Well it was last week when I went to the local elementary school to visit the kids there with all the other exchange students. I'd like to say it was awesome but to stick with the morality of truthful confessions it was just dumb. We all sat on the stage in the gym as the kids gawked at us and one of the poor 6th grade students was forced to stand up on the stage with the principal and translate all the greetings into English for us, even though it was at such a basic level of Japanese that we all understood what he was saying anyway; I'm not sure if I'm the only person who found that degrading though, not even letting us use any Japanese by waiting for the nervous kid to run it though his head and try to put it into English. The reason he was doing it though was because he was some white kid from America who moved to Japan when he was very little, which he told us when some people asked why his English was so good. After that, we broke into groups and me and my friend Krystal went off to join our class, 6th graders who had Home Economics. But first we played a game in the gym for physical education class or something, but we were just kinda told to go to opposite teams and then the game started. I was SO confused, they didn't even explain the rules after I told them NO, I have never played this game in my life. All I got was an "Okay, GO!" and everyone started running around and slamming into each other and throwing each other around, trying to get this ball that I was supposed to protect with all the other girls. It was really stupid, because in the end I was just waiting for time to finish so I could stop standing there being so confused while having about 25 rambunxious 6th grade boys throwing themselves into me to push me and the other girls aside, because of course all the boys ran off to be the offensive of the teams and the girls stayed to be the defense.
So after that we went back to the classroom and watched the kids cook, while the teacher continued to ignore us, obviously not knowing himself what to do with these two foreign girls lingering around his classroom all of a sudden. So Krystal, who was thoroughly enjoying herself, went around to all the tables, seeing what they were making and I did a little too but they were so involved in their own little stuff and just continuing on normally that it was just really boring for me to sit and watch these kids cook white rice and instant curry. So one of the Peer Assistants from our school who came into the classroom to see how it was going and saw that we weren't really interacting with them. So she comes over to where I am and interrupts the kids, asking them to let me play with them and try to let me do some stuff... and it may be that I had a bad mood to begin with or something (although I was never in the mood to go from the beginning) but when I was just standing there with this other Japanese college student talking to the kids and telling them to let me in with them, it made me really angry at her because I definitely didn't need someone telling people half my age to let me play with them, like I was some kind of moron. She's also the girl who talks really slow and clearly to all the exchange students, and just overall rubs me the wrong way, despite how nice she actually is. So, while this is just a bad entry overall, I'll end the story of the school failure because eventually class ended and I got to go back to the main classroom, where I saw another exchange student coming back with little first graders draped all over him as he carried about 3 kids on his back and had one clinging around each leg while holding the hands of about 5 more, all screaming with laughter as they led their prize back to the main room to say goodbye. I remembered when I was in Aichi and went to the elementary school that time and had lots of fun with the kids, so I just felt really unfortunate that this time I had to stand bored in the back of a classroom and watch kids who were completely uninterested in the fact that I was there, rather than attend a class that was entirely focused around me and have all the young kids fall in love with me like other people had. I was just glad when it was over, because I definitely didn't get anything out of it except a couple pictures.
So after that I had to rush to Tokyo with some other students because we had a field trip to go to for our Manga class, and had to go to Roppongi Hills. It was my third time there, so I was also anxious to get that over with because my list of obligations was full for the day. We went to the art exhibit, which was a real record holder for stupid art. There were pictures of a close up of a screw... just a swirly 3D line kinda thing. And just about 20 different pictures of that stupid screw, enlarged and lined up along a hallway. The best picture in the whole exhibit was of a calm ocean sea line, because it just didn't look like it was anything until I focused on it and could see some waves in the bottom dark part. So I was just confused the whole time and couldn't figure out where all the art was.
So now for my awesome Kansai trip. I don't think I could fit everything about the 5 day trip into an entry without my hands falling off. So I'll summarize.
Day 1: Wake up at 5:00, eat breakfast with host mom at 5:30. Be surprised and receive a homemade lunch and some money for later, get taken to the train station. Meet everyone in Ikebukuro Station in Tokyo at 7:30. Ride the crowded morning Yamanote Line train to Tokyo Station, and ride the Bullet Train from there until Hiroshima, a 4 hour ride. Take a ferry from there to Miyajima Island, and go to the Japanese Inn (Ryokan) to check in and drop our bags off. Go on a tour around the island, get attacked by deer, wander around temples and paths for a couple hours, and return with two friends to the inn to relax. Check in our room, sit at the table in our 6 person room and freak out about the sliding doors and tatami mats and big window with gorgeous overview. The other 3 people staying in our room arrive, and we go to dinner by the lobby restaurant, which is all very traditional Japanese food and completely raw. Pick at whatever food I can stomach, which isn't much after gagging and almost vomiting out a perfectly normal sushi that I used to eat at restaurants; discover that I can no longer stand Japanese food and assume that I must have had a 10 month limit and no longer enjoy the freaky meals here. Start craving steak and french fries and stereotypically American foods. Decide not to make my family eat a traditional Japanese meal if they ever come to Japan. Glare at the crowded little space in front of me and wonder why Japanese people like to waste space by putting a square inch piece of mysterious something on 1 rather unneccesary plate each and crowd as many plates as possible onto the table for each person, literally unable to even put a little salt shaker down somewhere even if I wanted to. After being unable to even try to pretend to want to eat whatever is in front of me, one of the women in yukata's walking around exchanging plates for new things asks me several times if I'm really done. I answer yes. She asks if I don't need it. I say I don't need it. She asks if I won't eat it. I say I won't eat it. She looks angry and takes away my full plates and says something about it being a waste. I think about how she doesn't appreciate the fact that I'm not eating it because if I were to eat it she would be cleaning up vomit on the carpeting of the restaurant. I realize how I am sucessfully fulfilling the role of judgemental stereotypes of how foreigners are unable to eat Japanese food, but stop caring after getting another whiff of violently pickled plums(umeboshi) and then seeing my friend suck down another raw octopus tentacle. After a suddenly delicious dessert of 2 grapes (on another new plate of course), I retreat back to the room along with the other girls and we get ready to go to the public bath on the top floor. We dress in our yukata's and take our towels, and board the elevator with the 5 of us. We are on floor 3, and press 5. The elevator goes down, and we started freaking out why it's going down. Door opens at floor 2, a startled Japanese man stares at us, but does not board because he isn't going down. We hurriedly close the door and the elevator continues downwards. Door opens at the main floor, no one is by the elevator. Doors close again, elevator starts to go up. Stops at floor 2 again. Japanese man still there, this time very confused and we start laughing because we must look ridiculous. Man hesitantly enters, staring around at us with his eyes almost popping out of his head and a shocked look on his face, being surrounded by 5 foreign girls in yukata's (which doesn't consist of wearing clothes underneath them, which is part of the point.) Elevator stops at floor 3 again, where we boarded in the first place. 3 more of the girls see us and we all start cracking up because of how strange it is that we're still in there. Girls board, and the man's face is no longer describable with words, except for his sudden exclamation once the doors close and he cries "Lucky!!!!" in his thick Japanese accent, to which we burst out laughing and don't know what to do with ourselves with this ecstatic man between all of us. Elevator finally reaches 5th floor, we all get out together and some of the girls say a sentence or two to him in Japanese to tell him we are exchange students studying Japanese, so we can speak Japanese. He is suprised that we speak it, and randomly blurts out, "It's my birthday!" Everyone wishes him a happy birthday and he thanks us and waves, and stops walking towards the men's bath. Hesitantly says he forgot something and returns back to the elevator and goes back in and disappears back down again. We all proceed to the baths laughing about what just happened, and proceed with acts of public nudity and sitting in the bath for a while until we all go back to the room and play truth or dare. Crazy things happen, but not crazy enough to prevent it from getting boring so we all go to sleep.
Day 2: Leave Miyajima Island, ride the bullet train again and go to Kyoto. Go to lots of shrines and random interesting places. Check in at the hotel. Sunday didn't have much happen besides basic touristing. Spend the evening hanging out in the hotel room with my 1 other roommate, chatting and reading books and enjoying the company while finally relaxing after walking for three thousand hours.
Day 3: Go to more shrines, including one with an American buddhist who leads us into a "do not enter" area. We all sit in a room and are taught the basics of meditation. Next we are led into the real meditation room and spend 20 minutes sitting straight and meditating with the incense and everything, the way the real Buddhist monks do. I manage to actually clear my head of thoughts and the 20 minutes zooms by surprisingly fast, but not without a terribly sore back despite my efforts to find the most comfortable position like he taught. My back has no such thing as a comfortable position with nothing to support it, which I take no responsibility for as I curse my scoliosis. Monk tells us how they pray 13-15 hours a day, shows us the stick they get smacked with if they fall asleep (tells us it's "invigorating"), and how they wake up at 3:30 in the morning, eat lunch at noon, and dinner at 8 pm (both consisting of gruel), go to sleep at 9, which isn't the official sleeping time because they must wake up during the night to pray some more. I wonder how anyone could fall in love with Buddhism so much as to give up their life for it to do nothing but eat, pray, clean the temple for work and (kind of) sleep every day. I also wonder what kind of life Catholic monks practice, and figure it must be the same, praying and reading the Bible all day when not doing chores or eating repetitive meals. Call me ignorant, but that lifestyle seems like mere torture. Good for them for doing it voluntarily. It just gives me a feeling of loneliness to be surrounded by people who are praying to a God different than mine.
Day 4: Take a train with 5 other girls to Nara, where we see even more deer and I quickly lose my fuzzy feeling in my heart when they won't stop attacking us and biting and following us and eating whatever they can get their teeth on, especially this one that is molting and has blood all over its head. I also see other people relaxing in the park get interrupted by deer who come up and start bothering them and trying to eat their book or headbutt them, making them get up and go somewhere else. The deer in Nara are famous because they just wander around casually, but after seeing them myself, I could almost put a vote in for their extermination. I'm glad my memories in Wisconsin of the deer park there include sweet deer who eat normal deer food and don't get really moody when petted. Besides that, visit more shrines and walk around the general area. Meet a couple strange people. There are 6 of us, and Krystle is a Japanese-American. An old Japanese woman comes up and starts talking to her, asking if she is our translator. Krystle doesn't understand and my classmate Molly tries telling her no, she is not our translator. The woman says oh, and continues to blow us off, talking with Krystle who just has a look of utter loss on her face at what this woman is stuttering in her half-delirious state, probably from just being around 80 something years old. She eventually wanders off and continues muttering to herself, and we are left laughing in confusion of what just happened. That was in the beginning of the day, and later on another Japanese woman came and talked to us, after we were done at a shrine and started to head back towards the station. She came up because she heard one of the girls say something in Japanese, and started telling them something. I was over to the side sitting by myself going through my purse, and I heard a lot of "uhh", until they called me over to translate what she was trying to say to them, as I am somehow the appointed leader of the group when it comes to understanding Japanese. I ask what she said, and she starts telling me to go to a certain place, but she said the place name so there was no way for me to know what it was. I ask what it is, and she points over in the opposite direction and starts muttering about something or other and how they're doing it until 4 pm and blah blah, I couldn't understand what she was saying either. So I just shrugged and suggested we all go where she said, because there may be something interesting. Well, we went, and there was nothing there, so we continued on our way and just took the long way back to the station... There had just been these 2 old guys painting pictures while sitting on the path, so I figured that's what she was talking about. Later on we reach the station, take an awesome Purikura together and stop at Kyoto station on the way home to go to a sushi restaurant. It turns out being insanely expensive, so I eat 1 dinky plate of egg sushi and decide to wait until I get back to the hotel to eat, having officially retired on sushi. It's strange because I used to go out to eat sushi at least twice a week when I first got to Japan, and now I'm disgusted by it; I would assume it would go the other direction.
Day 5: Wander around a department store with my hotel roommate for a couple hours, check out of the hotel with everyone and ride the Bullet Train back to Tokyo. Take the train from Tokyo back to home, wanting to go home so badly because it was a super awesome trip but I was pooped and wanted to go home to see my host parents and sleep in my own bed again. The train from Tokyo was INSANE, and even compared to the 4 months I rode rush hour trains every day when living in Tokyo, this night was the very worst since I've ever been in Japan. After waiting in the very front of the line for 30 minutes, the sardine can with people smashed against the door rolls up. People pour out, and I am shoved off to the side, more and more, quite violently at times, almost pushing me off of the platform. It was taking so much time with hundreds of people pouring out of this one car that the timed bell stopped, and it was time for the train to go, but it was still a mess. So the teenagers beside me were still yelling in disbelief at being unable to ride this car they've been waiting for on the otherwise calm platform that we had been standing on, and it really was a panicked mess of people pushing and shoving like some kind of out of control brawl. It was bad enough that I was wearing a big fat backpack full of my luggage and carrying 2 plastic bags full of gifts, but I was not ready to throw away the 30 minutes I wasted standing there waiting for this one train and then wait another 1 hour for the NEXT one because the train that went to my stop was VERY spread apart. So in a desparate attempt to get on this train I pushed the bodies in, trying to smash some more room for me to get on. But it was SO crammed that no matter how hard I pushed whatever bodies were in front of me, they wouldn't even cram together anymore, the train was definitely much more than full capacity, and I don't mean that by "having seats available" terms, I mean that in "cramming bodies together until you can't breathe" terms. So I pushed my back against them and the doors started to close. There was no chance of them closing though, there were just too many bodies in the way. I would have given ANYTHING at that point to have those guys at the station whose job it is to push everyone inside so the doors could close, because they sure as hell weren't closing at that point. I started to get a little headway and got halfway in, and enjoyed the sensation of the strong automatic doors finally sliding halfway shut, with half of my body being closed between it, because I still couldn't get inside all the way. So the station worker over the loudspeaker kept yelling at people to stop crowding and let the doors shut, everyone outside the train was yelling at not being able to get on at ALL, and everyone inside the train was still squirming and pushing each other from lack of air. Finally by some miracle of God the doors sqeezed shut and I managed to squeeze myself AND my bags inside. The problem then was all my gifts smashing to a pulp against my body as I had an incredible amount of weight press me against the door, also milking all the oxygen out of my body. I knew that no matter what, I had to get a train home, because it was my ONLY train home, and every single one was just as crowded, so it was do or die. But the chaos in the train and the being thrown around from each turn and being sqeezed against the door at full force knocked the wind out of me and I started hyperventilating, but tried to hold it in because the train was about 90% Japanese businessmen and I knew that quite a few of them would have started getting excited if they had some foreign girl breathing heavily into their ear, so I fought so hard to hold it in but couldn't stop my face from grimacing, and even had tears forming in my eyes from the utter pain. What sucked even more was when we pulled to the next station, which was on my side. So I braced for the impact as the door I was slammed against opened, and I flew out full force as an incredibly powerful wave of bodies behind me flooded out. Luckily there were station employees waiting for this train at this station, so they started barking out orders. I hurried to the side and prayed that I could get back onto my train as I was pushed further and further away. After the mass exodus got off the train, the mass exodus waiting for the train started to haul back on and I squeezed myself in again and managed to fit myself back into the crowd, this time stuck right in the middle of bodies instead of against the door. After that it was extremely crowded the rest of the way but little by little got to the point where it didn't involve being crammed against anybody directly, so luckily I could breath after that. Some of my gifts didn't make it though, and the cake I brought home for my host parents was pretty smashed; luckily they still liked it and ate it all up for me. The paper lantern I bought for one of my friends got ripped up, though, unfortunately. Needless to say, for some reason during and after all of that, my mood wasn't destroyed at all. I felt pretty powerful for actually being able to get on that stupid train and survive in Tokyo in the first place, because I see so many people rudely shove themselves onto trains that I am immune to it and see that sacrificing my right to an identity is crucial at times when in a place with a population density of 5 thousand people per square freaking foot. And while within that potentially dangerous crowd the whole time, a golden opportunity for women to be groped on trains (one of my biggest fears in Japan, because it is so blatantly commonplace), I was so pumped from the adrenaline of the situation that I just looked around and saw who was facing me and who wasn't, and kept eye contact with the men around me, giving them the "touch me and die, little man" look. So maybe it's ridiculous and unneccesary for me to take it so seriously, but I'm happy that I made it through another night of a 2 hour train ride without being touched by anyone, continuing my astounding record of not being touched by a Japanese man even once since I got to Japan. I just know that I need to be careful, because foreign women can be special targets for stuff like that sometimes.
But, I think this entry was quite incredible for my painting Japan with this God-awful image of garbage-eating neanderthals with no concept of modern civility or something... which I'm not going for! I think I'm either going through a second culture shock, after having already "gone through the transition process" once before, or I'm just really bad at explaining things as lightly as I feel them. I've been here for quite a while, I think I can say by now, and I'm completely used to living here and the people. So I also feel like I want to joke around about Japan all the time, which includes my extremely cynical humor. I love it here, and I am happy in Japan, so maybe all I can do is attach a little disclaimer that my constant complaining isn't a sign that I hate Japan. On the contrary, I think I have accepted this crazy place for what it is, and I am accepting that deep down, I am an American through and through. Playing with this culture, interacting with it, taking some of it in and rejecting other parts of it is the fun part of being immersed in another culture. The result is my knowing what there is to it, and while having already accepted it as normal by now, I am beginning to settle down to see who I really am, and I see how where I grew up and who I am deep down is preventing me from just turning completely over to Japanese culture. I mean, in the beginning, when I came in the very beginning, I had a normal process. I loved my new surroundings, I was in the "honeymoon stage" with Japan, I began to see the bad parts, I missed home and my family, I felt extremely lonely, I began to get accustomed to my new life, and in the end I was set in place in my new life in Japan, and time has brought this to be my new daily life, for which it will be until next summer. And along with that new life in Japan, I ate Japanese food, spoke Japanese, and spent time with Japanese people. It was all quite natural to me, and I fit in quite well, in a way that many American people may not ever be able to do. It was almost as if I lost myself to the culture, which a few people may understand if they went through the same thing here. But now, I see my "roots" coming out, like I feel like it's okay now if I don't fit in. I no longer care about going out of my way to incorporate myself into Japanese culture, because I know who I am, and I'm not Japanese. Even simple things like food, I used to love Japanese food when I came to Japan but I can't stand it anymore. There's stuff I still like but almost all of it, even though I don't eat it ever, if I were to have it sitting in front of me, I would feel the sensation like I've had it every day for the past 2 weeks and I can't eat one more bite of it. But I'm only talking about seriously traditional stuff, so I'm still holding out strong, especially because my host mom's meals are absolutely delicious and I would choose it over a 5 star restaurant any day, and it's not that she cooks western food. Another thing is the "having everyone stare at me" phenomenon. I'm finally starting to become a little less aware of it, but dang it takes a long time to become immune to something that alienating. But basically I feel like I'm getting into this new stage I'll call "Embracing my Foreignness." with subtitles like "No, I CAN'T sit cross-legged for more than 10 minutes at a time even though you all sit like that ALL DAY LONG!" and "Eating raw slimy things is disgusting, I don't care if it's 80% of your entire diet!" and "If you don't want to then SAY you don't want to and stop making everyone's life as complicated as possible!" and "Quit mutilating yourselves to look like me! Your black hair looks fine, and there's nothing wrong with NOT having a little line along your eyelid, you neurotics!"
I'm also sending an op/ed editorial to Yomiuri newspaper in hopes of having it published for people to read. I'm writing about how people should stop speaking English to us foreigners and assuming that we can't speak Japanese just because we don't look like them. I'll post a translation of it in here later, but I'm just really hoping it makes it in because then I know I've started making at least one step towards getting my message across to Japanese society, because I feel like this place is a mess and they need someone like me to start cleaning it up. And, wow, that's the one of the most conceited things I've said in a long time. For now I'll just blame it on having the last straw snap from living "on the outside looking in" for so long. Or maybe I'm just stressed from having a 3+ hour test of utter death in exactly 1 month from today. Or maybe even the fact that I am always trying to explain all the stereotypes of Americans to my host parents, who were really confused/surprised tonight when we had steak and I told them how Americans do NOT eat steak all the time, we actually have it quite sparingly and usually just eat big steaks on special occasions, and just eat our meat the normal way; i.e. with other stuff. These poor people are set on every stereotypical image of Americans in the book and they don't even realize it's a mere stereotype. Their friends are even worse, because I have heard the most ridiculous, even to the point of insulting/enraging things from my host mom's no-contact-with-foreigners friends who are absolutely blown away beyond words by the fact that I can understand Japanese. ...like being white makes me mentally retarded and completely UNABLE to speak ANYTHING but English and I'm blessed with a mighty power of the rice gods that enables me to speak Japanese greetings like "hello." Some of my host mom's friends don't even BELIEVE her when she tells them her exchange student from America can speak Japanese.
Either way, having this monster emerging from me is one of the coolest things that's happened to me in a long time. Now I just need to think of a shocking speech I can give in front of the entire school/host families next month for the final speech project. The walls shall resound! And even if they don't, I don't care, because I go home after that to see faces my heart will explode with happiness to see!
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