Penny Hero (dot) Net

I don’t ever want to forget last night. Seeing Tomoaki again might have been the most memorable event in my entire stay here.

Ueno and the zoo, off to Ebisu to see Tokyo Bosse Nova, and through Ginza on the way home. Remember the Okonomiyaki, the view from the 38th floor with the orange moon, the long moving walkway back to the station and the conversation there, the train ride home, him meeting my host family at 10:30 at night, and the last goodbye outside the Keisei line entrance.

So sad. But so inevitable. Just like the last time. It can’t be helped, so no regrets. I go back to my other life tomorrow. It’s reassuring to know that an old life still has meaning to the people who lived it, but I can’t help but cry.

Arakawa mayor arrested for accepting bribes

Technically, I work for this guy… just a few levels of politeness below him actually. I met him too. I served him peaches and pears during some kind of inter-ken diplomatic meeting or whatever. I’ve been in his office-suite like, twice.

Anyway yeah. Apparently, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. In August or July, the Vice-Mayor (for lack of a better word) got arrested for the same thing. I don’t know if it was from the same company, but the event still had the office all shaken up when I started working there and had been there long enough to sense the tension.

It’s going to be an interesting day tomorrow during my last day at work.

I guess there are a few things that you have to do before you can be a real “dumb gaijin” in Japan. You have to offend a few people by using the wrong form of the word “to give”. You have to endure endless and annoying “You are such a cute foreigner! your eyes are so big!” as if you are a new pet someone brought home. And then, there’s one more vital thing that one must do.

Last night, I completed the last of these things and became a real-life-honest-to-god-dumb-gaijin-in-Japan: I got lost in the train system. I’m just shocked that it took me this long. ha ha.

I went out to Shinjuku to meet Pingu and Natsumi, and immediately got lost in the station. Didn’t panic though, because I had my trusty cheap-ass cell phone with me and sent her a bunch of emails about where I was, and could she come find me. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find my exit, and I couldn’t find hers, so we were pretty much screwed until Natsumi randomly ran into me as she was leaving her train. She got on the phone and the three of us finally met up, and we ran off to have a lovely night of eating cake, talking about boys (*gag* but oh well… they are girls), and looking for a place to take pictures of ourselves.

Coming home was when the train system swallowed me whole and I was lost for about an hour. On the way to Shinjuku, I took a single JR Yamanote train from Nishi-Nippori Station, so I expected that the ride back would be the same. But nope. I should have gotten off at Ikebukuro and changed trains. Unfortunately, I was on some old local train with no english anywhere on it, and the announcer actually was the conductor (instead of pre-recorded Japanese messages) and was hella hard for me to understand. (the rumor that the train system is completely bilingual is a complete lie!)

Anyway, so I apparently was supposed to change trains at Ikebukuro, but I didn’t… I expected to be at nishi-nippori at 8:15… 8:15 came and went and the stations were getting smaller and smaller… the buildings got hella short too. Finally I decided to mutter “Toto, it looks like we’re not in Tokyo anymore” and get off the train. Checked my map, and realized I was about 45 minutes outside of Tokyo in Saitama. (Insert inside joke here: Takuya, there really isn’t anything in Saitama!)

After a few frantic emails and one phone call from my host mom, I got on the train going the opposite direction and road the sucker back to Tokyo and got on the right JR line… My host dad was waiting for me at Nishi-nippori, practically pale with worry! it was crazy. I love my host family. I just feel really really stupid. ha ha.

The worst of it was that the two cute Korean guys I met a few weeks ago were at my house waiting for me to come home so we could hang out one last time. I had kept them waiting for an hour and a half! ack! Oh well, they gave me presents and big smiles and we all laughed about it and they said the same thing had happened to them.

Even though I was pretty calm through the whole ordeal, the stress of the evening apparently was just enough to cause me to lose the battle I’ve been having with this cold I’ve felt trying to come on for a few days. Woke up this morning hella sick. But it’s all cool because I got to skip work, drink soup, SLEEP, and eat as much umeboshi as I wanted! Japanese treat colds as if they are life threatening. It’s quite amusing.

So yeah. I’m home safe, waiting to hear from Ethan to see if he still wants to meet today or not (I’m feeling much better). Tomorrow I actually will get to see the guy I came to Japan with 2 years ago. I’m very excited about that, and a little nervous too. The next day is my last day at work, and a farewell party… and then the following day I get on a plane to come home!

Lots and lots of moving.

The move to my third host family was pretty odd… They came to pick me up on bicycles as if I wouldn’t have any luggage. That was a pretty amazing sign of a great sense of accomodation. I kind of had a hunch that things were going to get worse from there… and I was right. After going back for the car, they brought be to their place, and I was told to put my luggage in the sisters’ bedroom (two sisters). I knew from the beginning that I’d be sharing a room with them, and that was going to be cool. They’re both really awesome girls, and their friends are people I’ve met several times before. I was really looking forward to staying there because then I could have people to go out with.

But… really, there was no physical space for any of my things… I couldn’t unpack, and only after I struggled to explain that I don’t need a separate room, just a little bit of space to unpack, did they empty out a few drawers… I was pretty disoriented. After I while though, I kind of resigned to it. I contemplated calling Watanabe-san and asking if I could move back in with my first host family, but eventually decided to just wait, and see if it got better.

It did get better in a way. The sisters invited two of their friends over and we had a little bit of a nifty slumber party. Me and this one girl Junko ended up talking about stuff that I haven’t been able to really talk about since I left the US because it’s so hard to translate into Japanese. But she is in the same (romantic) situation I am in, so she understood even though my Japanese is shit, and her English isn’t much better. That felt good to just exchange complicated stories and agree to each other that all that should matter is what is between the people involved, not what other people think.

So, for a while I thought, hey. I could live with this. The next morning, breakfast was together and we made plans to go out for dinner (me and the two sisters, who apparently run the house). They have a guitar so I even got to play for a while before taking off for work. At lunch, I was SHOCKED to see Watanabe-san come in and ask to talk to me.

Someone told her about the situation, and she decided it was better to try to get me to move back in with my host family (!!!). That’s one Japanese stereotype I’m very happy to have seen played out… that whole “think of others first and go WAY out of your way to fix their problems” thing.

So with her help, we hauled ALL my luggage back across town again… hoofing it where we had to, and taking a train and a taxi where we could… I owe her my soul. really I do.

Anyway, I feel like I am home now. I feel so relaxed. I’m glad it worked out this way for so many reasons. so relieved.

Ok… time for food and then bed.

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In Other News: I got to take a class on the Japanese Tea Ceremony today. The degree to which each simple motion is choreographed is… insane. They number all the steps you take, how many lines in the tatami mat need to be between each item on the floor, and how many between the mat and your knees. I wouldn’t be surprised if breaths were counted at some point too. The hardest thing is getting the (forgot the name) cloth to gracefully fold itself in your hand at the beginning. Mostly everything else makes sense, the way a martial arts kata makes sense. Anyway, it felt very nice… because all of these motions and the entire ceremony was created back in like… I forget. but a long time ago.(god my culture teacher would kill me if she found out I forgot what period it started in…)

Anyway, it’s like a direct link to that period in Japanese history. Knowing that maybe millions of women over hundreds of years performed those exact motions for various Samurai, Shogun, maybe even the Emperor? Yeah… even if my legs and feet will never work properly again EVAR from sitting like that for so long, i feel pretty nice now.

going to sleep now. I get to teach english tomorrow! fun.

Brain is still a little bit numb from everything. I woke up and got ready for work… had the normal “I don’t want to go to work” blues, got there and had a pretty normal day. I got to go to a culture museum and see all the local stuff they found here dating back as far as the Jomon period (!!!). Then I worked on (and almost finished) the video script translation I’m writing. I got a little frustrated because I tried and failed to make a specific and very necessary question clear to Watanabe-san… but hopefully what I’ve done will be of some use to whoever uses it later. (I needed to know if my script was going to be used as a voice-over, or for english subtitles) My japanese still sucks.

They threw me a small party at the office during lunch. Just our little ‘bunka-seisho-nen’ crew (I know I romanized that wrong. I’ll fix that later). it was pretty spiffy and cool. Takaki-san ate all the leftover cake and we made jokes about him being a cake-lover (that’s bad somehow?). That was probably the only part of the conversation i understood well… when we resorted to american-style joking and insults. haha.

After I got home, my first and third host families came over for the party… it was so nice to see them. I’ve only met the daughters of my third family so far, but they seem really cool. I feel like I kind of got transplanted into this… well, bloody big family composed of three different households… I don’t know how to um… comprehend it… My first family feels more like ‘parents/sister’ and I love them to death… second one are like grandparents… third is like a set of cousins (because I still haven’t met their mom or dad yet.) I’m extremely grateful for all of it… at some point I’m going to write a zillion poems for them all… especially for the Enomoto house (first family).

In Other News: At work today, I had this very very strong feeling that there was a presence following me around. Its something I haven’t felt since like, high school, and before that. Before today, in retrospect, I’ve found myself wondering if those feelings I’d had back then were imagined, or just a side effect of my insecure adolescence… but I felt it today, so distinctly, and for so long (about an hour and a half), with work and conversation going on at the same time (before, it would usually only come when I was alone) that it was impossible to ignore… and impossible to shake, until finally it went away by itself around the time I got off work.

Strangely nostalgic and kind of … cool, for lack of a better word. Back then I used to dig so hard into the people around me, trying to find out who it could have been… or I’d immediately drop into some meditation to see if i could talk to it. But today, it was just a warm thing. I liked it there, around me, and I didn’t care to know what it was. It was just there. Its like a compromise between the obsessive investigative believer I once was, and the insane psudeo-postmodernist skeptic I became in college… maybe I’ve found a new ballance. not sure.

Anyway, so that was my birthday. thanks to everyone who sent me emails on my phone, and gmail and everything. *hugs*

So, today was my first day of actual “work”. My brain is really tired… lots and lots of names that I really have no hope of remembering… our little uchi really is pretty small though. I counted six people including myself. the rest of the office is pretty big, but I expect I won’t have to remember anyone elses name… except for our Bucho, (head dood)… whose name I already forgot.

so, today I was introduced, watched a 10-year-old orientation video, and then watched a new orientation video that didn’t yet have any english (my first job is apparently to translate the japanese and write a script for the english audio), and then I sat and poured over a bunch of pamphlets and tried to read them… so much fricken kanji. I have NO IDEA how the previous intern survived. I watched her little news-clip and it seemed that her japanese sucked more than mine… maybe her reading skills were awesome or something.

But yeah… you’ll notice my tired and bitter tone… but it’s not from work… I had to say some horribly sad goodbyes yesterday night. Before today, I’d been spending time with these high school students from Austria, and I feel like I became really good friends with a few of them… alexandria and Rupert especially. They’d been here for a few weeks already, doing a kind of community/tourist exchange coordinated through the office I’m working for and I got to tag along for a while. Anyway… so… yeah. good friends, then… last night was their goodbye party….

I tried so hard not to cry… but I couldn’t help it. I think I surprised Rupert a lot. after he saw me crying, he kept looking at me with this… kind of different expression. like it something he’d never seen before. I surprised myself too. I mean, I barely know these kids. I just feel like they’re part of my family. Hah. even now I’m crying a little remembering. At the last minute at this party, I decided I wanted to give a little speech to say thanks. It was this strange (and probably rude) hybrid of Japanese and english… basically saying how surprised I was to have given a window into a totally different world (austria) when I came to Japan and how grateful I’ve been for that.

I cried almost all night last night. And I had so many dreams about Rupert and Karin and the other boy in the group, Lucas. Most of them involved saying goodbye in different ways… and lots of reluctance. In one, Rupert and I were dating, and being torn apart. In another, Lucas and I were siblings. Almost all of them took place at my mom’s house in Hawaii for some reason… probably because I invited them all to come visit me in Hawaii this winter, when I hope to try to go back.

God, I miss them. They are still on their airplane…

but yeah… so since I didn’t sleep well, today it was hard to be genki and happy because I was all depressed and tired. I just wanted to come home and sleep. But I made it through the day.

So, I have a better idea of what kinds of work I’ll be doing. The office I’m in is in charge of things related to community safety and community awareness, especially in regards to foreign residents. They put on cultural activities and classes, and even japanese classes run by volunteers. There’s all kinds of literature about what to do in case of earthquake, fire, and pregnancy (ha ha, I kid you not. it’s published together like that) translated into english and korean and chinese.. Yadda yadda yadda.

So anyway, today I spent most of my time studying kanji, trying to look up unfamiliar words from the pamphlets that I might need to um… know. I had lunch with Watanabe-san (my neighbor and the coordinator of this internship thing) and then I attended a japanese grammar class (taught in japanese) as a guest student.

I think this class was the most fun part of my day… I already knew the grammar that they were teaching, so I didn’t learn anything new there, but I learned words like “noun” and “connotation” and “conjugation” and stuff… useful crap for grammar nerds like me. The text book will be uber useful too because all, and I mean ALL of the kanji in that book has its reading above it. so yeah. I’ll be studying kanji like a mad pirate tonight.

Tomorrow, I’m hoping to no longer be depressed about my friends. I have images of falling cherry blossoms in my head now, thanks to my japanese culture teacher, who drove that cultural metaphor home 18-gajillion times an hour…

But… it makes sense, as cliche as it seems. My whole experience here would not be “whole” without this kind of motion between the happy and the sad. And I think this kind of pain really is mostly pleasure, in a cathartic kind of way. All this scary new stuff… new language, new friends, new family… it’s hella scary in a way. But this kind of goodbye-pain is important, and because of it, I feel like I’ve shed a little blood here in Japan, and now I’m becoming part of this place.

I was going through the stack of notebooks that I brought from my dad’s place and found a makeshift journal I had kept while in Japan. Some of it was clever and fun, other parts were melodramatic and much to inward-facing to be interesting to anyone but me. Here are excerpts from the more interesting parts.

August 2, 2002. After returning a movie, Tomo and I meet some of his friends at a bar.

Leaving the apartment, it had stopped raining, and the sky looked scrubbed and shiny. Bits of star poked out and looked around, but with little commitment to stay.

We returned the video, “Sen to Chihiro no Kamikaoshi”… I’ll own that one someday.

We were late, but Tomo said it was ok. Yu, in bright green plastic slippers, met us outside the station and took Tomo to the bank so he could pay for the night… and then he asked me my age. I guess I broke laws in both Japan and the US tonight.

Then we followed his green plastic slippers to another building and rode a smoky coffin of an elevator up to the 2nd floor. We arrived with much cheering and “kanpai!” and several Engrish “How do you do.”s I was told everyone’s name, but I already don’t remember. I’d recall their faces and wave if I saw them, but other than that…

A few minutes later, this “kid” in a business suit arrived and everyone yelled and screamed again. After handing his jacket to someone, he walked right up to me and grabbed my hand. “Very nice to meet you!”. At this point I figured I must be famous.

Tomo ordered some beer, and I ate bits of whatever had been ordered before. Kazu, the 8-year-old businessman, headed for the door suddenly and shot me this comical look and announced “I’ll be back for you, babe”, and cheers and yelling followed…. (It gets boring after this. )

August 9, 2002. After arriving in Kochi, Tomo’s hometown, I wrote down some first impressions:

Kochi is beautiful. Trees that scratch the sky by tippy-toeing from the tops of steep hills. Leafy skyscrapers, really. ….

I like this home. I like his dad. His mom is unbelievably sweet, and they are all so patient. Tomo on the other hand, changes dramatically in their presence. He becomes the Punk Kid… elbows on the table, too loud, with little respect. He never looks his parents in the eyes when having a conversation. Dissapointing and kind of a shock, but that’s just how it is.

August 15, 2002. Thoughts about heated toilet seats and the Yosakoi festival.

I’ve decided that I don’t like the heated toilet seats. they make me think that a really really fat person just got off the toilet. I sit down and think of that fat man’s ass pressed against where my ass is now, and get the yicks. I also worry that if I pee in the wrong direction, I might get electrocuted. Not to mention what might happen if the seat malfunctioned and the temperature kept rising… some unsuspecting person might end up with a toilet seat-shaped burnscar…

Yosakoi Matsuri. Imagine a hybrid of modern pop-techno music and traditional melodies exploding out of the backs of large parading semi-trucks, the bass lines audible from several miles away, followed by psychedelic lights and several hundred dancers per act. Wow. Won’t ever forget this. And to think that it goes on for about 18 hours straight.

I miss Japan. I’m glad I wrote stuff down. Don’t ever want to forget.

Quote of the Day:

Hiro @ Japan says: everything is Japanese… it’s kindda wierd.

Hiroki-san just went home for the break. I wonder what it is really like to live-day-to-day-life using one language, and then “go home” and use a different one.

Damnit. I wish I were foreign. I could have been born a language-geek instead of working my ass off to be bilingual.

In Other News: I arrive in Hilo on Monday evening… and I leave again on the 29th… NOT the 27th which I may have mistakenly announced. So yeah… looking forward to seeing da crew++. (and seeing my kitties!!)

So I gave in and bought one of those belts that everyone in Japan has. They are really cute and I will feel special because when I get back to the US I will have one, and I won’t be a “trendy” because they don’t exist in the US. Actually, I bought two, but one is a gift for someone.

And I am going to give in and buy one of those really cheap 200 yen umbrellas because I think they are really cool… and even though everyone and their grandmother owns like four of them here, I will be original when I get back home. Additionally, anyone at OSU who has been to Japan and sees me with it will immediately know that I too have been to Japan.

Just in case anyone cares… a team from Kochi just won the National High School Baseball Championships yesterday. The school that won was the rival of Tomo’s father’s high school, but I am sure all of Kochi is celebrating. Apparently half the busineses down there had the day off to watch the 2 hour game. Tomoaki could not be disturbed with a sledgehammer until the last of the final ceremonies were over. It was exciting to witness actually. Kochi hasn’t won in over 30 years. At the end of the game, the coaches were both crying, and so were half the players. One of those events I wish I could have taken an emotional snapshot of and put it in a little virtual reality scrap-book.

In Other News: I have finally passed the half-way point in Atlas Shrugged. I convinced Tomo to buy some Asahi to celebrate… I may have to remind him today again.

He got a job btw. Which is really great. He’s been going to interviews for two and a half months and finally this new company called WebMoney picked him out of 200 other interviewees. His family is proud. I am happy for him. So now we have more than one reason to buy Asahi (and curry flavored Pringles… of which I just ran out)

[end useless boredom-motivated journal entry]