say that it is my goal to one day be able to read it with ease.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Slightly Late Post
Tokyo, 5:50 am, July 8, 2008
Today I am starting school, and I will be finally seeded with people who know Japanese about as well as I do. I am excited because yesterday there were easily over a hundred people taking the placement exam, and I wasn’t sure which people I would be getting to know over the long term.
Speaking of lots of people, the Tokyo metro during rush-hour is a remarkable place; it throws “personal bubble” right out the door, along with any other quaint notions of easy breathing. I was literally packed so tightly that I barely needed the ceiling handle to steady myself during starts and stops. I could hear the air conditioner strain to keep up with the massive body heat we must have been generating. I remember being this packed in a NYC subway once; it should certainly be interesting to experience every day. The irony of it all is that, even with so many people, so many that the only thing you see around you is other heads bobbing with the train, you feel almost alone. Perhaps this was because every person on the train did their best simply to shut everyone else away, like an irksome but necessary bother. Some people read, some listen to music, some look as if deep in self-reflection, and some seem simply staring off into space, though I use the term very liberally. Perhaps one of the most interesting things I saw on my commute, though, was yet another train. We had caught up to another train on a momentarily parallel track and were going the same speed; I could see the cramped riders across from us. What struck me was how still, unmoving, they were, like robots shut off to save energy.
I saw on old man on my commute back home yesterday. The train was nearly empty then, as so many salarymen (office workers, Kaishain, 会社員), like Daisuke, only come home at 10 pm at the earliest, sometimes even as late as one or two in the morning. What intrigued me about this man was his clothing. He was wearing white shirt with a light blue checkered pattern, almost like what one might wear to a square dance, only more subtle. He had a dark blue, close to black blazer, also subtly striped, perhaps checkered. He had black pants, socks, and shoes, with his pants in the traditional “I am an old man, and I will wear my pants up to my chest if I so please!” fashion. Instead of a tie, though, he had a Texas style opal oval where the tie knot goes with two leather strings going down. He was resting his hands on a white curved handle umbrella, and held a small shop bag with French writing on it with his fingers as they hung from the handle. He was very small, with a balding top and grayish white hair covering the sides of his head, and had a face that screamed wisdom. Conclusion: I want to look in the same vein as that man when I am 90.
Today I am starting school, and I will be finally seeded with people who know Japanese about as well as I do. I am excited because yesterday there were easily over a hundred people taking the placement exam, and I wasn’t sure which people I would be getting to know over the long term.
Speaking of lots of people, the Tokyo metro during rush-hour is a remarkable place; it throws “personal bubble” right out the door, along with any other quaint notions of easy breathing. I was literally packed so tightly that I barely needed the ceiling handle to steady myself during starts and stops. I could hear the air conditioner strain to keep up with the massive body heat we must have been generating. I remember being this packed in a NYC subway once; it should certainly be interesting to experience every day. The irony of it all is that, even with so many people, so many that the only thing you see around you is other heads bobbing with the train, you feel almost alone. Perhaps this was because every person on the train did their best simply to shut everyone else away, like an irksome but necessary bother. Some people read, some listen to music, some look as if deep in self-reflection, and some seem simply staring off into space, though I use the term very liberally. Perhaps one of the most interesting things I saw on my commute, though, was yet another train. We had caught up to another train on a momentarily parallel track and were going the same speed; I could see the cramped riders across from us. What struck me was how still, unmoving, they were, like robots shut off to save energy.
I saw on old man on my commute back home yesterday. The train was nearly empty then, as so many salarymen (office workers, Kaishain, 会社員), like Daisuke, only come home at 10 pm at the earliest, sometimes even as late as one or two in the morning. What intrigued me about this man was his clothing. He was wearing white shirt with a light blue checkered pattern, almost like what one might wear to a square dance, only more subtle. He had a dark blue, close to black blazer, also subtly striped, perhaps checkered. He had black pants, socks, and shoes, with his pants in the traditional “I am an old man, and I will wear my pants up to my chest if I so please!” fashion. Instead of a tie, though, he had a Texas style opal oval where the tie knot goes with two leather strings going down. He was resting his hands on a white curved handle umbrella, and held a small shop bag with French writing on it with his fingers as they hung from the handle. He was very small, with a balding top and grayish white hair covering the sides of his head, and had a face that screamed wisdom. Conclusion: I want to look in the same vein as that man when I am 90.
Monday, July 7, 2008
July Seventh: day of victory!
Tokyo, 7/7/08, 5:50 am
Why so early you ask? Two reasons: I am still under the influence of jet lag, and I need to officially wake up in an hour so this gives me time to write to you all. This post chronicles the happenings of July 6th.
I finally met my housemate at breakfast. He is a Taiwanese boy named Weiyu, a rising college junior whose Japanese skills can only be described as “beast.” I would say this is a fair assessment, as he has two years of college level Japanese behind him as well as one of these summer courses from last year. (Mom: I made a mistake. He is not from H-vard; another boy was, but I missed him by a week). I learned a huge lesson from Weiyu: bring presents of food if possible. He had brought literally boxes of sweets and dried mangos and who knows what else to ingratiate himself with the family: it sure worked on me!
Okay, so moving along. Weiyu, Daisuke and I prophylactically did the commute from home to school so that today I wouldn’t get lost. From the train station it is very easy; one line change for a total of 40 minutes train time. It is the biking from the house to the train-station that proves difficult. Before I describe this, some observations: 1) People in Japan love bikes; 2) Tokyo has ridiculously narrow streets everywhere. 3) Unlike in the Chinese cities of this magnitude that I have visited that are like this, Tokyo is improbably clean and orderly despite these two otherwise crippling characteristics. However, what happens as a result of these very narrow streets is that the five minute bike ride is simply a maze. The actual directions I catalogued while following daisuke, committed to memory, then wrote down afterwards are: RRLRLRCXLR (C for curve, X for major street crossing). While I have the turns down, I am sure that I will be lost many times before I get my commute straight. Another interesting thing about bikes here: no gears; just you, the handle bars, and a lot of faith in flatness.
Weiyu left us after we had seen the school to go meet up with an Italian friend, leaving Daisuke and I to go where else: a chiropractor! Oh, ye of little faith, but wait! This was no ordinary chiropractor, and this was no ordinary chiropractic appointment! This chiropractor, as was explained to me later, was very famous, and held master classes for other chiropractors and their students once a month. So, imagine: one master chiropractor, 5 observing chiropractors, and 15 people watching, each waiting for his or her 30 seconds with the man himself. The sound of cracking necks and snapping body parts will stay with me for some time. It was quite entertaining to watch, actually. At one point, he tied a long narrow strip from a patient’s neck and another from the chin. He tied these together from each side, tied the sides together, pulled gently a couple of times to make sure the knot was good, and then yanked the patient 2 inches across the bed by the neck! At this point I felt deep respect for the master and mild terror for the patient.
After Daisuke was bent, twirled, yanked, and pressed, we headed out of the chiropractic finishing school and back home. On the way, I learned several things: 1) Calpico Water (soft drink) just tastes better purchased in Japan! 2) For things like drinks, drug stores are cheaper than vending machines which are cheaper than convenience stores, and cans are cheaper than plastic bottles (Petoboteru), though somehow both cans and bottles carry the same 500 ml. hmm.
A note on language learning. Daisuke and I spoke mostly in Japanese, and he really did a wonderful job being patient and repeating things for me, over and over and over, and I really feel like I am getting somewhere from day 1. Mika speaks much more English to me, likely because her goal in life seems to be to raise Miu bilingual. It is difficult to get my ideas across in Japanese as it is; it is nice on occasion to have some outlet for conversation outside of the survival level.
Tokyo, 5:00 pm, 7/7/08
If any of you are interested in what I had for dinner last night, I had this omelet sort-of dish where raw eggs are mixed into cabbage, then cooked on a hot-pan; tasty, if mildly breakfast-ish by American standards.
I had orientation today at school. It started with a placement test; I did the best that I could, though the grammar went beyond me very quickly. Then I had an interview with a teacher. A single word I learned with Daisuke on our Tokyo adventure saved me: if (moshi もし). This simple word meant I understood that all the scenarios were scenarios: anyone who has done conversation drills can understand the importance to meaning that this can have. We find out tomorrow what class level we are in.
Why so early you ask? Two reasons: I am still under the influence of jet lag, and I need to officially wake up in an hour so this gives me time to write to you all. This post chronicles the happenings of July 6th.
I finally met my housemate at breakfast. He is a Taiwanese boy named Weiyu, a rising college junior whose Japanese skills can only be described as “beast.” I would say this is a fair assessment, as he has two years of college level Japanese behind him as well as one of these summer courses from last year. (Mom: I made a mistake. He is not from H-vard; another boy was, but I missed him by a week). I learned a huge lesson from Weiyu: bring presents of food if possible. He had brought literally boxes of sweets and dried mangos and who knows what else to ingratiate himself with the family: it sure worked on me!
Okay, so moving along. Weiyu, Daisuke and I prophylactically did the commute from home to school so that today I wouldn’t get lost. From the train station it is very easy; one line change for a total of 40 minutes train time. It is the biking from the house to the train-station that proves difficult. Before I describe this, some observations: 1) People in Japan love bikes; 2) Tokyo has ridiculously narrow streets everywhere. 3) Unlike in the Chinese cities of this magnitude that I have visited that are like this, Tokyo is improbably clean and orderly despite these two otherwise crippling characteristics. However, what happens as a result of these very narrow streets is that the five minute bike ride is simply a maze. The actual directions I catalogued while following daisuke, committed to memory, then wrote down afterwards are: RRLRLRCXLR (C for curve, X for major street crossing). While I have the turns down, I am sure that I will be lost many times before I get my commute straight. Another interesting thing about bikes here: no gears; just you, the handle bars, and a lot of faith in flatness.
Weiyu left us after we had seen the school to go meet up with an Italian friend, leaving Daisuke and I to go where else: a chiropractor! Oh, ye of little faith, but wait! This was no ordinary chiropractor, and this was no ordinary chiropractic appointment! This chiropractor, as was explained to me later, was very famous, and held master classes for other chiropractors and their students once a month. So, imagine: one master chiropractor, 5 observing chiropractors, and 15 people watching, each waiting for his or her 30 seconds with the man himself. The sound of cracking necks and snapping body parts will stay with me for some time. It was quite entertaining to watch, actually. At one point, he tied a long narrow strip from a patient’s neck and another from the chin. He tied these together from each side, tied the sides together, pulled gently a couple of times to make sure the knot was good, and then yanked the patient 2 inches across the bed by the neck! At this point I felt deep respect for the master and mild terror for the patient.
After Daisuke was bent, twirled, yanked, and pressed, we headed out of the chiropractic finishing school and back home. On the way, I learned several things: 1) Calpico Water (soft drink) just tastes better purchased in Japan! 2) For things like drinks, drug stores are cheaper than vending machines which are cheaper than convenience stores, and cans are cheaper than plastic bottles (Petoboteru), though somehow both cans and bottles carry the same 500 ml. hmm.
A note on language learning. Daisuke and I spoke mostly in Japanese, and he really did a wonderful job being patient and repeating things for me, over and over and over, and I really feel like I am getting somewhere from day 1. Mika speaks much more English to me, likely because her goal in life seems to be to raise Miu bilingual. It is difficult to get my ideas across in Japanese as it is; it is nice on occasion to have some outlet for conversation outside of the survival level.
Tokyo, 5:00 pm, 7/7/08
If any of you are interested in what I had for dinner last night, I had this omelet sort-of dish where raw eggs are mixed into cabbage, then cooked on a hot-pan; tasty, if mildly breakfast-ish by American standards.
I had orientation today at school. It started with a placement test; I did the best that I could, though the grammar went beyond me very quickly. Then I had an interview with a teacher. A single word I learned with Daisuke on our Tokyo adventure saved me: if (moshi もし). This simple word meant I understood that all the scenarios were scenarios: anyone who has done conversation drills can understand the importance to meaning that this can have. We find out tomorrow what class level we are in.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Two posts at once!
8:42 am EDT- Atlanta, GA
Connecting flights make me sad. Two and a half hours, I just find a comfortable position to sleep in, and suddenly the plane lands; hopefully, 12 hours might just do it.
I’m watching CNN, and up comes the story of the hostages saved from the FARC in Colombia. When I was in JFK a couple hours back, they showed a short biop of the three American contractors saved in the operation; ingenious really, and I commend all those that were involved, but I question the effectiveness of a system that requires five years to act. Certainly, Colombia may have needed those five years to reform and consolidate its institutions, and may well have only had the necessary will once the FARC’s historic leader had died (I don’t remember his name at the moment; someone please look it up and put it in a comment), but I wonder why America had not acted on its own; perhaps neither three Americans nor Ingrid Betancourt, the Franco-Colombian politician, were worth the time if Colombia couldn’t pick up the slack in the weeks and months after.
Either way, farm disputes lead to gunfights that lead people to spend years in chains at the whim of men with guns who have never farmed in their lives. And here we are at the top of the world. If I’m not careful, I might turn socially conscious!
5:20 am Japan time- Tokyo
I have just woken up in my comfortable new Japanese style Tatami matted room. It is about 8 footlengths wide and 14 footlengths long. It is separated from the rest of the Manshon (as apartments of this type are called) by three sturdy sliding panels that form a sound insulating wall. It would by western standards seem small, but the lack of raised furniture gives a sense of space that would otherwise be swallowed up by banisters and shelves; so for me, the room seems very large, and I can happily live here for seven weeks!
When I first flew into Narita, Tokyo’s airport, I noticed two things: First was that arrivals gate (I was terminal 1, north side, so this may not apply to the other parts) was exceedingly quiet, though it was busy; more like a small train station than a huge airport. The second was that I had arrived nearly an hour earlier than scheduled. I proceeded to get yen, email y’all of my survival, and eventually met up with the staff from the school. They were all in their early twenties, the five of them who were running around catching scared foreigners, and to my surprise, they seemed to meld from Japanese to Mandarin to English like it was nothing. Frankly, I could not have told you, had I not known better, where these people came from; the benefits of being a polyglot, I suppose.
One of the organizers called two of us to come with him. The other boy was named Bradley. A rising high school senior from Baltimore, Bradley knew no Japanese and was here for a month. We rode in a school cab from Narita to “Tokyo.” I say this in quotes because I have very little idea what constitutes Tokyo. From what I saw in the cab, it is an urban sprawl taken to its logical conclusion, so I don’t have any confidence in my descriptions, whether they are of suburbs or of the city itself. Anywho, Bradley was living not with a host family, but in a dormitory-like setting. The neighborhood he was living in was filled with bike-shops, cleaners, used car dealerships, and fast food places. To be fair, my host family’s home looks out on a KFC, but his had a Denny’s, Pizza Hut, 7-11, and other such establishments. I also saw a Pachinko parlor, which if I am not mistaken is a kind of gambling/gaming place. Anyway, I suppose this might be a “working class” neighborhood in Tokyo? Really, no idea. In reality it was very nice; very clean, very pleasant, and fulfilling any student’s needs. Additionally, as Bradley told me, his neighborhood was only a couple of minutes away from Tokyo Disneyland. We all know where Bradley is going! Oh, that Bradley. Nice kid, hope to see him in school.
Anyway, after dropping Bradley off, The driver and I drove off to my host family’s neighborhood. Getting off the highway, I noticed a shift in the tenor of the place. The houses and buildings were taller, there were sit-down restaurants and new car dealerships; boutique shops and furniture stores sprang up where they were absent before. My host father, Daisuke, picked me up from the cab; he is a clean looking young Japanese man. 23 years old, an inch or two shorter than me, with dark skin and glasses of the thick plastic variety, he was dressed in nice jeans and patterned t-shirt. When he pointed out our building, I said “Apaato?” which is the Japanese word for apartment. He looked at me with a slightly pained expression and said that we lived in a “Manshon.” An Apaato is much smaller and cheaper. Learn new things! Anyway, we go up the elevator to the eighth floor, where my host mom, Mika, aged 25, wearing a pooh-bear t-shirt, meets us, holding little 2 year old Miu, their daughter, in her arms.
It would be a good time to point out that Mika and Daisuke both speak English very well. They both attended U of Wisconsin Sheboygan (they both cringed as they told me the campus name), and now are trying to raise Miu bilingual. This leads to very funny scenes where Mika tells Miu to close the door in English, and me telling her the same thing in Japanese! They are willing to speak to me in Japanese, and have taught me a few things already, but given my limited ability, we agreed to a mixed speaking arrangement. Perhaps as the weeks progress I will be able to wean myself off English more and more.
One of the first things Mika asked me was about my eating habits. She had read I “hated” pork, since I was a Jew. I laughed and said (in Japanese!) that as a Jew, I couldn’t eat certain foods. The lights flickered on in her eyes as she began to comprehend why someone would forego pork and crab. She asked me lots of questions about being Jewish, what it means, so on and so forth, and explained herself by saying (if anyone has read Learning to Bow, this should seem very familiar) something along the lines of “We are just one country, we don’t have so many different kinds of people that often.” Given the fact that her time in America was spent in Wisconsin for four years, I remain unsurprised.
Ok, There’s lots more to say, including a description of the rest of the Manshon, which is very interesting, but I am mildly tired of typing, so for now, signing off!
Connecting flights make me sad. Two and a half hours, I just find a comfortable position to sleep in, and suddenly the plane lands; hopefully, 12 hours might just do it.
I’m watching CNN, and up comes the story of the hostages saved from the FARC in Colombia. When I was in JFK a couple hours back, they showed a short biop of the three American contractors saved in the operation; ingenious really, and I commend all those that were involved, but I question the effectiveness of a system that requires five years to act. Certainly, Colombia may have needed those five years to reform and consolidate its institutions, and may well have only had the necessary will once the FARC’s historic leader had died (I don’t remember his name at the moment; someone please look it up and put it in a comment), but I wonder why America had not acted on its own; perhaps neither three Americans nor Ingrid Betancourt, the Franco-Colombian politician, were worth the time if Colombia couldn’t pick up the slack in the weeks and months after.
Either way, farm disputes lead to gunfights that lead people to spend years in chains at the whim of men with guns who have never farmed in their lives. And here we are at the top of the world. If I’m not careful, I might turn socially conscious!
5:20 am Japan time- Tokyo
I have just woken up in my comfortable new Japanese style Tatami matted room. It is about 8 footlengths wide and 14 footlengths long. It is separated from the rest of the Manshon (as apartments of this type are called) by three sturdy sliding panels that form a sound insulating wall. It would by western standards seem small, but the lack of raised furniture gives a sense of space that would otherwise be swallowed up by banisters and shelves; so for me, the room seems very large, and I can happily live here for seven weeks!
When I first flew into Narita, Tokyo’s airport, I noticed two things: First was that arrivals gate (I was terminal 1, north side, so this may not apply to the other parts) was exceedingly quiet, though it was busy; more like a small train station than a huge airport. The second was that I had arrived nearly an hour earlier than scheduled. I proceeded to get yen, email y’all of my survival, and eventually met up with the staff from the school. They were all in their early twenties, the five of them who were running around catching scared foreigners, and to my surprise, they seemed to meld from Japanese to Mandarin to English like it was nothing. Frankly, I could not have told you, had I not known better, where these people came from; the benefits of being a polyglot, I suppose.
One of the organizers called two of us to come with him. The other boy was named Bradley. A rising high school senior from Baltimore, Bradley knew no Japanese and was here for a month. We rode in a school cab from Narita to “Tokyo.” I say this in quotes because I have very little idea what constitutes Tokyo. From what I saw in the cab, it is an urban sprawl taken to its logical conclusion, so I don’t have any confidence in my descriptions, whether they are of suburbs or of the city itself. Anywho, Bradley was living not with a host family, but in a dormitory-like setting. The neighborhood he was living in was filled with bike-shops, cleaners, used car dealerships, and fast food places. To be fair, my host family’s home looks out on a KFC, but his had a Denny’s, Pizza Hut, 7-11, and other such establishments. I also saw a Pachinko parlor, which if I am not mistaken is a kind of gambling/gaming place. Anyway, I suppose this might be a “working class” neighborhood in Tokyo? Really, no idea. In reality it was very nice; very clean, very pleasant, and fulfilling any student’s needs. Additionally, as Bradley told me, his neighborhood was only a couple of minutes away from Tokyo Disneyland. We all know where Bradley is going! Oh, that Bradley. Nice kid, hope to see him in school.
Anyway, after dropping Bradley off, The driver and I drove off to my host family’s neighborhood. Getting off the highway, I noticed a shift in the tenor of the place. The houses and buildings were taller, there were sit-down restaurants and new car dealerships; boutique shops and furniture stores sprang up where they were absent before. My host father, Daisuke, picked me up from the cab; he is a clean looking young Japanese man. 23 years old, an inch or two shorter than me, with dark skin and glasses of the thick plastic variety, he was dressed in nice jeans and patterned t-shirt. When he pointed out our building, I said “Apaato?” which is the Japanese word for apartment. He looked at me with a slightly pained expression and said that we lived in a “Manshon.” An Apaato is much smaller and cheaper. Learn new things! Anyway, we go up the elevator to the eighth floor, where my host mom, Mika, aged 25, wearing a pooh-bear t-shirt, meets us, holding little 2 year old Miu, their daughter, in her arms.
It would be a good time to point out that Mika and Daisuke both speak English very well. They both attended U of Wisconsin Sheboygan (they both cringed as they told me the campus name), and now are trying to raise Miu bilingual. This leads to very funny scenes where Mika tells Miu to close the door in English, and me telling her the same thing in Japanese! They are willing to speak to me in Japanese, and have taught me a few things already, but given my limited ability, we agreed to a mixed speaking arrangement. Perhaps as the weeks progress I will be able to wean myself off English more and more.
One of the first things Mika asked me was about my eating habits. She had read I “hated” pork, since I was a Jew. I laughed and said (in Japanese!) that as a Jew, I couldn’t eat certain foods. The lights flickered on in her eyes as she began to comprehend why someone would forego pork and crab. She asked me lots of questions about being Jewish, what it means, so on and so forth, and explained herself by saying (if anyone has read Learning to Bow, this should seem very familiar) something along the lines of “We are just one country, we don’t have so many different kinds of people that often.” Given the fact that her time in America was spent in Wisconsin for four years, I remain unsurprised.
Ok, There’s lots more to say, including a description of the rest of the Manshon, which is very interesting, but I am mildly tired of typing, so for now, signing off!
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Pre-Flight Post
As I was packing my things together for my flights tomorrow, Alan called and suggested that I post my letters to you all in Blog form. As this was a very good idea, I saw no reason to say no, save some grand notion of independence that, however much I would like to have pursued it, would only have counteracted my free will anyway. That being said, Alan is an ocean away already, and sticking it to The Man seems silly when maybe the man became The Man because of his good ideas.
Saddlebag’s end, you ask? Why sir, why? Well, with all the phrase books and note cards, computers and cameras, sunscreen and fiber supplements, it almost seems like the trip itself is packed away in the bags, not in the arms that carry them, or the eyes that will turn away from them to see the sunrise come over the mountain-top; more about my trip to Mt. Fuji (Fujisan 富士山) later in the summer.
Saddlebag’s end, you ask? Why sir, why? Well, with all the phrase books and note cards, computers and cameras, sunscreen and fiber supplements, it almost seems like the trip itself is packed away in the bags, not in the arms that carry them, or the eyes that will turn away from them to see the sunrise come over the mountain-top; more about my trip to Mt. Fuji (Fujisan 富士山) later in the summer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)