Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Just over a month left

Wow where did all of the time go? Like really not that long ago I was counting down the days until I went to Japan and now here I am with just over a month until I return from it. Its a weird feeling because I feel like I have been here so long I don't remember exactly what home is like but at the same time it feels like just yesterday we were having out orientation. I am excited to go home to see my family, hang out with my friends, be able to enjoy everything being cheap, and all of the cool movies and games that came out while I wasn't paying attention to them. I'm not looking forward to going back to work. I'm not looking forward to loosing what little Japanese practice I get in my normal day, but I'm really not looking forward to leaving this country. I don't know why I like Japan. If I wanted to say some complaints I could come up with a good size list but there is just something about this place that has a real charming atmosphere about it. I ask myself why I want to come back and its not just the anime goods shopping, which is a huge perk, its something that I can't quite explain.

Classes are wrapping up and fair well parties are happening left and right. In about 2 weeks all of the kids from Hawaii are going home and in all reality I'll probably never see them again. I've made really good friends with Jay and Courtney but I just don't see myself getting out to Hawaii too much. I guess there might be a chance with Jay if I ended up in California for work and he goes back home or something like that. But life is just full of those sort of short term friendships and you just have to learn to enjoy them while you have them and move on when they are gone I guess.

So I am once again changing my plans for school. I emailed a few teachers trying to figure everything out and it turns out there simply isn't ANY Chinese studies class this summer so that forces me to not have a free schedule in the fall so I might as well just take all of my classes then rather then some in the summer. The more I think about it the smarter decision it really is. I am getting grant money for the fall and spring semesters so school is not only going to be free but should make some money actually even after buying books and what not. The little problem is that the priority registration already passed while I was set on taking a summer semester so some of the classes I wanted are full. I signed up for Chinese writers and society 341, Japanese 421 (I don't really know if this will be a more difficult class or not) and I am going to try and get into Japanese civilization 272 to fulfil my history requirement and modern east asian history 270. These classes have a lot of students in them so there should be lots of people who drop so as long as I just keep checking up on it I should be able to get in no problem. I actually dont need Hist 270 but I need to be at 12 credits to get the money so its just about being full time with that class. I wanted to take an easier class then Chinese 341 because I have already taken all of the hard ones I need and I have had professor li for three other classes. I know he is good but he is going to work you.

So one of my more interesting teachers is Koji Nakamura. He teaches the Japanese education class and he is the one who has had the class be all over the place in terms of what we cover in class. He also teaches regular konan students classes and he invited all of us to come to his class. I was free today and saw him during a break in class so I decided to go later in the day. He said the class was taught in all Japanese which I thought all the more reason for it to be interesting. So I go to the class room and he tells everyone that their will be a ryugakusei so think of a question to ask and he had me go in front of everyone and do a self introduction and I was doing ok in my Japanese but he kept asking me more and more questions and then everyone took turns asking me questions. It was so weird being on the spot lot like that saying everything in Japanese and making mistakes left and right in front of a group of native speakers. I only go to sit down after an HOUR. I held a Q and A in Japanese, in front of Japanese people, for a solid hour! I can't believe I got through it. Now that its over I feel glad because I certainly could not have done anything like that before I came here. And this is another example of how I am constantly forced out of my comfort zone. Like if I can do this then like really their is nothing I can't do.

There is a lot of free time coming up, tomorrow is some sort of holiday and I'm thinking of going to Takarazuka. Next week is golden week (a week where a bunch of holidays fall one right after the other) then an odd week of having only my elective classes and finally the two weeks of no school at all before I go. I really need to get working on exploring. I want to stay mostly in Kansai but thats still plenty to see and do.

---Ben

Friday, April 24, 2009

coming close to the end

There is a mall that opened up in this area a few months back called nishinomiya gardens. Nishinomiya is a little past the stop I get off on for school (and it takes forever to walk there as I once found out). I had plans to see the conan movie on saturday but friday zoe and jay wanted to walk around nishinomiya gardens so since I needed to get dinner because my host mom was in Tokyo I went along. We walked around but I have to tell you the only interesting store in the whole mall is Joshin (electronics store) and maybe book 1st. So it was a little boring but had fun with friends so it was ok.

The next day we wanted to do the 2pm showing of conan but it was sold out (this was the only time Ive seen the theater actaully busy) so we went for a 5pm one instead. That meant that we had lots of time to kill in the mall so we just kind of sat around for a while. The next day Courtney invited me to go to the horse race tracks with her and her family and it was a lot of fun. We didn't actually see the real race because we were trying to get out of the sun but it was lots of fun to hang out and Courtney's brother is so cute. After the race though we went again to nishinomiya for dinner.

On monday me and courtney were planning to skip afternoon classes and go to Umeda to buy more anime figures. I've started collecting the figma series and also ones that are about the same size, shes been collecting the really chibi funny ones that I forget what they are called. But it turned out it was layla's birthday so we went to nishinomiya to have lunch with her and then somehow talked Pak and Layla to go to Umeda with us. I like going shopping with courtney because I never feel bad about the amount of money I spend because she spends TONS of money the figures she gets are like $25 each and she bought like 5 of them! Her dad just gives her so much money I wonder what she is going to do when she has to make it on her own. So that was 4 days in a row of going to Nishinomiya gardens.

Tuesday we had off but Wednesday we had a field trip to the CUBE campus which was right across the street from Nishinomiya gardens. The cube was really nice because the students there seemed honestly interested in talking to foreigners not just practice thier English or something. It was a lot of fun and its really good to see some people trying to change Japan's education system.

Also on Wednesday I got to do my presentation on Tokusatsu. It was a lot of fun and I showed some trailers and opening videos, I put a LOT of time into making the presentation.

But it is really close to the end of the program at this point. Next week is finals for Japanese class. Then we have a week off I think, then the last week for elective classes. A few days after that half the people go home and I have the last two weeks to do everything I possibly can.

Its a weird feeling because on one hand its like, "what did I actually do here?" or "where did all of the time go" but at the same time I've been here so long its hard to remeber what its like back home. But I do have close to 10,000 photos (Im like 300 short so the next time I can just walk around I'll hit it) and around 50 blog posts while being here so you could say I've documented it as well as I could have.

This has been an incredible experience and I've done so many things that most people back home would never even dream about doing but I really don't think this programs goals are what they ought to be. This program is designed pretty much for "have fun in Japan with other foreigners" which is good in its own right but you really can't say that it is "to vastly improve Japanese language skill". But I dunno I'll get fluent someday.

Honestly I am dying right now. The allergies have come out and they are showing no mercy to me. Right now I can barely keep my eyes open and my nose is all messed up. I'm wearing a breathing mask but when I exhale it goes right into my eyes and makes it worse but without it I can't stand it. It all really sucks!

Well see everyone pretty soon

---Ben

Saturday, April 18, 2009

conan movie #13!

So the past few days I kind of flipped out. I thought that I failed big time because my Japanese was still so terrible and everyone else who had a host family they liked was close to being fluent. I felt like this was my one chance to improve my Japanese to the level I needed it to be and that I had my dream kind of taken away from me. So I prayed about it and I got my answer the next day when I was talking to my friend Jay who just mentioned "I mean I wasn't naive enough to think I'd be fluent but my Japanese improved a lot". That was exactly what I needed to hear so I started to feel better from that point.

So last night me, Jay, Martin, and Courtney went to go see the 13th Detective Conan movie, The Raven Chasers. We were all pretty impressed with ourselves afterwords because we understood enough of the movie for it to be really enjoyable and get the major plot points. It was a pretty good conan movie and I was just really happy to be able to see one of them in a theater. Like downloaded anime is pretty good, HD anime gives a really solid picture but man 35mm just blows me away how good it looks. It was a lot of fun. Also it was packed and we had to get a later showing too because it was sold out.

Schools really coming close to the end right now and it's mixed feelings. I am kind of fed up with school and I need that little break but also going back to the real world with job and that summer class and all of that jazz, not looking forward to that.

Well that's that
---Ben

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

shitsubou

I've tried not to be too negative about certain things here. I've tried really hard to ignore the bad and savor the good but I'm going to vent a bit. All of my problems are connected to the fact that my Japanese still sucks a lot. I came here with expectations to become fluent in a few months and have to dig really deep to find challenging Japanese like newspapers or something. That is not even close to what happened. My Japanese did increase for a bit but then it just sort of stagnated around the end of the year. So here I am almost ready to go home and while I have read manga cover to cover with out a dictionary (although didn't get all of it) and I can run earns like getting my camera fixed or shipping internationally, I still have the hardest time in the world understanding my host family. Its not just at home either, I've realized that I am the worst student in the class. I can usually see peoples grades when our teacher hands them out and Im always in the bottom. I took the Jtest with Patrick and he passed but I failed. This monday we had a speech test and I know I got the lowest grade. Im going to complain a little to the nice teacher about the speech contest because me and one other person actually gave a speech, everyone else just read it off a paper. So yeah mine was didn't have as complex grammar in it because I just wrote my main points in English on a scrap paper and sort of made it up on the spot. I didn't really "make it up on the spot" I mean I practiced it a lot and each time I would practice it it would come out a little different. But one of my friends literally copied a line from Haruhi (anime) and read it off in front of everyone.

So yeah all of this work and I see everyone doing better then me and I just feel so freaking stupid sometimes. Like Japanese is my tokui, or pride, like its what makes me special and being here in a program where not only is it everyone's tokui as well but they are all improving way beyond me. Its frustrating. I think I really have hit a wall here, I need to go home, take a break from studying Japanese then come back at it with a new resolve because despite all of the stuff I want to do with better Japanese I still find myself just doing the bare minimum in the classes here. Like I have a really hard time saying that any of the classes in this program are "good". Some teachers, wont say names because they read our blogs apparently, have no focus or direction in the class and it just goes off into all sorts of tangents. While Im sure the teacher thinks this is great and exploring people's minds it just leaves students confused on what they are supposed to do in the class and how they are even supposed to get a grade. Some classes are way too relaxed and nothing gets done, some are completely useless, some just aren't good classes. The thing they all have in common is that they all encourage students to not try, do the bare minimum, and not care about the subject at all.

You know I still dont like my host family. I really don't get it. You would think that I would have goten used to them by now but I haven't. I still don't feel comfortable in this house. The other day at dinner she said that there was a school to teach the kansai dialect to ryugakusei (foreign exchange) and I was trying to get at that I think its stupid to study kansai dialect because Japanese people expect you to not know Japanese to begin with so why waist the effort to learn something that you dont have to use. Plus the idea of learning kansai ben is to make you seem like a native Osaka person, but no matter what you ever do you will ALWAYS be just a gaijin, foreigner.

To go off on a little tangent, Japan is actually really racist. Everyone has this nice clean idea of Japan but its all just lies. Japanese people are really racists to particularly Koreans. Its a lot like blacks in America. People were brought into the country against their will, forced to work here, became free but generation after generation finds it self stuck in a lower economic class, and they are blamed for crime. There are also the aborigine people of Japan called the Ainu and for hundreds of years the Japanese government has forcefully tried to destroy their culture. They are also often discriminated against. Also on the south most part of Japan is an island called Okinawa, this is a lot like Hawaii in the sense that it was its own nation but was conquered because of its strategical position. The okinawins and the ainu are fighting desperately to preserve their language and culture but only recently have they been recognized by the government as a minority group.

I didn't know it but there are around a million Japanese descendants living in Brazil. Around 1900 in the Meji restoration the economy wasn't doing so well so Japan made a deal with Brazil that Japanese workers could immigrate to Brazil to work. Like immigration stories in the US (especially Chinese who built the rail road tracks in the west), the situation was not what they were told it was, they couldn't afford to go back home and ended up living their for generations. In the early 90s or late 80s Japan was enjoying economic success so their was a need for low level labors. A lot of the labors who came in illegally were from Iran. The Japanese people didn't seem to like the Iranians but needed the workers so they extended citizenship to all people who are Japanese up to the 3rd generation. This way they could have the workers from Brazil come and work while maintaining their xenophobic idea of a harmonious society.

What gets me personally is the stereotypes of Westerns. Our teacher showed us a TV show episode, as language practice, called Cool Japan. What this show is is foreigners going around being silly, experiencing Japanese things for the first time, and talking about how great Japan is. Japan's view of Westerners is movie stars and the silly ones they see on TV. I don't know I just felt really upset by seeing that show for some reason. I hate that I'll never fit in this society. I hate it when a store clerk uses English with me. I really hate the thought that people might be glancing looks at me just because I'm white. I think I understand in a tiny, tiny bit now what it might be like to be a minority in America.

Well there you go todays post is just some complaining I guess but I wanted to get it off my chest.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

dai-dai-bouken

So the first noteworthy thing I did this week was go see watchmen at nishinomiya gardens. Now this movie came out almost a month ago in America but it was only a few days after the japanese release that I saw it. In a nut shell I think it was 4 out of 5 stars. It pretty much did everything a film adaptation of the graphic novel needed, the different ending still worked, but the music selection was terrible. The music made for the movie was really good but every popular song that was put in didn't fit the scene at all an I think really hurt the movie. It was also really bloody. Like the comic is supposed to be dark and serious and people do get murdered but I felt uncomfortable how much gore there was. But the biggest thing about the movie is the fact that Dr. Manhattan is naked for almost the whole thing. They could have made him have a loin cloth that he wears in the Vietnam scene but they chose not to for some reason.

So nothing big really happened in school this week. Well the Japanese students started coming back to school so its more crowded now. Thursday night we made bean dip and soft tacos at church and that was pretty fun. I really like mexican food so even so so stuff tastes really good.

Friday night at oji koen (park) they had a night hanami (flower viewing). As you probably know Japan is full of these beautiful cherry blossom trees. These cherry blossom (sakura) have these wonderful white/pink flowers on them but the flowers only bloom for about 1 week or so. Poets and such say that the flowers represent the frailty of life. The night viewing (hanami/flower viewing) was really nice because they would have these paths with branches going over the top making this tunnel of white flowers. They added lights to the flowers so they really stood out. It was almost like a light show. I did take a lot of pictures of that but because of the odd lighting situation they all came out atleast a little blurry. We went with a big group but ended up splitting some how. The group I was with sat down on some benches and talked for a bit. The parked closed at 8:30 so we went through the rest of it then found a little park where we could hang out some more. Its really nice being in Japan because even though it was night time and there wasn't much light at the park I felt completely safe.

Once we found a good bench we started to play this really fun drinking game, I of course drank apple juice. You sit in a circle and you all take turns counting off 1 to 21. When you get to 21 you say "cheers to the general", everyone takes a drink and the person who gets to 21 makes up a rule to replaces one of the numbers with a phrase, simple action, or word. So for example it could be "3 is butterscotch" so when you take turns counting it goes 1,2, butterscotch, 4,5,6,etc. If someone messes up on counting they have to take a drink then start the counting over again. Also there are two numbers that are replaced from the start 7 is 14 and 14 is 7, these prove to be hard to remember no matter how many times you do it.

I had a lot of fun that night, lots of laughs and had a hard time with the game even though I was sober. This was also one of the rare times I hung out with Martin and Fabin, the two German students in our program. They are really cool guys and make me want to learn German someday.

Saturday I planned to do hanami with the people at church rather then go with the other ryugakusei. It was raining however so we went to the nearby park, took some pictures then went back inside and ate some food. I was under the impression that everyone bring their own lunch but it was more of a pot luck so I felt kind of bad. There are two Japanese people there who we kind of joke around with their names. One is Nagabashi and we call him Tom Longbridge and the other is Macchin and I call her machine. It was a fun afternoon, we played some badmitten and jenga but I went home around 4 or so. When I got home I was just kind of out of it so I crashed on my bed and watched gundam 00 on my computer. I don't quite know how I feel about 00 actually. In some senses its really different from Seed and Seed Destiny but in other I feel its too similar. Almost like super sentai where you can tell whats going to happen by looking at the timer in the corner of the screen and what episode number it is.

Sunday I went to church, got appointed as young men's advisor (over all 3 of the young men), went home and messed around on the computer. I'm doing my report for Japanese class on tokusatsu so I was learning about the history of Godzilla movies. I actually got pretty addicted to this video series that explained them all.

Monday we had a JLPT practice test. I didn't think the test was insanely hard or anything but when I took the test I got a really bad score, 48%. I realized that, or rather assumed, that I got the lowest score in class and was feeling really bad about my Japanese ability. Like Japanese is my special thing and I was feeling really bad because I'm with nothing but people who that also is their special thing or its their natural thing. I didn't want to go but I ended up going to family home evening but I'm glad that I did because my bad mood quickly disappeared. FHE was pretty nice we had some good cake and longbridge and machine came. Longbridge is actually an investigator so they showed a video but the cable was going in and out. Randomly I remebered that I had a video cable in my bag from when we were watching movies at school and I just pulled it out and gave it to them. Everyone was surprised I had it with me and machine said "sasuga otaku san ne" or something like "thats an otaku for you".

Tuesday is when the real fun starts. Ok so like I said there is only a small opportunity to see the sakura and the best place to see them arguably is Kyoto. So right after japanese class I printed some maps off and headed to Kyoto. I wasn't sure how much time I would have because if I could I wanted to eat dinner at home because my host mom said she would make okonomiyaki for me. So I got to Kyoto in about an hour or so and decided to take the bus to Kinkaku temple (the golden pavilion). Their were two buses I could have taken, one had more stops, was coming a few minutes sooner and went directly to kinkukujinja. The other had fewer stops but stoped just a tiny bit before. I thought I should take the later but when the former came I just jumped on. The bus ride took a really long amount of time and I was wishing I would have just looked up the subway info instead.

I got there in about 30 mins and the first thing I noticed was the amount of foreigners there were. This might sound in some bizzaro self hating racist way but I feel really weird when I see other foreigners in Japan. Its like maybe I've adopted a little of the Japanese soto/uchi thing but its like the foreigners in my program I know and are my friends and we all kind of stick together. With japanese people there is this separation feeling. So when I see a foreigner I dont know where to put them. They are like me they aren't the sort of distant Japanese people but I don't know them they aren't my friends. I try not to make eye contact because its like we shouldn't have to make eye contact just because our skin is the same color. I don't know if that made any sense but its a really unique feeling.

Ok ok so Kinkaku jinja, not that awesome. First of all it cots 400 yen to enter which isn't a lot but there are so many places that are free. The pavilion itself is pretty small and it sits across this nice scenery but the water is pretty dirty looking and you can only see it from a few angles. There is a path and a nice garden-esq area to walk through but I've seen nicer ones other places. Also like most things in Japan its become so touristized its hard to really feel any sort of calmness or tranquility. I got some nice pictures and can say I've been there so I guess thats worth the effort to go I suppose.

Since there were actually no sakura at kinkau I decided to head to my next destination. I was thinking of doing ginkakujinaja (the silver pavilion) but regardless of what I did I needed to get back to the other side of town. Since the bus took as long as it did I wanted to use the subway. I looked at the map and it looked like there was a station just a few blocks from there. I thought I would just head for that instead. As I was going down that way I found a little video game store. I of course went straight to the sega saturn section because for collectors sake I am buying a lot of those here. I found two of the games I had been searching all over for; shinning force 3 part 2 and part 3. Part 3 was reasonable price at 1100 yen but part 2 was 2900 yen. I debated what to do for a long time. I really want the trilogy but can I justify 2900 yen for an old video game I might play once but other then that just sit on my shelf so I can say that I have it. I ended up just getting part 3 but I'm still not sure if it was the right decision to pass up part 2.

Anyways I bumped into this pretty big temple what I think was called heiya temple. It was jam backed with sakura trees. Oh man it was like the clouds were only a few feet above my head. I spent a lot of time there taking a lot of pictures, it was really cool. I think the pictures kind of speak for themselves so I won't say too much more on this place.

A little bit from there I saw another bus stop. The station should have been just a little further down but I didn't know where exactly, the bus was right here. I ended up taking the bus just to be safe and waited another 30 mins. I actually rode the bus to kyoto JR station. I decided from there it would be good to go to inari jinja so I got on the train line and rode for two stops.

A torii gate is the tale red gates that you see all over Japan. Inari Jinja has thousands of them. They have pathways that are just tunnels of torii gates. Take a look at the crazy pictures I took there it was incredible. So I get there and its a lot like a regular temple but you go off to the side and you find the torii path. Inari jinja is part of tofuku jinja I believe and both are located in this huge park on the south eastern part of Kyoto. Its also mountainous so going through the gates is a lot like a hiking trail except you have stone walk way and the tunnels of gates. This area seems to really like the fox spirit because there were lots of fox statues and lots of mini shrines with for statues on them. Along the trail there were parts where you could break off for a bit and have just a regular hiking trail. I would go on these for just a little bit to get some pictures and go back but it was really stunning being there. Coming from Arizona forests in general are something very rare but Japanese forests are full of skinny tall trees packed together, there was also a lot of bamboo trees so it gave this very surreal feeling.

As you get toward the top there are resting spots, because you do get tired, over looking the kyoto city scape. It was a very beautiful sight even if there was a lot of haze. Surprisingly there seemed to be either stores or houses up this high on the mountain. I don't know how anyone could live there. At the very top was a shrine area that was packed with a bunch of mini ones. One of them had a big stone in the center with holy looking rope around it. I walked around that area a bit and decided to take a back exit out of that place.

Going up there were a few little side detours you could take or alternative pathways and going down was the same way. I got two this three way fork and decided to go down to the left. It was a somewhat steep stair climb down and there were much less torii gates this way. When I got down to the bottom I really took in the beauty of it all. It was so calm and quiet and peaceful. I continued on the stone path for a bit more and I ended up infront of this house and a bunch more fox type shrines. This house was pretty far away from anything but the door was open and there were shoes in the entrance way so people did live there somehow. I kept going but the path then became just a dirt path. I again took it all in and also thought of how amazing it was that I was here on this trail. Like I really didn't know where I was. I knew I could go back all that way and find the original path but I had no idea where my current location was. I wasn't worried about it but rather thought how I am one of few people who actually explore Japan like this. Tourists don't have time to explore nooks and crannies like I do and natives don't usually care too much about exploring their own area. Its only foreigners living here like me who really can explore.

So I continue on the trail and the forest breaks up a little and I see houses. I go a bit more and the trail is over but now I am in some really fancy looking neighborhood. Like a gated community. I was really baffled how I got there. I knew that towards the sunset was the main part of Kyoto so I headed that way but I really did not know where I was at all. I amaze myself sometimes with these adventures I go on. Like I genuinely get lost sometimes, I should be more worried about that then I actually am. Just walking around in a city I don't know very well without even a compass, its a big adventure for sure.

So as I exit the gated community what do I see? A sign with three kanji 任天堂 which I learned recently means NINTENDO. I totally accidentally stumbled across the Nintendo headquarters. There isn't much to see in all actuality but just to get a picture of the building where so many awesome games is made was a pretty exciting thing for me. After I got my fanboy pictures over with I tried to find the station. I did find the train tracks and hoped they were JR and followed them. I was in a part of Kyoto I didn't know at all but somehow I found the station and headed back to Kyoto station. I actually arrived on the hankyu line karasawa so I had to go north a few blocks. I marked on my map where it was but that was actually a mistake, it was a block ahead of that. Again somehow I got to the station and headed home.

Today, Wednesday I went to Sannomiya with Courtney and we both bought more anime goods. Courtney bought a lot and I have no idea where she gets all of her money from.

Well I think I might have written enough now so bye