Typhoon Adventures, Part 1

My host mom bought me chocolate on chocolate cream Pocky! :D It’s so fluffy and delicious!  It’s funny because instead of saying チョコレート (chokoreto)  or チョコ(choko) like chocolate things normally do in Japan, it says ショコラ (shokora).  I guess it’s trying to be pseudo-classy, like chocolat  or something.

Is that even how you’d spell that?  “Chocolate” doesn’t look like a word anymore.

This is bad, now I’m just going to eat all this Pocky! Why are there only three sticks per package?!!

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This has been quite an interesting week, and it’s only Wednesday!

On Monday, we had class as normal, but my research methods professor, who studies gender in festivals, wanted us to come, if we could, to a festival in Imaike, a few subway stops away from school, after class with him. 

Imaike is an interesting place because, if I’m remembering the history he told us right, it used to be outside the borders of Nagoya.  It was where a train line ended, so a lot of people got off there and it boomed as a result of that.  Lots of drinking establishments popped up, and the area is very multi-ethnic, with a lot of Chinese and Korean immigrants.  When the subways were put in people stopped getting off there and going into the neighborhood, so it fell into some decline.  In particular after World War II it became known as a big cabaret area, kind-of seedy.  Today there are still a ton of bars and pachinko parlors.  Anyway, this festival is actually run by the store owners’ association, to try to draw people there.  There are the traditional Japanese festival booths selling food and games for children and stuff, but there’s also like, the Lion’s Club doing a yard sale, and advertisements for the supermarket, and booths for info about community organizations. 

When I told my host mom, who is a woman in her early 60s, that I was going to Imaike, she had an interesting reaction.  She said it was full of bars and pachinko parlors, but if I was going with my teacher and my class it would be okay. “Just stick with your teacher!!” 

My professor laughed when I told him about this.  He’s an Australian guy in his 40s who’s been living in Japan since he was in his 20s who still acts quite a bit younger.  (He insists we call him by his first name, sometimes takes his shoes off when he’s teaching, and on this day he was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt with the communist sickle and hammer symbol on it.)  He said something to the extent of “That’s one of the things I like about this part of town!” 

Well, as you may remember, we’re on typhoon 15 of the season here, and as of Tuesday it started coming Nagoya-ward in earnest.  The rain started in the afternoon.  It let up for a bit when we left our class at 5:30, and was okay when we got to the festival around 6:30.  “If it rains too hard we can always go to an izakaya,” our professor told us.  (An izakaya is the Japanese version of a pub.  I’m coming to really love them.)   We decided we’d all split up and explore a bit and reconvene in an hour, at which point we’d decide if we wanted to do dinner together, or what. 

Well the rain didn’t hold off for very long.  I had just long enough to buy a stick of mitarashi dango (kind-of like dumplings, I guess? The sauce is kind-of sweet, like a soy sauce + sugar taste.  When they’re hot and fresh they’re delicious!) before it started pouring on us! Me and Michael, one of my classmates who’d wandered the same direction as me, ducked under a stand for cover, where I took the only pictures I was able to take on my camera.  Which is a real shame, because I couldn’t capture the size of the festival, or the colorful lights.  We got a phone call from our professor, and decided to all meet back and then make a run for somewhere to eat. 

We made a mad dash for an izakaya up the street that our professor knew, and ducked in for food and drinks. 

Izakaya are Japanese pubs.  You typically take off your shoes and step up onto a raised  platform.  Depending on the set up, you’re either sitting/kneeling on the floor on cushions, or the floor is sunk deeper under the table so you’re still sitting on cushions on the floor, but you can sit normally with your feet under the table.  There’s food (good traditional Japanese food!) and there’s drinks, and there’s often a 飲み放題 (nomihodai), or all-you-can-drink, option where you pay a set rate for unlimited drinks that usually also includes some kind of food dishes.  The table next to us was full of very drunk Japanese men. 

Anyway, the food is good, and unlike bars in the US or pubs in the UK, it’s not revolving around sports and like, going out with the boys, so the atmosphere is much better.  I’m sure it gets rowdy and smoky late (Japan doesn’t really restrict smoking in restaurants the same way as in the US.  Carolyn and I were in a restaurant last weekend and a woman came in as we were finishing up.  After she said something to the waitress, the waitress asked the other patron who was eating there if she was okay with smoking.  She said she was, and then the woman proceeded to smoke her cigarette as she was deciding what to order.).  Anyway, I’m sure the izakaya get rowdy and smoky as the night goes on, but it also seems like an excellent place to develop some camaraderie with local people.  If I were living in Japan, trying to learn Japanese, I would absolutely go to an izakaya and just try to start talking to people.  Societal rules are laxer in places like these.  When some of my friends and I went out one night, I had to leave early to catch the train home, but apparently later they started playing a drinking game with some Nanzan University athletes who were sitting a table over!  I myself got into a conversation with a woman while waiting in line for the bathroom.

So, anyway, we went to the izakaya and our professor started explaining the menu to us and asking us what we wanted to try.  He took our drink orders and ordered a salad and a handful of small plates: grilled things on skewers.  One was chicken and leek, one was grilled tomato wrapped in what I think was bacon.  There was something else I’m forgetting about, but the most interesting food item, which of course I forgot the name of, involved half-cooked chicken!  It was chicken on a skewer, but raw on the inside, with a line of tart but kind-of sweet plum sauce, and sliced shiso leaves on top.  Shiso is a Japanese leafy vegetable that seems to be in everything.  It’s green (though there’s also a purple variety -- not sure if this is an age thing or a different species), and I can’t really describe the taste, but I’m starting to really like it.  I have shiso salad dressing on my salads every night. The chicken-plum-shiso skewers were delicious!

After that we had ochatsuke, a bowl of rice with some kind of flavoring or topping, with ocha, or green tea, poured over the top.  Apparently it’s traditional to order and eat that last, after you’ve done all your eating and drinking.  It did seem very palate-calming.  I had ume (pickled plum - very sour!) flavored ochatsuke. 

Our professor treated us all to the izakaya meal!! 

After hanging out and chatting and eating and drinking, the rain seemed to have let up, so we went to try to check out the festival again.  There was still a bit of a concert going on, and we found someone spinning fire, but most everyone had packed up their stalls.  

(At this point my camera also ran out of battery.)

Our professor told us he wanted to show us some more stuff.  We walked by a big pachinko parlor, and he asked us if we’d done that yet.  We said no, so he said “Okay let’s just do a 10 minute look-see shall we?”  We went in the door from outside and then through a second automatic door.  As soon as that second automatic door opened, the noise was just INCREDIBLE.  The whole place was full of the clattering of pachinko balls and the whir of the game machines.  No one was saying anything.  They were all staring at the screens, pushing their buttons, and puffing away on their cigarettes.  Still, the sound was almost deafening!  Some people had huge stacks of baskets and baskets full of balls that they’d one! 

It’s gambling, but it’s officially a game for prizes.  Apparently if you take your balls out back to a shady counter behind the shop, though, they cash it out for you.  There’s no real secret about that, either. 

After pachinko, Alisha and I decided we’d better take the train home soon.  It was already approaching 9 and I had a quiz the next morning.  Our professor walked us to the nearest JR station, but first we stopped by another thing he wanted to show us: a gomen nasai jizo (I’m sorry statue).  It was a little statue in an alcove along one of the streets.  The sign explained that if you hurt someone's feelings you write it on a little card and apologize to the statue and then you’re forgiven.  There were tons of little cards hanging in the little alcove.  We also walked by a shrine where there was apparently a statue of a boar or a bull or something and if you rub it’s nose you’ll do well in school.  Maybe we all need to go back there.

At the train station, our professor dropped Alisha and I off and we got on what we expected to be the 8:38 train.  I texted my host mom as normal, telling her I was on my way home.

Except the train didn’t move.

And then it still didn’t move.

There were all these announcements in Japanese, but I couldn’t really understand them, and everyone just seemed to be sitting on the train waiting.

I got that there was something about heavy rain, and told my host mom this, and she just said to text back when it actually start moving again.

We ended up waiting on that train for almost two hours!  So my normal hour commute home took me 3 hours.

Oiii.

But that wasn’t to be the end of my typhoon adventures! Oh no.

 Stay tuned for Typhoon Advenutres: Part 2, coming soon to a blog near you!

First Week of Classes

And now for a return to your regularly scheduled programming: dear-god-does-anyone-read-this-long descriptions of what I’ve been doing, with a smattering of pictures and too many photos of the skyline.

I never talked about last weekend on here, but after spending too much time in expensive department stores for my liking, we went to Osu, which is this cool shopping district near the Ossu Kannon Buddhist temple (?).  It was dark so I couldn’t see the temple very well but I definitely want to go by it again in the day time! Same with Osu.  It’s this super crowded pedestrian mall with all kinds of shops.  Basically it looks like this, in every direction, and appears to be just huge.

For dinner that day we had takoyaki, fried dough with octopus and cabbage and stuff in it, basically.  It was warm and fluffy and basically one of the most delicious things I’ve had so far here.  I love takoyaki.

This week we started classes so I’ve been busy, and more than just busy, exhausted all the time!

I’m taking Japanese 400, which, despite the numbering system, corresponds to the first semester of 300 level Japanese at my school, so it’s right where I need to be.  That class is from 1.5 to 3 hours a day, every day of the school week.  It’s not even that it’s terribly difficult (though I’m sure it’ll get there once we stop reviewing) so much as it’s long.  I’m used to 45 minute class periods.  This is divided up into 45 minute class periods, but either the teachers change rooms after 45 minutes giving us no time to get up and stretch, or we move classrooms.  On the 3 hour days we get one fifteen minute break, which is nice.  But I never realized how fidgety and impatient I can be until these classes!  It’s not that they’re totally useless or not challenging, but we do have a tendency to repeat things.  Like, the same exercise over and over again.  Or doing the same reading over and over again.  If we got the meaning and the words the first time, isn’t that good enough?
They teach all of the parts of speech - nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. - in Japanese, too, and while that’s probably very practical, and forces us to think in Japanese instead of translating to and from English, it’s a bit of a learning curve for me, since we always taught our grammar in English in all of my past classes. 
We’ve also started doing basic reading comprehension stuff, like in fifth grade.  “What is the subject of this sentence?” “What is the predicate of this sentence?” “In this sentence, who is “that person” referring to?” 
Some of these are good practice, sure, but it’s just a pain in the neck! I hated it in English and I hate it in Japanese, too!  It doesn’t help that some of my classmates seem to overthink everything and get themselves confused.

Anyway that’s Japanese class.  And we’re moving steadily along, too.  Our first chapter test is on Tuesday!

All of my other classes are either 1.5 or 1.25 hours, and only once a week. 

On Mondays I have field research methods, which is taught by this cool Australian guy who’s been in Japan for the last 20 years.  Our mission for the semester is to do one fieldwork project about some aspect of life in Japan.  Which means interviewing Japanese people in Japanese. I’m terrified and intimidated but also very excited.  We don’t really know what we’re doing our research on yet because we’ve only had one class, but some people have been tossing ideas around and I’m excited to hear what other people decide to do. 

Here’s a view out of that classroom! It was on the fifth floor of the Center for Japan Studies building and the view was just incredible.  I still can’t quite grasp that I’m living in a city, can you tell?

On Tuesday I had Intermediate Translation, which was interesting and would probably be useful, but I’ve decided I’m going to drop it.  I initially registered for 18 credits, the maximum credit load, because I wasn’t really sure how the preregistration process worked.  I figured I’d save myself a spot in each of the things I thought I wanted to take, and choose one to drop.  There’s no reason I need to be taking a full credit load during my semester abroad.  I’m here to do things other than study, after all.

Wednesday is a lovely day in that we only have Japanese, and morning classes if we signed up for any.  Those are mostly upper-level Japanese writing classes so I am not taking any of them.  After that there are no afternoon classes, so I’m done with class at 10:50!  This Wednesday there was a welcome party organized by CJS students, which was a pretty awkward affair where we were grouped into teams with Japanese students and forced into little games like a quiz competition and musical chairs.  I came late so it was awkward.  But after that we had time for conversation, so I chatted with some Japanese students and added them on facebook!  Hopefully we’ll be able to hang out more later!  I met one girl who’d studied abroad in my home town!
After that Carolyn, another girl from my program, and I went to Book-Off, the used book store I referred to earlier.  Apparently it’s organized by publisher, and then from there title or author or something because I couldn’t figure it out at all!! Carolyn found some stuff she wanted, but I basically gave up and resolved to try again later.

On Thursday, I have Ikebana (flower arranging).  I was worried it would be boring, but I really like it!  Somehow (don’t ask, don’t judge me) it didn’t occur to me that we would be working with real flowers (I guess I couldn’t imagine them just giving them to us without us having to pay for them so I assumed whatever supplies we were using must be reusable, even though I know that makes no sense with flower arranging!) so I was really excited when I came into the classroom and saw a bunch of newspaper wrapped flower bundles, sticking up from a couple buckets of water. 
We unwrapped them and, SUNFLOWERS!!
I love sunflowers. Just seeing them makes me incredibly happy.  I had a stupid grin on my face the entire class.  The grin on my face got even stupider when I found out we could take the flowers home!  Even stupider when I said “I just really love sunflowers,” and two of my classmates said “Do you want mine?”  Before long my bundle of two sunflowers and three tall leaves had become six sunflowers and nine leaves!  I ended up giving a few to another one of my classmates because really, that bundle was kind-of ridiculous.  But now there are sunflowers in our living room! ^0^

So how Ikebana works is there’s a basin of water, and in it there’s a block with a bunch of needles in it.  You stand up the flowers and leaves in some kind of basic style on the block of needles, trimming the stems and leaves as needed.  I think we’re learning a different form each week, but this time it was the standing form of whatever ikebana style we’re learning, where you have one straight-up-and-down “subject” (the tall leaf) and one “object” tilting away from it at a 45 degree angle (the sunflower).  From there you can fill things in as you like to make it look nice. 

Sunflowers!
Happiness!

Our teacher then went around and made little comments to each person on their design,  correcting their flower placements a bit to make it look more balanced. Or, to facilitate things like, for example, the two sunflowers having a better “conversation”.  I’m not even kidding.  Is everything in Japan just precious, or what?  I swear, I did not like cute girly things this much before I left the US.  I am going to be housewifey supreme when I get back.

On Fridays I have Japanese Culture: Language and Society, a course that sounds like it’s going to be absolutely fascinating!  We’re talking about sociolinguistics, basically.  How gender and status and all of that kind of stuff is communicated through different ways of speaking Japanese.  I’m really excited.
Our teacher sounds like she has a lot of unique life experiences that would encourage her to teach a class like this, too.  She was the same professor I had for Intermediate Translation (the class I’ve decided to drop, through no fault of her own) so I know from that class’s first day that she really wanted to become a simultaneous interpreter, so she’s very fluent in both English and Japanese.  She also was talking about, when she introduced herself, how the name she was using was her maiden name, but how that’s not the official name that’s on file with the government, and in her family’s registry, or whatever.
Apparently in Japan when you get married you can choose whichever last name you want, but 97% of Japanese choose the man’s last name.  In Japan this is even more fraught than it is in the US, because the way most people refer to each other is by last name.  So if you’re a woman, after you get married, the entire way people refer to you changes.  That would be incredibly strange.  It’s incredibly strange just to think about going from being Miss __ to Mrs. or Ms. ___, but it’s even stranger to imagine one day being Shannon and the next day being, I don’t know, Rachel or something.  Which is basically the equivalent of what happens to women in Japan.
Our teacher also talked about how she lives in Kobe, a part of the Kansai region, which is known for its peculiar dialect.  Kansai dialect often gets rendered as an American southern accent when anime gets dubbed into English.  It’s definitely not a “prestige” dialect here in Japan, by which I mean people are thought of as being folksy and rural or just plain strange, when compared to the “standard” dialect.  Apparently our teacher commutes from Kobe every day by bullet train.  She said there were many reasons for this, but didn’t elaborate on them.  She talked about teaching Japanese and wanting to make sure she spoke in the prestige “standard” Japanese, since she is a Japanese language teacher, and making an effort to “switch” her dialect while she was on the train every morning.
At any rate, she sounds like someone who’s done a lot of critical thinking about her country’s language background, certainly more so than I have about mine! I think she’ll have a fascinating perspective.

On Saturday I made plans to meet up with Carolyn and a couple of her friends at Sakae again.  They were doing a traditional crafts exhibition at Oasis 21, a kind-of outside part with lots of shops that’s attached to the bus terminal and subway station.  In typical me fashion I forgot my camera, so you can have a lot of crappy cell phone pictures.

There were a bunch of people selling and demonstrating handmade crafts and artwork.
I got to play a little bit of “Sakura Sakura” the Japanese national anthem, on a koto, a traditional Japanese stringed instrument.  I took a picture of Carolyn playing it but I think I deleted it by accident...!

After that we heard some loud voices so we meandered over to the front and center of the booths where there we thought a play or something was going on.  Turns out, it was a boy band!

As in typical Japanese boy band fashion this involved a lot of dancing in unison.  It was pretty fun to watch.  They were called Boys and Men, which I also found kind-of funny.  At the end of their little set they went around and introduced themselves.  There were like four main guys, all wearing variations on the Japanese boys’ high school uniform, with their hair slicked back or spiked up.  Then there were probably eight or so younger guys in t-shirts who were backup dancers.  One of them was tiny!  He was adorable.  The cool thing was I could understand a lot of what they were saying when they were introducing themselves.  Like “I’m so and so and my hobbies are this!” “I’m so and so nice to meet you all!” “I’m so and so and I don’t really have any special comments.” (That kid got told off for that by the rest of the group, it was funny.) 

It was pretty cute, really.  They waved at some girls next to us and they squealed at them.
After the boy band was a fashion show! 

My favorite was this black and red dress.

After that, we, erm, went to the NHK (Japanese national television) store, which had a bunch of Studio Ghibli stuff that I’ll end up buying some of eventually, and Domo-kun (the TV network’s mascot) stuff, and the Jump store (Shonen Jump, a popular comic magazine--so, a bunch of anime and manga stuff) and the Pokemon Center (again).

This giant display was in the Jump store.

And I, erm, discovered gatchopan machines.  (AKA those machines you put coins in and they give you a toy in a little capsule.)  They’re much cooler in Japan, I promise...! but one of them ate the 200 yen I put in it (I wanted a Pokemon keychain!!!) so I learned my lesson, at least until I found a Moyashimon (another anime -- the weird one about the bacteria, Mom) phone strap machine later that evening.

After that we went back to Book-Off, I still failed at finding anything I wanted and resolved to come back later, then we did more shopping around the Sakae subway station.  Nagoya has an incredible amount of underground shopping.  To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, I’ll take some pictures of Nagoya Station next weekend, which is this sprawling craziness.  But here’s a small example.

This is at one end of Sakae station.  It’s a crystal fountain, which is a popular meeting place, especially when people are going on dates.

Everyone split up to go home for dinner, but Carolyn had already told her host family she’d be out late and wouldn’t need dinner, so I decided I’d stay and have dinner with her.  I finally tried kishimen, which is a noodle dish that is one of Nagoya’s specialties.  It’s like udon but with wider, flatter noodles.  It was really good!  Carolyn had curry udon, which I tried a bit of.  It was tasty.

After that we finally meandered our way out of the station, and since it was dark we decided it’d be an ideal time to ride the Sunshine Sakae ferris wheel! It’s attached to this mall.  Crappy cell phone pictures of the night sky ahoy! But it was too pretty to not.

Where we did Karaoke that one night

TV tower

The ferris wheel

We also did PuriKura (print club), the Japanese photobooth thing where you take pictures and get to doodle all over them.  Then they get printed out as stickers. 

Like this.

Then we each had a slice of cake and resolved to buy nothing but 100 yen onigiri (rice balls with various kinds of filling, they’re cheap and tasty) for lunch for the rest of the week.

This coming week is going to be busy! See you all later!