Automatic Makeup Machines

Today in the morning I learned what classes I got, and I got exactly the ones I requested, which is a relief, but I still don’t know what level of japanese I ended up in... probably something embarrassingly low. I’m really worried about that, I did very poorly on that test... oh well. We’ll see about that tomorrow. Also, Erich, the knife released “Tomorrow, in a Year” in its entirety this morning and I bought it with real money (!) but was a little bit disappointed by the lack of any track as good as “The colouring of pigeons.” There’s some other decent stuff on there, though. Anyway.

The main “event” today was an optional tour of kyoto. I thought all the students were going to go together in one enormous knot, and was dismayed to see how many students turned up, thinking we were going to be one of those sledgehammer tour groups that’s far far too big... but no! They had a pretty smart system set up - groups of three or four foreign students would get together with a group of japanese students who would show them around... So my roommates and I (and a girl who tapped me on the shoulder and asked to join us in a very quiet voice, more on her later) hooked up with two Japanese girls, one of whom had... tusks, I guess you would call them. For the most technologically advanced nation on earth (I’ve heard it called that) they sure use a light light touch when it comes to dentistry. But she was nice! They were both nice.

We walked to the station, did self introductions in Japanese... they are both studying German, and were kind of freaked out when I told them, oh, german? he’s german! and I didn’t hear them use any, I think. Where was I? Oh, we bought a ticket and they explained a few details of the railway map I hadn’t figured out before. They decided to take us to Kiyomizu temple, which is apparently quite famous (I think I saw a picture of it in my history class). The route took us to a shinto shrine after we got off the train, and up a hill through a touristy (but charming) series of little crooked streets with lots of shops with sweets and other kinds of souvenirs... the temple was near the top of the hill. It was kind of... chaotic, in a way, it was clear it wasn’t all built at once with one plan in mind: the gate faces one way and is off to the die, the temple faces another, there’s a large pagoda at another angle... the architecture was really interesting, lots of old dark wood - they didn’t use any nails, I hear. There was a place near the entrance where there were several metal rods going beneath the floor - the poles had weights attached to the bottom, under the floor, and people wold try to lift them (for good lick, or so your dreams would come true or something.) There was a small one (for girls) a medium one (for... other people) and a huge one which I didn’t see anybody manage to pull up at all, when I was watching. They never stop selling you things inside the shine, lots of booths for charms with various purposes - conception, I saw, safety, happiness (which was a little square bell, all the others were in cloth envelopes) health... and lots of others.

After the shrine we walked back into the downtownish area and had okonomiyaki, which is a local dish like a thick pancake that you cook on the table in front of you. I got the leek one, lots of leeks, and also little cubes of something chewy that I asked the two girls about... I think they were... something to do with beef. I saw beef nerves on the menu, but that had different characters. Anyway, remember that girl who joined us? Spoke no japanese, and the only thing I really remember her saying was does it have milk in it, which she said at least five times. They had to ask for a fork for her... it was a little sad. Really strong cheekbones, I kept thinking of her as the vampire.

We did one round of purikura, which is like a photo booth but more ridiculous. The one we did... automatically gave everyone makeup. Everyone looked like a girl. It was quite noticeable. Anyway, one AM. More updates later.

Really, Japan? Warmlet?

Today... what happened today? I just woke up from a nap. It was a great nap... I woke up late this morning, 10, then went to an assembly on immigration. I played an iphone game while they talked about the forms we have to fill out. I won’t be able to fill out most of them until I know where I’m really living. Anyway... stupid creeps, always getting into my base.

In the afternoon, one more assembly, about what to expect from one’s host family. It was informative, but also rather uninformative - everything was just generalizations, and the two students who had come to talk about their experiences always appended everything with, “yeah, but my host family was different.” the meeting dragged on a little, especially because they told us that as soon as the meeting ended we would find out who our host families were. More creeps, more getting into my base. Subtly, under the table.

Then I found out about my host family! Which was quite exciting. My host parents are pretty young - my host mother and host father were born in ’80 and ’78, which makes them... not terribly much older than me, I guess. That might be a little odd. They’ve had one exchange student before, the form says... the most exciting reveal, though, was that I’ll have a 7 year old host sister and 5 year old host brother. How adorable! Also, how frightening! I was yelled at by some rollerblading japanese children this morning, and didn’t know what they had said or how to respond. I don’t really know to entertain or engage children. My tastes vacillate between the somewhat childish (I like pokemon, still, and still try not to step on cracks, and Avatar the last airbender is one of my favorite shows ever) and the obscure and bizarre (especially when it comes to music) so we’ll see. We’ll see, we’ll see. I’ll learn, I guess. It said on the form that they want a host student so their kids are comfortable around foreigners, which seemed sensible, and kind of nice, I suppose. That was the most... personable thing on the form, I guess. The least sterile and form-y. They live about 40 minutes away.

Then there was a sex ed-ish assembly which I skipped. I skipped it! I hear I missed diagrams of gingerbread men in various racy combinations. Which is tragic but I probably would have just played more iphone games. When I got back to the dorm, the big hair roommate showed the film pi, which... I enjoyed, more now that I’m thinking about it in retrospect that at the time. Lots of harsh sounds in that movie. Some pretty freaky things happen! And it was overwhelming, and all three of us took a collective, impromptu nap from seven to nineish, right after it was over, which is hilarious in retrospect. And here we are, afterwards. I probably won’t be able to sleep very well, immediately.

Today’s photos are things I took pictures of on my phone, and the captions are... I don’t know, I haven’t written them as of... now. I will when I upload them in a second. Thoughts, maybe? Contexts?

...and then they were deported

We're still in the past today. Stay tuned for gradual progress towards the present... this one's short so maybe I'll post the next post sooner than 24 hours. Also: find me on skype at odd times of day. I won't be on AIM because I've been having trouble connecting. I'm henrylatkinson over there.

Today I took the japanese language placement test in the morning. I don’t think I really did all I was capable of. I was only able to do the first three of five sections... I really don’t think I did very well, especially considering how much other people say they were able to do of the test, and how much of the test it said I should have been doing based on my level of Japanese in college. Kiiiind of beating myself up about it... I’ve never really done as well as I could have in Japanese classes, and here we go. We’ll see, maybe it will work out. None of the review I was doing was on the test. Oh well, it’ll still be useful.

I ate lunch and turned in some forms, and then everybody got squared straight with regards to Japanese law. They really do deport people, I guess, though not for my crime of choice, or at least they didn’t mention it. Drunk bicycling? Not a good idea, I learned. Every story the guy told ended in “and then they were deported.” Also, every semester there’s been an earthquake. We also met all the professors, who introduced themselves and their classes. Also: japanese fire escapes look really fun. You slide to the ground inside a big canvas tube! Apparently it's sown so that you go down in a spiral and don't plummet to your death. What if you're too big to fit in? Maybe you'd have to be pretty big.

In the evening I met my speaking partner, her friend and her speaking partner, a floridan who spoke very little japanese. I got to know my speaking partner (big, big disney fan) and showed her some pictures of home. We got along pretty well, but it was just as fun to overhear the floridan trying to explain (with a rather thick accent) the american slang he was using, while using even more american slang in his explanations. His speaking partner listened in rapt attention. We made origami... and then ate at the cafeteria, even though it was just closing. I thought I was ordering Gyoza, and got gyoza, but also received a huge bowl of something like rice pudding, which was far more than I could eat and resembled a bowl of coagulated elmer’s glue. Tasteless, almost, and very very hot. But the gyoza were good. The whole thing was a little awkward. I didn't know what to say, but I asked a few questions and the conversation did go some places besides the usual niceties. It's a really good sign, I think, when something has to be looked up in a dictionary.

I have trouble with pretty basic questions. What are your interests? What kind of music do you listen to? Why did you decide to study Japanese? First, I don't really know the answers to those questions myself, so there's that. Well, I know the japanese one: Because it seemed like the most interesting language the high school offered. That's what I've been telling people and it's true. But as for the others... it's kind of hard to find common threads through my interests. I like little bits of everything: some bands from some genres, some albums from some bands, some songs from some albums, some specific passages from certain songs. My speaking partner loves disney, and her favorite place is disney world, and she has disney dongs on her ipod, and she wants to work for disney. I don't have anything like that. Even things that I am a big fan of... say, a TV show. I don't know... doctor who. Or a movie. I saw Avatar recently, and enjoyed it despote its regrettable lack of airbending. But I hate, say, commercials advertising Avatar, or Avatar tie-in products. I would never play the Avatar video game, and not just because it's gotten terrible reviews. It's because Avatar should stay just a movie. And anyway, it's hard to guarantee I'll like something: it depends on something's... internal logic? Self possession? Creative spark? Anyway, this paragraph was a tangent.

I walked back to the dorms with the floridian, and bought an ice cream bar. He talked about how scared straight he was too by the police presentation this morning. We joked about the “and then they were deported” repetition. Jaywalking? And then they were deported. Didn’t say thank you? And then they were deported. Added captions to photos from the lyrics of a song you've been listening to (today: ashes of american flags, wilco, YHF) while walking around campus?

Deported.

Poker Face

Edit: We're still a few days behind here.

Futons have hard pillows. I guess the taffy pillow at the airport wasn’t a fluke. First thing in the morning there was a welcome to Kansai Gaidai kind of assembly. Half the people had their language placement test right afterward, but I didn’t and wandered the campus. I thought I could use a USB key, but the convenience store on campus only had them for 2000 yen, and there weren’t any pencils I was crazy about, so I walked for 20 minutes to a department store, and had to ask someone where the USB memory was, and felt silly because the store was enormous and all I wanted was a memory stick. The man I asked about the USB key asked me where I was from, I answered and then he said, oh, you’re so skilled. Doesn’t take much, sometimes. I kind of wanted to find the stationary section and buy a pencil too, but decided that would be pushing my luck. I didn’t end up saving any money on the USB key, but the walk was nice.

I had lunch at the cafeteria for the first time, which was fun, and decided to be adventurous and sit down across from someone eating alone, who turned out to be another german who had already been there for a semester. His japanese friend sat down and we had a conversation about... mcdonald’s? I kind of spaced out for most of it. I was eating pork and egg on rice. Mmm.

I learned how to use the language lab (SWEET, SWEET IRONY) and opened a bank account, which involved reproducing exactly the same signature four times, and not writing any letters where you write the same line twice, and making sure everything is exactly the same as on your passport - capitols, commas, everything. I’m not really even sure I was in the had-to-open-a-bank-account crowd. Who knows. (Edit by a future HLA: I didn’t need to.)

I went back to my room, which is a walk, for the record - twenty minutes each way, a straight shot past a factory. I practiced some kanji and started an episode of something or other on my computer. I headed back to campus a little later to get my computer activated, and learned that bittorrent (the sweet, sweet teat of piracy and copyright violation I never cease to nurse at home and at Oberlin) is forbidden. Considering getting a seedbox (an online service which will torrent files which I can then download directly). My computer still won’t be able to connect until tomorrow for mysterious technical reasons.

After that, which was about 6, my two roommates and I set out to find the station and have dinner there, then take the train one station north and walk back to the dorm. It’s south from the dorm to the campus, and south from there to the station, and on a map it looked good, but we took the wrong train and had to go back, then got off at the right station but missed the turnoff to go in the direction of the dorms, which ended up leading us in a roundabout way through a residential area. At the station we wandered around for 20 minutes of looking back and forth between different maps and schedules and ticket prices and platforms, and it took some significant trial and error but it ended up working out. When we were finally of the train and on the right road home it was dark and we must have seemed pretty sketchy. We got back to the dorm a little before nine, and still hadn’t eaten, and most of the shops were closed.

We ended up going to a little udon shop near the dorm, with the taking off the shoes and the low table, and when we sat down waitress asked us something and no one understood so I asked her to repeat it and she asked us again and no one understood her again, so I bluffed with a firm, “yes, please,” which after the fact I was informed was very confident. So: lady gaga captions today. I had heard poker face coming out of a gas station (upcoming post? grocery store music) yesterday, and wanted to use it but “the colouring of pigeons” is just too damn good. Anyway, I picked something at random, having no idea how to pronounce it or what it was. I decided to choose something off the handwritten daily specials menu, something that translated “white child tempura.” Turned out to be little fish/mayo dumplings to be dipped in sauce. Delicious, but not much for 700 yen.

A moment of self-reflection: I think I am a little less nervous than I sometimes am. Sitting down next to a stranger? Figuring out the transit system, after deciding where I wanted to go? Talking to a waitress? Hmm. Hmmmm.

The Colouring of Pigeons

Note: I wrote this two or three days ago, getting internet has been an issue. I have written a few more recent ones but it’s better not to post them all at once, I’m thinking. Photo captions are from the Knife’s new ridiculously good single, the Colouring of Pigeons, which I was listening to on repeat during the day in question.

Today was one of those days that really seemed longer on the inside than the outside, which is a good thing, but it was also one of those days full of moments that seemed a little off somehow - blank, perhaps. Registration weeks are always a little bit like summer camp, with lots of structured time. In the bus I looked up kanji I saw from the window, and looked at pictures of my new half cousin (para-cousin? meta-cousin? semi-cousin?) born rather unexpectedly while I was over siberia. When we arrived it was all typical summer camp stuff - get your bags in the bus, everyone find your right number, pick up your packet and key. You know.

Then everything kind of stopped - all chronological scaffolds fell away, and I sat in my room for about half an hour, watching the tail end of a TV episode I had started in the hotel. It’s not really my room, I guess. I’m only staying in it for a week, I’ll head off to my host family in five or six days. I don't know who they'll be, yet. I looked through all the forms, filled some of them out, checked my email on the computer lab machines and posted the bit I wrote on the bus, went back to my room, met the other RA, looked at the maps of the campus, studied some kanji, and after what seemed like a lot of empty indecisive time headed out to find the real campus, which is a 20 minute walk from the dorms us exchange students stay in.

I took the long way around and found a hardware store and bought a razor blade and tape to fix my headphones (success, I’m listening to them as I write) and looked in some shop windows before finding the main campus. I wandered around a tad aimlessly, because the computer lab there was totally full (though I did submit the paperwork which will eventually allow my computer to connect to the internet) and the library, my first and eternal port of call in any foreign environment, requires a student ID card to enter, and I don’t get mine till friday.

I wandered back and stopped in a grocery store I saw on my way there. I wandered for a while - it was a pretty small store, only three aisles, almost a convenience store - before picking up a basket and putting some ramen and a pack of chocolate covered digestives in it. I realized that I would really need chopsticks, and wandered around for five minutes looking for them, thinking, hm, they really should be easier to find. I ended up asking one of the cashiers - hello, excuse me, where are the chopsticks? She walked me to the sundries-type section and pointed them out. The only option was the pack of 50 disposable pairs, which I felt compelled to buy because I had asked about them.

I got back, called home (the phone ate up a 1000 yen phone card with alarming rapidity) and studied more kanji until my two roommates arrived, both almost at the same time. One of them had left a note on his pillow (or, folded futon I guess) saying hello sorry I missed you, and had arrived two days ago, and the other (a German student going to college in Austria) arrived fresh from the airport without any luggage, which the airline had left in Beijing. We talked an introduced ourselves, and the student who had already been here and I studied kanji together for a while and were at more or less the same level. The german student hasn’t studied Japanese. Man, that’s got to take some guts.

We decided to go on a grocery store tour (they’re right down the street, and I guess it seems a little silly to me now to need moral support when going into a grocery store, but hey man I’ve been there) at 8:00, and... went to a grocery store with the RAs. We wanted to go to a restaurant, but it was getting late (they lock you out!) and ended up eating ramen in the kitchen, where there was a group of other students were talking. We made our ramen and listened to them, entering the conversation slowly. They were talking about sports and doping, which isn’t something I care a ton about, but they were an interesting bunch - two australians, a very vocal german, a brazilian and a lithuanian kid came later. My non-german roommate and I were the only Americans. The conversation moved on to the internet, piracy, Australia's poor internet service, the rocky movies, nutella, and other topics. I think I did more socializing today then I did in a week at Oberlin, where I’m usually pretty quiet. I said this during the conversation - it made sense in context, and I said it was a stupid thing to say, but man, it’s true. All my friends at home are Americans. (this is fine, I guess.) Anyway, interesting conversation was eventually derailed by some sort of philosophical debate I didn’t really understand or care about (is studying abroad really no better than imperialism, someone asked earnestly) and I went back to my room last, where my roommates were already getting ready for bed. I hope my loud typing isn’t disturbing them.

How doth the little crocodile

So I’m writing this on the bus to Kansai Gaidai and will post it as soon as I can find internet. I stayed at the hotel airport last night, which was pretty swank except for its lack of internet and breakfast. Or, I couldn’t find the internet, but other students have informed me that it was hidden in a drawer. Very tricky, Japan.

I left from seattle in the middle of the afternoon, after much waving (so much waiving) at security, and bought a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude and a burrito before going to my gate in the asian corner of SeaTac. My flight was delayed (which is perhaps so obvious it needn’t be written) and I ended up finding my row, in which a rather fat man (so fat) was huffing and puffing in an attempt to get settled, and I had the window seat so he had to get up again. I fell asleep, strangely, and woke up an hour later to find they had just served the first meal. I drifted back into consciousness watching my neighbor, who it must be repeated was very, very fat, eating his airplane meal in tiny bites.

My seat had some kind of plastic thing on the floor in front of it so my legs had to go in his... personal space, and I could only see the wing from my window (which I was asked to close for most of the flight) and I watched a little bit of cloudy with a chance of meatballs on my seat’s screen, in which a very, very fat man demanded that food fall from the sky and proceeded to choke down a hot dog easily three times the size any hot dog should ever be, even fictional ones, and then people were swimming in food, and no matter how many times you throw around the word sanitary it seemed really gross, and my neighbor was eating a ham sandwich, and my headphones broke (my top priority today is headphone repair) with 5 of eleven hours to go, and only stood up twice the whole time, and the fat man had a very wheezy voice and it was pretty rough is what I’m saying. We went over the bering sea and siberia and flew right over Anchorage, according to the seat-back screen. The earth is round, I guess.

Seoul had a nice airport and I didn’t have to take off my shoes to go through the metal detector, which was relaxing, though my that point I was feeling feverish and nauseated and had a headache, which a sign informed me are all signs of pig flu, though it was probably only lack of sleep. On the flight to Japan I just put my head in my elbow for two hours, and missed the bento-ish meal they served. I wasn’t over the wing but everything was dark so I didn’t really see the white-topped mountains the other students were talking about this morning.

I stayed at the airport and everyone talked to me in english, and having a hotel room to myself was not too depressing because everything seemed kind of novel, though the only place I could find to plug in my computer was in the bathroom. I slept well, though the pillow was rather hard (it felt kind of like a taffy pillow, which made me think of that rather gross movie on the plane) and I managed to wake up at the right time even though my cell phone ran out of power.

In the morning after paying my... surprisingly large bill and met the other Kansai Gaidai students after wandering around the airport for a while. We all talked and I bought a coffee (hot out of the machine, how nice) but have not eaten since my second round of soft, soft beef on my 11 hour flight. So: now I’m on the bus and writing this. Lots of industry, factories and the like... it’s the Hanshin industrial region, I suppose. The air is pretty opaque for air. I’m going to frantically study kanji for the rest of the bus ride. There’s a kid in front of my who is an incarnation of some Shia Lebouf character. Looks like him, acts like one of his characters.

Also: stay tuned for a piece by piece transcriptions of the journal I took in Japan in High School.

Pre-Departure, Tragedy, Good Luck Charms

I leave today, in the sense that it is now after midnight. Bag is packed. Books to take, selected. Charge cables, wrapped into loops. Standard issue stuff, all of it. I... tend to pack kind of heavy - I took like two dozen books to Japan when I went in High School (I went to Japan in High school) and ended up buying far too much manga, and other things, and ended up donating them all to my Japanese HS library, whose only english books were Jean M Auel novels. Funny I even remembered her name, come to think of it. I never did read any of her anything. Anyway, I tend to pack heavy but I didn't take much with me this time.

I read my to favorite novels ever when I was away from home and needed something to read not so much to entertain me, but to... run away to is maybe the wrong way to put it. I needed a distractions from all the distractions. I read the Brothers Karamazov in Japan, and Les Miserables at summer camp one year. I'm bringing Moby Dick, another classic, hoping it will fulfill the same role. Also, it is a very small book (my copy, I mean) so there's that.

I'll be spending the night in the airport, because I arrive at 9PM, and won't be able to get to campus and sign in in time. I'll either pay to stay at a 24 hour internet cafe thing, or splurge on a real hotel room. We'll see, it'll depend on how tired I am.

Also, tragedy struck. I can't find any of my pictures from my HS trip to Japan - I was going to post some of them here. My parents got a new computer, and claim everything was transferred, but I couldn't find them on there for the life of me - it's still possible they're hidden, but I have a video I took with that camera when I was in Japan, of my host sister's appearance on local television (she appeared on local television) and I couldn't find any files with a similar filename... I was pretty upset about it. My computer has had hard drive failures too... I went through all our old CDs, trying to find a backup I faintly remember making. I had backups on my iPod at one point too, because I liked to carry all my photos of that trip around with me, even though I never really looked at them. I could take that old ipod, which no longer works, to a data specialist, if I ever have any money, I suppose. They were kind of painful to look at, in a way, I haven't gone through them in years... but I'm really bummed they're gone.

I did find, though, while I was looking, little relics from that trip: postcards I bought at the art museum, a one yen coin (how did it end up in the CD box?) and a card my older host sister wrote me when I was leaving, a little tiny round card... I'll be taking it with me as a good luck charm. It's very, very sweet.

One Week

One Week, people. Also I was hooked up with the speaking partner I'll have at KG, but have not corresponded yet. Studying Kanji. Woooooh.

Two weeks

I hadn't really finished up my fall semester like someone really should finish up a fall semester. I had gotten an extension on my final paper for Religion 300, which was an awful awful class in terms of workload. My final assignment was to write ten pages of my senior capstone, which somehow became about the Additions of the book of Esther present in the Septuagint. It's an interesting subject? I guess? I don't really even know any more and am sick of it.

Last night I finally sent it all off, and now the only thing on my plate is Japan. I've been going through all of my old textbooks and playing through mother 3 in Japanese. I've got a big flashcard deck going of... old words, new words, and kanji, which I have mostly forgotten how to write because last semester was all about reading.

Also: visa applied for, should be no problems there. Also... no, that's about it. Only, it is worth noting that mother 3 is an incredible, incredible game.