This is the address at my host family's house, so please don't send anything dangerous or suspect, but I would love to get letters!
Emily Garfield
4-15-11 Yutaka
Minami-ku, Nagoya-shi
Aichi 457-0863
Friday, January 11, 2008
読み方
Please read the entries chronologically! I've posted them in typical blog format, with the latest ones closest to the top, but it will make a lot more sense if you read them from the first to the last. Thanks!
January 10
January 10, 2008
I dreamt that I was shown the computer labs at CJS and they were full of the ancient Macs that TH and Tekserve have as curiosities. There was a lot more in my dream, but I slept pretty well.
Kaori-san (I don’t know what to call her to her face – I called her 川口さん(last name, rather formal) a couple times, but I’m not sure what she wants to be called) was surprised that I slept well even without the electric blanket or the heater or anything. I think she’s a little worried that it might not be good for me… I’ll see. I just don’t think that I need to use the 電気 for an entire night while I’m not really getting the benefit of it consciously.
Japanese 紅茶 (black tea) is so weak that I’m having no trouble drinking it without milk or sugar. This is unprecedented for me. Usually that’s only true of green tea, and peppermint.
I got up an hour earlier than I needed to, and didn’t realize. I guess midnight calculations of time while still with じさぼっけ (jetlag, literally “time-difference stupidity” I think ^^) aren’t too accurate. Well, more time for 勉強 (studying – an indispensable all-purpose term, for expressing yourself as much as endearing yourself to your host mother…)
I dreamt that I was shown the computer labs at CJS and they were full of the ancient Macs that TH and Tekserve have as curiosities. There was a lot more in my dream, but I slept pretty well.
Kaori-san (I don’t know what to call her to her face – I called her 川口さん(last name, rather formal) a couple times, but I’m not sure what she wants to be called) was surprised that I slept well even without the electric blanket or the heater or anything. I think she’s a little worried that it might not be good for me… I’ll see. I just don’t think that I need to use the 電気 for an entire night while I’m not really getting the benefit of it consciously.
Japanese 紅茶 (black tea) is so weak that I’m having no trouble drinking it without milk or sugar. This is unprecedented for me. Usually that’s only true of green tea, and peppermint.
I got up an hour earlier than I needed to, and didn’t realize. I guess midnight calculations of time while still with じさぼっけ (jetlag, literally “time-difference stupidity” I think ^^) aren’t too accurate. Well, more time for 勉強 (studying – an indispensable all-purpose term, for expressing yourself as much as endearing yourself to your host mother…)
January 9
January 9, 2008
Meeting our host parents was very amusing. First there was the Entrance of the Gaijin Bus, where we backed a bus full of foreigners right through the gates to Nanzan, past the clop-clopping well-dressed Japanese college girls. Then we were all herded (with our luggage) to a room in the school where we sat, like puppies, to see who would be chosen. One by one we were called when pretty Japanese ladies came through the hall and to our room. We could see them for about two minutes before they came, so everyone was guessing who would be Next, and fretting, and どきどきしてる(onomatopoeia for heart-pounding: “dokidoki”), and 心配してる (worrying). The four girls (me, Nathalie, Ksenia and Kate) were in the corner together for a while, since they seemed to be picking off the boys first. John noticed that everyone who had sat in the corner of the room still remained, and said we looked like cattle in a truck or something. It must have looked funny.
My host mother is really cute. She talks very quickly, so I can usually understand what she’s saying mostly (it’s a little under 50-level, with some other vocabulary thrown in) but I’ve been so overwhelmed that I don’t actually end up saying much besides “yes” and “thank you”. I did ask a few questions, but nothing very elaborate because I can’t really keep to her pace. It’s only the first hour. In about half an hour I go up to have udon…! She seemed surprised that I liked Japanese food. Well, I won’t be so excited about it in another few months, I’m sure, but for now it’s good. She was especially excited that I liked sashimi…! Apparently I’m their fourth 留学生 (study-abroad student), which is cool.
At one point during the ride she gasped and said “Oh, I forgot to tell her about the dog”, and said that she had a large and very dangerous dog in their house, and sometimes she bites 留学生, and I was suitably concerned. She kept this up as we went up to their section of the house, telling me to stay quiet, whereupon I met the tiniest, most harmless dog in the world. She’s really cute, and she gets super excited and stands up on her hind legs and looks happy. I said I had been 心配していた and Kaori laughed.
I have my own little suite. It’s amazing. I was expecting to have to share a room or something, but actually their house is pretty big for an apartment.
There is a wireless I can get from here, but it doesn’t work. It conks out every thirty seconds, in a very regular pattern. Any advice? I’m pleased though because it’s password-protected, so I just guessed that the password might be the name of the wireless and I was correct! ☺
I learned something interesting right now, what was it. My host mother was talking about signs with incorrect English, and I told her we found a lot of チーシャツ(tshirts) with odd English, and she laughed and said Yknow, when foreigners come here with Japanese characters on their shirts, it’s usually pretty incorrect too. And tattoos, as well. Of course, this is all said in Japanese, since I don’t think either my host mother or my host father speak English. Maybe a tiny bit, like I heard “third floor” and “direct” (which keeps confusing me, since I expect it to be Japanese).
Apparently the 10-year-old just came back from being in Australia for a year…? I couldn’t quite catch what she was saying about the dates, but I think that’s true. So I guess I’ll be chatting with her a lot in English. Her mom said she’s good at English, but with an Australian accent :-p
So it seems that I will have to come home directly from school pretty often. I don’t really want to do that; I’d rather hang around in Nagoya or something. I want to go back to where we were in the hotel. I also want to get an electronic dictionary, since my paper one isn’t very good and certainly doesn’t recognise kanji input.
もうちょっと後で (a little later)：
We just went to get my Alien Registration Card and health insurance. Gya. I still don’t really understand what’s expected from me, and I hope the 10-year-old comes home soon so I can have an interpreter. It’s hard to realize that I really can’t make myself understood in any way besides Japanese for most of the people I’m around outside of school. It’s crazy.
Tomorrow is the placement test!! I want to do well, but I also want to unpack and nap instead of studying kanji. In the car I listened to stories about Reiko and learned that karaoke means “empty orchestra”, which I think I had learned before but forgot, and asked about what accent of English kids learn in Japanese. And I feel like getting a recognizable tone is almost as important as having a lot of vocabulary for Japanese. I want to sound like them.
Language is confusing…I was being introduced to a few friends who were outside, and one of them asked in English where I came from, but my brain found it easier to reply to him in Japanese. It’s a very difficult language to switch in. Either I can think in English or I can think in Japanese. I don’t know if I’ve dreamed in Japanese yet, but I’ve certainly woken up with it in my head.
More boots may not be possible with my current situation. I told my host mother I had five pairs of shoes and I think she thought I must have mistaken the words. So I lied and said I had four, and she cleared space in their shoe closet for three. Apparently it is だめ (honestly hard to translate, even though it’s the simplest word, but it describes something that you’re not allowed to do (as in cultural rules), that is impossible (as in a closed street), that is too difficult (as in Japanese)) to store shoes in your closet.
夕食の後 (after dinner)：
Ah. The end of total-immersion Japanese for the day. 英語の音楽を聞いて、英語で書くつもり。。。Except I have to study. Lots and lots of kanji. Kaori-san said that she thinks I’ll be able to make 500, but I don’t think that’s true. There’s too many kanji that I don’t remember in 400, even though I learned all of them.
Half of every sentence I write now is thought out in Japanese.
Reiko-chan really does have an Australian accent. Her mother was mostly surprised about the vowels (she was making fun of “can’t”), but what gets me is the insertion of “r” sounds, like at the end of “no”. I don’t know what that’s called. ジェレミー、手伝ってくれない？ I’m sure you have some idea, as a linguist. Wish you were here. Study-abroad should be required for linguists, I think. It’s amazing.
It’s only the first week, so I should withhold judgment for now, but I really do think that Japan encompasses everything I ever wanted. I don’t like being embarrassed, so wearing the wrong shoes in the wrong places has made me a little uncomfortable today, but I really do think that there’s a place for shame and deference. Other people do know better than you do. And keeping houses clean is good, and not being loud and obnoxious is a virtue. Stupid gaijin. And the beautiful things are SO beautiful, and really everything is beautiful. The girls always try to look nice, and everything you can buy is pretty, and packaged nicely, and presented well. And the gardens are so beautiful, both the historical, sacred ones and the little tiny plots of green things in little tiny yards of little tiny houses. The houses are amazing. They’re not generally symmetrical like a lot of ours; they’re well-designed and pleasing to the eye. I like the colors and the light here. It’s mostly subdued, outside of the flashy advertisements and pachinko arcades, so they use subtle variation to make design. Also I like telephone wires.
“Unbelievable” is a word I’ve been using a lot.
I haven’t experienced the bad, loud, loose parts yet. Our orientation booklet had a whole section on avoiding being groped by drunk men in the trains, and what to do. (Apparently you’re supposed to yell and then take them to the police, which seems counterintuitive – the last thing I would want to do is be anywhere near them!) It could be 違う (not so, otherwise, wrong), but I’ve also heard that the Japanese use drinking as an excuse for anything, since things you did while drunk are ignored in work the next day. That’s a bit frightening.
Heat is fabulous. There isn’t central heating in Japan, and 電気 (electricity) is expensive, so rooms have single heaters. Mine also has a larger unit, which I feel bad using. I’m still getting used to hearing “AC” to mean heat. I have a small space heater pointed towards my desk, and I like it very much. My room is colder than the outside air, for some reason.
I wonder why I always get hungry only a few hours after eating. I ate so much tonight, I wanted to eat more because it was really good and because Kaori-san made a ton of food. We had sukiyaki, which is fabulous. She put some kind of meat fat in a hotpot and fried beef in that, as well as mushrooms and cabbage and noodles and tofu, with sukiyaki sauce. Then we took the food from the pot when it was ready and dipped it in a bowl of raw egg and ate it. With the raw egg, it was amazing and tasty but I’m surprised that my stomach hasn’t been protesting more. I hope they haven’t heard of salmonella here yet.
I won’t have to get up at 7 tomorrow! The test is at 9:45, so we’re leaving the house around 9, so breakfast is about 8:30 or something. I don’t think it will take me that long to eat トスト (toast), but oh well.
Apparently my host mother really likes American dramas. It was fun trying to understand the Japanese transliterations. “Gilmore Girls” is especially hard to say in Japanese-style English.
Meeting our host parents was very amusing. First there was the Entrance of the Gaijin Bus, where we backed a bus full of foreigners right through the gates to Nanzan, past the clop-clopping well-dressed Japanese college girls. Then we were all herded (with our luggage) to a room in the school where we sat, like puppies, to see who would be chosen. One by one we were called when pretty Japanese ladies came through the hall and to our room. We could see them for about two minutes before they came, so everyone was guessing who would be Next, and fretting, and どきどきしてる(onomatopoeia for heart-pounding: “dokidoki”), and 心配してる (worrying). The four girls (me, Nathalie, Ksenia and Kate) were in the corner together for a while, since they seemed to be picking off the boys first. John noticed that everyone who had sat in the corner of the room still remained, and said we looked like cattle in a truck or something. It must have looked funny.
My host mother is really cute. She talks very quickly, so I can usually understand what she’s saying mostly (it’s a little under 50-level, with some other vocabulary thrown in) but I’ve been so overwhelmed that I don’t actually end up saying much besides “yes” and “thank you”. I did ask a few questions, but nothing very elaborate because I can’t really keep to her pace. It’s only the first hour. In about half an hour I go up to have udon…! She seemed surprised that I liked Japanese food. Well, I won’t be so excited about it in another few months, I’m sure, but for now it’s good. She was especially excited that I liked sashimi…! Apparently I’m their fourth 留学生 (study-abroad student), which is cool.
At one point during the ride she gasped and said “Oh, I forgot to tell her about the dog”, and said that she had a large and very dangerous dog in their house, and sometimes she bites 留学生, and I was suitably concerned. She kept this up as we went up to their section of the house, telling me to stay quiet, whereupon I met the tiniest, most harmless dog in the world. She’s really cute, and she gets super excited and stands up on her hind legs and looks happy. I said I had been 心配していた and Kaori laughed.
I have my own little suite. It’s amazing. I was expecting to have to share a room or something, but actually their house is pretty big for an apartment.
There is a wireless I can get from here, but it doesn’t work. It conks out every thirty seconds, in a very regular pattern. Any advice? I’m pleased though because it’s password-protected, so I just guessed that the password might be the name of the wireless and I was correct! ☺
I learned something interesting right now, what was it. My host mother was talking about signs with incorrect English, and I told her we found a lot of チーシャツ(tshirts) with odd English, and she laughed and said Yknow, when foreigners come here with Japanese characters on their shirts, it’s usually pretty incorrect too. And tattoos, as well. Of course, this is all said in Japanese, since I don’t think either my host mother or my host father speak English. Maybe a tiny bit, like I heard “third floor” and “direct” (which keeps confusing me, since I expect it to be Japanese).
Apparently the 10-year-old just came back from being in Australia for a year…? I couldn’t quite catch what she was saying about the dates, but I think that’s true. So I guess I’ll be chatting with her a lot in English. Her mom said she’s good at English, but with an Australian accent :-p
So it seems that I will have to come home directly from school pretty often. I don’t really want to do that; I’d rather hang around in Nagoya or something. I want to go back to where we were in the hotel. I also want to get an electronic dictionary, since my paper one isn’t very good and certainly doesn’t recognise kanji input.
もうちょっと後で (a little later)：
We just went to get my Alien Registration Card and health insurance. Gya. I still don’t really understand what’s expected from me, and I hope the 10-year-old comes home soon so I can have an interpreter. It’s hard to realize that I really can’t make myself understood in any way besides Japanese for most of the people I’m around outside of school. It’s crazy.
Tomorrow is the placement test!! I want to do well, but I also want to unpack and nap instead of studying kanji. In the car I listened to stories about Reiko and learned that karaoke means “empty orchestra”, which I think I had learned before but forgot, and asked about what accent of English kids learn in Japanese. And I feel like getting a recognizable tone is almost as important as having a lot of vocabulary for Japanese. I want to sound like them.
Language is confusing…I was being introduced to a few friends who were outside, and one of them asked in English where I came from, but my brain found it easier to reply to him in Japanese. It’s a very difficult language to switch in. Either I can think in English or I can think in Japanese. I don’t know if I’ve dreamed in Japanese yet, but I’ve certainly woken up with it in my head.
More boots may not be possible with my current situation. I told my host mother I had five pairs of shoes and I think she thought I must have mistaken the words. So I lied and said I had four, and she cleared space in their shoe closet for three. Apparently it is だめ (honestly hard to translate, even though it’s the simplest word, but it describes something that you’re not allowed to do (as in cultural rules), that is impossible (as in a closed street), that is too difficult (as in Japanese)) to store shoes in your closet.
夕食の後 (after dinner)：
Ah. The end of total-immersion Japanese for the day. 英語の音楽を聞いて、英語で書くつもり。。。Except I have to study. Lots and lots of kanji. Kaori-san said that she thinks I’ll be able to make 500, but I don’t think that’s true. There’s too many kanji that I don’t remember in 400, even though I learned all of them.
Half of every sentence I write now is thought out in Japanese.
Reiko-chan really does have an Australian accent. Her mother was mostly surprised about the vowels (she was making fun of “can’t”), but what gets me is the insertion of “r” sounds, like at the end of “no”. I don’t know what that’s called. ジェレミー、手伝ってくれない？ I’m sure you have some idea, as a linguist. Wish you were here. Study-abroad should be required for linguists, I think. It’s amazing.
It’s only the first week, so I should withhold judgment for now, but I really do think that Japan encompasses everything I ever wanted. I don’t like being embarrassed, so wearing the wrong shoes in the wrong places has made me a little uncomfortable today, but I really do think that there’s a place for shame and deference. Other people do know better than you do. And keeping houses clean is good, and not being loud and obnoxious is a virtue. Stupid gaijin. And the beautiful things are SO beautiful, and really everything is beautiful. The girls always try to look nice, and everything you can buy is pretty, and packaged nicely, and presented well. And the gardens are so beautiful, both the historical, sacred ones and the little tiny plots of green things in little tiny yards of little tiny houses. The houses are amazing. They’re not generally symmetrical like a lot of ours; they’re well-designed and pleasing to the eye. I like the colors and the light here. It’s mostly subdued, outside of the flashy advertisements and pachinko arcades, so they use subtle variation to make design. Also I like telephone wires.
“Unbelievable” is a word I’ve been using a lot.
I haven’t experienced the bad, loud, loose parts yet. Our orientation booklet had a whole section on avoiding being groped by drunk men in the trains, and what to do. (Apparently you’re supposed to yell and then take them to the police, which seems counterintuitive – the last thing I would want to do is be anywhere near them!) It could be 違う (not so, otherwise, wrong), but I’ve also heard that the Japanese use drinking as an excuse for anything, since things you did while drunk are ignored in work the next day. That’s a bit frightening.
Heat is fabulous. There isn’t central heating in Japan, and 電気 (electricity) is expensive, so rooms have single heaters. Mine also has a larger unit, which I feel bad using. I’m still getting used to hearing “AC” to mean heat. I have a small space heater pointed towards my desk, and I like it very much. My room is colder than the outside air, for some reason.
I wonder why I always get hungry only a few hours after eating. I ate so much tonight, I wanted to eat more because it was really good and because Kaori-san made a ton of food. We had sukiyaki, which is fabulous. She put some kind of meat fat in a hotpot and fried beef in that, as well as mushrooms and cabbage and noodles and tofu, with sukiyaki sauce. Then we took the food from the pot when it was ready and dipped it in a bowl of raw egg and ate it. With the raw egg, it was amazing and tasty but I’m surprised that my stomach hasn’t been protesting more. I hope they haven’t heard of salmonella here yet.
I won’t have to get up at 7 tomorrow! The test is at 9:45, so we’re leaving the house around 9, so breakfast is about 8:30 or something. I don’t think it will take me that long to eat トスト (toast), but oh well.
Apparently my host mother really likes American dramas. It was fun trying to understand the Japanese transliterations. “Gilmore Girls” is especially hard to say in Japanese-style English.
January 8
January 8, 2008
Today we went to Meijimura, a slightly eerie concept: buildings brought from various places (Japan, but also Seattle and Hawaii) to illustrate what things would have looked like in the Meiji era. For those who don’t know, what makes it so eerie (besides that these buildings are from various places) is that during this period, Japan was starting to be infatuated with Western architecture and clothing as status symbols, so the juxtaposition gets to be pretty weird. But there was a really cool turn-of-the-century darkroom, in one of the traditional Japanese houses! I’m really pleased that I learned the kanji for darkroom recently (暗室), or else I would not have been able to find it on the map. There are a few people who know some English here, but for the most part signs and everything are all in Japanese. I really wonder what darkroom processes that poet was using. The sign didn’t think it was important to list.
ほしいなこと:
1. Boots. All of the girls in Nagoya (ALL of them) look really cute. Not in a かわいい way, but just really well put together. And there’s LOTS of boots. I’m sad that I didn’t bring mine. But I’m pleased that I won’t have a hard time trying to look cute.
2. A cell phone charm, to remind me that my phone belongs here and should be used. I haven’t called anyone yet, although I suppose I should.
3. More stationary and more stamps. I’m really pleased with my anthropomorphic tofu stationary, but I know I’ll want to write tons of letters. I already want to write a letter every five minutes.
4. An electronic dictionary. They seem incredibly useful and portable and fast, and my paper dictionary doesn’t even have “ninja” in it. Also you can look up kanji – you just write the kanji on a screen and it finds what it might be and also words it could be in.
5. Paper, to teach Brian how to make shuriken. I can’t believe he doesn’t know. I have to get him in touch with Dylan, I think they’ll both save the world together as spiritual ninja.
Today we went to Meijimura, a slightly eerie concept: buildings brought from various places (Japan, but also Seattle and Hawaii) to illustrate what things would have looked like in the Meiji era. For those who don’t know, what makes it so eerie (besides that these buildings are from various places) is that during this period, Japan was starting to be infatuated with Western architecture and clothing as status symbols, so the juxtaposition gets to be pretty weird. But there was a really cool turn-of-the-century darkroom, in one of the traditional Japanese houses! I’m really pleased that I learned the kanji for darkroom recently (暗室), or else I would not have been able to find it on the map. There are a few people who know some English here, but for the most part signs and everything are all in Japanese. I really wonder what darkroom processes that poet was using. The sign didn’t think it was important to list.
ほしいなこと:
1. Boots. All of the girls in Nagoya (ALL of them) look really cute. Not in a かわいい way, but just really well put together. And there’s LOTS of boots. I’m sad that I didn’t bring mine. But I’m pleased that I won’t have a hard time trying to look cute.
2. A cell phone charm, to remind me that my phone belongs here and should be used. I haven’t called anyone yet, although I suppose I should.
3. More stationary and more stamps. I’m really pleased with my anthropomorphic tofu stationary, but I know I’ll want to write tons of letters. I already want to write a letter every five minutes.
4. An electronic dictionary. They seem incredibly useful and portable and fast, and my paper dictionary doesn’t even have “ninja” in it. Also you can look up kanji – you just write the kanji on a screen and it finds what it might be and also words it could be in.
5. Paper, to teach Brian how to make shuriken. I can’t believe he doesn’t know. I have to get him in touch with Dylan, I think they’ll both save the world together as spiritual ninja.
January 7
January 7, 2008
Breakfast today was a set meal, not the buffet. They had this amazing technology for getting butter and jam onto bread at the same time. Both were in a little packet, and you break it and them squeeze it so that ribbons of each come out from each side. It took me a while to figure out that you could cheat the system by just squeezing one side at a time.
Today on our way down to the post office (where we waited forever for Nathalie to fail to get her traveler’s checks cashed) we stopped in this cute little shop of hand-made beads, and the little old man who was melting glass there started talking to us in Japanese about the history of beads and the history of the town (five-hundred-year-old buildings…!). I should have bought a bead, but they were all ¥1000 or over.
We eventually got to the デパート (department store), which was AMAZING. Everything the Japanese make is beautiful. It seems that if something isn’t beautiful, they don’t feel it’s worth making. I found a purse and some fabulous stationary.
Writing will be slow right now, since the girls are all watching RENT. We have a girly group now (Natalie, Nathalie, Brittany, Kate, Ksenia and I hang out together often, and they’re all awesome). We went to the onsen again tonight. I find I get anxious in the hot water, because it’s harder for me to breathe. But it’s a fun experience.
The evening was a sort of worrying experience though. It hadn’t occurred to me to try to replicate frat parties in Japan, but apparently the other group that I don’t usually hang out with wanted to go to karaoke, so I followed because some of my friends were going, but it turned out that they were going to get alcohol at the デパートfirst. So by the time we got there, they were still coming back. We checked in the place, but they told us that they weren’t open. When the rest of the group came back with all their drinks, we tried to tell them that we’d been told that it was closed, but of course they decided they wanted to check for themselves. And apparently they were told that also they weren’t welcome because they had brought drinks last time. College students….It was, for lack of a better word, a sobering experience.
Things I Didn’t Know:
1. You can write a song using a seven-note melody lifted from another song, but if it’s eight notes, it’s plagiarism.
2. Pakkupakku, onomatopoeia for eating quickly and steadily, is the origin of “pacman”.
3. You have to take off your shoes when you go in a changing room. You also have to try on the clothes on top of your existing clothes. This makes us wonder what the protocol is for trying on shoes.
4. You can’t step off the raised platform of a house with your socks, and you can’t put your shoes on the platform. So you have to make sure to have your shoes right there and facing the right way, and not overbalance (like I often do).
Breakfast today was a set meal, not the buffet. They had this amazing technology for getting butter and jam onto bread at the same time. Both were in a little packet, and you break it and them squeeze it so that ribbons of each come out from each side. It took me a while to figure out that you could cheat the system by just squeezing one side at a time.
Today on our way down to the post office (where we waited forever for Nathalie to fail to get her traveler’s checks cashed) we stopped in this cute little shop of hand-made beads, and the little old man who was melting glass there started talking to us in Japanese about the history of beads and the history of the town (five-hundred-year-old buildings…!). I should have bought a bead, but they were all ¥1000 or over.
We eventually got to the デパート (department store), which was AMAZING. Everything the Japanese make is beautiful. It seems that if something isn’t beautiful, they don’t feel it’s worth making. I found a purse and some fabulous stationary.
Writing will be slow right now, since the girls are all watching RENT. We have a girly group now (Natalie, Nathalie, Brittany, Kate, Ksenia and I hang out together often, and they’re all awesome). We went to the onsen again tonight. I find I get anxious in the hot water, because it’s harder for me to breathe. But it’s a fun experience.
The evening was a sort of worrying experience though. It hadn’t occurred to me to try to replicate frat parties in Japan, but apparently the other group that I don’t usually hang out with wanted to go to karaoke, so I followed because some of my friends were going, but it turned out that they were going to get alcohol at the デパートfirst. So by the time we got there, they were still coming back. We checked in the place, but they told us that they weren’t open. When the rest of the group came back with all their drinks, we tried to tell them that we’d been told that it was closed, but of course they decided they wanted to check for themselves. And apparently they were told that also they weren’t welcome because they had brought drinks last time. College students….It was, for lack of a better word, a sobering experience.
Things I Didn’t Know:
1. You can write a song using a seven-note melody lifted from another song, but if it’s eight notes, it’s plagiarism.
2. Pakkupakku, onomatopoeia for eating quickly and steadily, is the origin of “pacman”.
3. You have to take off your shoes when you go in a changing room. You also have to try on the clothes on top of your existing clothes. This makes us wonder what the protocol is for trying on shoes.
4. You can’t step off the raised platform of a house with your socks, and you can’t put your shoes on the platform. So you have to make sure to have your shoes right there and facing the right way, and not overbalance (like I often do).
January 6
January 6, 2008:
We’re currently in a ryokan (traditional Japanese-style inn) so it’s expected that there’s no wireless around. I will have to post entries after we get back to Nagoya, possibly from the school.
Today we had to get up for breakfast at 7:30, which was not difficult with jetlag; I woke up sometime around 4am, when it was still completely dark outside. I almost fell asleep in the subsequent Japanese class, and I’m almost too tired to function right now, although it’s only 9:30.
After class we had a shorter-than-usual break for lunch – we went to the “toast restaurant” (the cheaper of the three available restaurants in Inuyama) and almost everyone got yakisoba. I have been finding a lot of Japanese dishes unnecessarily sweet, which is disappointing; I was hoping that fried noodles would be salty. What looked good was the “toast”, which was made with these enormously thick pieces of bread. Perhaps tomorrow. We still have a few days here before we go back to Nagoya.
Then we walked up the hill to Inuyama Castle, which was beautiful. It’s the oldest castle in Japan, did you know? I think that’s what it was. The view from the slightly shaky walkway-balcony was unbelievable. The castle is on a hill already, and so the view from the top of a castle on the top of a hill…
For Dylan - real armor in a real castle! It's even better than the Met!
After that we went to Joan Teahouse, which had some beautiful pristine Japanese gardens. The Japanese phrase いい感じreally makes so much sense with so many of these places. It literally means “good feeling”, but it’s very descriptive when used in the sense of “picturesque”. A lot of Japanese aesthetic setups (gardens, houses, etc.) seem to be made with the idea that they create harmonious pictures. It’s so close to framing a shot in photography; it must be easy to shoot pictures of Japan…!
The Japanese think through everything, even in the fifteen hundreds. The tea house had a very small, square, raised door that you would really have to crouch to get through. I figured it was so that you had to bow your head and show respect, which is not unlikely, but the real reason is even more thoughtful. The katana carried by warriors would be too long to fit across the narrow opening while strapped to someone’s back, forcing warriors to lay down their weapons when entering the peaceful place.
I am seeing things, out here in the hallway because my roommates are already sleeping. This is not good.
After the teahouse (and after waiting around chatting for about half an hour before we realized that actually, we were the last group and everyone had already gone back so we were not in fact waiting for anyone – oops!) a group of us wandered around by the river. That may have been my favorite part of the day. There was a lot of “oh my god, we’re actually in Japan” moments, which are cute. Because we were just playing around in an entirely foreign country. I do wonder how much they resent us running around being noisy. But the other students are fun, and even if we do speak English most of the time, they’re extremely funny and we’re almost always laughing. It’s like the best parts of Japanese class, twenty-four hours a day.
And there was the most beautiful, Japanese postcard sunset. I haven’t figured out how to get Blogger to want to post my photos, but that needs to happen very soon. There was also an island that happened to have a window in it.
I continue to see things that aren’t there. I think I will have to sleep.
Later:
Here are some more photos from that day:
We’re currently in a ryokan (traditional Japanese-style inn) so it’s expected that there’s no wireless around. I will have to post entries after we get back to Nagoya, possibly from the school.
Today we had to get up for breakfast at 7:30, which was not difficult with jetlag; I woke up sometime around 4am, when it was still completely dark outside. I almost fell asleep in the subsequent Japanese class, and I’m almost too tired to function right now, although it’s only 9:30.
After class we had a shorter-than-usual break for lunch – we went to the “toast restaurant” (the cheaper of the three available restaurants in Inuyama) and almost everyone got yakisoba. I have been finding a lot of Japanese dishes unnecessarily sweet, which is disappointing; I was hoping that fried noodles would be salty. What looked good was the “toast”, which was made with these enormously thick pieces of bread. Perhaps tomorrow. We still have a few days here before we go back to Nagoya.
Then we walked up the hill to Inuyama Castle, which was beautiful. It’s the oldest castle in Japan, did you know? I think that’s what it was. The view from the slightly shaky walkway-balcony was unbelievable. The castle is on a hill already, and so the view from the top of a castle on the top of a hill…
For Dylan - real armor in a real castle! It's even better than the Met!
After that we went to Joan Teahouse, which had some beautiful pristine Japanese gardens. The Japanese phrase いい感じreally makes so much sense with so many of these places. It literally means “good feeling”, but it’s very descriptive when used in the sense of “picturesque”. A lot of Japanese aesthetic setups (gardens, houses, etc.) seem to be made with the idea that they create harmonious pictures. It’s so close to framing a shot in photography; it must be easy to shoot pictures of Japan…!
The Japanese think through everything, even in the fifteen hundreds. The tea house had a very small, square, raised door that you would really have to crouch to get through. I figured it was so that you had to bow your head and show respect, which is not unlikely, but the real reason is even more thoughtful. The katana carried by warriors would be too long to fit across the narrow opening while strapped to someone’s back, forcing warriors to lay down their weapons when entering the peaceful place.
I am seeing things, out here in the hallway because my roommates are already sleeping. This is not good.
After the teahouse (and after waiting around chatting for about half an hour before we realized that actually, we were the last group and everyone had already gone back so we were not in fact waiting for anyone – oops!) a group of us wandered around by the river. That may have been my favorite part of the day. There was a lot of “oh my god, we’re actually in Japan” moments, which are cute. Because we were just playing around in an entirely foreign country. I do wonder how much they resent us running around being noisy. But the other students are fun, and even if we do speak English most of the time, they’re extremely funny and we’re almost always laughing. It’s like the best parts of Japanese class, twenty-four hours a day.
And there was the most beautiful, Japanese postcard sunset. I haven’t figured out how to get Blogger to want to post my photos, but that needs to happen very soon. There was also an island that happened to have a window in it.
I continue to see things that aren’t there. I think I will have to sleep.
Later:
Here are some more photos from that day:
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