Listening to my host mom and host dad go back and forth at each other is basically the funniest thing ever.
I don’t know if they know that I understand them because I try to hide the fact that it makes me giggle so as not to be laughing at them or anything.
Like,
Okaasan: “Why didn’t you eat your shiso leaves? They taste good.”
Otousan: *mutters something about not wanting to and then tries to give them to my host mom*
Okaasan: I don’t need them! *Otousan keeps pushing the plate towards her* I don’t need them! I already ate all mine! I told you I don’t need them! I said I already ate everything. Here you go. *passes leaves back to Otousan*
Otousan: Fine. *eats one*
Okaasan: What about the other? Eat it with your salmon and it’s good.
Otousan: You got fish bones on it...!
Okaasan: Bonus. :P
They’re basically like that a lot.
It’s kind of adorable.
My host family isn’t typical of Japanese couples, though. For one, they’re both retired. For another, they have no kids, so they’ve gotten to reap the benefits of the “dual income, no kids” lifestyle. This includes some extensive-sounding world travel. The house we live in, while small by American standards, is perfectly adequate, if not excessive, for two people, and definitely large by Japanese standards for a house with only two people (well, now three) living in it. I think normally a family living in a house like this would have a couple of kids, and I’ve read that it’s only recently that upper middle class Japanese families have been able to get houses where kids each have their own bedrooms.
I didn’t fully realize how spoiled I was (though I had a vague idea from all that my host parents have talked about the traveling they’ve done, and from the size of the TV in our living room) until I went to my friend Alisha’s host family’s house today. Her family’s younger: a couple in their 30s or so with two little kids, a girl and a boy who are, I want to say, four an seven, respectively. I could easily be wrong about those ages. Today Alisha invited me over for lunch because her host dad was having some people over and he told her she could invite a friend and I was the one who lived closest. (Alisha and I take the same train in the morning and after school.)
I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do or how formal the get together would be so I brought a package of some greeting cards I’d brought from home to give because I know the Japanese way of doing things is to bring some kind of gift when you go over to someone else’s house as thanks for their hospitality.
I agonized about it for a while because I had no idea what was proper or if it should be something wrapped more nicely or less cheap-seeming. But I’m glad I didn’t buy anything else. Turns out, nobody else brought anything over. I got the impression that the young guy and young woman who were invited over were both family friends. The woman in particular acted like she’d been over before. The man worked with Alisha’s host dad, teaching English.
It was a little awkward, until Alisha’s little host brother roped us all into playing Mario Kart and told us about how good he was and how he unlocked all the characters and stages because he beat the Grand Prix. He also beat us all soundly, while Alisha’s little host sister flounced around with her Ariel light up wand saying there were four people! One, two, three, four people! And that the pink controller was good for me because I was a girl, and talked about my skirt, and did curtsies in hers, and told us all the family was going to Disney Land in the winter. Basically she was adorable.
At one point while Alisha and her host mom were fixing lunch I heard her telling the woman that I lived with a rich family, up in a wealthy area. That was a little awkward. She also apologized to me for the size of their house, which, really, didn’t seem that small, but I guess it was probably about the size of my host parents’ house and housed usually four, now five (with the addition of Alisha) people.
I felt a little bad because my host parents definitely don’t seem like snooty people at all, unlike when someone else was telling me about how she wanted to go to Book-Off (a huge used book, CD, DVD, and game store where you can buy manga for 105 yen -- excellent for we foreign geeky people) and one of her host parents said that it was “dirty.”
Alisha’s family also has different things that my host family doesn’t have, like air conditioning, multiple video game systems for the kids, a car GPS, and a newer computer. But I’m sure a lot of that is a reflection of age as much as class.
Class is an interesting thing in Japan. I don’t know much about it yet. But here in the US, all we really talk about are salarymen and office ladies, and occasionally Japanese athletes, idols, and celebrities.
If we read manga or watch anime the range of Japanese jobs we know about expands, but only a little. We talk about teachers and doctors, manga artists and writers, budding musicians and chefs and high school and college students working part time jobs.
We don’t talk about the janitors and street cleaners and garbage collectors, the 100 yen store clerks and parking garage attendants, the woman who, every week at around 8:30, changes the posters that hang from the ceiling of the subway.
And I’m embarrassed to admit that when I first saw some of those people I was surprised by their presence. Of course, someone had to do these jobs. For the Japanese streets and subway stations to be as clean as they’re fabled to be, someone has to clean them. That’s just obvious. Or at least it should be.
But it’s interesting how the view of itself a country exports changes outsiders’ perceptions of what exists in that country. There are some things that, without already knowing what to look for or experiencing them first hand, we as foreigners just don’t know exist in Japan. When I think about Japan, I certainly don’t think of struggles for women’s rights or gay rights, because challenging the status quo is frowned upon, so the people who do it don’t exactly make international news. I had never even thought about a feminist movement having happened in Japan until someone else mentioned it in conversation. With the international image of Japan as a tech-savvy nation of polite and helpful, though perhaps somewhat strange and camera-happy, people, a nation where friendly police officers are willing to help lost foreigners with directions and help old ladies cross the streets, it’s easy to forget about Japan’s reputation for police brutality and forcing confessions after holding people for indeterminate amounts of time, or the Rape of Nanking, or the troubled relations between the Japanese people and the native Ainu people.
I’m rambling, but I guess my point is a simple and obvious one. The information we get about a country, or anything really, is never bias-free. Working at a textbook warehouse this summer, I found so many fascinating-looking books I’d never heard of before, about topics I didn’t know anyone even wrote about, because I’d never seen them at my local book stores before. I’d never seen them at my public library. And that’s just within the US. So much of what we can know about foreign countries and cultures is limited by language barriers. Going back to the Japanese feminist movement example, I’ve never heard it talked about before, but there is apparently a lot about feminism written about in Japanese that just hasn’t been translated or distributed in English. From an English-speaking perspective, it’s as if the Japanese feminist movement never existed!
I have never felt so illiterate as in that conversation.
All of this is probably obvious, and probably should have been obvious to me, but some moments just crystallize things we think that we already know and understand. These are my thoughts as I’m having them, and that’s what a blog is for, right?
Showing posts with label host family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label host family. Show all posts
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Tuesday September 6
Man. There’s gotta be at least one of these days in everyone’s study abroad experience I guess. I just hope there aren’t too many more because I am so worn out right now I don’t even know what to do with myself. It’s only 6:20 and I’m ready for sleep. I think it’s the stress.
It’s not really “culture shock” per say that I’m experiencing right now so much as it’s “big city shock” and “being in a place where I don’t really know anybody” shock. I think I’d be having the same feelings if I were studying in, say, New York City, or somewhere like that.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not unhappy, really. I really like my host family, particularly my host mom. I’m just getting used to things.
Today was my second day commuting to class by myself. I guess because I thought I knew what I was doing I got over confident? Not sure.
Well, it all started when I woke up, probably at some point in the middle of the night, and noticed that my phone only had two bars of battery left. I didn’t think too much of it. This morning when I was leaving the house, I checked to see if I had everything. See, Okaasan and I were going to the city hall today to get my Alien Registration Card, the proof that I’m allowed to be in this country for 4 months. So I needed to bring my passport, and I needed to be prepared to meet my host mom at a different JR train (Kasugai, for the Kasugai City city hall) station on the way home in the afternoon.
Anyway I had my passport and I had my phone and I had the packet I needed for school today to register for classes, so I was like “All right, I’m good.”
But as soon as I got down the hill to the train station I got a text from one of my friends and was going to reply to it, but then my phone battery died. I had a few extra minutes before my train so I thought about hurrying back up the hill and going to get --- what would I get? The phone charger? That wouldn’t really work. Besides, it’s a really long, steep hill. It takes about 10 minutes walking down, but up is an entirely different story.
So I decided what the heck, I’d just go to school. I didn’t want to be late after all. I ride the subway part of the way home with a friend from back home, Iris, anyway, I’d just borrow her phone and shoot off a quick text or call or something.
So I get to the train station, and I get on, this time going all the way to the last car like my host mom first suggested. She said if I did that it’d pull closer to the stairway I wanted to take so it was I good idea. Or something like that. But the last car was a handicap accessible one so it looked different! All the seats were in sets of 4 and 4 facing each other, instead of one line on each side of the car with handles in the middle! And, because this is Japan, the two rows of seats were all (for me) wayyyy to close to each other seeming. Personal space norms are different in Japan. People don’t really hug or touch or anything like that if they’re close, but strangers bump into each other and take up each other’s personal space all the time. It’s a small country, I guess.
Anyway so I got in that car and because it looked different I immediately freaked out that I’d gotten on an express train or something by accident. But it was okay. Thank god for English signage EVERYWHERE in the Japanese transportation system.
I arrived successfully at Ozone, my train stop, and there were stairs right in front of the exit of the car, so I was like “Huh? This doesn’t quite look familiar, but maybe it’s right...” I went down them and arrived, not at the station, but at the street. O_O! I “Sumimasen ga-ed” (すみませんが。。。is a pretty standard “Sorry excuse me I have some kind of problem/request” greeting) the station attendant saying “...Is this the way to the subway?” And he was like “Yeah, just go straight.”
So I did... and I saw no familiar signs or anything (I can actually read “subway” in kanji, unlike most other things -- in fact I even got confused later because I was looking for 地下鉄 and all I could see was SUBWAY in bigger font... fail.) I saw some business man looking guys waiting at the crosswalk so I was like “Sorry excuse me I think I’m a little lost...” and asked them if this was the way to the subway. And they were like “Uh...” and told me I needed to go a different way. Which actually made much more sense based on where I thought I might have messed up. (I think I might have misunderstood the station attendant’s definition of “go straight.”) They were really nice about it, one of them pulled out his smartphone an showed me the map and it looked like walking there was really far away. They were like “Where did you come form?” and I said “The J.R. station...” “And then you went straight...” I was like “Would it be better to go back to the station?” And they thought that was probably the case. So I told them I would and I thanked them and they told me to take care. They were really nice. As Masae said during our orientation (after someone gave us some free stuff out of nowhere) “Japanese hospitality, right?”
Thank goodness I have a ToiCa commuting pass swipe card thing, so I didn’t have to buy another ticket to get back through the gate so I could walk back up to the platform and then all the way down to the opposite end of it to the exit I was supposed to have taken. 北口、Shannon. 北口 (north exit). If it’s not a loooong walk through the station, you’re doing it wrong.
The silver lining at the end of all this is I was late, so I ran into Alisha, another girl from my study abroad program! Apparently she’s been taking the same train and subway route as me, but leaving later. We’re going to take the same train together starting tomorrow, because she said she wanted to be a little early. We don’t have anything for orientation until 9:30, and normal classes don’t start until 9:20, but if I take the route I’ve been taking I get to campus around 9:00 or 9:10 if I don’t stop anywhere. There’re stores in the station, and a convenience store on the way to campus, though, so it’s nice to know I can slow down a bit if I need to.
So then we arrive and campus and that was all okay. Did our orientation stuff, I was tired, it was boring, but that’s okay, it’s just orientation.
At lunch I asked for a nearby bank where I could change travelers checks to yen, and got directions to one by Yagoto station, one stop away from the one I get off for school. I was like “All right this’ll be easy to find!” but I decided I’d better get something to eat first just in case I ran out of time.
So I went to lunch and sat with some people, one girl from Australia, one from Indiana, one from Germany, and one from Minnesota who’s from my program. And we were talking about various things, and somehow we got onto the subject of sperm or egg donor ship and adoption, and, in one girl’s case, how she really wanted to adopt an Asian baby because they’re the cutest. After a while of nodding and giggling along I was like “Man I’m such a fun sucker but the sociologist in me can’t help but think this is super problematic!!” and then rambled off about how adoption is so messy culturally especially adoption across races because caucasian and Asian babies are seen as so much more desirable, when there are many African American kids in the US who none of these affluent white couples want to adopt, and yet that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone should just go adopt African American kids because the fact of the matter is no matter how you raise somebody African American kids, particularly young men get perceived a certain way by society and white parents, having not experienced that, can’t prepare their kids for that experience so is that really better? Adoption is so messy...! Hahaha ... ha...
And everyone was kind of like “...” But they eventually shook it off a bit.
And went on to talk about making out with Asian boys again.
Man I’m so glad I have other people from my school here. I think that would be the real culture shock, if there was nobody who’d had that same experience as me here with me.
So anyway, at lunch time I didn’t make it to the bank, but I figured “okay I’ll just go later.” I didn’t have to leave for the city hall until 3:40 at the latest so it was probably fine.
Went to another orientation session, and then set off for the bank.
My plan was this:
-Iris had to buy her commuter pass at Yagoto Nisseki, so while she was doing that, me and the other people who needed to cash travelers checks would go to Yagoto, the next station over and find that bank.
-I’d buy my ticket for the one stop, come back to Yagoto Nisseki, get off the train, and get back on using my Manaca (subway commuter pass)
-Then together Iris and I would take the train back to Ozone and I could use her phone and call Okaasan and tell her what time train I was on.
Pretty could plan, right?
Well, you know what they say about best laid plans.
Let’s start with what *didn’t* go wrong.
We did actually end up getting money.
And I eventually got everywhere okay.
Okay so we went to the station and got off and went outside to find the bank. Found it. Nearly walked into automatic glass doors (you have to stand a lot closer to get them to open here than in the US... so I figured that was the problem, okay?!) because the bank was closed! Banks in Japan close at 3:00 PM apparently. And they apparently open late, too! What’s up with that? What’s a girl gonna do when she needs a 銀行？！ (ginkou = bank)
So we were like... “Well we’ll try a post office since we already bought tickets over here..?” And walked up the way we thought the sign pointed us. Found another bank instead, but it had ATMs so we tried that but it only took Japanese cards. Some bank people were still there so we asked but they were like “We can’t do it now because it’s just after 3:00 so we’re closing...”
Then we found the *real* way to the post office and asked if they could cash traveler’s checks.
They couldn’t, but there was an international ATM in the entranceway! YAY CASH = GOT
I’m really glad I decided to open a bank account after all. If this is what the finding cash process is like, it just seems unnecessarily difficult. (Besides, to open a bank account you needed to order an inkan, or name seal, to stamp official documents, so I got to get my name put into kanji and a cool souvenir! Nifty, huh?)
Anyway so from there I bought my ticket back to Yagoto Nisseki. I got on the train, saw Iris still waiting for me but she just got on the train with me instead of letting me get out like I planned. I was like “...okay whatever, I’ll just swipe out with my Manaca card on the way out or do fare adjustment or whatever... “ I didn’t really know how any of that worked but I figured I could try.
At this point I tried to call my host mom. But I realized I didn’t have her number because it was in my phone... which was dead, which was the problem to begin with. But I had this card she’d given me that had their address on it...! ...but it only had the home phone. My host dad picked up and was like “okay” but sounded very confused as to why I would be calling. And it was on the train so it was loud and I probably wasn’t really supposed to be making a phone call anyway.
I figured I’d call again when I got to Ozone, where I change to the JR train. So Iris and I got off the train. But then I realized I dropped my ticket somewhere! I couldn’t find it anywhere...! I tried to swipe out with my commuter pass and it wouldn’t let me! ;_;
I talked to the station attendant and explained what happened and he was like “oh okay, go ahead.” He was very understanding, so that was good.
Then, as Iris and I were about to separate I tried to call my family again. Luckily, I remembered that on the note where Okaasan had written the train directions the other day she’d also jotted down her cell phone number! I called it... And got a wrong number. I asked if it was [name], and I thought the person (sounded like a man! Not like my host mom!) said yes, but then he was finally like “You have the wrong number.” Damn Japanese politeness. In America we would have been like “Nope. Bye.” from the word go!
Anyway I realized I dialed it wrong, called again, left a message saying where I was (because my host mom was driving and didn’t pick up the phone), and proceeded to get nervous until I got to Kasugai. How would I know what exit to use?!!!! What if we wandered around each other in circles and never connected because my phone was dead?!!!
Luckily from the train I saw my host mom standing right at the gate. She saw me at the train door and waved. I have never been so relieved to see that woman. I was like “今日全部まちがえた。。。！けいたいも電車も！” (Today I messed up everything! The cell phone and the train...!) She just told me “It’s an experience!”
How motherly.
We went to the city hall and got my Japan National Health Insurance and Alien Registration Card taken care of. OH SHOOT I FORGOT SOMETHING I NEED FOR THE BANK...! Some kind of certificate I was supposed to ask for. I was so relieved to just be there that I completely forgot everything else. ...I wonder if I can get it when we come pick up the card.... I can’t really go by myself because it’s a really far drive away from the station.
Blah.
It’s that kind of day.
I’m managing to stay pretty positive about it, though. This kind of thing is inevitable. At least right now I don’t have homework or anything.
My host mom is funny. On the way home we started playing some kind of “マンション (mansion) orアパート (apaato)？” game. It started because my host mom likes to point out funny differences between Japanese and English she thinks I might not know. She said “Did you that in Japanese a building like that [a tall multi-story apartment building] is called a mansion?” I said yeah I’d heard that and chuckled. She was like “Haha you laughed I knew you would! International students always laugh. ‘A mansion, that?’” I was like, “Then, if that’s a mansion, what’s an apaato [the word I’d learned in class for ‘apartment’]?” My host mom explained that in an apartment, everyone rents their room(s) but in a mansion people own their own room(s). Then she went around saying “See that? That’s a mansion! That? That’s an apartment building!” ...They looked the same to me. It went on some more. “Mansion!” “Apartment!” I was finally like “...How do you know which is which...?”
It wasn’t as mysterious as I thought it would be, haha. My host mom admitted she knew because a lot of the apartments were controlled by different companies, and she’d seen a lot of the fliers!
I think the mansions seem to be a bit taller and nicer looking, though. The apartments look a bit dirtier. At least around this area.
We played the “Mansion/apartment” game a bit more, with Okaasan finally admitting there was one she didn’t know and she’d “have to go look at more fliers later.”
Oh Okaasan, you and your shumi (hobbies).
Wow, this blog post is way too long. Stopping now.
It’s not really “culture shock” per say that I’m experiencing right now so much as it’s “big city shock” and “being in a place where I don’t really know anybody” shock. I think I’d be having the same feelings if I were studying in, say, New York City, or somewhere like that.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not unhappy, really. I really like my host family, particularly my host mom. I’m just getting used to things.
Today was my second day commuting to class by myself. I guess because I thought I knew what I was doing I got over confident? Not sure.
Well, it all started when I woke up, probably at some point in the middle of the night, and noticed that my phone only had two bars of battery left. I didn’t think too much of it. This morning when I was leaving the house, I checked to see if I had everything. See, Okaasan and I were going to the city hall today to get my Alien Registration Card, the proof that I’m allowed to be in this country for 4 months. So I needed to bring my passport, and I needed to be prepared to meet my host mom at a different JR train (Kasugai, for the Kasugai City city hall) station on the way home in the afternoon.
Anyway I had my passport and I had my phone and I had the packet I needed for school today to register for classes, so I was like “All right, I’m good.”
But as soon as I got down the hill to the train station I got a text from one of my friends and was going to reply to it, but then my phone battery died. I had a few extra minutes before my train so I thought about hurrying back up the hill and going to get --- what would I get? The phone charger? That wouldn’t really work. Besides, it’s a really long, steep hill. It takes about 10 minutes walking down, but up is an entirely different story.
So I decided what the heck, I’d just go to school. I didn’t want to be late after all. I ride the subway part of the way home with a friend from back home, Iris, anyway, I’d just borrow her phone and shoot off a quick text or call or something.
So I get to the train station, and I get on, this time going all the way to the last car like my host mom first suggested. She said if I did that it’d pull closer to the stairway I wanted to take so it was I good idea. Or something like that. But the last car was a handicap accessible one so it looked different! All the seats were in sets of 4 and 4 facing each other, instead of one line on each side of the car with handles in the middle! And, because this is Japan, the two rows of seats were all (for me) wayyyy to close to each other seeming. Personal space norms are different in Japan. People don’t really hug or touch or anything like that if they’re close, but strangers bump into each other and take up each other’s personal space all the time. It’s a small country, I guess.
Anyway so I got in that car and because it looked different I immediately freaked out that I’d gotten on an express train or something by accident. But it was okay. Thank god for English signage EVERYWHERE in the Japanese transportation system.
I arrived successfully at Ozone, my train stop, and there were stairs right in front of the exit of the car, so I was like “Huh? This doesn’t quite look familiar, but maybe it’s right...” I went down them and arrived, not at the station, but at the street. O_O! I “Sumimasen ga-ed” (すみませんが。。。is a pretty standard “Sorry excuse me I have some kind of problem/request” greeting) the station attendant saying “...Is this the way to the subway?” And he was like “Yeah, just go straight.”
So I did... and I saw no familiar signs or anything (I can actually read “subway” in kanji, unlike most other things -- in fact I even got confused later because I was looking for 地下鉄 and all I could see was SUBWAY in bigger font... fail.) I saw some business man looking guys waiting at the crosswalk so I was like “Sorry excuse me I think I’m a little lost...” and asked them if this was the way to the subway. And they were like “Uh...” and told me I needed to go a different way. Which actually made much more sense based on where I thought I might have messed up. (I think I might have misunderstood the station attendant’s definition of “go straight.”) They were really nice about it, one of them pulled out his smartphone an showed me the map and it looked like walking there was really far away. They were like “Where did you come form?” and I said “The J.R. station...” “And then you went straight...” I was like “Would it be better to go back to the station?” And they thought that was probably the case. So I told them I would and I thanked them and they told me to take care. They were really nice. As Masae said during our orientation (after someone gave us some free stuff out of nowhere) “Japanese hospitality, right?”
Thank goodness I have a ToiCa commuting pass swipe card thing, so I didn’t have to buy another ticket to get back through the gate so I could walk back up to the platform and then all the way down to the opposite end of it to the exit I was supposed to have taken. 北口、Shannon. 北口 (north exit). If it’s not a loooong walk through the station, you’re doing it wrong.
The silver lining at the end of all this is I was late, so I ran into Alisha, another girl from my study abroad program! Apparently she’s been taking the same train and subway route as me, but leaving later. We’re going to take the same train together starting tomorrow, because she said she wanted to be a little early. We don’t have anything for orientation until 9:30, and normal classes don’t start until 9:20, but if I take the route I’ve been taking I get to campus around 9:00 or 9:10 if I don’t stop anywhere. There’re stores in the station, and a convenience store on the way to campus, though, so it’s nice to know I can slow down a bit if I need to.
So then we arrive and campus and that was all okay. Did our orientation stuff, I was tired, it was boring, but that’s okay, it’s just orientation.
At lunch I asked for a nearby bank where I could change travelers checks to yen, and got directions to one by Yagoto station, one stop away from the one I get off for school. I was like “All right this’ll be easy to find!” but I decided I’d better get something to eat first just in case I ran out of time.
So I went to lunch and sat with some people, one girl from Australia, one from Indiana, one from Germany, and one from Minnesota who’s from my program. And we were talking about various things, and somehow we got onto the subject of sperm or egg donor ship and adoption, and, in one girl’s case, how she really wanted to adopt an Asian baby because they’re the cutest. After a while of nodding and giggling along I was like “Man I’m such a fun sucker but the sociologist in me can’t help but think this is super problematic!!” and then rambled off about how adoption is so messy culturally especially adoption across races because caucasian and Asian babies are seen as so much more desirable, when there are many African American kids in the US who none of these affluent white couples want to adopt, and yet that doesn’t necessarily mean everyone should just go adopt African American kids because the fact of the matter is no matter how you raise somebody African American kids, particularly young men get perceived a certain way by society and white parents, having not experienced that, can’t prepare their kids for that experience so is that really better? Adoption is so messy...! Hahaha ... ha...
And everyone was kind of like “...” But they eventually shook it off a bit.
And went on to talk about making out with Asian boys again.
Man I’m so glad I have other people from my school here. I think that would be the real culture shock, if there was nobody who’d had that same experience as me here with me.
So anyway, at lunch time I didn’t make it to the bank, but I figured “okay I’ll just go later.” I didn’t have to leave for the city hall until 3:40 at the latest so it was probably fine.
Went to another orientation session, and then set off for the bank.
My plan was this:
-Iris had to buy her commuter pass at Yagoto Nisseki, so while she was doing that, me and the other people who needed to cash travelers checks would go to Yagoto, the next station over and find that bank.
-I’d buy my ticket for the one stop, come back to Yagoto Nisseki, get off the train, and get back on using my Manaca (subway commuter pass)
-Then together Iris and I would take the train back to Ozone and I could use her phone and call Okaasan and tell her what time train I was on.
Pretty could plan, right?
Well, you know what they say about best laid plans.
Let’s start with what *didn’t* go wrong.
We did actually end up getting money.
And I eventually got everywhere okay.
Okay so we went to the station and got off and went outside to find the bank. Found it. Nearly walked into automatic glass doors (you have to stand a lot closer to get them to open here than in the US... so I figured that was the problem, okay?!) because the bank was closed! Banks in Japan close at 3:00 PM apparently. And they apparently open late, too! What’s up with that? What’s a girl gonna do when she needs a 銀行？！ (ginkou = bank)
So we were like... “Well we’ll try a post office since we already bought tickets over here..?” And walked up the way we thought the sign pointed us. Found another bank instead, but it had ATMs so we tried that but it only took Japanese cards. Some bank people were still there so we asked but they were like “We can’t do it now because it’s just after 3:00 so we’re closing...”
Then we found the *real* way to the post office and asked if they could cash traveler’s checks.
They couldn’t, but there was an international ATM in the entranceway! YAY CASH = GOT
I’m really glad I decided to open a bank account after all. If this is what the finding cash process is like, it just seems unnecessarily difficult. (Besides, to open a bank account you needed to order an inkan, or name seal, to stamp official documents, so I got to get my name put into kanji and a cool souvenir! Nifty, huh?)
Anyway so from there I bought my ticket back to Yagoto Nisseki. I got on the train, saw Iris still waiting for me but she just got on the train with me instead of letting me get out like I planned. I was like “...okay whatever, I’ll just swipe out with my Manaca card on the way out or do fare adjustment or whatever... “ I didn’t really know how any of that worked but I figured I could try.
At this point I tried to call my host mom. But I realized I didn’t have her number because it was in my phone... which was dead, which was the problem to begin with. But I had this card she’d given me that had their address on it...! ...but it only had the home phone. My host dad picked up and was like “okay” but sounded very confused as to why I would be calling. And it was on the train so it was loud and I probably wasn’t really supposed to be making a phone call anyway.
I figured I’d call again when I got to Ozone, where I change to the JR train. So Iris and I got off the train. But then I realized I dropped my ticket somewhere! I couldn’t find it anywhere...! I tried to swipe out with my commuter pass and it wouldn’t let me! ;_;
I talked to the station attendant and explained what happened and he was like “oh okay, go ahead.” He was very understanding, so that was good.
Then, as Iris and I were about to separate I tried to call my family again. Luckily, I remembered that on the note where Okaasan had written the train directions the other day she’d also jotted down her cell phone number! I called it... And got a wrong number. I asked if it was [name], and I thought the person (sounded like a man! Not like my host mom!) said yes, but then he was finally like “You have the wrong number.” Damn Japanese politeness. In America we would have been like “Nope. Bye.” from the word go!
Anyway I realized I dialed it wrong, called again, left a message saying where I was (because my host mom was driving and didn’t pick up the phone), and proceeded to get nervous until I got to Kasugai. How would I know what exit to use?!!!! What if we wandered around each other in circles and never connected because my phone was dead?!!!
Luckily from the train I saw my host mom standing right at the gate. She saw me at the train door and waved. I have never been so relieved to see that woman. I was like “今日全部まちがえた。。。！けいたいも電車も！” (Today I messed up everything! The cell phone and the train...!) She just told me “It’s an experience!”
How motherly.
We went to the city hall and got my Japan National Health Insurance and Alien Registration Card taken care of. OH SHOOT I FORGOT SOMETHING I NEED FOR THE BANK...! Some kind of certificate I was supposed to ask for. I was so relieved to just be there that I completely forgot everything else. ...I wonder if I can get it when we come pick up the card.... I can’t really go by myself because it’s a really far drive away from the station.
Blah.
It’s that kind of day.
I’m managing to stay pretty positive about it, though. This kind of thing is inevitable. At least right now I don’t have homework or anything.
My host mom is funny. On the way home we started playing some kind of “マンション (mansion) orアパート (apaato)？” game. It started because my host mom likes to point out funny differences between Japanese and English she thinks I might not know. She said “Did you that in Japanese a building like that [a tall multi-story apartment building] is called a mansion?” I said yeah I’d heard that and chuckled. She was like “Haha you laughed I knew you would! International students always laugh. ‘A mansion, that?’” I was like, “Then, if that’s a mansion, what’s an apaato [the word I’d learned in class for ‘apartment’]?” My host mom explained that in an apartment, everyone rents their room(s) but in a mansion people own their own room(s). Then she went around saying “See that? That’s a mansion! That? That’s an apartment building!” ...They looked the same to me. It went on some more. “Mansion!” “Apartment!” I was finally like “...How do you know which is which...?”
It wasn’t as mysterious as I thought it would be, haha. My host mom admitted she knew because a lot of the apartments were controlled by different companies, and she’d seen a lot of the fliers!
I think the mansions seem to be a bit taller and nicer looking, though. The apartments look a bit dirtier. At least around this area.
We played the “Mansion/apartment” game a bit more, with Okaasan finally admitting there was one she didn’t know and she’d “have to go look at more fliers later.”
Oh Okaasan, you and your shumi (hobbies).
Wow, this blog post is way too long. Stopping now.
September 3
My host mom is basically the nicest person ever.
I AM SO TIRED right now, though. I totally understand what Samy was talking about now when she said her first days in Switzerland she just slept all the time. Granted, I woke up at 6:30 after going to bed at 10:30, but I’m more tired than even that really accounts for.
I’ve been speaking in pretty much only Japanese since about 1:00 and it’s 6:20 now. Soon it’s dinner time. My host mom keeps coming up and asking if I’m okay with this and that and I’m like “Seriously, I’m okay. I like Japanese food!” I know she’s making something with miso and with rice because I saw her making rice and she asked me if miso paste was okay. I’m getting really hungry~! I wonder what it’ll be. :)
Okay, back to the beginning.
This morning we checked out of our ryokan in Inuyama and got on a charter bus to Nagoya. Because of the typhoon there was a strong wind warning in place, but we still were able to leave our ryokan at 9 like we’d planned. The wind didn’t seem that strong... until we watched it blow a sign off of some building and across the highway! It narrowly missed our bus. After that the drive went without incident. We arrived at Nanzan University, at the international studies building, and sat in a classroom to wait for people’s host families and for students living in the dorms to arrive and take us to our homes. Lots of people were delayed because of the strong wind warning. It causes classes to be cancelled and public transport to be stopped or delayed. So, we were in this classroom from about 10 to 1. It was nice to get a chance to talk with everyone, and to get everyone’s cell phone numbers, since we’d all go our separate ways soon.
Everyone’s host families arrived before mine -- my host mom couldn’t get there until 1. So the people who were left were me, Satoshi and Masae (our program coordinators), and 5 students living in dorms that were far away. After I got picked up, Satoshi and Masae would take them to their dorms by taxi, since the high wind warning prevented students from those dorms from coming and picking them up.
We walked down the street to a convenience store and grabbed some lunch, and then there was more sitting around and chatting about what clubs we’d join and stuff.
I might end up joining the fencing club! It only meets once a week, Sunday mornings, and you don’t have to go to all the meetings or have any equipment or anything.
Anyway at one my host mom arrived. She’s basically the cutest thing ever. She’s like in her fifties, almost sixty, but in the fashion of (it seems like) all Japanese people she looks really young. So does my host dad, but he’s like 65! They’re both retired. Apparently I’m the 10th international student their family has hosted. Wow. She walked me from Nanzan to the subway station, making sure to stop me to turn me around once we got there, point the direction we’d came from, and check to see if I remembered how to get back to Nanzan from there.
We took the subway to the stop where we transfer to the JR train. At that stop she set me up so I could buy a subway card, so that I wouldn’t have to pay fare each time and could just swipe my card. She even set it up so that the card covered not only from Ozone (where I transfer from JR to subway) to Yagato Nisseki (the stations I’d take to school), but also from Yagato Nisseki to Sakae, the popular student district. She said I’d be going there a lot if I went and hung out with friends, so this way it was cheaper.
We took the JR train from Ozone to ... Kozonji was I think the name of my station. I’ll figure it out soon...!
On the train we talked about a bunch of stuff, like how many students she’d hosted, where they were from, places she’d been in America, how I was going to Tokyo to visit Shaun in December, and how right now my Japanese was very pretty since I’ve only met teachers, but once I start going to Nanzan classes and joining clubs and making friends with Japanese students it would get more slang. She said that some of the guys at Nanzan like to tell exchange students, especially those who are in lower levels of Japanese, dirty slang and then say it means some other, everyday thing. She said to be careful and research any slang someone teaches me! Hahahaha.
Once we got to the station by the house, she helped me buy a JR swipe card, too.
I almost wish we hadn’t talked so much because I paid no attention to how long the whole train commute takes.
Then we met my host dad at their car at the train station. He didn’t really talk to me much, but I was also being really quiet because I was a little overwhelmed.
Their car was super adorable. Inside it had lacy seat covers, and Winnie the Pooh floor mats, and some Snoopy stuff too. It must be my host mom’s car. She seems to really like Snoopy.
We got home, I unpacked, gave them my gift, and then my host mom sat me down and started explaining stuff to me. She’s so nice, seriously. Their only rule is that I call them and let them know my schedule if I’m going to miss dinner or be home late or something, and that I make sure if I call them if I’m taking the train home when it’s dark, no matter how late it is, so that they can pick me up from the station. It’s a 15 minute walk from the station to home, and they don’t want me doing it in the dark.
I don’t have a curfew or anything “because I’m an adult.” She did say she’d worry if I don’t communicate, but that if I do miss the last train and tell her I’m not coming home until the morning just to be careful because there are some not safe places in Nagoya.
Seriously, my host mom sat me down and said that while studying is important I’m in Japan to have all kinds of experiences, and that studying was one experience and one way of learning about Japan, but Japan is full of Japanese people (「日本人ばっかり」って）so just taking the train is studying, so is going on trips, meeting friends, going out for food, getting lost, and even going out drinking and drinking too much and throwing up. She then told me a story about another student she’d hosted who called her, said she wasn’t able to get the last train because she was with a friend who was throwing up. My host mom went to pick them up and it was actually the student who was throwing up and her friend had texted for her. My host mom had figured this was what had actually happened, drove all the way to Nagoya to pick her up, and even brought a plastic bag for her to throw up.
Not that I’m planning on doing this, Mom, don’t worry!
She then talked about how I need to go to izakaya (Japanese bars, with food, kinda like the Japanese version of a pub) and talked about 飲み放題 (nomi houdai -- all-you-can-drink).
(Okay, ‘My host mom’ is getting cumbersome. I’m going to call her “Okaa-san” because that’s what I call her, mother, in Japanese.)
After warning me that Japanese hotels charge per person and not per room (so even in a twin room you get charged double the room price for two people), and I explained that since Shaun was staying with a host family in Tokyo so I found a cheap hostel to stay at, Okaasan said that if you come visit me here in Nagoya, Shaun, you are more than welcome to come stay with us. There’s a tatami room, or there’s my room, and either one is okay. 早く来てね！(come soon!)
We talked a bit more, about Amanda and how she dated a guy here and it was cute. We ate some yummy eclairs! And then she said there was a Softbank (Japanese phone company) cell phone in the desk, the one Amanda used last year, that I could use. I explained that I already had a rental Japanese cell phone and that I had researched the Softbank phones but I went with Piccell like the program recommended because I wasn’t sure whether I could get one without my alien registration card yet. She said she would have done the same thing if she were me. But we compared rates and the Softbank phone is much cheaper. It’s seriously 9 yen a minute, and you can get unlimited messaging for 300 yen a month. Whereas the Piccell phone is like 63 yen a minute with a 20 yen connection fee or something. I also have noticed I have like half a bar of service on my Piccell phone here. And that’s only in my room. When I was in the kitchen I didn’t have any service at all. I was like “Well this is a raw deal.”
I just need to get a phone card for 3000 yen and then I can use it. Right now it can receive calls but not make them, until I input another card. Even if it wasn’t a cooler phone (which it totally is) I’d want to switch anyway just because I don’t get service here and I can’t not get service at my home.
My family has provided me with so much! I have my own room, and it’s a pretty sizeable room. And my own bathroom (just a toilet and sink up here -- we all share the shower/bath). They gave me slippers, and I have a whole drawer full of bath towels I can use. Buying towels in Japan was good advice -- I now have these towels taking up space that I’m not using. Same with the slippers. But the ones I brought are warmer so I might want to use them in the winter.
That reminds me. No air conditioning in this house. That’s the one thing. I’ve got a very nice fan in this room, though! It’ll be better once I can open the window, too. Okaasan said not to do it today because of the typhoon, but I think the strong winds have mostly stopped by now. It sounds calm outside.
Still, hopefully the heat won’t last very long... Hopefully...
Guys Okaasan’s even doing my laundry for me. I told her I could definitely do it, but she said that when school started up I’d have homework and be too busy. “If I had a job, well then...” she said, kind-of winking at me. Then said that since she didn’t have a job she didn’t mind doing it.
We had dinner and Okaasan made rice, miso katsu, some salad, eggplant with bonito flakes on top, and these kind of salty tomatoes with egg. It was all very tasty... except for the tomatoes. She told me to tell her if there was anything I couldn’t eat so she wouldn’t make it again, and I felt rude doing it, but I did. I tried putting the tomatoes on the rice and it helped a bit, but they were just too salty and the flavor was too strong, the way canned tomatoes sometimes are (maybe they’d been marinated in something). Maybe it’s because I’m tired and not relaxed into my surroundings yet, but my stomach just couldn’t really handle it.
She offered me another eclair but I was so full...! Now I kinda wish I’d taken it, haha.
Tomorrow’s Sunday and I don’t have any orientation or anything until Monday (which is the placement test!) so I was assured that I can, and should, sleep as much as I want.
Okaa-san keeps making fun of me for saying “はい” (yes, but in Japan it gets used a lot more than just as ‘yes’ - gotcha, uh-huh, roger, I’m here!, I understand, etc.) to everything. Like she’s explaining something, like where drinks are in the fridge or how to use the shower and I’m just like “はい。はい。はい。はい。” Like “uh-huh.” So she was like “はい〜” at me in a kind-of silly voice. Okay okay it’ll get better when my Japanese gets better all right stop teasing.
But I like the teasing, really. If they were serious and strict I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. This way it’s more comfortable. I feel like they’re treating me like actually part of the family and not so much of this “うち／そと inside the family/outside the family” boundary stuff. That’s what I was really worried about -- people being really cold to me.
Otousan (father) and Okaasan had some kind of meeting with friends this evening so they’ve both stepped out for an hour or so.
In the meantime, now that it’s 8, it seems like a less ridiculous time to go to sleep. I’m gonna shower and then see how I feel.
おやすみ！(good night!)
I AM SO TIRED right now, though. I totally understand what Samy was talking about now when she said her first days in Switzerland she just slept all the time. Granted, I woke up at 6:30 after going to bed at 10:30, but I’m more tired than even that really accounts for.
I’ve been speaking in pretty much only Japanese since about 1:00 and it’s 6:20 now. Soon it’s dinner time. My host mom keeps coming up and asking if I’m okay with this and that and I’m like “Seriously, I’m okay. I like Japanese food!” I know she’s making something with miso and with rice because I saw her making rice and she asked me if miso paste was okay. I’m getting really hungry~! I wonder what it’ll be. :)
Okay, back to the beginning.
This morning we checked out of our ryokan in Inuyama and got on a charter bus to Nagoya. Because of the typhoon there was a strong wind warning in place, but we still were able to leave our ryokan at 9 like we’d planned. The wind didn’t seem that strong... until we watched it blow a sign off of some building and across the highway! It narrowly missed our bus. After that the drive went without incident. We arrived at Nanzan University, at the international studies building, and sat in a classroom to wait for people’s host families and for students living in the dorms to arrive and take us to our homes. Lots of people were delayed because of the strong wind warning. It causes classes to be cancelled and public transport to be stopped or delayed. So, we were in this classroom from about 10 to 1. It was nice to get a chance to talk with everyone, and to get everyone’s cell phone numbers, since we’d all go our separate ways soon.
Everyone’s host families arrived before mine -- my host mom couldn’t get there until 1. So the people who were left were me, Satoshi and Masae (our program coordinators), and 5 students living in dorms that were far away. After I got picked up, Satoshi and Masae would take them to their dorms by taxi, since the high wind warning prevented students from those dorms from coming and picking them up.
We walked down the street to a convenience store and grabbed some lunch, and then there was more sitting around and chatting about what clubs we’d join and stuff.
I might end up joining the fencing club! It only meets once a week, Sunday mornings, and you don’t have to go to all the meetings or have any equipment or anything.
Anyway at one my host mom arrived. She’s basically the cutest thing ever. She’s like in her fifties, almost sixty, but in the fashion of (it seems like) all Japanese people she looks really young. So does my host dad, but he’s like 65! They’re both retired. Apparently I’m the 10th international student their family has hosted. Wow. She walked me from Nanzan to the subway station, making sure to stop me to turn me around once we got there, point the direction we’d came from, and check to see if I remembered how to get back to Nanzan from there.
We took the subway to the stop where we transfer to the JR train. At that stop she set me up so I could buy a subway card, so that I wouldn’t have to pay fare each time and could just swipe my card. She even set it up so that the card covered not only from Ozone (where I transfer from JR to subway) to Yagato Nisseki (the stations I’d take to school), but also from Yagato Nisseki to Sakae, the popular student district. She said I’d be going there a lot if I went and hung out with friends, so this way it was cheaper.
We took the JR train from Ozone to ... Kozonji was I think the name of my station. I’ll figure it out soon...!
On the train we talked about a bunch of stuff, like how many students she’d hosted, where they were from, places she’d been in America, how I was going to Tokyo to visit Shaun in December, and how right now my Japanese was very pretty since I’ve only met teachers, but once I start going to Nanzan classes and joining clubs and making friends with Japanese students it would get more slang. She said that some of the guys at Nanzan like to tell exchange students, especially those who are in lower levels of Japanese, dirty slang and then say it means some other, everyday thing. She said to be careful and research any slang someone teaches me! Hahahaha.
Once we got to the station by the house, she helped me buy a JR swipe card, too.
I almost wish we hadn’t talked so much because I paid no attention to how long the whole train commute takes.
Then we met my host dad at their car at the train station. He didn’t really talk to me much, but I was also being really quiet because I was a little overwhelmed.
Their car was super adorable. Inside it had lacy seat covers, and Winnie the Pooh floor mats, and some Snoopy stuff too. It must be my host mom’s car. She seems to really like Snoopy.
We got home, I unpacked, gave them my gift, and then my host mom sat me down and started explaining stuff to me. She’s so nice, seriously. Their only rule is that I call them and let them know my schedule if I’m going to miss dinner or be home late or something, and that I make sure if I call them if I’m taking the train home when it’s dark, no matter how late it is, so that they can pick me up from the station. It’s a 15 minute walk from the station to home, and they don’t want me doing it in the dark.
I don’t have a curfew or anything “because I’m an adult.” She did say she’d worry if I don’t communicate, but that if I do miss the last train and tell her I’m not coming home until the morning just to be careful because there are some not safe places in Nagoya.
Seriously, my host mom sat me down and said that while studying is important I’m in Japan to have all kinds of experiences, and that studying was one experience and one way of learning about Japan, but Japan is full of Japanese people (「日本人ばっかり」って）so just taking the train is studying, so is going on trips, meeting friends, going out for food, getting lost, and even going out drinking and drinking too much and throwing up. She then told me a story about another student she’d hosted who called her, said she wasn’t able to get the last train because she was with a friend who was throwing up. My host mom went to pick them up and it was actually the student who was throwing up and her friend had texted for her. My host mom had figured this was what had actually happened, drove all the way to Nagoya to pick her up, and even brought a plastic bag for her to throw up.
Not that I’m planning on doing this, Mom, don’t worry!
She then talked about how I need to go to izakaya (Japanese bars, with food, kinda like the Japanese version of a pub) and talked about 飲み放題 (nomi houdai -- all-you-can-drink).
(Okay, ‘My host mom’ is getting cumbersome. I’m going to call her “Okaa-san” because that’s what I call her, mother, in Japanese.)
After warning me that Japanese hotels charge per person and not per room (so even in a twin room you get charged double the room price for two people), and I explained that since Shaun was staying with a host family in Tokyo so I found a cheap hostel to stay at, Okaasan said that if you come visit me here in Nagoya, Shaun, you are more than welcome to come stay with us. There’s a tatami room, or there’s my room, and either one is okay. 早く来てね！(come soon!)
We talked a bit more, about Amanda and how she dated a guy here and it was cute. We ate some yummy eclairs! And then she said there was a Softbank (Japanese phone company) cell phone in the desk, the one Amanda used last year, that I could use. I explained that I already had a rental Japanese cell phone and that I had researched the Softbank phones but I went with Piccell like the program recommended because I wasn’t sure whether I could get one without my alien registration card yet. She said she would have done the same thing if she were me. But we compared rates and the Softbank phone is much cheaper. It’s seriously 9 yen a minute, and you can get unlimited messaging for 300 yen a month. Whereas the Piccell phone is like 63 yen a minute with a 20 yen connection fee or something. I also have noticed I have like half a bar of service on my Piccell phone here. And that’s only in my room. When I was in the kitchen I didn’t have any service at all. I was like “Well this is a raw deal.”
I just need to get a phone card for 3000 yen and then I can use it. Right now it can receive calls but not make them, until I input another card. Even if it wasn’t a cooler phone (which it totally is) I’d want to switch anyway just because I don’t get service here and I can’t not get service at my home.
My family has provided me with so much! I have my own room, and it’s a pretty sizeable room. And my own bathroom (just a toilet and sink up here -- we all share the shower/bath). They gave me slippers, and I have a whole drawer full of bath towels I can use. Buying towels in Japan was good advice -- I now have these towels taking up space that I’m not using. Same with the slippers. But the ones I brought are warmer so I might want to use them in the winter.
That reminds me. No air conditioning in this house. That’s the one thing. I’ve got a very nice fan in this room, though! It’ll be better once I can open the window, too. Okaasan said not to do it today because of the typhoon, but I think the strong winds have mostly stopped by now. It sounds calm outside.
Still, hopefully the heat won’t last very long... Hopefully...
Guys Okaasan’s even doing my laundry for me. I told her I could definitely do it, but she said that when school started up I’d have homework and be too busy. “If I had a job, well then...” she said, kind-of winking at me. Then said that since she didn’t have a job she didn’t mind doing it.
We had dinner and Okaasan made rice, miso katsu, some salad, eggplant with bonito flakes on top, and these kind of salty tomatoes with egg. It was all very tasty... except for the tomatoes. She told me to tell her if there was anything I couldn’t eat so she wouldn’t make it again, and I felt rude doing it, but I did. I tried putting the tomatoes on the rice and it helped a bit, but they were just too salty and the flavor was too strong, the way canned tomatoes sometimes are (maybe they’d been marinated in something). Maybe it’s because I’m tired and not relaxed into my surroundings yet, but my stomach just couldn’t really handle it.
She offered me another eclair but I was so full...! Now I kinda wish I’d taken it, haha.
Tomorrow’s Sunday and I don’t have any orientation or anything until Monday (which is the placement test!) so I was assured that I can, and should, sleep as much as I want.
Okaa-san keeps making fun of me for saying “はい” (yes, but in Japan it gets used a lot more than just as ‘yes’ - gotcha, uh-huh, roger, I’m here!, I understand, etc.) to everything. Like she’s explaining something, like where drinks are in the fridge or how to use the shower and I’m just like “はい。はい。はい。はい。” Like “uh-huh.” So she was like “はい〜” at me in a kind-of silly voice. Okay okay it’ll get better when my Japanese gets better all right stop teasing.
But I like the teasing, really. If they were serious and strict I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. This way it’s more comfortable. I feel like they’re treating me like actually part of the family and not so much of this “うち／そと inside the family/outside the family” boundary stuff. That’s what I was really worried about -- people being really cold to me.
Otousan (father) and Okaasan had some kind of meeting with friends this evening so they’ve both stepped out for an hour or so.
In the meantime, now that it’s 8, it seems like a less ridiculous time to go to sleep. I’m gonna shower and then see how I feel.
おやすみ！(good night!)
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