Days 31-33: Living in Yokkaichi

The past few days have been pretty slow as far as noteworthy events go.  I've been mostly spending my time at my friend Charlie's house, but I've also gone around and seen some of the local town.  Charlie works during the afternoons and evenings, so I'm mostly left to my own devices.  Monday was mostly spent recovering from my trip to Tokyo, but I also went out shopping for a couple things to use around the house, like soap, and some milk and cereal for some cheap breakfasts that should last all week.  Later that night, we went out to a bigger shopping mall and got some more food for various meals.

My arms and shoulders were extremely sore from Saturday through Monday night, because of lugging around about 100 pounds of baggage.  I didn't mention it before, but it did make Akihabara a little less enjoyable than it could have been.  I mostly tried to ignore it anyway.  They're still a little tight now, but it's not too bad.

On Tuesday, I sat in on one of Charlie's English lessons with a couple of small boys.  He seemed like a pretty good teacher, and the kids were alright.  It was pretty fun to watch.  I participated a little bit, but there wasn't much for me to do.  His boss wants him to teach by pure immersion, so I couldn't practice my Japanese with them, either, since I was supposed to be speaking English only.  His boss was a pretty nice woman, though, and we talked for a while in both English and Japanese.  She even took us out for a light lunch at the shopping mall's cafe.

After all that was over, I went to Book Off, a used book/movie/game chain, and got a couple more Japanese games: Lunar: Silver Star Story and Remember 11: The Age of Infinity, for PS and PS2, respectively.  I already own Lunar in English, but it was 500 yen, so I couldn't pass that up.  Remember 11 was also 500 yen, and it's a visual novel I've been playing in English with a fan translation patch, so when I saw that I could purchase it legally, I had to do that.  I try to get my games legally whenever possible, but that game hadn't been possible until now.

Today, I've mostly just sat at home.  Charlie went out to work around 1:30 and got back around 9:00, and in the meantime I've done a bunch of cleaning for him and played games.  I doubt anything exciting will happen in the rest of tonight.

There's a chance I'll go out to see Ise Jingu before I leave, but that sort of depends.  It's a 90-minute train ride to get there, which I really don't feel like doing, and it'll also cost another 4000 yen or so, which is basically the rest of my entire budget, aside from the train fares to get back to the airport and go home.  I haven't decided for sure one way or the other if I'll go.


Miscellaneous stuff:

• The cereal selection in Japan is very limited.  Pretty much corn flakes (frosted or chocolate), or bran flakes.
• When you buy anything, the store clerk will almost always tape the top of the bag closed for you.  This does not apply in grocery stores, because by and large you are expected to bag your own purchases there after you're done.
• When people are trying to explain something, or give a somewhat-rehearsed speech or lesson (such as in church, at school, or my host family choosing their words carefully so I could understand), they tend to stress their particles (ha, ga, wo, ni, etc.).  Those come up every few words in a typical sentence, so the result is that they'll say a few words at a lower pitch, then a longer, more drawn out and higher pitched syllable for the particle, then back down and up and down and up.  Lots of people do this.
• People here in Yokkaichi stare at me much more openly than they did in Izumi.  This isn't exactly a big city, and foreigners are pretty rare.  I haven't seen any other white people besides Charlie, so we attract a lot more attention.

Day 27: Drawing to a close

I just realized my day numbering has been off since the first week, so I went back and corrected all the titles since then.

Today was raining all day again.  I got soaked from the waist down on my way home, despite my umbrella.  I walked this time instead of biking.

A classic shot.  I had to get this at some point during my stay.  These mirrors are designed to help you see around corners so you can tell if cars are coming before you pull out.  I've gotten used to using them somewhat when I ride my bike, and it's actually pretty helpful on the narrow streets.

All the drainage systems were full of rushing water.

We were going to do the archery today if it hadn't rained.  It got rained out last week, and they moved it to today, then it got rained out today, so it's just not happening at all.  That's one I was really looking forward to, too.

I can't believe how quickly time has passed/is passing.  For some reason, all day I've been thinking it was Wednesday instead of Thursday, so when I just noticed what day it actually is, that made me feel as though it was passing even faster than it already felt like.

I leave here Saturday morning, but I don't have any of the actual details worked out.  I think I'll take a train from here to Osaka, then a bus to Nagoya, then a train down to Yokkaichi.  It's a longer trip than trains the whole way, but fewer transfers and cheaper.  Once I arrive there, I'll meet up with my friend who will take me to his apartment where I can deposit all my stuff.  Then I think we're planning to go out and get lunch somewhere, then we'll take a bus to Tokyo.  I still don't really know what I'll be doing there yet, or how long I'm going to stay, but my friend can only stay one night, and he'll come back on Sunday night.  I may or may not go with him.  That depends on if there's anything else I really want to do there, and on how confident I am that I could find my way back by myself.

I should probably start packing everything up tonight, and make more solid plans about how I'm getting to Yokkaichi.  My host family should be able to help me with that, I hope.  I also still have homework to do, and a final test and presentation tomorrow.

Another round of quick observations:

• Keyboards on Japanese computers are all different from the standard US ones.  They have the hiragana printed on them, of course, but they also have a few extra keys here and there.  One of the worst changes is that all the little symbols (!@#$%^&*()[];:'" etc) are in different places, so when I've had to use the computers to write things, it always takes a while to search for those.  Also, the spacebar is tiny, and there's a button where the right side of it should be that changes it from English to hiragana/kanji, so it's really annoying when I keep accidentally hitting that.  And apostrophe is something like shift+7.  I never did figure out how to get an underscore.
• You don't hand cashiers money directly.  Instead, you put it all into a tray next to the register.  Once you've stopped putting money in, they'll count the coins one by one, pushing them with their fingertips as they go, and total up the bills, then pick it all up and put it away.  When you get change, they'll take any bills first, count them for you while holding them up in front of you so you can see you're getting the right amount, then hand them to you.  Coins are handed to you in a single pile, and generally not counted separately.
• Dryers seem to be rare.  Looking at any apartment complex or on any residential street in the middle of the day, you'll see clothes hanging out on a line to dry.
• Meats are often served with all the fat, skin, cartilage etc. still on them.  This is generally just eaten as is.  I've only had bones in the meat twice: once at the barbeque, and once a couple nights ago in some fish.  They apparently ate the fish bones, too, which I can't understand.  Those things hurt when they jab you in the gums.  I didn't eat those (well, I tried not to), and I took off most of the cartilage from the meats I had, but otherwise I ate it basically the same way they did.

Right as I was about to publish this, I heard the doorbell.  I'm the only one home, so I went down to take a look, and apparently there was a package that I had to sign for.  I wrote my name out in katakana.  Hopefully that's alright.  Alright.  Off to do my homework.

Days 20 and 21: "Culture experiences" and shopping

Thursday we did some calligraphy after school.  It was pretty hard to do it right, as expected.  In the end, we each put one kanji of our choice on a paper/plastic fan.  Mine was 雪 (snow/yuki).  It was either that or 炎 (flame/honoo) for me.  Snow implying cold, because you use the fan to cool off, or flame implying heat because you use the fan when it's hot.  I decided I liked snow better.  Unfortunately, it looks kind of childish, because I'm just not that good at calligraphy, and I got the proportions all messed up.  Oh well.

Friday we got to try on yukata.  They had enough for the girls, but not the boys, so I only put it on for about 5 minutes or so, and didn't get any pictures on my camera.  A few other people got pictures of me, but I don't have them yet.  In the end, all the girls (and two guys) wore their yukata for this group picture, with the rest of the guys who didn't have one standing in the back.

Very colorful and flowery.

That night, I went out grocery shopping with Yukie.  First, we picked Ranmaru up from his school, so I got to see that (I didn't bring my camera) and he came along.

We ended up buying a couple small frozen pizzas, and all the ingredients for tacos and "eggs in the basket" which probably has some other more official name somewhere, but is basically just bread with a hole cut out and an egg put inside, fried together, with cheese put on top.

For dinner, I fixed (with Yukie's help, since I don't know my way around her kitchen) soft-shelled tacos.  They tasted almost exactly like they do back home, which made me very pleased.  Everyone liked them, so I guess Yukie has another recipe to add to her collection now.

And now, more random observations:

• The most common color of umbrella here seems to be transparent.  White and pale flowery colors are also common, as is black.
• I don't know if I said this before, but basically everyone uses cash and coins instead of cards.  Most places don't even accept cards.  Stores, and even vending machines, will often accept 10,000 yen bills (roughly $130), which seem to be pretty common.
• Most store and restaurant prices include tax.  Occasionally, it will list two prices, one before and one after tax.  It makes it a lot easier to see how much you'll have to pay in advance, which is especially useful considering the reliance on cash.
  
• Women in general wear their hair short far more often than they do in the US.  Probably at least 50% have neck-length or shorter hair.
• Longer hair is often tied in some way.  Ponytails are common, and among the middle school girls I've seen on all my trips, twintails seem particularly popular.  Twintails refers to two ponytails, one on either side of the head, like in the picture.  These can be anywhere from an inch and a half or so to about a foot long.  It seems like a good 25% of the girls in that age range wear their hair like that.  I also saw two today (Saturday) who each had one ponytail, but sticking out opposite sides in the back (one to the left, one right).
• Instead of napkins, people use small wet washcloths, or nothing at all.  Occasionally tissues serve the function of napkins if washcloths are unavailable and someone makes a mess.
• Japanese McDonald's is very similar to American McDonald's, with some added menu items such as McPork and Teriyaki Burger.  I had the McPork, which while not bad wasn't anything special.  I also had a plain hamburger so I could compare with the US, and it tasted identical as far as I could tell.  McDonald's was also the only place so far that I've seen a real napkin.  One.  They didn't give multiple with my order.  Not that I would have used more than one, but they always give way more in the US.
• I have confirmed that there is no "correct" side of the path to walk or bike on.  The very concept of there being one is foreign to them.  Instead, people and bikes just sort of weave in and out of each other's ways.
• Lots of people seem to be employed to stand there.  Supposedly they direct traffic, but they spend the vast majority of the time standing there nodding to pedestrians as they go by.  Their actual job seems to be mostly to stop cars from running into people passing by by instead standing in their way themselves until everyone else is out of the way.
• People give out lots of free flyers, free food samples, and tissue packets with ads stuck in them.  Stores also often have someone standing outside to call customers in, shouting "irasshaimase!" (welcome) whenever anyone comes close and yelling about their various goods or special deals.
• I will amend my previous statement about number of people into anime.  While I haven't met very many into anime myself, it must be more popular, as there are whole stores and stands dedicated to it.  Still, it doesn't seem to be a very universal interest (except One Piece, which, again, is absolutely everywhere).
• Gachapon machines are common.  I don't even know what they're called in the US, but they're those things in stores where you put in some coins, turn the handle, and get a random toy out the bottom.  Capsule machines.  The variety of goodies is much wider in Japan than the US, though.  Still haven't actually bought anything from one yet, as they generally cost 200 yen per try.
• Vending machines are all over the place, even along the middle of the street in my suburban neighborhood.  Most sell drinks, such as tea, coffee, fruit juice, sometimes soda, water, and milk.  Some sell cigarettes, and require a special card that proves you're over 20 before you can buy from them.  Others sell ice cream or similar snacks.  I don't think I've seen any for the more typical chips, cookies, crackers, pretzels, or what-have-you that they put in them in the US.
• Pachinko and slots are both apparently very popular.  There are tons of signs for them everywhere, especially when you go downtown to one of the shopping arcades, but even just around the city.  They're usually advertised with famous anime characters on the signs, so it always catches my eye before I realize what it is.

That ended up being a lot longer than I expected.  I think that's enough for now.

Days 13 and 14: Back to school

So after having the day off for the trip to Kyoto, we went right back to studying in school.  Our language classes are only 3 hours in the mornings now, with cultural classes after lunch.  So on Thursday, our cultural class was learning how to make stone stamps.  These were polished, smooth stone rectangles, about 3/4" square by 2" or so, and we made designs and carved them into the square end to use as stamps.  Mine has my name in katakana, and utau, or "to sing" next to it.  I mostly chose that because it was a cool kanji and it does represent something I do a lot of.  It was really hard to carve it, though, especially to make it so that the characters were the parts that would be colored instead of those being the white parts.

My seal and stamp.

A close-up of the stamp.  I had to carve it inverted and backwards in order to come out right.

Friday's cultural activity was learning all about wearing kimono and such.  It was almost all about the girls, but it was still kind of interesting.  I already knew a lot of it, though.  In the end of the class, one of the girls got to wear the full kimono, which took roughly 20-25 minutes to put on.  Then one of the guys wore the men's version, which took about 5 minutes.  The difference in fashion level is very apparent here.  Also, apparently women's kimonos can be sized to fit basically any height or girth, but men's kimonos have to be matched to your size.  The women tuck up the extra length under the obi (belt), and the men don't get to do that.  That makes it much less convenient.

The woman on the right was the teacher, and she wore a kimono the whole time.

In unrelated notes, here's a glimpse at my lunches this week:

Curry bread.  This time I decided to microwave it a little while before I ate it.

In case you weren't sure why it was called curry bread.  There's the answer.  It actually tasted pretty good.

"A lunch" again, but a different one.  Pork cutlet, I think.  The stuff in the bowl on the right was absolutely nasty, but I still ate it.  It was super sour/bitter.  And cold.  The main dish was pretty good, if a bit soggy, and the soup was normal.

And now a glance at the school.  These are all taken from the same seat.

Everyone studying the day's kanji to prepare for the test.  We do 10-12 new kanji per school day.

Looking around the main hall we meet in every day, St. John's Hall.

St. John's Hall 2

St. John's Hall 3

St. John's Hall 4

And now for another round of random notes and observations:

• Among all the different school groups when we went to Kyoto, I was surprised at how many of the girls were wearing the sailor-style uniforms.  I'd heard they were going out of style.  I'd estimate about 20-25% of the uniforms were that style, though.
• Girls' uniforms do NOT have super short skirts (I knew this already, but hey, some people might not).  They were actually a bit longer than I expected, usually a couple inches below the knee.  The highest I noticed was just above the knee.
• Boys' uniforms pretty much all looked the same.  White collared shirt, either long or short sleeves, and black or navy pants.  Usually had the school emblem somewhere.  Pretty boring.  Doesn't seem like it would help to distinguish you from the other schools much.
• Several days ago, I saw Ranmaru coloring a picture on a worksheet from school.  At first I didn't pay much attention, but then I realized that all the people in the picture had black hair, and the same medium-light brown skin color.  I guess it's to be expected, but I never really thought about it before.  In the U.S., kids' pictures always had people with brown, black, blonde, and red hair, and usually at least a couple different skin tones. [Edit (6/16/12): I just noticed I already mentioned this one... already repeating myself]
• Japanese TV has a whole lot of game shows.  It seems like that's just about the only thing people watch besides news or weather reports.  And an occasional baseball or soccer game.
• The popularity of anime and video games seems to be roughly on par with how it is in the U.S.  You're not going to find a ton more people into anime here than back home, although they may be into different ones.
• Exception: One Piece is everywhere, and everyone loves it.  [Having only seen about 2 episodes out of the middle, in English, I was unimpressed]
• There are a lot of foods that you would think when you look at them would be served hot, but are in fact refrigerator cold.  It's a bit unsettling when you bite into something you're expecting to be warm and it's cold instead.
• Instead of one big plate and everyone taking food and putting it on their plate to eat, meals in Japan use lots of small dishes, usually one per food item.  Occasionally a couple different things will be on one plate, but only if they're supposed to go together.
• I read before coming that it's considered rude to grab food off a communal plate with the same end of the chopsticks you've been eating off of.  You're supposed to flip them around and use the back.  I have yet to see anyone actually do this, and plenty of (Japanese) people break the rule regularly.
• No one drinks water.  Instead, they drink tea (ocha/お茶).  Even drinking fountains are rare.  I know of exactly one on campus so far.

Ok, that's it for now.

Days 10 and 11: New classes, new students, shopping, and notes

Yesterday, I started the new class.  Unfortunately, it spent most of the time way below my current level, but some of it at least was a good review.  My kanji is still progressing the same regardless of class changes, amounting to about 10 kanji per school day, roughly half of which is review with added jukugo (kanji compounds).  I think for the rest of the material, it'll probably take a little while to get to the actual new stuff for me, but it's better than being lost the whole time.  It would be best if they just had an intermediate level.

We also got a few new classmates yesterday.  One student from Hawaii, and three from England.  The Hawaiian girl and one of the English girls are in the lower class, the other English people are in the upper class.  Potentially more people to associate with and make friends with, so that's all fine, but the Hawaiian doesn't seem very serious about this whole thing, which is disappointing.

After classes yesterday, we had the opening ceremony proper, since all the students are now here.  It was some Catholic (?) church service in mostly Japanese.  Fairly short and largely unintelligible except for the foreign student center's welcome to us, which I could mostly understand.  After the church part, we took pictures (I don't have any - they'll probably send them to us later) and they gave us dinner, which wasn't anything special.  Then we all introduced ourselves for the umpteenth time in front of all the host families, Japanese buddies, and so on.  We've done introductions every day except today, because we've had new teachers every day.  It's getting old.  I'm getting faster at it, though.

Between the morning classes and the evening opening ceremony, I decided that I would go shopping a bit at a store that my host mother had pointed out to me before: Book Off.  They specialize in used books, CDs, DVDs, and games, and had a few other things.  While there, I happened to meet up with 3 or 4 other students from my classes who apparently all had the same idea as me.  I bought Love Plus Plus, a very popular DS game, since it was cheap, I would be able to play it (DS games are region-free, unlike basically every other system), and it's largely voiced, which will help with understanding it.  It only cost 1,550 yen.  It was used, though.  I tried it out for about 10 minutes, playing a scene the previous owner had unlocked, and understood probably about 75-80% of the spoken lines, and 40-50% of the written lines.  Not bad, but I'll probably have to wait until I've learned quite a bit more before I'll really be able to enjoy it.

I also bought 3 small Da Capo figures for pretty cheap, and one large K-On figure for really cheap.  1,280 yen for a good 8-inch figure.  The same thing is at least $40 on eBay.  It's SEGA, so nothing too fancy to begin with, but still.  And yes, it should fit in my luggage with no problems.  I could have fit all my stuff easily into one suitcase, without expanding it, but instead brought two.  And I've since given away the presents I brought, which means I have even more space for things like figures on the way back.  3 or 4 will probably be the most large ones I can buy though, and I'll save the rest of that space for when I go to Akihabara.

As for today, we only had a half day of classes and nothing scheduled in the afternoon, so I've been home doing homework and stuff since then.  I don't think anything really interesting is likely to happen tonight.

Oh, some general observations and notes:

• People park their cars backwards, almost without exception.
• Ranmaru colors in pictures of groups of people, and all of them have black hair and medium brown skin.  Back in the US, I always see kids' pictures with all sorts of hair and skin colors.
• Almost no one wears helmets on their bikes.  I've seen some small kids wearing them (probably around 5-8 years old), and a total of 2 teenagers wearing them.  And me.  And I see a few dozen bikers every day.
• I'm sleeping on a futon, which I have to unfold every night and fold up every morning, along with all the blankets and stuff.  It's actually pretty comfortable, although this comes from someone who sleeps on a pretty hard bed every night at home anyway.
• My presents, I forgot to mention, ended up all being food.  I brought a can of mixed nuts (nuts are expensive in Japan), a box of American made chocolates, and some Fruit Roll-ups and Gushers.  I wanted to get something from Mount Vernon or some other colonial center, but I didn't see anything that I could afford that would make a good gift.  They were all well-received, and no one had seen anything like the fruit snacks before.
• Lots of people stare at me openly when I go by, at least off campus.  On campus there are several other foreign students (not just my group), so I guess they're used to it.  But lots of kids and even some teenagers or older people give me long looks.
• There doesn't seem to be any sort of tendency towards walking or biking on the right or left side of the path/street.  People walk everywhere, and bikers go wherever there's space.  I try to stick to the left in general, but it doesn't really seem to matter.
• There are a lot of signs that say something is prohibited.  Smoking, motorcycles, bicycles, fishing, entering, etc. etc.  They're everywhere.  I learned to read the kanji for prohibited pretty fast.
• Lots of people ignore the signs.

No pictures today.  I think that's enough for one post.