Friday, January 23, 2009

matsuri and stuff

Well its been another good amount of time since my last blog so its time to write some more. Since last thing the first thing that was really big was I went to Ebisu Matsuri on Sunday. It was incredibly crowded something like 700,000 people went on the busiest day. I took some interesting pictures but I was more interested in the side booths then the actual temple. All sorts of different foods and carnival esq games. I kept thinking about trying one of the lottery type ones because they have a box for a wii and ps3 so its like you “could” win them but since its $3 a try and the boxes look REALLY old so its probably impossible to actually win them.

Monday I went to the 20 year old celebration with my friends. There were tons of really pretty kimonos, and everyone was so dressed up. My friends said its kind of like the Japanese prom, the way everyone gets all fancy. I wasn't planning on going in because it seemed like they were taking tickets but after my friends left I ran into the missionaries and they were going in and it seemed like it was all right. The ceremony was kind of boring but it was one of those once in a life time things you have to do just because.

The rest of the week went by pretty event less I think. It seems like I'm going to have a really easy semester despite having 3 non language classes. Cinema is taught by possibly the single most laid back (lazy) teacher in the history of the world so we just have to turn in 4 short papers about the movies we watched. Religion is a pretty boring class because we just fill in the blanks in class for the most part but last time he showed some pictures of stuff which made things more interesting. But for that class all we have is mid term final and one paper. Education might be the only class that is close to being a “real” class because we have a paper that requires 5 sources but the thing with this class is it just talks about the Japanese stereotypes. Not like how they are bad but talking about them as if they are true.

I have to take a little detour to rant about this for a bit. In Japanese studies there is a thing called nihonjin ron, or basicly an argument or debate about Japanese people. This is characterized by setting Japan up as a very unique culture and how it is infinitely different from the West. The problem is that this idea is maintained by both Westerners and Japanese people. For example many times I have heard, Japan has four seasons Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. But its like thats the same as everywhere in the entire world. And in the education class we watched a video about Japan and it talked about the Japanese way of eating and it showed people in kimonos sitting Japanese style on tatami mats eating off the floor, but the reality is that no one in Japan does that. And in the book for education class, which by the way quoted a source from 40 years ago, talks in such strong absolutes that all Japanese people think in this specific way, its all just really annoying. Another example is Akira Kurosawa was really thought to not make movies for Japanese audiences simply because his movies won awards internationally. Because if Westerners like something then its not Japanese.

On Saturday I took Emily and Julienne to Den Den Town because they wanted to find non pornographic dojinshin, let me tell that is no easy task. Hentai is so big here its really scarry, which I think I'll just leave it at that. I'm trying not to spend too much money or atleast refrain from buying anime goods because I've ran out of room here and if I really want to display everything back home, I'm out of room there too so its a no go. Also like I really need to get working on my Gundam models. I haven't been doing too much because I've been trying to read more manga in my free time (which I found a series I really like and I'm on book 5 now) and also I want to spray paint some of them but I need a day that is not too cold, not raining, not windy and I'm home during day light so its been a no go lately. I got a few that are metalic coating and I just started the last of them and I have really mixed reactions about them. One model had the model specifically built for the metalic coating (ie there is no regular version) so on the runners they are in a way that you can snap it off with out cutting into the coated part. The others however have regular models so no matter what you do you have a black spot where the frame was. And I tried painting it over with a color that wouldn't stand out too much and it instantly ate the coating so any mistake and its ruined. But the other hand is that the metallic looks so cool so its a trade off.

Ok so here I want to rant about the konan program a bit, so bear with me. I know I'm in Japan and its an incredibly opportunity and I'm doing all that I can to take advantage of it and experience as much as I can, but when I decided I wanted to study abroad I was looking forward to two things, the first is to make a lot of Japanese friends and the second is to become really good at Japanese. Pretty much exactly in the middle of the program, I feel both of those things are not going to happen. Starting off its just so hard to make Japanese friends. The start of which, and really the only part I can blame the program for, is that we are completely separated from the Japanese students. Apparently other programs, granted not all of them, have the ryugakusei take normal Japanese classes but offer a small prep class beforehand so the students know what to expect this would be really tough but you would actually be a student at that college not just someone doing a program that takes place inside that college. Add in the fact that the Japanese students will soon be gone for two months as their calendar is completely different and it just feels impossible. However it isn't impossible to “meet” people but rather making friends is a whole different story. Many times when I try to hang out with someone I always get some excuse, so much so that it makes me not want to even try. Even if they are legitimate I think a friend should be someone who hangs out atleast once every 3 weeks, espically for students. And the bout about becoming good at Japanese is really all dependent on making friends. Japan is a country that is very easy to get by without ever having to speak Japanese. All of the signs are in English, enough people study it that you could find a clerk that speaks it, and EVERYONE assumes you don't know Japanese at all so they try and avoid you. There is a guy at church who came here about a year ago with his wife as an English teacher and he wanted to get to the point where he could translate but he doesn't have any Japanese friends and ended up just speaking English with his wife and now feels his Japanese is worse then before. So point is Japan is a country that doesn't try to assimilate foreigners , like America is, so a good foreign exchange program should take that into consideration.

Oh yeah and I'm thinking about going with some of the ryugakusei to Korea sometime before I head home. I bet Melissa would be pretty jealous.

Friday, January 9, 2009

A trip to Den Den Town

I actually made this video a while ago but never linked it to this page, here is a video made out of little clips from my camera as I went to Den Den Town in Osaka. The camera is VERY shaky and you very likely will get sick a parts so just skip around.

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New years and stuff

Its been a while since I last wrote so let me see if I can remember what happened since last time. Well the big thing was new years. My host family's daughter and her family came. There was an adorable 3 or 4 year old girl named Mai. I really love little kids and was so happy to be able to play with her, and to have someone who I could understand. Over the holidays we had food that had a lot of effort put into it. Some of the stuff was really great like yakiniku and crab but other stuff was just so weird I couldn't eat too much of it. Like there was mochi in a bowl of miso like soup. That stuff is so hard to eat.

On new years day I went to Ikuta temple. It was really crowded and there were food stands and like carnival type game booths set up so it really was a sight to behold. As you waddle your way through the sea of people and get up to the actually jinja (temple) you see more booths but these are selling charms and what not. I went up to the main part and threw in a few yen saying a little prayer to Heavenly Father in my head and walked around some more. As you will often seen in anime you can buy fortunes and you tie that fortune around a tree or around a fence covering a tree so that it either comes true or doesn't come true, which ever you want (its kind of confusing there). After that I came home and just did the usual try and kill time thing.

Taking a little detour here, Japan is so weird here religiously. Like this place is translated as a temple but it didn't seem to really be anything at all what you would think of for that word. The fact that there were just all sorts of vendors leading up to the place made it all feel more like a state fair or something rather then anything spiritual. And the fact that they sell good luck charms just is something thats hard to get my head around. Its like the gods (there is a huge vagueness about if there is one god or multiple) will bless you because you spent 300 yen on a cell phone strap. And I started my religion class on Thursday and its like the Japanese “religions” don't seem that concerned about validity. Like its no secret that budhissim is an evolvement of all sorts of beliefs across Asia. Coming from a Western (or even Middle Eastern point of view) a religion should atleast claim to be a powerful being's real desire for mankind. But religion here just seems like philosophy mixed with traditions which my religion is so much more to me.

Its kind of a little silly but while I'm building my Gundams I've been listening to the book of mormon on mp3 and I started in heleman (because I always give up on reading it once I get to alma, I get so lost in the so and so reign of the judges this war happened part) and after I finished it I moved on to the doctrine and covenants. I can't believe that I went my entire life without ever actually looking at the contents of the doctrine and covenants. As I'm going through it it is blowing my mind that in relatively recent times God gave very direct distinct directions to the leaders of the young church. Its like I can feel the power and authority of Heavenly Father's words as I listen. I didn't expect to really have my testimony grow so much here but it really has. Many times I've very grudgingly went to church but now I find myself looking forward to it and I really honestly want to become a good Mormon now.

Aside from all of that um I sat around my room a lot. I hung out with Jay, Nohea, and Courtney a lot and we went back to the temple one time and I got a fortune. I didn't tie it on the tree because I wanted to know what it said and I wanted to keep it as a souvenir. School finally started and I'm really glad. Japanese class might be a little on the tough side this semester (but its my LAST Japanese class). We are reading books now and there are SOOOOO many words we have to look up because this author is being incredibly descriptive of everything. I am taking three other classes this semester; education in Japan which is taught by a seems to be really cool teacher and we are going to have a field trip to a Japanese high school, Japanese religion which is taught by a terrible teacher. This teacher just gave us a packet with key points not filled in and he just stands there and reads the piece of paper while we fill it in. Its like freaking crap that is NOT teaching, I know its slim pickings on teachers who can speak English but the teachers in this program seem like they have never been a student before. The last class is Japanese cinema, which after the first meeting I have high hopes for.

On Friday in Japanese class we did some really fun word games. We broke up into two teams and each team had a leader. The first game the teacher wrote a word on the board so the leader couldn't see it and three of us had to each write a part of a haiku to describe that word. My team had nintendo DS so it was , everyone holds it, has 2 screens, also wireless (doesn't fit the rules in English). The second game the captain would know the word and give tiny hints as to what it was and the three of us at the same time had to say the same answer. Each time we got it wrong we were docked points. I think this one would work in English too. The third one was really interesting, the teacher wrote a word in katakana (the alphabet for foreign words) and we had to make a 4 kanji word that would describe it. So we had bargin (ba-gen) and I wrote dai-an-kin-sho which was big-cheap-money-little and he guessed sale (se-ru) but it wasn't close enough.