First Few Days

Friday, May 21, 2010, 9:30 p.m.

Where to begin? It seems like it has been ages since I wrote in this blog on Wednesday afternoon, even though it’s only been two days.

I’ll start with some pictures of the room that I am staying in and the view from my window:

Yesterday morning I followed Kelly to school again. It was only raining a little this time. On our way back from Yamasa on Wednesday it had been pouring, and I was completely soaked by the time we got home.  I need to remember to invest in a raincoat immediately. Anyway, yesterday morning consisted mainly of placement testing. I started the day in a classroom with five other students, all of whom were also new to Yamasa. We introduced ourselves in Japanese and then the instructor leading the orientation talked for a bit. There was a girl from Sweden and a boy from Germany who both looked like they were also college students. There was a man from the UK who looked like he was maybe fifty-five or sixty years old and a boy from California, named Alex who just finished his master’s degree in piano performance.

Before I started the written placement test, I had an oral interview with an instructor. I think I could understand/answer about 60% of the questions that he asked me. I’m certain that he stopped at a certain point when he discovered my approximate skill level. Everything was, of course, done entirely in Japanese, and it was slightly overwhelming at first. But the teacher was very nice and the entire interview probably only lasted 30 minutes. Then I went back into the room to take the written exam which was about 70 or 80 questions total, and I think I gave up about a third the way through. I probably ended up only being able to answer fifteen of the questions. After I handed in my written exam, the teacher asked me to wait in a separate classroom, and after awhile Alex joined me. We had what seemed like an impromptu lesson with the teacher where he used flash cards and we mainly repeated things. Most of it was review, which felt reassuring.  After the trial-type lesson, we had almost two hours to kill before our tour of the school. Alex and I explored a little bit of the area around campus before buying lunch at a convenience store and bringing it back to the campus to eat. (There are convenience stores everywhere in Okazaki, and they’re a lot nicer than American ones.) It was unbelievably humid. I haven’t really gotten a grasp on the weather here yet. It seems pretty cool at night, but the last couple days have seemed to fluctuate between nice and breezy and unbearably humid.

After lunch, all of the students who were new to Yamasa met back up for an informational session and campus tour. Highlighted Information: (1) Japan is ultra-particular about garbage disposal. Every trashcan has four separate places where one is supposed to sort their trash. Burnable/non-burnable/plastic-bottles/other bottles, ect. (2)The drinking age in Japan is twenty. (3) Okazaki has the worst drivers in Japan.

The campus tour was helpful. We were shown various places to get help and information, places to register for tea ceremony and traditional flower arrangement lessons, and good places to eat near campus. The part of Okazaki that I’ve seen so far is completely disorienting. None of the streets in Japan have names, and they all seem to wrap around themselves. I just hope that I will have learned how to effectively ask for help in Japanese before the first time I get too terribly lost. Out of all of the places to potentially get lost, though, Okazaki seems like a pretty good one. Everyone keeps talking about how friendly the people are and how safe the city is.

After my tour finished around 3:00p.m., Kelly and I biked to a local general store. It seemed like a more refined gigantic Japanese version of a dollar store. She explained to me that she had bought slippers and a rain jacket there, and that it was a good place to get inexpensive school supplies. Maybe once I am more familiar with the city I’ll be able to find it on my own again…

When we got back home around 5:00 p.m. I was exhausted, and we both ended up falling asleep. We woke up before 8:00 p.m. though, because it was Kelly’s last night, so the family was having a special going away dinner for her. Hurumi-san (my host mother) had bought a bunch of sushi and had made other delicious side dishes. It was unbelievably good. Despite all of my practice, I am still by far the worst at using chopsticks. The father asked me twice if the chopsticks were okay and Lee ended up setting a fork beside my plate, regardless of my insisting that the chopsticks were fine.

Having now experienced three dinners at my new home, I feel like I can make some general observations: Hurumi-san never sits down. The cooking area is somewhat separated from the dining area, but all within close quarters, and she stands near the stove and keeps cooking throughout the entire meal. Without a doubt she is the one that speaks the most, and keeps the conversation going, but she never sits at the table. She just keeps cooking and bringing out food. It seems like there are at least six courses at each meal. These courses all have a couple general things in common: They are all delicious, and I have no idea what I’m eating. One course last night was particularly interesting. Harumi-san brought over a large metal pot that was clearly very hot. It had paper thin noodles, vegetables, and various kinds of unidentifiable meat. I had eaten several things that looked similar already. However, this was different because the father then handed me a bowl and a raw egg. I watched as everyone broke their eggs into their bowls and stirred them up. Then each person took a ladle of the mixture in the pot and added it to the raw egg. It was really very good, but it would have been better if I could get all of the warnings about not eating raw eggs from my childhood out of my head. I could definitely still feel the gooeyness of the egg woke when I took a bite.

After dinner Kelly and I went back upstairs to our room, and talked on skype on our computers. After awhile she asked me if it would be okay if her father could see me. I said of course and spent the next half hour meeting all of her family on skype. Neither of her parents speaks any English, but they both seemed incredibly nice. The majority of the half hour was spent listening to her four-year-old cousin sing songs in English. For anyone who has never watched a Taiwanese four-year-old girl sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” or “Row Row Row Your Boat,” I highly suggest it. Speaking of Asian children, if I wasn’t afraid of being arrested for appearing to be a pedophile, I would take my camera everywhere with me and spend all of my time taking pictures of all of the little kids. They are unbelievably adorable.

Here's a photo of Kelly in our bedroom. It was rather sad to have to say goodbye to her this morning.

 She was incredibly helpful and kind to me. She answered all of my questions about classes and living with the host family and showed me all of the useful places in Okazaki. I was sincerely sad to say goodbye. However, it has been nice to have a little more space in the bedroom and to be able to take my clothes out of my suitcase. In my unpacking I discovered that I only brought two t-shirts to Japan. TWO! I would just like to take the opportunity to point out that seeing as I have to bike forty minutes each day, t-shirts would be much more appropriate than the two dress and skirt that I managed to bring. However, somehow at the last minute the majority of my t-shirts were relocated from my suitcase… strange how these things happen.

After saying goodbye to Kelly this morning I followed Lee to school. I’m still not certain that I would be able to find my way. When I got to the school, I looked for the classroom door that had my name on it. There were five students including me. Alex (my new Californian friend from orientation the day before) was in the same class with me, and so was Lee (the boy from Singapore who is also staying with my host family), and two other students who had been at the school for a couple weeks, a girl and a boy who are both from Taiwan. The classes went by very quickly, and I felt like I was able to keep up well with most of it. By the end my head was starting to spin from having so much Japanese spoken to me. Right as we were leaving, a different teacher came up to me and told me that I would have my first private less in half an hour. (Besides the normal courses I’m enrolled in two private lessons and two semi-private lessons each week.) My private lesson was only 50 minutes long though, and it mainly focused on reading and writing. The majority of my regular classes are concerned with conversation skills, so it will be good to have some help with writing too. Hopefully it won’t be too difficult to keep up with all of the additional homework. At the pace we seem to be moving in my classes right now, I’d say I’ll probably have to spend at least three hours working on homework each night and a significant amount of my weekend as well. However, I also have to remember that I’m in Japan to experience Japan, not just to memorize my text book, which I could do anywhere.

Lee and one of his friends waited for me, and after my private lesson we biked to a shopping mall in Okazaki. It was huge, and not too unlike malls in America. However, there were a couple key differences that I would like to note. (1) Exhibit A of the importance placed on recycling/trash disposal in Japan.

(2) They sell cigarettes in vending machines.

It was neat to walk around the mall. A lot of the shops looked really similar to ones in America. However, there was still something very distinct about the atmosphere. I’m not certain how to describe it yet, but when I figure it out, I’ll explain it. We got to practice our Japanese by asking a woman at the information desk where the bookstore was located. It was wicked exciting when I understood everything she said. Although, I think she spoke abnormally slow because she could tell we were foreign, but thrilling to me nonetheless. Before we left I bought a small backpack at a department store. I adore my hardcore Swiss Army backpack that my father bought me; however, it probably weight 10lbs without anything inside and does not fit in my bicycle basket. So I bought a tiny blue backpack that will probably just barely hold my school things, but will be perfect for transportation.

We located the post office and stopped so that I could exchange some more currency and Lee could mail a letter. Oh, for anyone who is interested, I have now written down my address for while I’m in Japan and can have anything mailed to me:  Paige Bolduc, 1-2-1 Hanehigashi-machi, Okazaki-shi, Aichi-ken, Japan 444-8691.

Dinner tonight was just Harumi-san, Lee, and me. I really have not seen that much of Mao or Hibiki (the son and daughter), or the father. The kids show up for a couple minutes at dinner, but I think the father generally gets home from work rather late. Harumi-san still cooked a huge meal for Lee and me though. The main course was fish. Fish of all sizes with gapping eye sockets.  I couldn’t bring myself to eat the head, even after watching when Mao had briefly come into the kitchen, grabbed a small one and ate it in one bite. I hope I did not look as shocked as I had felt.

My host mother really is very kind and accommodating. Even though she cannot speak English, and my Japanese is still quite basic, she talks to me to make sure that I like all of her cooking, and tonight she asked me when I would like to have my first meal tomorrow. I can tell that she genuinely wants me to feel at home here. Hopefully as I improve in my speaking abilities, I will be able to interact more with the entire family.

I know that there are loads of things that I am leaving out, and I will try to get to them at some point, but right now, I just really want to go to sleep. I’ll leave you with a few general notes and observations:

(1)    I am still waiting for the soreness from biking so much to wear off.

(2)    One must bag his or her own groceries in Japan.

(3)    Japanese post offices give much better currency exchange rates than the Detroit airport.

(4)    One can easily make a purchase at a Ramen restaurant without saying a single word.

(5)    Juice drinks and alcoholic beverages look very similar in Japan.