home(?)
I don't think the feeling of displacement has really hit yet. I'm too tired, too sore and too crampy to feel anything but relief at being out of that hot, smelly and loudy city. The first thing I noticed on deplaning in Vancouver, B.C., was how clean the air smelled.

The flight itself was uneventful, though the moments leading up to it were quite possibly some of the most stressful since coming to Japan. My host family stayed until the last possible moment, keeping me outside of th security checkpoint until after my plane had started boarding. My Host Mom was still acting markedly cold, as she had been for two days prior, which I attribute to the fact that she's probably bad at goodbyes. I had to rescue myself several times from the teetering edge of a breakdown-- which I still haven't had yet but guess will come soon-- to settle for handshakes from everyone as the final goodbye for ten months living together. (Allow me to express my narrow-minded disgust at a culture that is afraid and ashamed of affection.)

I fully attribute that any disasters that might have occurred in the airport were averted by Totoro, whom I carried plumply under my arm. All three Kokusaibu students on Air Canada flight 04 seemed to have some sort of problem at the counter. Whatshisname was told that he had to check his carry-on, which they for some reason *weighed* and found to be 3kg "over" even though it fit perfectly into that silly little measurement system they have. They wanted him to pay $200 for the extra piece of luggage and insisted on it even when he said he'd never had a problem previously.

After watching him struggle with airport staff, I headed in fully expecting to be fee'd and fined up the wazoo for my overweight baggage and extra carry-ons. But... the check-in clerk, took one look at Totoro, told me how cute it was, called me "Miss" and I knew everything would be OK. My luggage WAS overweight... and they didn't charge. I was carrying FAR more than the standard per-person carry-on limit, and no one even blinked, despite that my backpackers bag is MUCH larger than their standard size limit. None of my carry-ons were weighed or examined by the counter staff. The only problem I had was that STA travel, being the hellspawn they are, failed to note in the computer that I'd already paid for my date change even though I was confirmed. Luckily I was carrying the reciept, so after twenty minutes of diddling around, the clerks waved me through unfined. Meanwhile, Whatshisname had just finished convincing the staff to let him reallocate the weight to other bags... and Keith was paying them $100 to look the other way because he'd lost his original ticket (not the one he needed for that day, mind you, but) from when he came to Japan.

They sat me on the aisle in an exit-row berth seat. I had quite possibly the most leg room on the plane. I watched Here Comes Polly, a movie I suggest you avoid with your life, before taking two NyQuil and a melatonin and sleeping restlessly on and off for five hours.

America isn't that weird, except that it seems strangely TRASHY and there are a lot of FAT PEOPLE everywhere. Canada, where we spent the day in Vancouver, seemed a lot stranger. The city itself was too new and strangely empty. Walking by the Amsterdam smoking cafes and stoners passed out on the street or harassing cops, I had the vague feeling that I was on an alien planet. I'm not sure whether it started or stopped being funny when one guy tried to sell us a six-dollar (Canadian even!) bag of bud. I felt a little "off" when we later passed a handcuffed junkie trying to pull his pants up while the cop waited for something. I dunno if I want to live in Canada more or less than I did before.

Around Justin I feel solid and grounded, if not a bit co-dependent. But here in my parents' house, I'm a bit suffocated, partially because it echoes with memories of the unhappiest years of my life and mostly because I can't just hop on a local train and get my ass out of here if I want. I'm unfit to drive at the moment, so I'll just settle to roll around on the floor for a bit and avoid like a plague that garish and nauseating bile of American television. Last night we went to see the late show of DodgeBall (with Ben Stiller) and my head almost exploded.

Like I said, so far my feeling of displacement is only vague and dreamlike in the background. I don't think I quite realize where I am or what has changed. But I do catch myself stopped and staring, frozen quite helplessly unpacking things from my bags or contemplating normalacy. It's not that I have the sense I'm waiting for the bomb to drop, just that I suspect it will when I am quite unawares.

Eyes to the Sky
Being in transit it my favorite time.

I define �in transit� as being between one place and another, experiencing the true potential of transitioning between a nostalgic past and a shining future. Though I know that it could be said metaphorically that all life is like that, it�s easier for me to phrase it in the context of all chunks. This whole year here in Japan has been spent �in transit,� and it�s given me the chance to really appreciate the experience without finding it too mundane.

On my own time, I�ve been able, do some concrete self-examination outside of the context of my normal existence. But now what was once a strange perspective has become my proper context and I�m terrified of going back.

When I return, I will be the proverbial Emperor with New Clothes. No one but me will be able to see the splendor with which I�ve returned, so eventually I�ll be labeled an egotistical freak or easier yet, return the chronic inferiority of being �not that� anything. I�m not that smart, I�m not that pretty, I�m not that skilled, I�m not that creative, I�m not that tall, I�m not that fit, etc. etc. Here in Japan I am a spectacle in a land of spectacles. My very existence grants me acknowledgement, though not always in a positive light.

In a film I watched with anthro class, an African American living in Japan was quoted as saying �By never accepting you as Japanese, Japan truly allows you to be yourself.� By that, he means that Japan has absolutely no expectations of the foreigner� none based on race or social standing and certainly no expectations of linguistic or cultural understanding. Foreigners are all the same in that they�re all gaijin, �outsiders,� no matter where they come from. The Japanese think we cannot penetrate the world that is Japan� and maybe they are right.

I think there�s a lot of truth in the statement that Japan allows one to be him or herself. By having so little expected of me, I earned a lot of praise for my adaptability and gained great self-confidence through experience and support.

I�ve learned to stop clinging to every detail in order to try and make the perfect plan and discovered that I can let go what can�t be helped. Most of all, I�ve learned that I can�t see the future and the best way to enjoy myself is just to go with the flow.

When I first came here, I spent every extra minute studying to cram words into my head. This was partially out of necessity but mostly out of the panic that if I DIDN�T, then I wouldn�t be able to do anything here. When I finally gave up trying so hard, I realized that I still accomplished just as much, if not more.

I know people, however, who clung to silly self-imposed limitations until the very end and didn�t enjoy much, if any, of their time here. Tokyo has changed them, much as it has changed me, for better or for worse.

When it comes down to it, however, *I* am the one who changed me. It took some pushing from the outside for me to stop worrying about certain things but when I did, it was because I decided to. I decided to stop gnawing away at myself from the inside. I decided that a fulfilled life could, indeed, be a quiet life. I decided to stop being a drama queen. I decided to stop trying to be things that I�m not.

In return, I received a greater sense of support and camaraderie than I�ve ever had from any group of people before. Though the exchange students were a stressed and somewhat cliquey bunch, there were many who would talk openly about anything, and many more who would listen if anyone needed an ear.

My host family contributed by far the greatest amount to the sense of security I gained in Tokyo through their helpfulness and praise. I�m leaving a home where I receive, if anything, too many proud compliments and going back to a life where I rarely, if ever, get any positive support. I�m tired of having to prove myself to teachers, peers and others who act like they either don�t care or like what I�m doing isn�t good enough.

Before I came to Tokyo, I thought that I could have nothing but a future filled with dry obligation and misery. (You know, living by example�) But now I see that isn�t true. I believe I can accomplish what I put my mind to� and furthermore, that I�m worthy of the praise I receive.

I said at the beginning that if I could learn to survive Tokyo I could survive anything, and I�ll say it again now. I have triumphed in this city and in myself. My stay in Japan, due in part to my neurotic preparations and in full to the kindness and (over)generosity of my host family, has far exceeded any expectations I had for its own experiential wholeness.

I am leaving Japan a new woman and carrying the valuable conviction that taking this exchange was indubitably the best decision I have ever made for my own life.

For what it has given me, Tokyo has become the first place I can truly call �home� since I left Michigan almost eight years ago. Today I leave Home but take with me the memory and the hope that what confidence I gain will not be so easily shattered by my re-entry as I fear it may.

Sayonnara, Tokyo.

Last Dance
Tokyo and I have one final date. I'm wearing my favorite dress, pearls and a Japanese hairpin.

First, I'm going to ride the Yamanote line all the way around the circle once; something that I've not yet done in a consecutive sitting.

Then, I'm going to the Park Hyatt bar featured in Lost in Translation to have one cocktail and watch the sunset before the 8PM cover charge takes effect.

It's a cheap date, yes... but a good date.

Itte kimasu....

Edit: As fate would have it, the Yamanote line stopped at Kanda station, aproximately halfway around the circle, and did not move again. I waited for fifteen minutes through repeated announcements that northernbound passengers ride the Keihin Tohoku line through the upper loop. Then came apologies that they were not sure when the train would move again and both the inner and outerbound Yamanote trains had suspended operation. I suspect someone killed themselves.

After biding my time, I decided it wasn't worth the wait and hopped on the Chuo express back to Shinjuku. I walked from the station to the Park Hyatt, which took longer than I thought, and found the New York Bar on the 52nd floor of the South Tower, which also took longer than I thought.

The cheapest cocktail was 1600 yen, so I settled for a nice 1100 yen glass of 1997 vintage Port and sat by myself eating free snacks and feeling somewhat awkward. I took a few photographs and enjoyed the view but no one came and talked to me as I hoped. I was paying to leave before the music started when the waiter noticed my teiki (commuter pass) and asked me if I lived here. I said yes and we struck up a conversation (in Japanese) that concluded with him asking if I would stay through the first music set if he waived the charge.

After the music started-- it was honest to god "Black Jazz"-- I really enjoyed myself for half an hour before I had to leave. Quite a fun date with myself.

I think I'm turning Japanese
Things I have bought or been given in the last week:

-A small lucky cat statue
-A ko-omote Noh mask
-One large and one small furoshiki (Japanese wrapping/carry cloth)
-Traditional candy and sweet senbei (crackers)
-A decorative wrap/tie for my yukata obi
-A Japanese style hair pic
-Two pair chopsticks and two chopstick rests
-Three small painted porcelain balls, for garden decoration
-Three small Japanese bells (fuurin)
-A round-style paper/cloth fan with goldfish design
-A paper lantern
-Japanese cherries (I ate them)

This adds considerable volume to the scads of other stuff I'm dragging along with me, including three yukata with accessories and several gifts. Everything seems like it will fit, and better than when I brought it, so I may still be under weight limit *crosses fingers.*

diving
Tomorrow morning is the last chance I'll have the opportunity to Dive the West Shinjuku basement during rush hour. Shinjuku station is my favorite place to Dive, probably because it's a simple matter of running a short gamut, shooting down the center for the ticket gates and out again. Much easier than attempting Takadanobaba all the way from Waseda. That gets pretty tiring.

Diving is an ability which I've always had, or at least been aware of the potential of, but something that I truly developed since coming to Tokyo as a matter of necessity. To understand what Diving is, you first need a few stock images.

1) If you've seen Donnie Darko, you're almost set. Remember the clear "tube-worm" things that came out of people and represented their preconscious intentions? Keep that in mind, except as a more metaphorical "sense of direction."

2) Imagine being able to visualize information flow, particularly in a networked setting (like a 3D VR grid, if you will) and being able to both see and comprehend the numbers of the matrix which you are in and the flow of binary of which you are a part.

In yogic terms, I would say that Diving is simply three-hundred-sixty expanded consciousness. Even more basic than that, it is a feeling very similar to letting one's eyes relax to view those "Magic Eye" pictures.

I only Dive when I listen to music, whether by choice or perhaps because that is the only time enough of the world is blocked out for me to accomplish the proper state. At the very least, I have little doubt that Diving is linked at least somewhat to my minor Synethesia or at least the brain processes (misfirings?) that make it possible for me to see music as shapes and colors.

My personal metaphor for Diving is "jacking in" (to a network of movement). When I "jack in," the world drops out from around me and I am centralized. It is as if I am moving suddenly very very slow while everything else whirs around me. Except that one major thing has changed: when I Dive, my consciousness is expanded such that I sense the movement patterns of the people and things around me and seem to be able to precalculate their speed and trajectory. It seems logical that this is a basic function of the brain but one that people don't normally use when focused too much on something.

In Diving, there is no focus. The most basic way I initiate a Dive is to relax my eyes (like for the Magic Eye books) and simply project my destination. In that way, I become a natural part of the flow. To Dive is to walk through a crowd unscathed, parting the seas on either side. To Dive is to float down the corridor that is always there and never seen, meant for path and purpose.

Since I've come to Tokyo, I've been utilizing Diving to walk in the city. Some days I don't Dive because I prefer to walk Open... but it takes a lot of confidence and a really good day (although I've had a lot of those recently!) for me to brave the sensory-assault of Tokyo streets without Diving as a backup.

It occurs to me that before I came here, I could already Dive, I just never did it in an outside setting. But I frequently did it while exercising as a method of visualization and automatic breath regulation. Diving with active endorphin release increases my perception of energy flow and the visual aura of my own spinning cycles. [Please for God's sake don't ask me to explain what I just said.]

Today I actually broke down the pattern visually into code. When I was halfway to the turnstile, the world faded even further from the muted colors of Diving into the gree-grey of the network itself. I think for a moment, before I swiped my Suica and passed through the gate, I actually saw the binary of life.

The reason I rarely attempt to explain my visions/visualizations is because they always end up sounding like so much New-Agey bullshit. The truth is, they do make me feel just about as good as drugs, so I keep them my little secret. But as before, I didn't know that there were other Synethesics out there and so it's quite possible that other people can Dive, too.

What about you?

the easy way out
Been thinking about having a face-on meeting with the Chuo-sen rather than getting on that plane Sunday.

survivor
We sat at the same Wednesday table, the four of us, talking of war because today was the day the battle in Okinawa ended. She started to speak, the oldest and shyest of the group. In halting sentences, she talked about her past, the whole time with a smile on her face but only knowing how to proceed because I asked her questions.

I had no idea.

*****
I was fourteen years old during the war. In the second year of a girl's high school. But for six months, we had no class. Instead, we were forced to come to school to make nuts and bolts for army airplanes (using a lathe). It was boring work and we didn't get paid. Instead, we recieved two slices of bread.

There was very little food those days, especially no rice. In the morning, we ate gruel and sometimes rice porridge. But all the sugar and fats were sent to war for the soldiers. No, I didn't think the war was frightening. I didn't think about things like that. But none of us thought Japan would win the war.

After the war we could eat canned goods given to us by American soldiers. The first time I met American soldiers they kept asking me questions and asking me questions but I wouldn't answer. I wasn't angry at the occupation because it was all a matter of due course. But we all thought that the soldiers were cruel and might hit you or rape you if you were a woman. So we stayed away from them.

In school, we were taught that the American soldiers would stop at nothing. We had started to learn our ABCs but the teacher had to stop us midway because it was the language of the enemy. The truth is that even though Western things were forbidden, I still loved Western fairy tales and especially comics. I still love them today.

I lived in Nagasaki prefecture during the war. Yes, my family's house was in Nagasaki city. On the day that they dropped the A-bomb, I was visiting with my aunt and playing with the children at their house. I heard the plane fly by so I ran into the hallway to look. Suddenly, everything became very, very bright and my skin felt very hot. As I watched, it seemed that the world had turned red.

I considered falling to the ground and covering my head and that I might die. But when I thought I might die, I decided that I would rather do it standing up, so I held on to the beam in front of me. That's when I heard my aunt calling me from the closet, "Yoshiko, Yoshiko, come here!" They had all hidden in the closet. When I went in, things started to fall down around us and all the windows in the house were broken.

We were about three kilometres from where the bomb struck. There were some small mountains between where I was and the blast. But I heard that if the pilot had correctly dropped the bomb, I probably would not be alive today. My parents were in the city... but they survived.

Afterwards, I had some diarrhea and bleeding from my gums. My hair fell out in chunks. But I have never had any problems after that, not even having children. I think I'm really lucky. At the time, even the A-bomb didn't really scare me. I never knew the extent of the damage until long afterwards. People didn't tell me these things.

*****

It's different hearing these stories in person. What surprised me the most wasn't listening to the account of someone I know, but rather seeing the way she retold it. I wasn't sure how to react, especially given that she told the story as if she was talking about drinking tea with a friend on Friday. The questions just kept on coming, ironically minutes before the end of the last group lesson and to the one student who has always spoken least.

I was going to write about cultural regression in Japan today-- did YOU know they have Pepsi Blue here? I was going to write about how I made an ass of myself. I was going to write about returning my health insurance or maybe about calling the post office to make sure they correctly labled my package. I've been planning to write a long piece explaining my current emotional state. But somehow all that seems trite at the moment. I keep picturing that image of a fourteen-year-old Yoshiko Hasegawa clinging to a hallway strut as the sky turns red.

eww
It's roach season and boy are those buggers big and ugly.

I don't know why roaches disturb me so much, as I'm generally not frightened by even the biggest spiders and wasps. Among stinging insects, centi/milli-pedes are the only ones that freak me out. But roaches? Roaches don't sting or bite... they just look stupid. I think it's that they move so fast that sets me off. Nothing that close to the ground with so few legs should be able to move that fast.

Eww.

Scorpion.
I pulled out the suitcase on sunday, shook the sand from the underlayers, and laid my carefully folded yukata in its bag on the bottom. Then I stepped back and left it at that. The first thing I packed for my return from Japan is the most Japanese.

Today, I stuffed three bags full of paper waste from folders and notebooks. Essays, forms, paperwork, scribbles, study notes... all things I kept "just in case" are now destined for the incinerator. I even threw away some unwritten letters, looking back on the past that has become the past, considering keeping them for memories' sake, as an alcoholic might think about one last drink.

I wrapped the shells, stones and "found items" I've accumulated since coming here, and even some rocks that I took all the way from Glacier, MT last year that should be returned to their rightful home. These things are bagged and bubble-wrapped, laid next to the carefully picked-through scrapbook memories of tickets and souvenir stickers from places visited across Japan.

The books I cannot part with are in a bag ready to go to the post office on Wednesday. Today I closed my bank account and returned one commuter pass for the deposit. I bought five more photographs to commemorate the time I spent in kimono walking through Meiji shrine with Justin. I sorted through things that were my life this year.

At 9PM, I met the staff of the Kids' English School in Sasazuka for "dinner," if one can call a meal that late anything but sadistic. We had Korean food and the usual forced "all you can drink" until long past I wanted to go home. The beer I drank had me cycling between a giddy, happy laughing optimist and confessing all my worries about my Homecoming to the senior sensei at the school. And I wasn't even drunk.

I walked home from Sasazuka at midnight, forty minutes ago. It actually took just as long as the two-bus transfer route, if not shorter. A good part of the walk, the Blue Danube piped from my iPod through my headphones and ended perfectly as I walked through the front gate of my house.

There's a typhoon a-blowin', YARR. Or, rather, there WAS. Typhoon roku-ban (number six) just barely touched on Tokyo but enough to dump a few hours of rain today coupled with some severe winds. The humindity in this city must be close to ninety percent, and even though it isn't THAT hot, it's almost unbearable to move.

On the way home, I spotted something curious in a beverage machine... and a curious beverage machine at that. Normal Coca-Cola drinks were only 100 yen for starters, but I wouldn't have cared had I not noticed a drink I'd never seen before. Coca-Cola Scorpion. Looks like a Japanese Coke bottle but with a Scorpion on it. My guess is it contains deadly amounts of caffiene, especially as the pictures on the bottle depict a book, a car and an alarm clock. That's right, I bought it an I intend to drink it sometime in the next few days. I figure if the stress doesn't kill me, I might as well give it a try. Anyone heard of this Scorpion stuff? I'm bringing it to school for show-and-tell tomorrow, before I subject my poor heart to what may be its last refreshment. Bwa ha ha.

As for tonight, sleep, as T.S. Eliot says, 'till human voices wake me, and I drown.

gender bender

Two kids I teach at the English School... both girls. But one refers to herself as boku, the Japanese male self-reflexive, and is unindubitably masculine in both looks and personality. They're not really friends but were forced into taking lessons together by their parents, who are. The "boy child" is boisterous, loud and interactive'; the "girl child" is quiet and reserved. So not only do they not interact well in lessons, I feel like I'm teaching gender stereotypes. The other day, the boy-type smelled so strongly of mothballs, I couldn't stand next to her. HMM.

Father's Day
Quite to the contrary of my expectations, I did not cry at the dinner table tonight. I was far too pleased that I managed to turn out a real meal with the family's wanna-be EZ-Bake-Oven to really consider that this might be our last real meal together with everyone at the table.

I finally found most of the ingredients to make enchiladas, with one major oversight: black beans. Though pretty much every grocery in Tokyo sells S&W Kidney beans and Chickpeas, even after calling no less than eight Shinjuku department and import stores, we discovered black were nowhere to be found.

I can tell I'm stressed because this almost gave me a breakdown. I didn't want to cook something I hadn't made in over nine months without one of the primary ingredients. Fortunately (and thankfully), since coming to Japan I've learned to stop caring about something once it can't be helped. Shoganai, as the Japanese say. Too damn bad, but the enchiladas were made with kidney beans and half-sized tortillas. Other than that, I was amazed at what came together. Had the chips, the salsa, the wacky spanish salad Host Mom made (delicious, though), the paella and even the corona and lime (I know, ick) to go with the enchiladas. The enchiladas were not only edible, they tasted just like they were supposed to, as did the cake I made for dessert. Yatta. =D

Everyone was cheerful and quite conversational (with one exception, guess who...) and Host Dad most of all. I think he was glad at the chance to have some mexican food, as he's a fan of spicy cuisine and that's not something he gets much of around here.

Even though it was Father's Day, he wasn't really presented with any gifts, outside of a Ralph Lauren handkerchief from Host Sister. But weirdly enough, she gave me one too. Then, for no reason apparent to me, Host Mom presented each of the girls there (including Host Brother's wife) with a small Isetan bag and told us it was "just a little something." Anything from Isetan can't be combined with "just a little something," nor should it. And in my experience, the Japanese only use that line when they absolutely don't mean it. So although the very random act of gifting surprised me, I wasn't surprised find what was inside when I opened the bag.

*cough* I've never owned pearls before.

I'm a terrible gift reciever, as I become horribly embarrased and feel unduly indebted, as you who have been reading for a while may have noticed. Today, as I wasn't the only one being gifted, I didn't feel as on-the-spot and I was actually really happy to recieve something that I would never have gotten for myself but liked all the same-- this is a rare occurence as I really don't care for shopping all that much and there are few things I ever can request as gifts that I'd not rather buy.

For some reason, Host Sister also gave me a five-hundred-yen pocket mirror. Maybe she heard I was doing a project on mirrors for my Tokyo Anthropology class and misunderstood? (Because I honestly hope she isn't trying to tell me a) I need one for good reason or b) I'm unbearably vain.) She also asked me today when I was going back to America. I almost died. Sigh.

Other than the success of dinner, I'm falling apart. My immune system is dying and though I'm not sick, the bacteria count in my body has obviously spawned to unhealthy levels so I'm waffling between feeling like total crap and feeling OK "with side effects." Of course, that could be a product ot the heat but I'm gonna guess it's stress.

The thing is, I really don't have that much to do. I'm taking it one step at a time and everything flows logically into the next. After Wednesday, I really can just pack up and go. But the truth is, even though I'm not feeling pressured on the surface, I'm roiling beneath. I haven't felt this lost and afraid since high school. It's as if everything I felt I'd accomplished on Japan-- all the personal growth and confidence-- is hinged on my return... and the return is something to which I simply cannot apply positive thinking.

I've been well loved and supported here and strangely what has given me the biggest sense of confidence has been the support that's come from my "family" rather than the friends I've made. When I return to America, I lose the family support network entirely and return to a nest of blood relatives who expect me to commiserate in their unhappiness and would rather heap loads of guilt and criticism upon me instead of sharing a smile or a laugh. (Needless to say, I expect to be slaughtered if either of my parents read this, which I sincerely doubt.)

So when I say I don't want to return... it's not that I don't want to return to America, it's that I don't want to return "home." In fact, it's my thought that after some brief hellos, I'm going to make it my perfectly obvious intention that I will be spending as little time in Bellevue as possible. Does this make me evil? No, it makes me sane... and I'm going to try to keep believing that no matter what anyone else tries to convince me.

On the other hand, my time here in Japan feels nearly done. I don't know how much more of the Waseda Kokusaibu I can stand (particularly the 4-days-a-week 2 1/2 hour Japanese class) before I honestly freak out at people. I have a feeling that I can attribute much of my acquired bitchiness to the format of that institution. It resembles High School by FAR too close for my comfort. Being with the same people day-in and day-out only seems to make me dislike my classmates simply for the presence of their particular aura or tone of voice, rather than taking into consideration whether I might have liked them "out of context."

In fact, as much as I've been surprised at how familiar I've become with the vast majority of people in the international programme, I can honestly say I've made mistakes making friends. The more creative, inspired and aware people, I've spurned and ignored for either their overenthusiasm or sullenness, two things which I could handle and enjoy while in Eugene but which stress me out here. I made some bread-n-butter friends, a few of whom turned out not to be banal at all (and whom I love dearly). But others who I liked for their moderate, no-stress personalities now make me want to kill myself with their manic drivel and flaky pseudo-loyalism. I did enjoy being lightened up by stepping onto the "other side," but now I think it's best for me to return to the realm of loner.

One of the best realizations I've made since coming here is that I really don't need to care if someone doesn't like me, especially if it doesn't affect my personal or professional relationship with others. It surprised me what a burden of stress was lifted from my shoulders when I stopped pandering to the people whose attention I desired and quit worrying if the people I didn't like thought equally poorly of me. As I tried to put it gently to one guy in my Japanese class, you can't like everyone you meet. Unfortunately, even that sense of self-assurance is teetering upon my impending return. I'm a mess waffling between the desire to pathetically redeem myself to the people who I'm sure think I'm the Bitch Queen and to just tell EVERYONE, including the people I still like, to fuck off and die. I don't think I've felt this weird about myself around people I know since... eh, high school. Big. Surprise.

I think I'll opt for the nice civil sayonnara and then crawl into a hole somewhere for a week to recooperate. :-X

Our daily bread...

[ Click for BIG ]

Text reads: Our little friend "TOMTE" use magical secret-power for delicious BREAD that.

That... that WHAT? Damn it, "TOMTE"!!
If they wanted this badly constructed Engrish sentence to appeal to foreign consumers with inexplicable mystery, their evil plan has succeeded. I must know what it is his magical-powers have done to the delicious BREAD or my head will explode.

Edit: It's just bread and not even particularly delicious at that. "TOMTE" is a quack.

Thanks, mom
I remember the last time (and only time) I was in a room with the other Oregon students and their host parents. It was the first time we all met, the end of the week after we arrived in Tokyo. I was terrified and insecure. I scanned the room before we were introduced, looking at the parents waiting for children and judging them based on their facial expressions, their clothes and their overall caricature.

When I found out the name of my host family, my heart fell because there was only one person, a rather plain-looking woman, there to wait for me. I took this as a sign that things would only go downhill from there. I now can say that my defeatest attitude was honestly and completely wrong and for once my expectations were by far succeeded.

After tonight's dinner and half-embarrassed impromptu speeches by students and parents alike (alas, only Host Mom was able to attend), I left feeling sincerely that my time with this family was truly something of which I could be proud.

I want to express my sincerest thanks to my Host Mother for her bright smile and positive supportive attitude. She's much more than a guardian now... she's my very good friend. While everyone's experience speaks differently to them, I'm being honest when I say that tonight I had the feeling that my Host Mom is really the best of the bunch.

Ten Days

...but who's counting?

Lost and Found

Rush hour JR train, Playboy Ad.

Though there is no excuse for the stupidity of my own action, the following story explains why I strongly dislike the Japanese Bureaucratic Heirarchy.

As I was rushing to my afternoon English lesson, I realized that I didn't have my Suica teiki. That is to say, I attempted to enter Shinjuku station and the gate tried to close on my leg rather than passing me through. At first, I wasn't surprised, as sometimes the machines fail to read my commuter pass when I swipe my wallet but when the same thing happened at Takadanobaba, I took a look to make sure my Suica was OK... lo and behold, it wasn't there at all.

I immediately knew where and why I'd left it. In the hustle to get to Harajuku yesterday I bought a ticket with some spare change and the remaining 60 yen on my Suica and then promptly took the ticket yet left the card, despite that the machine was probably beeping like mad at me to take it. Yeah, I'm a complete idiot but I blame the fact that I was entirely distracted by the crowd waiting for me and the fact that I was wearing a yukata and had neither pants pockets nor an accessable wallet probably caused me more readily to completely space that I had something to "put away." Quite honestly, it was the first time I'd ever used my suica to buy a ticket, too... usually I just use the Suica itself, which I charge with cash and then swipe, but as I'm leaving and don't want to put more cash on it before I go, I thought it best to drain the card completely one last time. My bad.

All righty. So, even though I was running late, I decided to stop in the ticket office and see if they'd collected my Suica. I was pretty confident someone would have turned it in and as the card only had three days remaining to expiration, I honestly didn't care if it wasn't found. I simply wanted to know if they had it or not and take it if they did. I figured five minutes was enough time. That was my second mistake.

The first gentleman to help me took a look in the record books-- notice I said BOOK and NOT "computer," for they were indeed giant PAPER TOMES-- and discovered that my card had been returned. Great, said I. He told me to wait a moment, as they would send someone from above. So I waited a moment.

And waited.

...

And waited.

Finally, a young-ish station worked came in the door and approached me. Did HE have my teiki? No. He wanted to escort me upstairs to the StationMaster's office where the 'proper' Lost and Found was located. Oooookay. I walked with him through the station, noting that he nervously looked behind him every two seconds as if to make sure I was following. It's not like I don't stand on that very platform EVERY DAY. In fact, his jitters were so apparent that he made ME nervous, and rightly so.

When we got to the office the door was closed, so he entered the security code and pulled. Nothing happened. He tried again and, to my dismay, not only did the code not work but the person standing inside the office retreated behind another closed door rather than help us out. The nervous station worker told me to "please wait" and ran off to leave me standing alone. Not two seconds after he disappeared, the person inside opened the door and told me to sit down.

Of course, nothing could be accomplished until Mr. Jitters returned, even though the NEW man was the StationMaster himself. MY story, as simple and straightforward as it was, was insufficient to do business. We had to wait for the noob to help me out. Five minutes later, my unhelpful intermediary skipped back into the office and apologized for having left me. Where the hell did you go?!? is what I wanted to scream but instead I just sucked it up and nodded. Can I have my teiki now?

I expected them to pull it out of a drawer and give it to me. But instead the StationMaster took out ANOTHER giant tome and looked up my name and the date I'd done the deed.

"Oh, HMM," said he.

"Um, WHAT?" said I.

"You bought this in Shinjuku, didn't you." was his unintelligible reply. Following that, he took a moment to convey some unintelligible explanation to the trainee, who by now seemed to have the shakes. Then he looked at me and said, point-blank,

"Your commuter pass is not here."

"Uh, excuse me?"

"You can pick it up in Shinjuku."

"Oh, ok... Shinjuku, yes, OK." I was a little pissed. Why was this not obvious in the first place? "I'll go get it later then," I said.

"Oh, no," he said, "you have to pick it up in three days. We have shipped it to sdkhkhgj to be processed and it should be in Shinjuku the day after tomorrow."

"You... w-what? My commuter pass expires in three days!" I was livid and on the brink of tears. This whole process took thirty minutes of being strung along for no reason other than that the one person privy to the information that needed to be relayed did not give that information to his second-in-command. Pure bureaucratic bullshit at its finest. An inefficient system performed with perfect efficiency. The bastards.

You see, I would not have minded in the least, had this information been relayed to me at the start. I would have said to myself "oh, what a dumbass you are for forgetting your teiki," and bought a new one later that evening. It only costs 2000 yen and that money is refunded to me in full. But, instead I was played like a fucking guitar and thrown out, twenty-five minutes late for a lesson I was supposed to be teaching, only so I could miss the Tozai line just as it was pulling away from the station. I thought I might kill the next person in uniform I saw... but instead I amused myself by internalizing my anger and watching the Centaa-gai [What is Center Guy? See LINK A and LINK B.] next to me out of the corner of my eye as he recoiled in terror at my enraged facial expressions.

I have met three kinds of Station Workers in my time here in Japan, though I suppose the same could be said of any repetetive job. First, there are the newbies who cower in fear of their superiors and are terrified of doing anything wrong. So terrified, in fact, that though they DESPERATELY want to help you to prove themselves, they cannot actually do anything without explicit permission or without their hand being held by a superior. The second type is those who have overcome their fear but have not been on the job much longer than a few years. These guys are great because they are courteous, knowledgeable, friendly and generally happy. They don't take bullshit but they don't give it either. The third type are the bastard Grandpas of the train stations. These fellows have been around forever and generally hate the noise, the people, the stupid questions and EVERYTHING about their job but of course they can't change their work because this is *Japan.* So instead, they put their passion into being crochety dicks to anyone and everyone and get the most pleasure out of purveying misinformation and scaring the newbies. Thus, a vicious cycle is perpetuated. A fun, fun cycle of threes of which I was the unfortunate victim today.

Look, I know that a lot of you think I hate Tokyo because I complain about it so much. The truth is, I don't. I love this city... but it is a VERY DIFFICULT, VERY STRESSFUL place to live. It is not always fun, no matter how amazing it is. Please keep in mind too, that this blog sees more ranting than raving for the sole simple reason that I am more likely to rant than I am to rave. It relieves stress, and stress I have. In conclusion... Friggin' yay; I'm ready to go home.

Hana Shobu

[ click for images ]

EDIT: Fixed link to reflect the correct gallery.

BulleTime

-If the clothes make the... me... I'm sure I have problems. I got my yukata and I'm thrilled to wear it tomorrow. In preparation, I even shaved a part of my body I've never touched with my own razor before... the nape of my neck. Why? Because I felt all the random peach fuzz detracted from the sexiness of it. On the other hand, my favorite pair of jeans has self-destructed two weeks before I leave here by randomly generating a huge hole directly beneath the right-hand ass-pocket. The Japanese girls seem to think it's sexy but I think it just means people can see my white ass and more easily understand that my jeans are ratty and old. No more favorite pants for Kat.

-I woke up the other night with one of my earplugs in my mouth. I think I had been sucking on it. Although I was half asleep and remained so while I dried it off and replaced it, I was as equally horrified and disgusted as you probably are right now. What. The. Fuck.

-I met a dog the other day. He is named Kenta-kun and lives near where I work at the kids' English school. Kenta-kun is special for one reason. He is a Burmese mountain dog, which means he is effectively GIGANTORIFFIC and lives in a teeny tiny tranditional house with a gnarly, self-professed "Japanese Old Boy" and a disgusting terrier named Tweety-chan. Kenta-kun is the quietest, most well-behaved big-freaking-dog I have ever met. I feel bad that he has to spend his life crammed into a pen, even if it is in Suginami-ku, where the air is slightly fresher.

-I got into the Magainze Design and Production class for Fall 2003. I'd be more excited about it but I keep getting hints that the professor may be an ass. Since I really need the class, I'll put up with his threats that it's "extremely challenging, work intensive and competetive," because a) those are usually just scare tactics and b) I'm a competetive workaholic professionalist so I doubt that even if they AREN'T empty threats, I will have any problems.

-When I came home from Chiba yesterday, Host Mom had placed out some kind of sweet cruton on the kitchen table. I had a few with tea and they were quite good. Apparently they're called (katakana) rosuku, which I would translate as "rusk." Again, we had translation problems when my host mom thought it was English and expected me to know what the hell it meant. I gather from extrapolation that it's a word from Italian that's effectively equal to "crust" or something. Anyway, she gave me my own bag and when sounding out the katakana, I deduced that mine were MARGARINE flavored. Indeed, my RUSK had been soaked in buttery oil. Instead of being as disgusting as this sounds, they're like heavenly, sweet, buttery croutons and I will have to take them to school to share, lest I eat the whole bag.

-Host Mom also told me an amusing story as I was leaving on Saturday morning. She said she planned to do a bit of "homework" while I was gone, as she's currently taking reinforcement classes for her English Teaching Certificate and has been busy of late. What homework, I asked. Only four papers, she replied. She planned to do two on Sat and two on Sun. Okay, said I, what subjects? Linguistics and literature, said she, but here's the problem. Host Mom hadn't yet opened her textbooks or preused the essay questions. She showed me the texts, which were roughly the size of medium novels. Scary? Nah. Welllll, she opened the book for the first time to find it all written IN ENGLISH. Now, Host Mom knows a lot of English but not that much. And certainly not enough to manage four five-page papers in two days, especially considering that a five-pager in Japanese equals about an Eight-pager in English due to kanji compound useage shortening sentences. Nevertheless, she had somehow managed to finish by the time I got home at 2PM on Sunday. Fishy... or maybe just amazing.

-Sadly, I doubt I'll be getting a hug from Host Mom before I leave for America. She mentioned offhand the other day (I can't recall what we were talking about) that she thinks they're kimochi warui (bad feeling). : ( I also realized that I've never heard Host Sister laugh once since I came here. Not one fake laugh nor polite laugh... nothing. I've seen her SMILING upon occasion, though often at a completely inappropriate time and often to herself, and it's a scary, scary thing. Problems with Host Sister remain the same as always, except that she's out of the house more now attempting to earn a teaching degree (what? I know!) and when she's home we don't speak. Her bodily problems are on and off, but I've ceased to be able to take a bath after her for the hair and... bits... she leaves in the tub. I thought we were supposed to wash BEFORE?

-Lastly, in a sleep-induced haze, I wrote "you have to want something for it to come true" on the paper from which this list-post was derived... and I have no freaking clue what I meant. It is an allusion to something? Probably... but for now it will have to stand as it is, a ridiculously cliche statement in no context whatsoever. Fun times.

Notes from Kamogawa, Chiba
Even as I pulled inward on Saturday morning, the day slowly drew me out. It helped that the bus stopped at Umi Hotaru, the famous cement fortress of a rest area (literally) in the middle of the bay between Tokyo and Chiba. Irony of ironies, the name of the place means, beautifully and liltingly, ocean fireflies. I sure saw a lot of ocean, stretched out three-hundred-sixty, but I doubt the place has ever seen fireflies.

Like I said, Umi Hotaru is a rest area. But apparently it's so scenic (and Tokyoites are so lacking in scenery) that people come there just to hang out and eat food. The 3000 yen fee to cross the rest of the bridge after the tunnel ends probably deters them from actually continuing on into nature. Umi Hotaru is so awesome, in fact, that it houses at least ten restaurants and has its own brand of omiyage, the Japanese version of souvenirs. Umi Hotaru and its omiyage shouldn't surprise me with their existence, as the Japanese really love to look at scenery rather than be involved in it and also to bring back the same cookies from wherever they go, but I was nevertheless gapingly amazed. The wrapper of the anko (red bean paste) buns I bought has a beautifully rendered picture of the freeway stretching out over ocean and Fuji-san cross-sectioned by an expressway. I'm keeping that paper as a souvenir highly and ironically characteristic of my time here.

The rain stopped and it held and cleared long enough for a hike to the beach from Waseda's seminar house. Until the rising wind pushed us back to the dorm, we sat in sand and on breakwaters, enjoying the feeling of being outside the choke of the city.

The hills have become thick with green after the rain, even my part of Tokyo, where one can find few trees. But in Kamogawa, especially along the river, the forest can best be described as impenetrable. This forest was a deep, jungle forest. A forest to house dreams and primitive fears. A forest where headhunters or totoros might live, so thick and grown together over random upthrusts of rock and soil that if one were to wander into the trees, I would question whether one would come out again.

All alongside the highway, the reflective moonpools, mostly empty except for a few bald, infant stalks of rice in scant lines, have exploded into a carpet of lush, languid green. The entire countryside, and anywhere one can find a hydroponic paddy, appears to be carpeted in moss. A soft beconing blanket with a dangerous shine at the very underneath.

I slept little and talked more, which I believe may have been a good thing. Upon revealing my age to some Waseda girls also in their 20s, I heard for the Nth time from Japanese women how "calm and ADULT" I appear. While I could be offended at the offhand implication that I'm boring, I prefer to take this as a complement from some of the most outrageously squealy girls I've ever met. I think, at the moment, it was just the thing I needed to hear.

bitch queen: a series of rants
Yesterday I was feeling particularly ranty, so I made a list of things to write about (not all rant-induced) but never got around to it because, as always, ever single minute of my day was occupied by some demand from work or school. I'm hoping I can make it the next two weeks without an ounce of free time. In lieu of ranting and instead of going to bed, I ended up being a horrible bitch to Justin on AIM for about an hour and a half. My excuse to myself for not going to sleep? I had to write my kanji homework in order to take it with me this weekend and study it. Gah, I'm not only a terrible bitch, I'm a stupid bitch too!

Living here has given me a superiority complex a mile high. I think a multicultural experience was supposed to leave me humble and tolerant-- and to somet things it has-- but I still spend the good part of many days irritated at the idiocy of the people around me. Let's get something straight. I HATE stupid people. "Hate" may be too strong a word but it's the only one that fits the bill. I hate stupid people, I hate lazy people, I hate weak people and I hate whiners (by that I mean not the kind of whining I'm doing now but the "o woe is me, life is nothing but pain" whining because it reminds me too much of how I used to be and I have no desire to return to that kind of pathetic existance). Unfortunately, I also have a car-crash fascination with stupid people and masochists. This leads me to continue to do things such as wasting huge amounts of time listening to gossip about my friends' overly-dramatic, masochistic lifestyles and reading livejournal communities like "pro_ana" and "sextips," where the posts are some of the stupidest things I've ever seen. My bad.

I also continue to go to the Waseda gym even though I have everyone there but the exception of a few people. The current generation of Japanese youth are a bunch of pencil-necked, stick-thin weaklings and while I applaud their efforts at coming to the Waseda gym, I am frustrated by the percentage of them who are there to do nothing more than play around and take up every bit of space that could be used by people with the intent to actually exercise. I may sound a bit racially biased by saying that but as I've heard the same from Japanese of older generations, I don't feel especially bad expressing my frustration with the lack of muscle mass in most of my peers. Thankfully, Japan is not populated by fat people to the extent that America is, but I won't say it's for a lack of over-indulgence. The things I see people shove into their mouths here with no ill effect both shock me and make me incredibly jealous.

Yesterday, in addition to watching the usual slew of "wish-I-were-a-jock" boys trying to do their lifts so incorrectly they either render them ineffective or risk serious injury, I watched some dumb bitch (a different type of dumb bitch than *I*, of course) try to work out WEARING ONLY SOCKS. I could have strangled her. If you fucking forgot your shoes, GO HOME. Don't take up TREADMILLS and STAIRCLIMBERs so you can putz around on them and giggle about it with your friend. There are far too many people in that gym for you to be screwing around like that, not to MENTION the safety issues. I see people in there all the time lifting in sandals, standing on medicine balls in front of the mirror and trying to work out dressed generally incorrectly. This does not give me hope for the world. And it makes it very hard to work out without developing the burning desire to kill someone violently.

It's a sensitive point, especially when I usually have to wait for said idiots to finish what they're doing to I can use the equipment they've just played with. (And they're always soooo careful to wipe it down even though I've rarely seen a drop of sweat exiting anyone's body in that gym. ugh.)

Yes, and I had another revelation yesterday. Takadanobaba is quite possibly the singly WORST smelling place in Tokyo, and I've been a lot of places. It smells bad in the morning, it smells bad in the evening, it smells bad all year round but is PUTRID in the summer. The air quality is terrible from the asphalt and lack of trees, people toss their cigarettes onto the "don't walk while smoking" campaign signs and the sewer system is either malfunctioning or never functioned well at all. It makes me want to vomit first thing in the morning.

Finally, I HATE Japanese sales clerks. Their tactics are far worse than the constant "can I help you?" by American clerks. At least if you tell them to bug off, they do. I don't know if it's because I'm a foreigner and they're afraid of me but when I go to department stores here, someone always HOVERS right over me, often without saying ANYTHING at all. Sometimes they take a look at what I'm browsing and whine "ikaga desu kaaaa?" (how about it?), like I need fucking encouragement. Excuse me? Don't hold my hand.

It's not like it isn't hard enough to think already with the constant nasal cries of "Irrashaimasseeeeee" (welcome) and "goran kudasaimaseeeee" (please have a looooook) at twice the volume necessary. Shut UP! This is even MORE of an issue in restaurants where I can't manage a normal conversation because my train of thought is constantly cut in half when the ENTIRE RESTAURANT STAFF begins to yell at ever new customer that enters the restaurant. I can't tell you how irritated this makes me. If I can't shop at nice stores or eat at nice restaurants in this country without being irritated, I think it's time to go home.

But going home poses a whole new set of issues. I guess I'll talk about those later as I have to get ready to go to Chiba for the weekend with my classmates. *dryly* Yay.

Thus ends my rant! Please take it only as seriously as you feel necessary.

Japanglish
A chronicle of language aquisition and code-switching

No shit, this is what it's actually like.
( Click for BIG size comic. )


I've started to have an interesting problem. I can't seem to speak just English anymore. At any given time in the day, from a quarter to half of the words I use are in Japanese. This is especially problematic when I'm attempting to teach English to Japanese speakers, as I'm prone to speak half in Japanese or switch to a 90% Japanese-English hybrid for explanations instead of helping with proper English. The scary part? It's easier that way.

When people in America ask me if I'm bilingual, I'll still tell them "no." In my mind, I guess I qualify a bilingual person as one who is fluent enough in a language to have little or no problem with it. A friend explained bilingualism as possessing the same ability in a language as a 3rd grade native speaker. Even if that's the case, I'd say third graders (and even the bratty 4-year-old) I teach speak better Japanese than I do... but that's not to say I can't understand them.

Learning Japanese is a bitch-I'm sure I don't have to explain that-but it's quite possibly MORE of a bitch than learning English is, and as teaching English has only just revealed to me how much of a pain-in-the ass English can be, that's saying something.. English certainly has its share of slang, accents and levels of formality, but all revolve around the same verb conjugations (mostly) and can be understood by the average person. Japanese is really three or more languages in one.

Basic Japanese is the everyday desu-masu semi-formal conversation. Outside of that, there are separate sets of informal/casual verb conjugations and formal/polite verb conjugations, as well as a wealth of nouns and verbs that are relationship specific words. That, however, is the icing on the cake. For anyone but native Chinese speakers, Japanese language learning is hell because of the written requirements. Hiragana, katakana and kanji are entirely separate realms of pain.

Hiragana, what I would classify as basic bread-and-butter Japanese, gives me no difficulty at all. On the other hand, katakana makes me perhaps even more frustrated than kanji. Katakana is the Japanese text used for representing foreign words, Japanese-foreign hybrids and exclamations. Unfortunately, the Japanese seem to lack the ability to encorporate foreign words into their language without SEVERE "Japanization" of pronunciation. On top of that, they seem to expect foreign learners (especially English speakers) to easily understand katakana because, well, isn't it ENGLISH? No, Katakana is not English, even though most of the words are bastardized from America. I can't count the number of times I've spend sounding out something like "heu-maa" with no idea of the implied meaning only to find out later that the word I was trying to translate was "humor" or something equally simple.

Katakana is just completely illogical. It requires precise spelling and pronunciation of words that have been so completely misspelled and mispronounced that they no longer resemble their language of origin. Katakana also contains any number of words that come from non-English languages and are equally random and equally bastardized. Did you know that a stapler isn't called a "stay-pu-raa" in Japanese but a "Hotchi-kissu," after the name of the European inventor? Not that the word "stapler" makes any more sense.

Katakana also isn't JUST used for foreign words. Noooo, that'd be too much to ask. Katakana is frequently and randomly used in advertisements for Japanese words like kirei (pretty) and oishii (delicious), among others, to somehow EMPHASIZE that word. *snort*

And then there's kanji. There's not much to say about kanji because anyone with half a brain can understand how difficult it is to go from a syllabic language to a pictographic one. Japanese, unlike Chinese doesn't JUST use kanji for written text, but a mix of hiragana, katakana and Kanji.

I'm still illiterate when it comes to most written Japanese and quite logically so, as I only can read about 400-500 of the 1500 kanji required for basic literacy. However, my listening comprehension has progressed to the point where I understand most Japanese spoken around me and directed towards me. I can watch entertainment TV and understand most of the dialogue and story. TV news is still pretty impossible.

I wouldn't say I've learned to think completely in Japanese and I certainly don't dream in it. That's not to say I DON'T think I Japanese at all. I've ceased to translate Japanese phrases in my head before speaking and often times even during English conversation, I replace English words with Japanese words as they're far more readily accessible than English ones. The dreaming, I expect, will start after I come home to an entirely English-speaking world and find myself code-switching in a room full of people who don't understand me. I'm not sure whether the thought of being able to absorb meaning through unintentional eavesdropping once again is exciting or frightening. I've become used to having to work, even if just a little bit, to have a conversation.

When I first got here, I thought I knew enough Japanese to get by in "everyday conversation." Now I'd certainly say otherwise. I had LEARNED a lot of grammar and vocabulary but couldn't make use of any of it. I didn't understand half of the questions directed at me. I went into frantic overdrive and studied any words I could get my hands on, mostly just to forget them a week later because I was forcing myself too much. As I learned to interact in Japanese, I realized the difference between studying a language and actually acquiring fluency. I wrote this in December as I was riding the train:

I can feel the language centers in my brain beinfg forced open. FEEL IT. Like some physical change is taking place within me. Switches are being flipped, synapses connected, sleeping places awakened. Does this happen to everyone during language acquisition? Will I be a different person for this immersion? Surely I will... but will my very core, my thought centers, have been completely changed?

Even that little notebook sketch was written two months before I stopped getting headaches from the intense concentration required to speak and started to feel comfortable managing my own business transactions on the phone and in person. I didn't really gain confidence in my Japanese abilities-or in myself as a person-until I'd managed to complete Spring Break planning and had returned from traveling to Hokkaido, Okinawa, Kyoto, Nara and Osaka.

I still make a lot of mistakes and sound like an idiot foreigner, but at least I'm confident. Speaking Japanese isn't scary or abnormal any more... it's just part of my daily life. So much so, in fact, that I do it even while speaking English, as I mentioned before. So much so, that I've started to understand song lyrics. Even scarier than the thought of being in an English immersion environment upon coming home is the thought of letting all this work slide away from me and disappear. Though I'm sure I'll be involved in the Japanese Student Organization (JSO) next year and working my ass off in class to maintain a moderate fluency level, I'm afraid of the damage a summer without speaking will do. No matter how much I study, Japanese class is not Japan, and the casual ease with which I can talk about most anything on my mind will slip away. And that, my friends, is just one reason I'll come back here someday.

The questions I asked myself in that December passage are still a mystery that may only be made a bit clearer upon my return to the states. It's impossible, of course, to separate JAPANESE and JAPAN, but I still wonder... Am I different, not for this experience as a whole, but for the language I've learned?

turning in, turning up, turning down
I may have pissed off my "boss" at the Kids' English School but I'm not sure I care. I traded hours with the other teacher (my classmate) this week after she confirmed the schedule and my Monday lesson cancelled. With all the cancellations I've been getting lately, I've started to freak out about money when I really shouldn't. The long and the short of it is, I worked today (Tuesday) for two hours and it was hellish.

The first little girl I taught, I see quite frequently. Thankfully, I only have to see her 3 more times and I can be done with her for good. She's a spoiled, bratty crybaby who can't think for herself and depends on her mother for everything. This probably is only because she's four years old but her behavior is in stark contrast to the other 4-year-old girl student who is perhaps the most intelligent kid her age I've ever met. She might know more English words than an American four-year-old.

The little bratkins can't do anything without her mom. I don't blame her, as neither can the other 4-year-old, but the problem with whiney-poo is that she can't seem to use her head either. She's completely co-dependent on mom, whom she has realized already speaks some English and looks to for EVERY answer. If I ask her a question, even if I spell it out for her in JAPANESE, she immediately asks her mom what I said (in Japanese). Only by careful repetition and parroting through MOM will she even repeat phrases. She never remembers what she was taught for more than a minute afterwards and because mom helps so much, she hasn't learned a single thing since I've been working with her.

That's not to say mom hasn't been trying. She wants to leave the little snot alone for the lesson but when she tries, Bratleigh always whines and snivels until mommy comes with her into the room. The damage has been done. So today, when mom actually left the room but stood within visual distance outside the partition, what should happen but (of course), the kid starts whimpering and whining until she's a mess just saying "momma momma" over and over again. I get paid to teach her English, not try and play the clown so that she'll be amused by my very presence. I don't get paid enough, in my opinion, to merit exerting myself to comfort her. I'm not a complete asshole, so I tried all the classic tactics but because mom was RIGHT THERE and she knew she'd get her way or get to go home, she didn't quit until mom came in the room and then it was all the same all over again. Mom reminds her how she PROMISED this time to study good and try to do it on her own and the kid is still an absolute snot to me and her mom. She uses awful, slangy Japanese and refuses to even speak an English word unless practically forced to do it. Yeah, I guess I'd have hated learning a foreign langauage at 4 years old if I'd been forced into classes too, but it's not like it's bloody impossible to learn COLORS and SHAPES with minimal effort. GRAH. End rant.

I thought I might go see Cutie Honey tonight. But then, despite Chris's urging that it is maybe the awesomest movie ever, I decided not to go. Because I don't *really* care... and if it's as much camp as it looks, I'd much rather see it with friends than by myself. I can't comment loudly while watching a movie by myself, that makes me pathetic AND crazy. So scratch that one off.

And Roppongi. Right-o, what WAS I thinking? I'm getting frantic about leaving here. I don't think it's so much that I really WANT to go to Roppongi all night-- especially not alone-- but just that I think it would be an interesting experience to have and one that I might not get again. See, I'm an experience junkie. I do things just to do them and sometimes just to say, "I did it" or "I was there" and not because I really CARE. For better or for worse, that's just the way I am.

So I'll forget about the big plans and just get these projects done and go home. I do want to at least LOOK at the Park Hyatt, if not just so I can rant about how insanely rich the characters in Lost in Translation were and how I think it defeats any realistic relatability the movie might have had. [Then again, how entertaining would it have been were they to have stayed in a frumpy Asakusa hostel with no cash?] Did you know that after 8PM, you have to pay a 2000yen (US $20) cover charge just to BE in the bar when the live music is playing? Chee-ah, that's right. Didn't mention THAT in the movie, did they now?

So, right, whatever, I'll keep my addiction to experience moderated and just suck it up and finish here. As hard as that is, it's better than freaking out about whether or not I ate GYUUDON, for crap's sake. Frankly, the feeling that the next time I go somewhere or see someone may be the last is something that really puts me on end. I honestly cannot bear to think about all the places in this city that I visited recently without even mentally saying goodby to. I'm not a wreck BECAUSE I can keep this all remarkably under check. But when the music is playing and I'm watching the city fly by on the train, damn, I can feel the edges start to fall apart.

A lot has changed since I came here, except that now, just as when I came, it's the hot, rainy thickness of summer... and that means this city smells REALLY REALLY BAD.

Dear God
The Panic is starting to hit. The feeling that there are only so many days left to do a hundred things and even so, no time to do them because of the last minute finals crush. When will I get to eat Gyuudon? Go to the Park Hyatt bar? See the Cutie Honey movie? Stay out all night in Roppongi? How can I do these things and still manage to write reports and study kanji and wake up at 7AM for Japanese class? Realistically speaking, how is there even time to say the many obligatory good-byes to the people I've met here?

I am so screwed. >.<

Missing the Torch
I knew something was up when I was coming back from my South Shinjuku English lesson at around 3PM today. There was a speaker at the station with a huge audience even in the pouring rain but that didn't catch my attention. What seemed weird were the police waiting with GATES at several major intersections as if to close off the street for some very important looking reason.

No, thankfully, it has nothing to do with Ronald Reagan's death. As sad as it is, the man has been dying for a good long time now and I don't think we need to make a big deal of his passing.

It was raining pretty hard and I had things to do, so when the bus passed by the Skyscraper district stops, I kept on riding until home. Not until the 7 o'clock news did I find out that what I missed was the OLYMPIC TORCH RELAY.

Bloody fucking hell. It was right here in my back yard and it ENDED, of all places, at the Metropolitan Government building. That's a 15-minute walk from here.

Granted, the relay didn't arrive in Shinjuku until 6pm, so it would have been a far cry for me to have been there by coincidence. Also, I doubt that had I asked, someone would have been able to tell me what was happening-- people in this city seem remarkably unaware of their surroundings.

From what I saw on the news, the relay itself was pretty tame and the crowds were fierce. I might have lost an eye to an umbrella. But still... the Olympic Torch Relay was four blocks away. And I bloody missed it.

ACKKFFTTTK.

furin

(**not my photo**)

The weather forecast says the Japanese rainy season starts... tomorrow. Nearly one month of hot, humid, sticky downpour. This, in my mind, is far better than six months of relentless, bone-cold Seattle drizzle but Host Dad says it's pretty hellish. After June, however, the real Japanese summer begins. The season that I'm missing is the one by which I'm most intrigued.

The Japanese summer carries a heavy feeling of nostalgia, primarily because, historically, summer vacation was a time when children and families took a return trip from the city to their furusatou, or hometown. Summer is the season of somen, of yukata and fans, fireworks and furin. Ah furin, I've always wanted one... but now that I've started to hear that crystalline, melancholy sound around Tokyo, I'm certain I'll have to buy one before I return.

I was chatting with Host Dad last night about that very subject and he mentioned that they might have a bell or two lyring around. He said that last year they recieved a traditional Edo-period bell as a gift at the Shibuya Iris Festival (which I am attending in two weeks) but when he brought it home and asked Host Mom if he could hang it, she blatantly refused. I inferred that he meant she thought the noise was a bit obnoxious after a while. But no, Host Mom hates furin because she finds the sound too sad to listen to. That's a rather heavily laden statement, if you ask me.

Today a butterfly got onto the bus at my stop. After a minute of fluttering about the back of the bus, it had the adherent fixation of all the surrounding passengers. At first, when an old man decided to try to hit it with a stick, I thought I might leave the bus ready with an angsty rant about taking innocent life in a Buddhist country. But then the same old man huffed about for the next few stops, opening windows until he successfully herded the poor thing out with his bare hands. The image of that paper thin, wisp of summer nostalgia bumping helplessly up against the back window of a city bus speaks something truly characteristic of life in Tokyo.

I feel as though I've finally learned to SEE Japan. And not only that, but by settling here, I've learned to not just live but also enjoy life from moment to moment. As I found myself godless in this overwhelming city not five months ago, I think it rather amazing how self-fulfilled and inspired I've become. So much can change with so little time and so little notice. For the first time, it feels as though I've done something useful with my life and learned things that mean anything at all.

I realize, of course, how desperately cliche this all sounds. But it's true. Although I can't accredit Waseda, the so-called Harvard of Japan, with any large contribution to my education (outside of some rather interesting reading material assigned), the very experience of being here has made me a scholar of Japan. I finally feel interested by and involved in my own life... and more than that, of the world.

Even as cliche as it is, I'm still surprised.

Final note: Saw Troy tonight with Host Dad. I'll give it four our of five stars. I really liked the acting, scriptwork and even the plot changes. I think it flowed well. However, I take away that one star because of the stupid accents and bad cinematography. I was not at all fond of the exessive extreme closeups and weird, slow-panning shots. Swordplay was excellent... but for a movie about a war, it sure had some boring-ass battle scenes. The movie as a whole gave me the impression of being made after a classic like Lawrence of Arabia but wasn't something that I think I'll look back on as a particularly skilled or theatrically ground-breaking piece of work in 50 years.

Scotch-- with honors
I haven't even started my "senior" (5th, that is) year yet and I've already had my thesis topic enthusiastically approved by both my major departments. That's right, I get to use my ONE Honors thesis project to graduate with departmental Honors in both Japanese Language/Culture and Magazine Journalism. If you can't guess from the majors what the project will be, I'll give you a big hint: it involves a magazine and Japanese culture/language.

Now if only the Mag Design and Production prof would get back to those of us who applied for his class this fall about whether or not we have his approval... as I require this class to take care of a good part of my thesis workload, it will take a load off when it becomes a "sure thing." If he tells me for some reason my portfolio isn't good enough... I'll damnwell petition the board. I'm that kind of spoiled brat.

I was handed the weirdest thing on the street today. That in itself sounds strange, but in Tokyo it's really not. Companies from Izakaya (Japanese bars) to beauty salons solicit their shops and products on the street by passing out fliers. This is a huge waste of time and paper. The people whose job it is to pass out the product usually only get paid if they can disribute a certain amount. Therefore, they stand blocking traffic, desperately wailing yoroshiku onegaishimasu left and right. That's not to say people don't accept the fliers. Many do so, and quite unthinkingly, only to dispose of them in the nearest trashbin. I have to wonder if any stores get business from regular flier distribution.

To fight wastefulness, a lot of places have resorted to tucking their ads into pocket-sized tissue packs, which many more people will take, keep and use, thus greatly increasing the visibility of the advertisement. I like tissue packs... they've prevented me from ever having to buy tissue since coming here. Tissue, believe it or not, even with the mass distribution of a FREE substitute, remains as expensive as everything else in this city.

But today I was not handed tissue, I was handed TAPE. A big-ass packaged roll of Scotch(tm) tape. Nice tape. Tape that would cost a dollar or two in the store. Just cos, I guess, Scotch(tm) is premiering a new product. So not only is it nice tape, it's spiffy tape from the future. And it sticks to things. With purpose.

mysterious ways

The Japan Alps

I've worn myself out completely again. Awake till 2am, up at 7am, coffee, out the door, class, class and more class.

My workshop professor isn't angry at me anymore for auditing the class. In fact, she wrote me a letter of apology and later took me out for coffee and cheesecake. Cheesecake. Wewt.

Went to Ikebukuro and picked up the return ticket home. You heard it first here... coming in to Vancouver at 10AM on June 27th. Suspiciously early, if you ask me. I leave Tokyo at 5:15 and I did't think the backwards time difference was that great. In any case, it was a HUGE surprise to learn from STA that I can indeed fly home to Seattle... but only if I do it the next morning. I guess a seat opened up or something. I don't think I'll actually USE the flight from Vancouver to Seattle but I don't NEED to, as I can pick up my luggage from the airport and go wherever I want, just to "conveniently" miss my flight the next day. Moreover, what this development meant for me was that I only had to hand over $35 to change my flight date, not the $70 I was expecting (twice the same fee) to stop my ticket in Vancouver.

Of course, I took this money shopping-- to buy a horde of awesome and happy gifts for all the peeps at home.

As promised, I've uploaded the photos for the Ookamura trip and an archived copy of Rachel's rendition of the whole thing. As expected, I added fewer comments to the story and photos than I would have liked. But what can I say, I'm tired as hell.

( Ooka-mura Story )
( Japan Alps Photos )

Punishment
There's not much I can say about this ebay auction except that it's incredibly GREAT. My initial response was to think the parent hosting the aution was a tightwad or something until I read the story. Little 13-year-old punk TRULY got what he deserved. Take a look.

reflection
One very interesting thing about working on a photo documentary involving street mirrors is that no one can ever figure out what I'm taking pictures of. Today, while I was setting up a shot, a Japanese guy stopped in the street behind me to watch what I was doing in order to discover what kind of weirdo I was. Of course, I could see him perfectly well... in the mirror... so it was just a *little* irritating to have to watch him wonder what kind of moron I am while waiting for him to get out of my shot.

Yeah, I admit it's pretty weird taking pictures of mirrors (no, I'm not IN the pictures, that would be stupid). But what can I say, I've finally developed an interest in something... and with me, said interest was bound to be weird. Works for moi.

Spreading the meme
I mentioned a while back that I was reading The DaVinci Code. Well, I leant it to a friend... and then to another friend, who leant it to a friend and so on. The book has gone through five people and there are at least three lined up to read it. I'm so thrilled to be spreading a meme that I'm not sure I even care if I get the book back. If I do, I hope it's sincerely beat up and enjoyed. I didn't spend nine dollars for a book to just sit on the shelf after being read once...

Photos are edited and uploaded. In the middle of being ordered chronologically and captioned. Post up tomorrow.

Ate unagi for dinner as I was too hungry to wait to eat with my client. On one hand it was a shame, as we went to El Torito, the Mexican/American restaurant on the first floor of the Microsoft building/ (something) Hotel in South Shinjuku. But even if I didn't get texmex out of it, I still got a daquiri and *gasp* FREE CHIPS. (Can you tell this is an American based restaurant company!?!??!) On the other hand, not only is unagi (river eel) one of my favorite foods but my body loves it. I was feeling like all of a piece of shit and a half before I ate and afterwards I became incredibly... genki. That stuff is chock full of omega acids, fat and protein. I can't believe how much 300% better I felt.

Eh, well, time flies so I'll sleep now. As the rest of the Internet isn't performing up to my dramatic standard lately, I don't feel quite as bad for being this incredibly lame three days in a row.