Osaka and Kyoto photos now available

EDIT: 2/6/07 2:50 p.m. JST

You can now view my photos of the Osaka and Kyoto trips on my Yahoo Flickr page by clicking the link at the bottom of this post. A new photo section for “Engrish” is in the works, as well as some random shots of interesting stuff. Keep checking periodically to see what’s new.

Shigakusha’s Photos

The End of Orientation Week

And so it ends, the last remaining days of freedom before classes begin in earnest. Japanese classes begin tomorrow morning, and I am beyond excited. Finally, maybe, I will be able to read all of those perplexing signs and instructions that have baffled me for the last week… And with God’s blessing, I will be able to hold some decent conversations with a Japanese person without resorting to English. Hah! Well, we’ll see.

Funny, the Japanese use different sizes of paper than we do in America. 8.5 x 11 does not exist. It’s all labeled by a letter-number combination, such as A4, B5, etc. Rather confusing. When I went to the ConveniShop today to buy some notebooks, I discovered that I had no idea which size of paper my professors would want me to turn in! There were at least six different sizes! I chose a ring binder and the size of paper that seemed to fit it best (which was close to the size of regular notebook paper), and I plan to ask my sensei tomorrow what they prefer. How odd. Not really significant for culture shock, but certainly surprising.

Speaking of culture shock, I haven’t been getting it too bad, I don’t think, but some of my friends have been having problems; par example Joanna, Sach’s colleague from Le Republique d’Afrique du Sud (Little French for you there. I saw it on Sach’s passport and thought it had a nice ring to it.). You may remember her as the lamentress of Japan’s paucity of anti-perspirant (“dodgy” was her word). I failed to tell you the last part of that conversation. After her comment, someone suggested that she simply wash under her arms with soap a couple of times a day, to which she retorted that she’d gladly have taken his advice if she’d brought soap and hadn’t been forced to buy some that day. Astonished, the person asked why she hadn’t thought to bring soap. Her answer: “Well, I thought they’d have some here already, like any other civilized place!” Apparently, people take cleanliness even more seriously in South Africa than we do in the States.

We finally got some “crockery,” as Sach calls it, in the dorm kitchen. Boy, did we ever. Rice cookers, toasters, scales, bowls, pots, pans, all manner of utensils. It’s great. I went and bought bread, eggs, butter, forgot the jelly and peanut butter, milk, canned fruit, two fresh apples, a carrot-ish (freebird!) vegetable, some frozen entrees, forgot the cheese, forgot the rice (see? I am no good at all without a list!), cereal, a couple of kinds of ramen that looked halfway edible, a liter or so of ginger ale, a thing of Minute Maid apple juice that tastes completely different here than in the States because it’s mixed green and red apples, Dutch melon custard bread (the amazing tasty-goodness of this stuff is indescribable) as a sweetstuff for breakfast, regular Doritos (here called “Mexican Taco” flavor), and… other stuff I can’t remember right now. Tomorrow’s breakfast will be eggs and yummy toast with juice. If only I had remembered the cheese… Oh well. The QQ is only 10 minutes by bike. Then again, the danger of being hit by a car or other bicycle or hitting some other obstacle (and there are many) makes that short distance deceptively risky. Happily, I’m quickly getting the hang of things. It really is true, you know. You never forget how to ride a bike. You just forget how to do all those cool things with it you used to do as a kid.

Good news! I have found a photo hosting service run by Yahoo called Flickr that appears to be an excellent means of sharing my photos with everyone! I am working busily to get Kyoto and Osaka photos online for you even now. I will let you know as soon as they are available.

So you may remember the roommate “situation” I mentioned a few posts ago. Well, everything has resolved, and I am now settled in 4224 with a my new roommate, Pat. Pat’s an African-American football player and jazz musician from Little Rock, AR who attends Westinster College in Fulton, MO. He is a Christian and has a girlfriend from Cameroon, Africa, who is also a Christian. He’s not as talkative as Michal and is usually gone to hang out with friends, but he’s very laid back and generally genial. However, he is… how shall I put it…? He has a creative sense of organization. He prefers things to be out in plain sight so that he can easily find them when he wants them. At least, that’s what I optimistically hope is his explanation for the way his side of the room looks, particularly his closet. (See, Deborah? Optimism!) “So,” I told God, “I see you have bestowed both a blessing and a challenge. First of all, thank you. Second of all… *sigh* … What do you want to teach me?”

I finally met Tomoko yesterday, and boy… wow. She is a ham and a half, quite a character. Some Japanese girls feign shyness when they’re in unfamiliar situations and just titter demurely. Not Tomoko! No, she’s large, in charge, and goofy as an oral surgery patient with the N2O valve on full blast. Now, when I say “large,” I mean that her personality is effusive. Physically, she stands barely 5′4″ and nearly scared me to death when I made her laugh very hard because I thought she’d snap her tiny back from bending backward and forward so much, her hand covering her mouth as though she was holding her head screwed on. Ohhhh, and her mouth. Please understand, I don’t mean to insult. I just found it… blackly humorous. The Japanese, from all observations, care less about teeth and have poorer genetic dispostions for oral aesthesia than the English.

All of that aside, we had a wonderful time. She brought her friend Fumiko and Fumiko’s conversation partner Alan, and we went out to eat at a wonderful donburi restaurant at Hirakata-shi (the train station), then window shopped at the nearby depaato (department store) and finally stopped at Mr. Donut for a small dose of sugar before bidding each other “Ja mata!” at the bus stop. In the beginning, I felt very unsure of my Japanese, but after only a few hours, I caught on rather quickly to the girls’ speech patterns and phrases. I even wrote a list of new words on a napkin to memorize at home. Overall, I’d say it was an excellent afternoon. Next time, she told me, we’ll go to Nara to see the daibutsu, the famous gigantic statue of the Buddha. And, of course, we’ll go to the royal gardens and see the deer. Nara deer are famous for their beauty, grace, and pernicious habit of chasing people whose hands, bags, or clothes they suspect of concealing food. Chouin shite kudasai, ne? (Have to be very careful, you know?)

In case you’re wondering, donburi is a style of Japanese food that is very simple but very delicious. It consists of a bowl of white rice topped with any number of ingredients and sauces. Some of the most popular varieties have tempura shrimp and/or vegetables, beef and onions, pork in sauce, chicken with mayonnaise, and a unique kind called oyakodon. Oyakodon’s three kanji represent parent (oya), child (ko), and bowl of rice (don). The “parent” is chicken, and the “child” is egg, both of which are mixed together in a skillet, swished around in a pungent brown sauce, and spread over the top of the rice. It’s a favorite of mine, second only to shrimp tempura (ebitempuradon).

Well, I figure that’s about all for tonight! I want to go visit my friends in Sem 2 before the visiting hours are over (10 p.m.), so I’d better get moving. Pictures are coming! Bye for now!

Osaka trip

Okay, so here’s the deal. Facebook is the best way I know to share pictures with comments that has no limit on upload sizes or amounts or daily posting. Sadly, even though anybody can get an account for free, only college and high school students have really picked up on it. Since I know that the adults reading this will probably not want to create an account (and I don’t really blame them), I am still searching for a better way to host my photos. The problem is, no hosting site has a great uploading interface (almost none have GUIs or Java), and almost all have limits. That, and I want to post comments with the photos instead of having to post them here. It’s just a huge hassle to post 60+ photo links from Facebook on this blog with commentary. I’ll do it, if that’s what it takes, but I’d rather not. While you’re waiting, here are some videos I took today from my trip to Osaka’s Den-Den Town, Shinsaibashi Shopping Center, and Amerika-mura district. I hope you enjoy.

Amerika-Mura street corner

Shinsaibashi shopping center

More Shinsaibashi

… more to come in the morning.

EDIT: The sound on the videos is out of sync. According to the online help guide, it’s because I uploaded in the Quicktime .mov format instead of MPEG or .avi or .wma formats, which are more conducive to YouTube’s compression software. It suggested that I convert the files before uploading. Well yippee skippy. Sorry, folks, looks like I’m going to have to hunt down even more software to make this blog easily accessible. Sheesh, somebody should already have come up with stuff like that. Until such time, please excuse the poor video qualities and compensate using your noodle. Thanks for your patience.

Day 4 & 5

I’m still having a hard time getting used to people staring at me all the time. Anytime I walk into a room full of Japanese people, I am immediately the center of attention. If I were walking through the cafeteria at App looking for a table (which is much less crowded there, by the way), very few people would bother to look up from their conversations to follow me with their eyes down the row. Here, everybody stares at me–at all of the foreigners–as we go past. I just *know* that they’re talking about me/us… Oh well. Gaijin are apparently still a novelty here. I take it for granted that I live in such a melting pot culture and country. When I get back, I think I will appreciate people from different backgrounds much more than I did before.

Registration was yesterday, and even though my lottery number was 215 out of 408, I still got all three courses I wanted. Apart from the Japanese speaking and reading/writing courses, I’ll be taking one on China-Japan relations in history, one called Cultural Prisms: Cross-Cultural Interaction in Psychology, and one called Japanese Art in the Kansai Area. All of them sound fantastic, but I think I’ll be dropping one of them after a while. All of the second-semester students and even the head of the exchange professors advised us to take only four courses. They told us that if we wanted to see any of Japan outside of the library and our dorm rooms, we should take only 14 credits, not 17. The Japanese classes here are reportedly very tough and very time-intensive, to which I replied, so much the better! Let me learn! Hah! I scoff in the face of two hours of homework per night in Japanese alone and throw down the gauntlet before the threat of daily quizzes. That’s what I came here to do, after all! Well, it’s *one* of the things I came here to do. At any rate, this sounds like an interesting semester already, academically.

Still working on those pictures… For some reason, they keep coming out unusually small. I think I know the solution, but I’m still testing it. iPhoto is so stupid! They keep three copies of every picture! Imagine how much hard drive space they’re wasting! I think I’m going to take a little time one night to go through and delete all of the extraneous files. I bet I’d free up a couple of gigs.

So get this: Our school is so prepared for earthquakes, it’s unbelievable. Our dorms and buildings are constructed with the latest in quake-resistant techniques (I’d bet the administration building actually bends to keep out of the frequency of shock waves.), and there are even a few nifty features that the program leaders warned us about today in the general meeting. In the CIE building (Center for International Education, i.e. my *second* second home for the next four months), there are blast doors around the main staircase to shield debris and keep out smoke from fires. Instead of using that staircase, there are special quake-proof stairwells on either side of the building that we are supposed to use. Seriously, there are gigantic metal plates that drop from the ceiling to cordon off this huge glass-enclosed stairwell that runs through the middle of the building. I’m not sure exactly how it works, they just warned us that we won’t be able to use the main stairwell in case of an earthquake. There are other neat security measures, too, but I just thought that one was the coolest. Mom, Dad, family and friends, you have nothing to fear. The odds are pretty good, they told us, that we could have a earthquake during this semester, but it would be a small one, below 3.0 on the Richter scale. Most of them are that weak, and the region gets on average one earthquake per year strong enough to be felt without a seismograph. We would probably notice a little vibrating, but nothing more. Nevertheless, we were drilled heavily on preparedness and evacuation procedures, and I expect we’ll get it again at the main dorm meeting on Sunday. They take this stuff seriously over here.

Well, I really have to get moving on with my day, but I want to mention one other thing that’s going on. We have a roommate “situation” here in 4221. Michal is moving out on Sunday to go live with his host family, so it’s just going to be me and this other guy, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. Turns out the other dude, Louis Lapaz, is an extending student and wants to switch roommates so that he can live with a friend from last semester. So that you can get an idea, Louis is from London, and his last name is not representative of any ethnicity. He’s straight Caucasian. Kind of emo black hair, thick accent, likes to play the guitar, blunt and straightforward. Anyway, I told him I wouldn’t have a problem switching. After all, every room looks exactly the same. Sure, this room is directly across from the shower and toilets, which makes it very convenient, but three doors down is no big deal. Thing is, I have no idea who the other guy is who’d be living with me. Far as I know, I’ve never met him. And who’s going to do the moving? Am I going over there, or is he coming over here? I think we’re going to “scissors-paper-stone” for it, as Louis said. (Cultural aside: the Japanese have elevated rock-paper-scissors into an art form. They call it “jan-ken-pon,” and there are actually unofficial competitions for it. They’ve added some crazy rules to it, too, that I cannot begin to comprehend. Like if you tie the first time, you do it again, except you say, “Ai-ko-deshou.” Then, there’s some thing about pointing different directions… I don’t know. It’s confusing for a gaijin. You’ll see young Japanese do it in large groups all the time when they can’t agree on something simple and want to make a quick decision, like which of two restaurants to eat at for dinner. Before I leave Japan, one more of my goals is to learn what the heck they’re doing.)

Well, I think that’s gonna be all for a little while. I’m leaving soon to take a tour of Kyoto today with a big bunch of other students. We’re going to learn how the transit system works and see some interesting sights. I think we’re allowed to break off from the main group if we wish, but I’m not sure just how comfortable I am with that at the moment. Although… OH! Story! Another time, though. Sorry, sorry. I promise I’ll post it later. Just one of those things where I recklessly decided to go off on my own adventure and managed to pull through by the skin of my teeth and all of my linguistic mettle. Happy ending. Til later! Sayounara!

Day 3 and going strong

Minna-san, konban wa! (Good evening, everyone!) Things are going well so far. I thought I would update about some things that have happened in the last day and a half or so. I’ve gotten to know my roommate Michal much better, and he’s pretty cool. He’s a tad garrulous, but I’m patient enough to handle it. And he’s letting me borrow his spare slippers, so I don’t have to walk the dorms in socks anymore! It makes my heart happy. He taught me some elementary Czech today, but I’m not sure I remember it all. Very complex language. I like the sound of it.

Anyway, last night, he took Sach, Trevor, Max, and me out to a good restaurant called “Sandal Grill,” which had pretty amazing food, and LOTS OF IT, for 500-700 yen. You got a bowl of miso, a bowl of rice, your main course plate(s), some pickled squash and other vegetable, and as much tea and water as you wanted. I paid only 500 yen and change for my meal, the name of which escapes me at the moment. It was the house special: grilled chicken pieces and a slab of fried boneless chicken breast over spaghetti noodles, plus the extras mentioned above. It was *delicious*. Seems like all of these restaurants are owned and run by spry elderly Japanese couples. I wonder what’s going to happen in 10 years when they all start dying? Sorry. That was morbid.

ANYway, thanks to our new bikes, the trip uptown took only 5-10 minutes, as opposed to maybe 20 minutes on foot. Quite possibly the best 4725 yen I have ever spent. Yes, I will upload a picture as soon as I can. I just forgot today. We bought the bikes from “Cycle Center,” a tiny bike repair shop down the street from the dorm. It was run by a diminutive, 50-something year old man with very weathered skin and hands black with grease. He was quite polite and very helpful, and the biked were dirt cheap. I paid only $38 and change for mine, while a couple of the others paid in the $50s. Trevor got one that had the words “Bloody Cross” and a decorative cross logo on the front of the bike frame. Typical. Sach, Max, and I were more conservative in our choices, but I definitely got the cheapest. Hah, well, maybe not the *best* but definitely the cheapest…

So I saw a pretty nice bike off to the side with a great dark blue frame, and I asked the man, “Kore wa ikura gurai desu ka?” (“How much is this one?”) He replied, “Fuuun, dame deshou, ne? Kowarete imasu,” (“Hmm, it’s probably no good, okay? It’s broken.”) and showed me some bent metal on the back of the frame. Instead, he suggested another bike in a shiny, light blue color with silver trim. The tag said “5000,” which was an excellent deal. I wasn’t crazy about the color, but I liked the idea of saving money if I didn’t *hate* the color. He pulled it out, adjusted the seat, and informed me that he would give me a discount. He wrote down 4725 on a pad of paper. A *very* excellent deal. I told him, “Ii desu ne? Doushite desu ka?” (“Hey, that’s good. Why the discount?”) “Eeeeto, ne… Amari yokunai deshou.” (“Weellll… It’s not really good.”) What on Earth did *that* mean? Unfortunately, neither Michal nor I could weasel it out of him, and since the test drive went well, I decided to go with it. So far, I have no regrets. I can get to campus soooo quickly now. Anywhere, in fact. It’s great. The only problem is actually driving in traffic. I feel a bit suicidal sometimes because the drivers here can be crazy. Traffic rules are a little lax in the neighborhoods, and you could easily get hurt if you don’t ride defensively. Of course, riding on the left side of the road takes some getting used to… That, and I haven’t ridden a bicycle in YEARS. Well, it’s all good. I think I’m getting the hang of it.

Every single day I wish that I could actually drink the teas here, but alas, my pharmacotherapy regimen (read: medicine) prohibits caffeine intake. A bit of tea science, courtesy of the History Channel: The teas here, particularly black teas, have a significant amount of caffeine in them. Green tea is the “freshest” version of tea, compared to black tea or oolong, meaning that less drying and scorching occurs in the processing of the tea leaves. Black teas spend the most time being dried and heated, and the burning process creates chemical reactions that create more caffeine. That said, green tea in Japan is powdered and made from concentrate, which can increase the milligrams of caffeine per serving. Overall, only black tea has more caffeine per serving than soda, but for me, even smaller amounts can prove detrimental. Kowaii, ne. (How sad.) I’ll just have to settle for small cups every now and then. Still, I feel as though I’m missing out on one of the greatest parts of Japanese culture.

Another odd cultural thing… no napkins. Yeah. So far, no restaurant I’ve been to, not even the school cafeteria, has napkins. Maybe we’re supposed to bring our own? Well, I’ve been using my hankachi regardless. I hope it’s not offensive.

So yeeeahhh… took the language placement test this morning. Kicked. My. Butt. I felt soooo stupid. I’m not sure where I’ll be placed, maybe level 3 or 4. Thing is, in Japanese at ASU, we never finished the second textbook, the one we used for Advanced Japanese, so I didn’t know some very important grammar points at the end of one section of the test. Since KG uses the same brand of textbook as ASU, when the complexity and content of the test increased, I noticed that it followed almost exactly the progress of the textbooks I’d used. That definitely helped me with some metathinking, i.e. guessing what answer the test-makers wanted me to give rather than what I thought the actual answer was. I knew the rubric, basically. The kanji test… yow. I’ll probably be in reading and writing class 2. That is pitiful. Listening comprehension was bad, too. I think I just suck all around. But you know, it’s not all my fault, I think. Yamamoto-sensei has *GOT* to start toughening up on students. She’s been way too nice and too soft on us, and now we’re paying the price (Trevor and I). *sigh* Oh well. I’ll just have to work hard to make up for it here.

Minor things… Got a bank account set up. Had to redo the forms four frickin times because the Japanese want everything on each application to match both each other and your passport information EXACTLY. Even your signature. Too different, you have to do everything again. Yeah. Tried to go to a bar with Max, Trevor, and Michal last night, but the tiny bar (positively miniscule, like max capacity was 20 people) was so crowded, they had to fight to get in. I decided to skip since I was tired anyway and didn’t want to drink. I only agreed to go in the first place because they begged me. Earlier today I checked the closest shoe store for some slippers but found them to run around $20. I think I’ll just ask my parents to FedEx me my own slippers and use Michal’s spares in the meantime.

SPEAKING of FedExing me things I don’t have… Deodorant. I don’t have any. Neither do the Japanese. You think I’m kidding? No convenience store or grocery store so far has had any. I’m beginning to think it doesn’t exist! As my friend Joanna from South Africa/Poland so eloquently put it, “I’ve heard the deodorant here is dodgy.” I can’t believe I forgot mine at home… Well, I’ll just do my best to keep my arms down and hope my friends don’t notice. The Japanese definitely won’t.

I wanted to post pictures of campus and the neighborhood and some really, really, really bad English signs, but the computer is being uncooperative. The monkeys are lazy. Tomorrow maybe. I turn in my laptop for registration tomorrow, so I’ll have Internet on my own machine by the end of Wednesday or Thursday. VIDEO CHAT!

Well, that’s about it… I’ll keep you posted about new stuff. Ja mata ne?

(To those who are wondering, “Ja mata!” is simply a casual “See you later.” “Ja mata ne?” is the same, but the “ne” often indicates that a response is desired. Sometimes, however, the Japanese just shorten the thing to “Ja ne?” to which the response is also “Ja ne?” It’s a cultural thing. Don’t give yourself a headache. )