Late Bloomer or Bloomin' Idiot?
I expect that those few of you who would be reading this blog would have realized that I have in fact been in Japan for almost exactly a month, and would then inexorably be drawn to the conclusion that it's a bit late in the game to be starting in on a blog of my experiences. I can't help but agree with you. The prospect of attempting to recap a month's worth of experiences in a foreign country seems impossible, but that doesn't mean that I'm not going to attempt it... which I suppose takes me back to January 31st in the year of our lord 2012.
On the surprisingly tolerable flight from Seattle to Kansai International Airport, I ended up sitting next to two fellow rosy cheeked newbies headed to Kansai Gaidai University (although I didn't figure that out until after we had landed). In a somewhat bleary-eyed and delirious state (I didn't sleep on the plane a bit) I made friends with them (Michael and Andrew, for the curious) and a few others (Caroline, Amber, and Tori, et. al.), and after changing what American $ we had into what we would come to realize was a scant few 円, we all had our first meal in Japan at the first restaurant we managed to stumble into (your basic noodle shop, as it turned out). What came next was what I can only describe as the bus ride from Hell, due to my torrential lack of sleep and the overwhelming, burning insistence of a million new stimuli. 45 minutes later (I would have bet my as yet non-existant pension it was two and a half hours at the time) we arrived at Seminar House 4, the biggest and shiniest and most superior of the lot. In an almost drunken daze I received all my paperwork and my room key and after saying hi to my roommate Tony (shown below in our dorm room) I dropped immediately to sleep.
During the course of Orientation week I continually managed to wake up smack dab in the middle of the night every day like clockwork, evidence of the evils of jet lag. That first night was the exception that seemed to prove the rule. My inability to sleep might also have had something to do with the beds being futons laid out on the traditional Tatami mats, though they were comfortable as a vat full of jello and kittens. Life at Seminar House 4 for the five days that I lived there was something like experiencing freshman year all over again, except without the added benefit of being able to walk outside the dorm without becoming horribly lost. The very first morning I woke up rather early and read through about a tree and a half's worth of instructions and orientation materials, and after a bit I went with my roommate Tony to the College campus for the very first time. That particular day it was about 2 degrees C and raining, which on top of the children's scribble map we were given made getting to campus pretty difficult. Tony and I eventually ended up walking all the way around the outskirts of the campus which made what should have been a 20 minute walk a 40 minute walk, pausing every two minutes or so to reaffirm how lost we were against what could have been a map of Middle Earth for all the good it did us. Once at the school we had about 15 minutes to scarf down some breakfast, and oddly enough the only place on campus that was open was the resident Seattle's Best Coffee, which I can honestly say has just about the tastiest Green Tea Croissant I've ever had.
The next four days was a swirl of (occasionally tedious) conferences, placement tests, awkwardly making friends, and curry rice with kara age (balls of fried chicken) with melon soda (the closest thing to bliss I've found so far). During the entirety of orientation I had to fend for myself in terms of meals, and so I became pretty familiar with the local (slightly overpriced) grocery stores and their pre-made meals (e.g. delicious Okonomiyaki, a delicious savory pancake-type dish portrayed above with Caroline), and taking the plunge in trying a beverage rather unfortunately called Pocari Sweat (the photo below in no way belongs to me), which actually looks a bit like sweat but tastes like grapefruit-tinted bubbly water. I also did more walking within that first week than I did collectively the entire month and a half of Winter Break, which was both bracing and exhausting, and as a result I ate roughly the equivalent of five meals every day without once reaching an uncomfortable level of fullness. During that time I registered for my classes, which include Japanese 4; Onna to Otoko: Gender and Sexuality in Japan; No, Bunraku, and Kabuki; and Religions of Japan, but more on all that later. Oddly enough it seems that I had to come to Japan in order to see both the Hangover and the Hangover 2; but I guess that's a textbook example of a side note. Sorry.
Easily the most stressful thing I did during orientation week was setting up a Japanese bank account in order to get lunch money from Bennington. The paperwork was pretty easy to get through, but the painstakingly difficult part was that I had to create a signature that I could replicate PERFECTLY FOUR TIMES on various parts of the paperwork. Have you ever tried to do your signature EXACTLY THE SAME over and over? Let me assure you that it is nigh on impossible, and I eventually had to create a signature akin to a five year old's attempt at cursive. After forcing the kind people guiding us through the procedure to tear up about five different forms, I finally made it through, and got the prettiest Credit Card I've ever seen. I'm seriously considering turning it into a necklace once I head back to the states (I wanted to take a picture of the card and put it up, but halfway through I realized that that would be incredibly stupid. Woops.)
One of the things that is going to appear in this blog over and over and over is the little missive "... and I did karaoke...", because quite frankly I'm good at singing, I love singing, and I am becoming a minor celebrity amongst the Japanese folks I know for my singing moxie. I'll explain all about the best (by which I mean cheapest) karaoke place around in due time, but the first time I went to do Karaoke it was a bit of a let down, but in a hilarious way. Right next to one of the entrances to Kansai Gaidai is a tiny little karaoke bar, and as I was in Japan and dying to do Karaoke (and as I didn't know no better) I convinced my dear friends Ashlee and Caroline (of Okonomiyaki fame) to go hit it with me on the third night I was there. It turned out that the bar was every bit as small on the inside as it was on the outside, and the karaoke was set up in the western fashion of a bar and a machine located where you have to sing in front of the whole bar. As the three of us were the only people actually in the bar, that wasn't really an issue, but the lady who own the establishment was perhaps the most unhelpful clerk I've yet to meet in Japan. After a good bit of confusion we managed to program some english songs, though the selection was odd at best (Mr. Roboto, P.Y.T, etc.), while Ashlee, who has a pretty impressive cache of Japanese songs under her belt, sang a bunch of Japanese songs. What we didn't realize was that the lady was charging 100 yen a song, and that added up pretty damn quickly. The funny part came at the very end. As we were leaving the shop-owner repeatedly told me that I was very good at singing, and then turned to Ashlee and emphasized that her Japanese was very good. Fun times.
By far the most crazy exciting thing to happen during that week (aside from moving in with my family, which I'll do in the second post) was a trip I took with Tony and Caroline and a random grouping of four (quite lovely) Japanese girls to Kyoto. Our unofficial tour guides were called Naoko, Chieka, Kie, and Erina, and after the initial awkwardness we ended up becoming quite chummy. The girls took us to a rather famous temple in Kyoto called Kiyomizu. The road to get to Kiyomizu is actually a very attractive little tourist trap in its own right (I had been once before with my brother Julian about seven years ago, toured around by an employee of the college our father was visiting at the time), and after mentioning I was looking for a phone strap the girls got together and bought the three of us adorable little kimono wearing teddy bear charms... mine broke a couple of days later, unfortunately, but the brave soul is shown below.
And here we have the group in various formations at the tori (gate) to Kiyomizu.
Just beyond the mountains there was a special spot where the temple folk had set up a special stream of water. Travelers to the temple could use some rather long ladles to catch and drink the water and somehow become spiritually enriched because of it. What I found fascinating about this (aside from the purification of my spiritual balance or whatever) was that the ladles were resting in what looked like ultraviolet light, and I can only assume that this ancient temple was using radiation to sterilize their ceremonial drinking ladles (unfortunately, all of these photos are courtesy of friends from Facebook because I don't have the cable to connect my camera to my computer, and as a result I don't have a photo of the radiation stuff). Below is the entire saga, played out in pictures that speak much more than my thousands of words. You get the water...
... then you drink it...
... and then you wonder if the radiation made the water taste a bit off...
I expect that those few of you who would be reading this blog would have realized that I have in fact been in Japan for almost exactly a month, and would then inexorably be drawn to the conclusion that it's a bit late in the game to be starting in on a blog of my experiences. I can't help but agree with you. The prospect of attempting to recap a month's worth of experiences in a foreign country seems impossible, but that doesn't mean that I'm not going to attempt it... which I suppose takes me back to January 31st in the year of our lord 2012.
On the surprisingly tolerable flight from Seattle to Kansai International Airport, I ended up sitting next to two fellow rosy cheeked newbies headed to Kansai Gaidai University (although I didn't figure that out until after we had landed). In a somewhat bleary-eyed and delirious state (I didn't sleep on the plane a bit) I made friends with them (Michael and Andrew, for the curious) and a few others (Caroline, Amber, and Tori, et. al.), and after changing what American $ we had into what we would come to realize was a scant few 円, we all had our first meal in Japan at the first restaurant we managed to stumble into (your basic noodle shop, as it turned out). What came next was what I can only describe as the bus ride from Hell, due to my torrential lack of sleep and the overwhelming, burning insistence of a million new stimuli. 45 minutes later (I would have bet my as yet non-existant pension it was two and a half hours at the time) we arrived at Seminar House 4, the biggest and shiniest and most superior of the lot. In an almost drunken daze I received all my paperwork and my room key and after saying hi to my roommate Tony (shown below in our dorm room) I dropped immediately to sleep.
During the course of Orientation week I continually managed to wake up smack dab in the middle of the night every day like clockwork, evidence of the evils of jet lag. That first night was the exception that seemed to prove the rule. My inability to sleep might also have had something to do with the beds being futons laid out on the traditional Tatami mats, though they were comfortable as a vat full of jello and kittens. Life at Seminar House 4 for the five days that I lived there was something like experiencing freshman year all over again, except without the added benefit of being able to walk outside the dorm without becoming horribly lost. The very first morning I woke up rather early and read through about a tree and a half's worth of instructions and orientation materials, and after a bit I went with my roommate Tony to the College campus for the very first time. That particular day it was about 2 degrees C and raining, which on top of the children's scribble map we were given made getting to campus pretty difficult. Tony and I eventually ended up walking all the way around the outskirts of the campus which made what should have been a 20 minute walk a 40 minute walk, pausing every two minutes or so to reaffirm how lost we were against what could have been a map of Middle Earth for all the good it did us. Once at the school we had about 15 minutes to scarf down some breakfast, and oddly enough the only place on campus that was open was the resident Seattle's Best Coffee, which I can honestly say has just about the tastiest Green Tea Croissant I've ever had.
One of the things that is going to appear in this blog over and over and over is the little missive "... and I did karaoke...", because quite frankly I'm good at singing, I love singing, and I am becoming a minor celebrity amongst the Japanese folks I know for my singing moxie. I'll explain all about the best (by which I mean cheapest) karaoke place around in due time, but the first time I went to do Karaoke it was a bit of a let down, but in a hilarious way. Right next to one of the entrances to Kansai Gaidai is a tiny little karaoke bar, and as I was in Japan and dying to do Karaoke (and as I didn't know no better) I convinced my dear friends Ashlee and Caroline (of Okonomiyaki fame) to go hit it with me on the third night I was there. It turned out that the bar was every bit as small on the inside as it was on the outside, and the karaoke was set up in the western fashion of a bar and a machine located where you have to sing in front of the whole bar. As the three of us were the only people actually in the bar, that wasn't really an issue, but the lady who own the establishment was perhaps the most unhelpful clerk I've yet to meet in Japan. After a good bit of confusion we managed to program some english songs, though the selection was odd at best (Mr. Roboto, P.Y.T, etc.), while Ashlee, who has a pretty impressive cache of Japanese songs under her belt, sang a bunch of Japanese songs. What we didn't realize was that the lady was charging 100 yen a song, and that added up pretty damn quickly. The funny part came at the very end. As we were leaving the shop-owner repeatedly told me that I was very good at singing, and then turned to Ashlee and emphasized that her Japanese was very good. Fun times.
And the Gaijin (foreigners) at the entrance to a gorgeous higher level of the temple.
And here we have the Gaijin with a backdrop of the mountains of Kyoto.
I'm afraid I've run out of juice for the moment, and so will leave the inconsolably bored reader waiting with bated breath for the continuation of the saga. With any luck I may be able to catch up in a couple of weeks.
ご親切にありがとうございました,
Alex -..-
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