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!

Sociology Babble

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?