This Week:
I’m feeling a little more confident in my surroundings now. I still feel like I’m going to get killed riding my bike on the narrow streets, but not as often as before!
I also bought a yukata at the mall and after asking my supervisor, Morii-sensei, about how to wear it, she asked around and eventually found another teacher who could show me how. Not many people know how to wear yukatas, and even less know how to wear a formal kimono. If women wear one at their weddings, etc. they usually have to find someone to dress them for the occasion. I wish I had had someone like that for my wedding! But I did ok under the circumstances! Anyway, the other teacher gave me a short lesson on wearing a yukata and how to tie the obi (the wide waistband that ties in the back). The obi that came with the yukata is ‘ready-made’, meaning that you don’t have to tie the bow in the back yourself- the bow comes already made and you just tack it on the back. It should be far easier for me to dress myself, but I plan on getting a regular obi eventually and learning how to tie it properly. Maybe I can even give lessons when I get back in the States if I get good enough!
It was funny the way the yukata lesson came about and I think it demonstrates a lot about Japanese culture. Morii-sensei had told me I could leave for home that day and I was halfway there when Iyazawa-sensei (who we had had lunch with and who also knew I was looking for someone to show me how to wear a yukata) came driving up beside me and told me they had found a teacher at the school to show me. When we got back, we found that Morii-sensei had also gone out to look for me and bring me back for the lesson! (She realized the other teacher had picked me up though and came back right away!)
On the one hand, this was incredibly nice of both these teachers to go out of their way to drive me back to school just so I could learn about the yukata. On the other hand, it totally could have waited until the next day, or at least I assume so, because the teacher who gave me the lesson is usually at school every day anyway. But it seems very much in keeping with the culture to go out of your way to make sure something is taken care of. Before we knew that there was another teacher to show me how to wear the yukata, Morii-sensei and Iyazawa-Sensei took me to the mall after lunch to look for instructional books and magazines on the subject. None of the mags had instructions about ready-made obis, only the traditional kind, but I bought one of them anyway for future reference and just because I felt obligated to after they had gone out of their way to help me.
Oh, I met my first Japanese friend that wasn’t someone from school today! I was at the mall (ok, so I hang out there a lot… I can’t help it! I needed socks and notebooks and… that cute hat I saw the other day that looks like its right out of an Ai Yazawa manga! :P) and a girl came up to me and asked if I was American, then asked what wrapping paper would be good for some gifts she was giving to friends in Texas. We started talking and it turns out she knew my predecessor, Samantha. They both went to the nearby gym, Cospa. So, her name is Keiko, she’s super friendly and teaches English at a cram school (its like night school for kids who want to get into good universities- they go to regular school all day and then get extra lessons at private ‘cram’ schools). She’s also dresses very trendy and hip- not one of these women who cover themselves head to toe to try and keep their pale skin and who never wear skirts above the knee. (Seriously, I saw a woman today in long black pants, long black sleeves, black gloves and a parasol! She looked like she was ready for winter and its sooo damn hot here!) Keiko’s English is very good too, which isn’t always the case even with English teachers! We exchanged emails and hopefully we’ll get together soon. It was fun to talk with someone who wasn’t as quiet as a lot of the teachers at my school. Not that they teachers aren’t talkative, but they have that usual Japanese way of speaking quietly or hesitantly and Keiko was very boisterous. It was a nice change.
I really should say that everyone at school is so wonderful, though! So don’t get me wrong! It’s just nice to talk with someone a little closer to me age.

About the food:

I’ve been very adventurous with my food lately. I kind of have to be. I’m always starving by the time Morii-sensei and I go out to lunch and I have to get used to the food here anyway. It’s really not that bad, either. I mean, there aren’t that many potent flavors in Japanese food so I don’t have to worry that much. Even the raw fish doesn’t have a strong taste, it’s just odd because you know it’s raw and the consistency is a bit odd sometimes.
The only thing I steer clear of is the pork. I think I already mentioned how it turns up all over the place and the issue I have is that its usually not cooked as well-done as I’d like it to be and it can be kind of chewy and fatty.

So, here’s some things I’ve eaten since I got to Japan (besides the sushi):
-Hiroshima-yaki: omelet stuffed with noodles, cabbage and (hidden) pork. I opted for no mayonnaise on top. *shudder*
-Okonomiyaki: Omelet/pancake stuffed with onions and squid. (*Cooked* squid. It really doesn’t taste like much of anything, so it’s really not that weird.)
-Shredded daikon: Japanese radish
-Lots of instant udon and soba noodles: similar to ramen
-Inari: sushi rice wrapped in tofu pockets- I had these in the States
-Kombu onigiri: rice balls stuffed with kombu seaweed and wrapped in nori or sushi seaweed
-Mochi: rice pounded into a glutinous consistency. It’s usually rolled into little balls and stuffed with sweet bean paste… they are good! But, again, I had them at home, so they’re not new.
-‘American style’ pizza (kinda undercooked, like so many things here) and spaghetti.
I have to say here that the foreign-style restaurants are just as weird as you’d expect. The menu for both the Italian-style café and the American-style restaurant consisted mostly of beef patties with different toppings (a bit like a skillet) and other oddities like curry soup with rice and hard-boiled eggs. I had the gelato at the Italian place and it was so artificially flavored that it was just like flavored ice. I think some of my headaches are not only from sometimes not eating enough, but from all the additives. It’s not like I ate totally organic in the States, but at least a good portion of my food didn’t have too many preservatives or additives. Here, even if some items are natural, I don’t know the kanji that would indicate that so I’m outta luck.

Learning Japanese:
This brings me to the fact that I still haven’t had a chance to sit down and review my Japanese, and I seriously need to do it. However, I’m starting to think that I will never be a fluent speaker. You might think I’m just being pessimistic (I have only been here 2 weeks), but I’m not. I’m not adventurous when it comes to speaking Japanese. You can get by with surprisingly little and still be understood, so unless you put yourself out there, you aren’t going to improve and I’m very bad about sticking my neck out when it comes to conversation. Even if I do improve, chances are that once I get back to the States, I won’t have all that much opportunity to practice my Japanese and I will probably forget a great deal. However, I do feel confident that I could probably make very good headway when it comes to reading the language. And this is a skill I can practice alone if needs be once I get back home.
For most people, its easier to learn to speak a language than read or write it, especially Japanese, with its 3 writing systems. However, I’m much better with things that I can learn on my own and being surrounded by signs in Japanese all day and having to grocery shop, etc., is really going to help me. More importantly, I’ve learned that I really like kanji.
Before I go on, I’m going to give a brief synopsis of the Japanese writing system. If you’re already familiar or just don’t care, you can skip it! So, Japan didn’t have its own writing system until it came into contact with China. (This is why it’s so damn hard to know anything about early Japanese culture, since they really didn’t have writing at all for quite some time.) Then they simply adapted the Chinese ‘kanji’ characters to the Japanese language. Later, a phonetic alphabet was created (hiragana). Some say it was developed by the women of the court who were often excluded from learning how to write and decided to start a system of their own, but I don’t know if this is true. Anyway, a second phonetic alphabet was thrown into the mix at some point (katakana). It’s similar to the first, but more angular and is used for foreign words, scientific words, and when emphasis is needed (which is why you see it in advertising so often).
So, today this leaves us with a very complicated writing system! Books for younger readers will have more hiragana, but as you get older, more and more characters are replaced with kanji and if you pick up a newspaper, you’ll probably have to know over 1,000 kanji to read it. I know the hiragana and katakana ok (if I review it, I’ll have it down), but I don’t know many kanji. When I started shopping for food, I looked up the kanji for words like ‘meat’, ‘pork’, etc. The kanji stand more for concepts than specific words, though. So, for instance, the kanji for ‘high school’ is ‘high’ + ‘education’ (I think) and the word in Japanese is koukou. However, if you say ‘that building is high’, the word for ‘high’ is takai, but when you write the word you use the same kanji. Did I explain that alright? Basically, it means that you could (hypothetically) learn how to read a word in kanji, but never actually know the Japanese translation for it! Most people would learn that high=takai, then they would learn how to write it in hiragana, then how to write it in the more complex kanji character. However, for myself, it’s easier to learn what a kanji character stands for in English, and then learn the Japanese word for it later. In the long run, this would also mean that I would probably be able to read better than I can speak in Japanese. And that’s ok with me. As long as I know where my strengths lie, that’s where I’ll concentrate. It’s great being exposed to so many kanji on a daily basis because you really get used to seeing them in context, not just on some worksheet in class. And I like them, they’re like little pictures! So I’m going to focus a lot of effort into learning kanji. I’ll work on my conversational skills as well, of course! It’s completely frustrating to have so much trouble communicating on a daily basis and I feel bad that Morii-sensei constantly has to translate for me.
Anyway, its after 9pm, which means its getting late for me, so I better go! I’ll have lots of pictures coming in the next week because I’m going to a festival this weekend and I’ll be in the cities of Nara and Osaka next week to sight see. I wish Steve was here this week because I’ll have waaaaay more free time than next week, but oh well!
Hope everyone is well!

Ja ne!
Erin