Indian Summer
I finally got rid of my family's Christmas package. And though I spent all day working on it (again) and got none of my piles of homework done, just letting it go has released a trememdous amount of stress from me. And sending it cost less than I originally estimated. Yay! I hope all the gifts are in good condition after a month (or more) in transit...

I was really impressed by the all day, all-night Post Office in Shinjuku. Not only was it enormouse but it's also open... forever. How convenient!

Getting out allowed me to take my mind off being lonely and once again just experience the city. As usual, after I was out for a while I started feeling stressed and overwhelmed again but for the first hour or so that I was out, I felt free and optimistic.

Taking the bus from Nakano-ku to Shinjuku, I eavesdropped on the conversation of two teenage girls behind me. I only realized that I was eavesdropping when it occurred to me that not only did I understand them but I was listening to them to pick up new casual-speech grammar structures. When the hell did that happen? The best part, however, was not understanding them but learning that one of the girls apparently was from the country (a fact confirmed when she got off the bus with a carry-case) and had never been to Shinjuku before. Her friend spend the bus ride explaining to her where they were going and what they were doing. It thrilled me to think that I knew more about Shinjuku than a Nihonjin. What a rush!

While listening to them, it also occurred to me that sugoi, which I had previously translated as cool is actually an untranslatable word. Kakko-ii is closer to cool. I would say sugoi is closer to "SWEET" or "SICK" as American slang, except everyone uses sugoi for everything. Adults use it, children use it. I bet old people use it, too. It is, quite literally, an all-purpose adjective expressing the extreme.

If you say, "Sugoi!" it can mean:
-horrible
-terrible
-heavy
-enormous
-bloody
-frightful
-awesome
-beautiful
-cool
-breathtaking
-courageous
-great
-impressive

All of these things have a similar "extreme" connotation but for vastly differing situations. What English word can do all that and still be appropriate in useage such as "sugoi ame" (humongous rain) and such?

Speaking of sugoi... I'm not quite sure what the heck has been up with the weather here lately. It's an Indian Summer. Every day for the last, oh, month has been 70 degrees. Every day, rain or shine. 70 degrees. Don't get me wrong, I think 70 degrees is a great temperature and all and I'd will it to stay this warm forever if I had enough clothing... but... you can't fool my body. I know it's November. It gets dark before 5 o'clock. The mornings are crisp and chill. My brain WANTS to wear sweaters and warm coats. In the morning, I HAVE to wear sweaters and coats to prevent myself from freezing on the walk to school but by mid-afternoon I'm roasting in them. My host mom says that the North Wind will move in soon and we'll have some cooler weather. I do hope so, because I'm getting awfully tired of pretending that it isn't winter... and it doesn't even really feel like fall yet.

How strange, to complain about good weather!

So I walked around Shinjuku pitting out my turtleneck and it also occured to me, as I was again nearly struck by a bicyclist, that Tokyo drivers are (pardon my french) Nucking Futs. Like, total crack-addicts. I can't believe how stupidly people drive here... especially the bicyclists. Everyone rides either dinky portable mini-bikes or huge schooners of bicycles that have seats as wide as a desk chair. They ride them in the streets and on the sidewalks... wherever they want. I've gotta hand it to them; they've got guts. I would never bike here, expecially with the regard pedestrians and motorists seem to have toward bicyclists... that is, they just don't seem to care.

Of course, no one wears helmets or makes any attempt to engage in what we Americans think of as bicycle manners (i.e. hand signals, bells, etc). They just squeeze on by without saying a damn thing to you. Some bicyclists strike me particularly as exceedingly stupid. Like those that ride in the street against heavy traffic. Some in front of busses. Today I saw a pair of men on a bike, one standing on the frame of the back tire as they biked down a busy street. Both men had lit cigarettes in their mouths. Tonight I also saw some dumbass biking around with a bandage over one eye. Hello, depth perception???

And it's not only the bicyclists who are total wackos. Automobiles consistantly pop out of random alleys with no warning and nearly run people over. When traffic has stopped for some reason or other in a narrow street, the other cars don't wait for it to clear... they just drive around trusting that they'll get by before opposing traffic is equally inconvenienced. Motorcyclists, too, it seems, do whatever they please: Drive on any side of the street, weave in and out of traffic, cut off other vehicles regularly, drive alongside cars, vans, busses, bicycles, etc and sometimes go up on the sidewalk.

One thing that really bothers me but can't be helped is that in the early morning and sometimes at night, shipping trucks for stores just park IN the street and force cars to go around while backing up traffic for hours. The reason for this, as with everything else here, is that there simply isn't enough SPACE to put the trucks anywhere else. There are no driveways, no service alleys, no truck lots. (Well, in some places there are, in fact, turnoffs for trucks... but not in my neighborhood.) Business is business and the show must go on.

Most small cars can seem to fit around the trucks OK but busses have to dodge them. So I can never tell how late my bus will run on any given day.

Pedestrians, too, come in two varieties. Those who can walk and those who cannot. Tokyo is rife with idiots who meander meaninglessly all over the sidewalk at no faster than a crawl. Now, I know I walk very fast... but some of these people walk OBSCENELY slow. I'm not talking old people here, either... young girls and guys, even. I've been so tempted to yell "just MOVE!" at some of them, I swear. It's especially obnoxious to be stuck behind a big group of gabbing schoolkids who are taking up the WHOLE sidewalk. Must. Repress. Violent. Urges. Thankfully, often one of the despised sidewalk bicyclists comes along and forces such sidewalk hogs to part a throughfare. Some people also walk very fast like me. I can usually find them and tail them for a while before I overtake them because of my long legs and have to hunt out a new parter.

It's easy to spot such people at streetlights because they are always the ones who are so eager to go (like me, typically) that they will start to walk before the light has really changed. In Tokyo, "jumping the gun" not only serves the purpose of getting you across the street faster, but getting you to your entire destination faster because you are at the FRONT of the obscene crush of people usually using the crosswalk. Eventually jumping the gun becomes a habit and these people (like me) do it even at empty crosswalks. I think we should have a special people club. A club of people who know how to walk down the freaking sidewalk at a normal speed and keep the hell out of my... err, I mean... everyone's way.

yes yes, that's a good idea.