Sunny Days in Okazaki

May 29^th, 2010, 11:30p.m.

In the past three days the weather in Okazaki has been wonderful. I’ve been preparing myself to deal with the rainy season throughout the rest of my time here, but since Wednesday there hasn’t been any rain at all. The weather has been making me even more fond of biking.

Yesterday started a new cycle of classes. We had one boy advance to the next stage of classes, and three new students enter, so my class now has seven people including me. Two of the new students are college students, a boy from Germany and a girl from France. The other is a middle aged man from Buenos Aires named Ferdinand, that's all I know about him right now.

This was our classroom set up when we had five students.

And this is what it looks like now that there are seven, still nice and cozy. 

Every day my host mom packs me Onigiri to bring for lunch. It's kind of like a ball of rice that she rolls up and shapes like a triangle. Usually there are bits of seaweed mixed in too. It's not bad at all. Here's a picture of the one she made me for Friday; she used curry rice. 

On a typical school day, I’m in classes or private lessons until 3:30 p.m. and afterward I stay at the school and study until about 6:00p.m. Lee and I usually bike home together, which is nice, because this way I know that if I get hit by a car at least someone will notice. Thursday is his last day living here, which is a bummer. It’s nice to have a traveling companion. However, I have a feeling that as soon as he moves out, someone new will come. I think the family likes to have two students here all of the time. I’ll keep you guys posted.

Yesterday after classes and studying, I biked to a used book store with Lee, Helen, and William. (Helen is in my class and William is one of Lee’s friends who is also from Singapore). The book store was an interesting place… There were so many books, you could hardly move around inside. I have pictures to explain. The shocking thing was that about 80% of the books seemed to be either Anime, porn, or animated porn. Two little old ladies sat behind the counter (which was actually just side-by-side stacks of several hundred books) and watched as we awkwardly tried to avoid the inappropriate books and magazines (which was not an easy task as they were everywhere). We didn’t stay long. But before we left, I bought a children’s book. I’m trying to figure out ways that I can keep up my Japanese when I go back home, and I think having something to read other than my textbooks will be a good way to start, and the only books at my level are kids’ books. I’m pretty sure the title of the book I bought means “Kanga and Roo Go to the Forest.” I’m not certain about this yet though…

This morning I woke up early, 7:30ish, to go to the school and study with a friend. However, when I was about to leave the house, my host mom stopped me and explained that she wanted Lee and I to follow her to see something at the nearby elementary school. I hope that when I’m 56 years old I can ride a bike half as well as my host mother, it was remarkable. Lee and I followed her to the school and proceeded to witness a “track and field” type of event, except Japanese track and field day is clearly a very very big deal. I think there must have been six family members per child who had come to watch, and there were a lot of children. It’s hard to believe that so many kids can fit into one elementary school actually. There seemed to be a sort of international theme for the games that they played, and everything was meticulously structured (there was a very official looking program of events to prove this). Of course, the kids were absolutely adorable, but the millions of family members were a little overwhelming. Lee took some pictures:

After spending a little while at Japanese track and field day, Lee and I rode to the school. My friend, Alex, who I had been planning to meet to study forgave me for being 45 minutes late, and we spent the next two and a half hours memorizing verb conjugations. For lunch, the three of us walked to a nearby traditional sushi place that Lee had heard was really good. It was super traditional. We took of our shoes to sit down on the floor next to our table. No one spoke any English, and there weren’t menus. We didn’t order at all actually, our food was just brought out to us. The workers were incredibly friendly. They spoke slowly in Japanese to us, and seemed genuinely happy to have us there. Lee said that they could tell we were foreigners (and most likely students) because of me. He said that he and Alex could past as native Japanese people, but I was clearly not Japanese.  Lee seemed to think it was a blessing though, because people are less likely to think that I can speak Japanese fluently and try to talk to me. However, I’ve found that this is not necessarily the case. I think because Okazaki is such a comparatively small town (about 330,000 people) and not much of a tourist destination, most people expect you to be able to speak Japanese if you are living here. However, when they realize that I’m a student and can’t speak very quickly or understand everything, people don’t seem to be bothered at all. I’ve found almost everyone to be encouraging and good natured.

Anyway, the sushi was absolutely delicious, and a lot less expensive than I had thought it would be, only 700 yen (about $7) per person, for a good amount of high quality food. The same amount of sushi would probably cost at least $25 in America at the places that I’ve eaten sushi before.

One last thing I want to mention before I crawl into bed: When we have dinner, my host-stay mom never sits down. She hasn’t eaten with us once. She stands on the cooking side of the counter and asks “next menu?” (in English) and she talks to us, but she never sits at the table. Once when I asked if I should set a place for her she said “my place is here,” meaning, in front of the stove.

When she brings food to the table, she always serves Lee, then Hibiki, and then me, in that order, which I hadn’t even noticed actually, until the other night, when she said, “Japanese style, boy, boy, and then girl,” as she brought over the food. I’ve never considered myself a devoted or driven feminist before, although, being roommates with Hannah and thinking more about feminism this last semester has changed this a little. I think that because Neil and I have been treated completely equally growing up, I haven’t realistically considered what it would be like to be a girl living in a household where males were clearly treated with favoritism or at least with more care and respect. It is clear to me that my host mother loves her daughter and takes good care of her, but she still observes this tradition of serving her male child first (even though he is younger). And I don’t feel like my host family is particularly conventional, which makes me wonder if/how this sexist treatment occurs in other Japanese homes. It also makes me curious about the types of battles women face in the workplace in Japan.

When thinking about my trip to Japan before I had left home, I promised myself that I would be as open minded as I could about everything. I would try desperately not to think of things solely as oppositions to the Western mentality that I’m used to, that I would not regard things as being “less progressive” or “less civilized,” because who is to say that the Western idea of civility is even correct. However, it is difficult for me to stay open minded about this sort of mentality about the role and value of women. 

To end on a more positive note: Tomorrow I’m going to go to Nagoya with Lee and a Norwegian boy that I met today. I’m not exactly sure what we are going to do there yet, but it will be neat to see another type of environment in Japan. Nagoya is the fourth largest city in Japan (population = about 2.2 million). My host mom and daughter are both really busy preparing for their students’ dance/piano recital that is tomorrow, and I haven’t told anyone that it is my birthday, because I didn’t want them to feel like they had to do anything special for it. It will be neat to spend my 19^th birthday visiting a new place in Japan J

Did I mention that I'm a bicycle riding machine?