BBQs and BANZAI!

So I was thinking, WOW. Where did I leave off…? How do I relate to the MASSIVE following I have (just joshing; you all are GREAT!) exactly what I have been experiencing thus far…? How do I explain it all…

School at Senboku Junior High School (a 5 minute bike ride away) is going well-all 1.5 days of it so far. Gandai University will be tough, but manageable. Our Literacy in Japanese class is JAPN431. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH. Numbers that start with 4 SCARE ME. Especially if they are three digits and taught by Yasumi Kuriya (Kuriya sensei). BUT both Literacy in Education class (Literacy) and Cross Cultural Educational Perspectives class (Education) require immense reading (well not YET) and will require us to lead discussions in class, etc. Not too big of projects though. I am hoping that this means they want us to focus on the host school experience and host family experience. That would be logic to me. But I also think that you should wear brightly colored shoes, plaid shorts, and a striped top, with a rainbow-colored headband to top it off and we know that THAT’S not logical, now is it?  But it sure is fun.

That’s something I can’t quite get used to. We can’t wear jewelry at our host schools, so I brought no necklaces or earrings or bracelets. No adornment basically. Others brought some because we can wear things at Gandai, but I didn’t want to have to remember “Oh, today I can’t wear anything.” One more thing to remember, one more thing to juggle, one more thing (or many things) to bring on the plane/remember to pack, on more thing to potentially lose. All that jazz. So I am running very simply. I brought only what I needed, literally. Nothing is on my walls. I don’t have clutter. And I feel very calm. I feel like I can handle the world. Maybe this is what life could be like if I only bought from Crate & Barrel and IKEA…

Perhaps what I was missing those past four semesters was a sense of place. A recognition that where I sleep and study should be as productive as possible and as conducive to living as I can make it. I also have made my bed my sleeping area and my desk my studying area (another way to distress and compartmentalize, which is a GOOD THING sometimes). I also have found myself being more logical in doing homework so far. I read the whole assigned chapter, for instance, making notes in the margin like always. If there are questions I must answer for the chapter, key words to define, etc, I look at those BEFORE starting to read. In this way, I familiarize myself with what is expected of me. And if I need to find a word I forgot to circle/mark (in order to remember its placement in the text), I start skimming the chapter FROM THE BEGINNING. It really is more efficient that way, for me at least, thus far. It has kept frustration at bay and homework time down…

I bought tennis shoes and shorts (The tennis shoes are 8s in the US and 28s here. Quite large. I think they might be a man’s size…The shorts go down just past my knees AND THEY HAVE POCKETS and look VERY much like Japanese school shorts-maybe I’ll fit in now ) on our day off (Tuesday (8/25), so we could ease into the university and host school madness). My host sister and I want to go running. She plays Ultimate (YEAHHHHYERRRR!!!) at her university in Yokohama and wants to stay in shape over her summer vacation, though it’s so short I don’t see how anyone could get out of shape ESPECIALLY when biking is such a popular form of transportation. Like Nicole said, “We’re biking so much, we’ve got to lose something SOMEWHERE.” So I got me some tennis shoes (adidas) and some sweet shorts. And now it’s turning cooler, so bully for me.

Came home in the pouring rain on Friday (8/28) after going to a hyaku en shop, like a dollar store, (hyakin), and buying some folders with translucent pockets for class and some notebooks and a bento (lunchbox) and some lime green hashi (chopsticks) with a carrying case (SCORE!) and a lime green canteen (because students cannot carry PET bottles in school (plastic drink bottles from the vending machines, mentioned later). All for under ¥1000 ($10). School club activities were cancelled due to influenza. It has broken out in Japan and in Morioka (more of our primary concern due to our location). One student at Senboku has it, so alcohol is everywhere in order to sterilize hands and kill any germs. After we get home, we must wash our hands and gargle. Yes, let’s not get pig flu shall we?

While I was biking, while I am biking, while I bike in the future, I turn heads. We all turn heads. Or rather, we keep heads fixed in our direction. When we all return, it will be strange to not be stared at, ESPECIALLY by younger kids. (The itty bitty ones walking around with their HUGE knapsacks, everyone has the same one, and their hats, sometimes yellow.) Middle school-aged students generally try to talk in English and high school students do too, even more enthusiastically. They also wave. And smile. It is all very sweet. And it is good to be in the minority.

Saturday (8/29) was a barbecue, hosted by E-Club (Earlham Club, composed of past and present host families) at a park that was outside the city. The barbecue was not the American BBQ idea, which most of us thought and most of us weren’t that excited about. In true Japanese fashion, it was better. Over charcoal (lit on fire by a vacuum of some kind), was a metal plate-like flat surface. On top of which, we put all sorts of different meats (niku) and vegetables (yasai) like sprouts, peppers, onions, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots…and yakisoba noodles. And we cooked it all and we ate it and it was AMAZING. SO VERY GOOD. Some people brought their own drinks, omusubi/onigiri (rice balls wrapped up in seaweed with, usually, some kind of meat or vegetable at the center of the rice), chocolate (especially a crispy waffle-like concoction with chocolate in the center-sometimes found cold in vending machines, with ice cream in the middle, like in the Narita train station)…Then, after we were all so full we couldn’t move, we played some team games like one person blows up a balloon, they run to a bench and their partner pops it, then they run back and tag the next pair, hoping to win before the other team of pairs; a plastic-egg-carrying-on-a-spoon race, etc. A wooden child’s toy with a ball on the end of a string provided great balance and coordination practice.

We played on some wooden and rope structures-rediscovered my love of bouldering and maneuvering and balance. Then the SICE students pow-wowed and we decided we would go out and to karaoke that evening, anyone who didn’t have plans with their host family. Claire did and Elizabeth wanted to get reading done for Monday, so Abhi, Tamara, Samantha, Mitchell, Ethan, Nicole, and I agreed to meet at Gandai at 7pm and go to kureyon (Crayon, a favorite of Earlham SICE students). We were meeting there because of its moderate centrality and the desire to not have anyone get lost trying to get to kureyon from their home. I live 15 minutes from kureyon and 30 minutes from Gandai and I knew where kureyon was, but I loved that we were all being a happy group/pack/gaijin (foreigner) tribe. So we met at Gandai and our fearless leader, Starving Indian Child Abhi, led the way to kureyon, but he took quite a roundabout route, so we arrived on Oodoori, the main road of karaoke and restaurants (near Kumagai Ryokan, where we started our wonderful Morioka adventure) at around 7:45pm.

Being the fabulous Earlhamites we are, we don’t want to have an opinion of what we want to do lest someone else not want to do that thing. In other words, when Abhi asked “So do we want to do karaoke?”, many of us shrugged and said we were good with anything. This is frustrating and I think we all can understand why. You ask a question. You want an answer. But really, we just want to do anything. One philosophy is it’s not what you are doing, but who you are with. So Tamara made a reservation at kureyon and we proceeded to Lawson (pharmacy/food mart) so Tamara could get money. She decided not to do so there, so when we were all outside again, we decided that since the majority of us had not eaten, we should eat dinner of some kind. AWESOME. A semi-plan!

Tamara and Abhi come up with the idea of nomihoodai , the concept of drinking without a drink limit for a set amount of time. In Japan, the drinking age is 20 and we are all 20, though not all of us drink. So we went to a restaurant off Oodoori and had our own room with, if we wanted, karaoke (we did not partake) and drank and ate for about two hours. Sake, beer, Ramune sours, gin and tonics, iced tea, ginger ale, and peach Calpis’ (Carupisu) were the favorites of the seven of us.

We all had different curfews (I had said I would be home before 10pm, but I called and my host mother allowed me to stay out until “before 11”, in my words) and all lived different distances from Oodoori. After leaving the restaurant (around 10:15), Abhi and Ethan wanted McDonald’s (not much food at the restaurant, or at least not enough to fill 7 college students) and then Tamara and I split a McFlurry. Then I had to jet, as I live about 10 minutes from Oodoori (not 15, which I found out because I BLAZED home and it was like riding the wind).

Went to a high school matsuri (festival) today (Sunday, 8/30) at my host brother’s high school, a 4 floor beauty housing some 1,000 students. It was AMAZING. Well orchestrated, vibrant, fun, creative, bustling. In America, I feel it would not have been pulled off with quite as much enthusiasm and not as efficient. There was information as to where different food was, different activities, different musical performances. There was yelling, there was singing, there was just plain Japanese good fun. I was trying to find Ko and the badminton club and the hamburgers and popcorn they were selling, but when I got to their “restaurant” (a classroom), he was nowhere to be found. When I ran into my host mother and she asked about him, they didn’t seem to know where he was either. So we ate burgers and she bought me a grape soda that had little bits of jelly/Jello in the bottom and fizzed like CRAZY. Wow. So different from America. Maybe that’s the best part-electrically carbonated fizzy beverages.

It’s funny to think of all the things that are different between America and Japan (America and anywhere else, really). The vending machines here sell SO MANY DIFFERENT drinks. You literally have a PLETHORA of choices, not just Coca-Cola, Sprite, 7-Up, Fanta, Coke, Diet Coke, water, root beer (though that is a lot ). You’ve got water, Aquarius, Pocari Sweat, Fanta, Mitsuya Cider, coffee, tea, cocoa, Coca-Cola, fruit juice, milk, Calpis, etc. And sometimes you don’t know what you’re drinking until you get it…WHICH IS THE BEST. And then there are the ice cream vending machines. And in major cities: the ties, batteries, cigarettes, beer, disposable cameras, and other handy things you may have forgotten on your way to the office.

Have made American salad for dinner for my host family, often help to prepare dinner, and always help afterwards. I feel it is important and necessary to lend a hand and I guess I have been doing it to the extent that I have made my host siblings look bad. Ko is expected to study, so he is an eat-and-dash kind of person, which is appropriate for this time in his life-a high school student with a busy club schedule and workload. Hanako does many other chores around the house and it IS her summer vacation. But her mother commented about how I was helping and how it was such a welcome change. She appears to help more in the kitchen now. Kind of makes me feel bad…

I’m listening to this very repetitive song that sounds kind of like Sister Sledge (“We Are Family”)-very disco and upbeat-because it’s the soundtrack to the exercise my host mother is doing downstairs. She and Hanako are aware of food and weight and their figures and sometimes comment about dieting and losing weight, though neither of them need to AND they bicycle so much and Hanako plays Ultimate. But the Japanese culture is quite fashion/appearance/impression conscious.

Great place, this Land of the Rising Sun. Looking forward to more bicycle experiences, more group outings, and more memories. Love to all of you!