God, That is sooo Japanese...

I have been noticing more and more interesting Japanese perspectives from my family recently. For instance...

Last night I was explaining what the "Polar Plunge" is. My little sister did it in Wisconsin this past week or so and I thought it was an interesting thing that Japanese people would probably find interesting. I explained it (For those of you who don't know, it is to raise money for the Special Olympics. You raise pledges and then dive into a frozen lake. Saftey, of course, is there to make sure you don't die...) My host family really didn't get it though. They kept asking "So, she gets money from people. Then to say 'thank you' she jumps into the lake?" "No, not quite, it's more like 'How much would you pay me to jump into this frozen lake?'" "I don't understand, why would someone pay her to jump in the lake? It's cold and dangerous." "Exactly, because it is cold and dangerous." "...." "...." ".............." ".................."

I guess that is just the "American Way" This morning I explained what a Date Auction is, my host mom loved that idea, she thought it was so funny.

Another funny thing is the way I eat, compared to how they eat. My host dad stopped me and asked me why I had so much rice left. My host sister said "All the host students we have always save most of their rice for last." I realized that I eat each little chapter of food until its gone and then move on. I rarely do one bite of food, one bite of rice, as they tend to do here. My dad said "That's crazy! Rice has no taste! why would you want to eat it alone??" The answer is: Rice. Is. Good.

Another thing I am realizing is that, probably because my vocablary and speaking ability is that of a child, my mother thinks I am a child. I was sharing starburst and reese's with my family to see how they liked them (They love them) and after I popped a starburst into my mouth, my host mom said "Make sure you brush your teeth!" She also likes to point random things out to me. Last night, at the grocery store, she stopped me in front of a little food stand and said "Look! They have a stove!" Then this morning as I was leaving and saying "Ittekimasu!" (which is what you say when you leave) she started laughing and when I asked why she said "I was going to tell you to make sure you have your gloves and commuter pass...I keep forgetting that you are an adult." Then she continued to laugh the whole time she walked me outside.

Also, on a side note, last night we went to a Kaitenzushi (The sushi restaurants where the sushi is on the little conveyorbelt and you take what you want) and when you'd order your own sushi on a separate track, it'd be brought to you on top of a little Bullet-Train. It made eating 1000 times more fun... I guess I am a child.

Naked Man Festival Countdown : TWO DAYS

Trains, Trains, Trains, Trains

I'm not sure what it is about me, whether it's my incredibly pliable and stretchy skin, beatufully thick eye brows, thin hair, or pale semi-transparent skin... but it seems that I'm a very approachable person in public. Not all Japanese people think this, especially my Japanese Peers. Those who DO like to approach me are old men, small small children, old women, then last is probably junior high boys. Junior high girls will approach me, but only when in large groups. I think nearly everytime I ride the train, an old man will at least look, smile, and wave at me. I do get a frequent conversation though and they usually seem to be pretty crazy conversations...

While at a train station my friend and I decided to take the elevator down to the subway. As the elevator arrived we heard an old man go "It COMES SO FAST!" (but in Japanese). We tried to hold back our laughter. Then, the entire ride down the elevator he wouldn't stop saying "Irashhai!" Ira-Ira-Ira-IrasSHAI!!!!" This is the word people say when you enter stores and restaurants to welcome you to the store. When we got to the bottom he said "That was fast wasn't it?" and we nodded and walked away. We met up with our other friends who took the stairs and suddenly the old man appears in our little circle out of nowhere. He kept telling me that the train was coming and we should get ready. He then laughed at us and he said he was laughing because we were laughing at him. It was awkward. But funny. I made him sound like he was a crazy person. He was. But he wasn't REALLY. He was just a nice old man trying to make us laugh. (He was crazy.)

We rode the train one stop, transferred to the train home and of course what happens? An old man comes and talks again. He asks us where we are from, then he goes off into this elaborate story about how he used to be a high school teacher, he retired and went to America and went to Boston, Indiana, San Francisco, San Diego, and then came back and decided to be a principal. Then apparently 10 years ago the Emperor of Japan invited him and his wife to his house and gave him a giant medal. He explained this while puffing his chest out and pretended to show off his invisible medal. Then he got off the train.

Of course there is the couple who talked to Matt and I and invited us over. The old man from that couple acts in Noh Theater and is a Flute Master apparently. They also live in a giant giant house and have a Noh Theater in their home (this was confirmed by Matt, he went to their house and survived. I wonder though...).

Today an old man with a giant Blue leather purse sat down next to me and talked to me for a while. He had the worst breath I've ever smelled in my entire life. But he was nice. I knew he wasn't crazy because his daughter was with him and she talked to me too. God, his breath was horrible though.

The other night two older men from Vietnam had a nice convo with me on the train. We were both practicing our Japanese on each other.

OH! Another weird one this afternoon. I was standing on a train and an older man who was clearly really rich (He had a fancy sport jacket on with a really dumb looking purple vest with horses on under it) SLAPPED me. He pushed me and slapped me. Not hard. Very subtley too. The train was kiiiinda crowded. By Japanese standards, it wasn't very crowded. This guy gets on, kinda bumps me with his hip, then pushes/slaps me out of his way. I wasn't sure if I should make a big deal out of it but something seemed fishy so here is what happened... I grabbed his arm as he was walking away and pulled him over to me. I got real close to his face and said "You think you can just push me, but you have NO idea who I am. If this were my territory you'd be in pieces before you even touched me." (In Japanese) he said "Good thing it's my territory and I have eight men on this train who have weapons pointed at your brain!! right now!!!! Make your move, Mister bucko!" (In Japanese, also). I scream for everyone to hit the deck and pull the emergency stop chord. The train slams to a stop and everyone hits the floor, including his goons. I grab the man and jump out onto the tracks. I see the rear train conductor and motion for him to drive off. He does as told. He'll obviously rewarded later, generously. The old man says "Hah, fine, you got me alone now, but what do you think can happen." I say "All I want, is that purple sweater." "You don't deserve to wear this sweater." "Oh yeah? I'll tell you what I do and do not deserve" and in one swift move, the sweater is on me. His inner circuits are exposed. The man is clearly a robot. "I KNEW IT! You're one of the MWE908 DROIDS!" I splash water on him and deflect his punch as I roll flip off of the tracks JUST in time to miss the train that crushes the evil MWE980 Droid. One down, four more to go.

But yeah, an old man in a purple vest really did push/slap me. After that wasn't true. (You probably knew though, since Japanese trains OBVIOUSLY don't have an emergency stop cable.)

I think this blog will ruin my reputation with a lot of people. People I work for and some of my teachers read this I think. I don't tend to be this strange, but I need some sort of random creative silly output for these thoughts. But do feel free to leave comments on these, it's always exciting to see who reads these. Even if the comment is "Yep, definitely semi-transparent." or "Yeah, you DO have thick eyebrows."

Countdown to the Naked Man Festival: 4 Days

Thoughts on Kanji...

Since I've been sick and haven't really gone out today, I've grown slightly bored. My family went out to the Onsen (I guess being sick probably got me out of another awkward adventure), and I think I'll take the time to write a brief essay on my struggles learning this strange strange language.

Kanji: Kanji is a system of writing used in Japan, borrowed from China. It's basically a picture that is a word. For instance..

This is a kanji that means "Day" There are quite a few different ways to read this kanji's sound. You can say "Hee" "Bee" "Nichi" "Jitsu" "Ka". But you can't just pick which ever you like. It'll confuse Japanese people. In different combinations with other Kanji, it's read a different way.

You cannot tell what a Kanji's reading is just by looking at it. The only way is by either guessing based on whats around it, (For instance if you know the word for Post Office and you sound out the surrounding Kanji, you could figure it out) or by memorizing. The only REAL way is to memorize, memorize, memorize, and memorize. You can get by in Japan by knowing about 800 or 900 Kanji. (In order to graduate middle school in Japan, a student must know 900 Kanji, or so I am told.) When I asked my host mom how many Kanji she knows, she told me "2,300" for me to know this many kanji would be insane. One day when there is a way to pull a "Matrix" and download stuff into our brains, I'll be mad that I spent so much time trying to memorize kanji.

For us who speak english, imagine this scenario... The word "person" we know the sound of each letter and that in that combination it sounds liek "person" If I put up a random arrangment of letters liek "Jifdren" We could all sound that out. Now Imagine if when we wrote "person" instead of spelling it we drew a small picture. When we put it next to the picture for the word "fire" it wouldn't be said as "Fire Person" it'd be "Fire Fighter" the sound of the "Person" picture would be changed. What if we put it next to "Airplane"? It'd probably become "Flight Attendant" The picture we use for "Airplane" would then sound like "Flight" and Person would then sound like "Attendant". Confused yet? Great. That's how Japanese works pretty much. Sometimes you can understand the meaning of the Kanji combinations but not know their reading, or sometimes you can know the reading and not the meaning.

Kanji is so weird and difficult there are a number of game shows on TV that involve Japanese contestants having to guess the reading for certain Kanji. It's kind of like the "spelling bee" of Japan I guess. The good thing with learning a language that uses our same writing system is that you can read everything right off the bat. I'm not trying to say Japanese is sooooo much harder, all languages are hard to learn. What I am saying is that, if you know of a place that can download languages into my brain please send me their phone number.

The Bottom of a W

So now that I've had these wonderful two months of good luck. (I am pretty sure they were kind some "greater power" saying "I know I've given you a bunch of shit over the past 7 or 8 years, but if you redeem your tickets now, you'll get two months of fun!") Well it all came to an end literally the day after the Stevie concert when I felt a slight tingle in my throat. 30 seconds later (when calculated in dog-years) my face pretty much appeared to be melting. I currently have the absolutely worst cold I have ever had in my life. It's not the kind of thing that's sending me to my knees, contemplating a return home, or long sobbing phone calls to my family, but it does kind of suck. It was so intense this afternoon, that I left school early. I ditched out on Sumie. SUMIE, the best class in the world! I couldn't get the energy to go to a class where you paint leaves and bamboo in one stroke. So basically, I've got my eye on your cold. Watch you ass.

Now, I don't dislike Japan or anything like that, but I figure now is a good time to express things I don't like/reasons why I think I got sick...

1) Japanese people do not wash their hands. Ever. (except maybe after they cook)
2) When Japanese people DO wash their hands, they don't use soap (Not using soap would be "okay" if they spent time scrubbing, but they do a quick dip then call it a day.)
3) The trains in Japan get so packed that you're constantly face to face with people.
4) When Japanese people get colds they all wear these masks, much like those surgeon masks, and I have a feeling when you're face to face with them, it actually does the opposite of what the mask is used for. I mean come on, this big mask full of the person's breath, germs, it's slightly wet from breathing on it all morning, and it's RIGHT there. It's like a breeding ground for "sick". When a safe distance away, I could see it's purpose, but I mean, face to face...ugh. (I take the train at LEAST 2 times a day.)
5) When people get sick in Japan, they all go out and pretend they aren't sick. Sick days are kind of a "no-no".

That's all for now I guess. I am starting to get a low grade fever which sucks, but don't think I won't take this son of a bitch without a fight. If I had my olive leaf extract on hand it'd be completely destroyed. It's like a sucker-punch-of-a-cold if you ask me, get me when my back is turned. That's ok, I've got Airborne AND Zycam AND a lot of TV shows I can download off of Itunes incase I decide to not go out this weekend. Hopefully this isn't payback for when I made fun of my old roommate for blowing his nose so hard that he vomited into his hands (I mean, COME ON! It happened TWICE!). I REALLY hope this isn't payback.



Fashionable eh?

Will It Go 'Round in Circles

Japanese class is divided into 4 periods each day and we have a different teacher each period. We go to a language lab for one of them for listening practice. The language lab is very close to the one we had in high school. There's the individual cassette tape things, a tv, and a headset with a microphone. Today we started off doing some basic listening exercises, listen to something and fill out a worksheet. We flipped over the worksheet to see something that started to make me uneasy. There was a series of random names in one column, followed by their age in another, their country in the next, and a blank column after that. At the top of the blank column it said "Things they like to do in Japan..." this was followed by "watch the video and then answer the questions".

The last name was "M***ael" (But in Japanese). The video started and low and behold, one of my teachers happened to see the commercial for the TV I was on on Saturday morning. She taped it and then gave it to the Language Lab teacher. My whole class, aboooout 40 people, saw it with me in the room. How many times? Twice. BUT I got a pretty awesome round of applause and laughs afterwards. My teachers gave me pretty good praise too, apparently people are impressed I know that song because it's "so Japanese." It was embarassing, but that's ok. A lot of the Japanese students at my school have apparently seen it too, when I walk into the cafeteria I can tell who has seen it because I'll hear "Zoom In" (The TV show) or "Ue wo Muite Arukou" (The songs REAL name, not "Sukiyaki") then giggles and people stare. People stare at me all the time though so it's nothing really new. Also I don't really care because I've already run, naked, into an old lady. It's gonna be hard to be really embarassed about anything after that one.

Wonder-san

So last night, it happened. I attended my first Stevie Wonder concert and I can pretty much safely say Japan didn't know what they had coming. He pretty much aurally destroyed everyone. He played every good he's ever written and avoided most of his "questionable" material. Also, I was worried that his voice would be all "old" kind of like Paul McCartney's is. Not that McCartney can't rock any place, but in comparison to his younger years, he's lost a little bit. Stevie, my friend, is in his 60s and sings like he's 20. His band had live horns, live percussion, a drummer, a guitarist (who suuuuucked), a bassist, and 4 back up singers who were nuuuuuts. Stevie even used a REAL bright blue grand piano when necessary which was great. He avoided cheesy synth sounds at all cost, except for songs that originally included the cheesy synth sounds.

The place was pretty small, about the size of a largish-high school basketball arena. I had goooood seats. The concerts in Japan seem to be pretty different though. People don't really "let loose" here. So when they hear this funky soulful music their bodies are like "I feel something, I'm not sure what, but I feel something...I need to move. I NEED to. But how?" and the result is this kind of awkward jerky thrusty thing. Ya know when the muppets would dance on Sesame Street and they would just kind of flail around? It was similar to that, maybe mixed with a baby hopping around to music. I'm not saying ALL Japanese people aren't good dancers, but it's just a lot less part of their culture than ours is all I am saying. I am sure if my friends from Senegal came to America and saw how I dance they'd think exactly the same thing. Probably even worse. I only saw 4 other forgieners at the concert too which was weird.

My favorite moment of the night was when it was dead silent, before the show started someone yelled "Stee-bee Wan-Dah SAN!" (Stevie Wonder San!).

Japanese security is pretty nuts. These guys are in really nice suits and have a little arm band thing on, their hair is neatly combed. The rule was, no photos, and don't use your cellphone. If they saw someone as much as holding a cellphone, it was immediately confiscated (I'm pretty sure you can get it back at the end though). During the concert if they saw the glow of a cellphone out, they'd take that too. They don't want pictures taken and they are super stealth security guards. This woman near us took out her camera and within seconds on guard was at her side politely taking her camera and 4 other guards were waiting at the top of the section in case things got too rough.

Stevie came out and launched into song after song. My intial reaction was this: I stood up, clasped my hands together, kind of hunched over smiling and screamed "I KNOW THIS SONG!! I KNOW IT!" to Matt. His response was "I KNOW! BECAUSE YOU LIKE STEVIE WONDER!!!!" Here is the setlist with a few missing...

Too High
Innervisions
Livin' For the City
You Are the Sunshine of My Life
Higher Ground
Superstition
Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing
If You Really Love Me
Shelter in the Rain
(a ballad where two Japanese ballet dancers came out and danced)
Master Blaster
Improvised Doo-Wop Song
I Just Called To Say I Love You
My Cherie Amour
Signed, Sealed, Delivered
Sir Duke
I Wish
Ribbon In The Sky
Giant Steps (That's right, the Coltrane song)
Part Time Lover
What The Fuss
As
Another Star

A Trip to the Local "映画館"

So I went to the local movie theater with my host family last night. We saw Dreamgirls (English with Japanese subtitles). This was a very interesting experience for a few reasons...
1) Movie theaters in Japan are wicked expensive. a ticket costs between 20 and 30 dollars. If you go to the first or last show of a day, you get half off though, so we went late and it was only 10 bucks.
2) The tickets you get are assigned seats. This has its plus and minuses. If you got tickets to an opening night movie early, youd' get bitchin seats. BUT who deserves it more? The person who shows up two hours early or the person who buys them online fastest? Tricky, tricky.
3) I'd occasionally glance at the subtitles in Japanese and would be kind of weirded out at how different the translation was...then I realized that I was the only American in the whole theater, while some of the other people may have known English, I'm pretty sure I was only person who actually fully understood the movie.
4) It was the best sounding theater I'd ever been to in my entire life. It was kind of crazy.

My host-family pretty much had no idea what happened in that movie. The plot, in my mind, was pretty simple too. The movie was more about the music (which was pretty badass) than the plot. In the car ride home my host mom kept thinking that everyone in the movie was related. Eventually this problem was solved when I explained that "brother" doesn't always mean a male sibling. For those of you who have not seen the movie, it doesn't ruin anything to say that there's a lot of broken love relationships in it. My host fathers response to this translates to "American human relationships are very difficult to understand. I just liked music, and I really liked the sound of the drums." My host family wants to see "Babel" next, we'll see...

Countdown to the Naked Man Festival: 11 Days