There and Back Again

AKA: I don't belong anywhere anymore!

Today marks the start of a new school semester, and I find myself thinking of the least original prompt known to man for a post-summer essay: "What did you do during your summer vacation?" All things told, I spent my summer quietly. I went to school, worked on lesson plans, visited with friends and played with my cat. Still, there was a little excitement: Unbeknownst to many, I made a visit back to the States.


That's right, I kept it a secret (a fact that may be more shocking than the secret itself). So as to waylay any offense to those who weren't "in the know," this secrecy was because I was coming for my parents; they had maded it clear that a visit back home was overdue. I wanted to be in control of my schedule and couldn't afford to spend a lot of time running around and visiting everyone.

The trip itself was rather quiet, all things told. I spent 28 hours total traveling from my apartment to my parents' house, which was quite the experience; it would have been unbearable were it not for the involvement of an awesome plane (Air Canada is my new favorite airline) and many, many energy drinks. I stayed awake most of that time, adjusted quickly to my new time zone, and was all set to go the next day.

I had a couple of gatherings in various locations, all of which were fun - I missed my family and friends more than I had realized. This really came to light when the odd and awesome food I brought with me was brought out for everyone's *cough* enjoyment. That being said, I still don't think I can forgive my friends for their lack of appreciation for really, really good sake. (My family's praise of it made up for it, fortunately.)

I did a ridiculous amount of shopping. It's amazing how easily won-over one can be by clothes that fit, an excess of available books, et cetera when one is unused to those situations. My suitcases almost couldn't handle all of the clothing, books, and food I brought back. In fact, I think my carry-on was just as heavy as my much larger, checked bag; considering the difference in size, I find this to be a rather impressive feat. (I blame most of it on the 5 pound bag of grits and the 2 pound, trilogy-in-one book.)

I did and didn't sleep. 2 pm and 6 pm were my worst times, and I occassionally fell prey to a zombie state that could only be fixed by a long nap. There were some days where my sum total of sleep reached double digits, while there were other totals that reminded me strongly of college right around midterms.

There were lots of things that seemed weird to me. The first thought I had when I got off of the plane in Atlanta went along the lines of "Wow, there are a lot of overweight people! And a lot of black people!" The next (notable) thought was, "Huh, none of the guys are dressing fashionably." (Young men and women in Japan are almost always dressing to the nines, and Americans just looked sloppy.) I also felt like I was drowning in all of the green - my house is surrounded by trees, something that I normally love, but I am so unused to it now that I felt I couldn't breathe the first few days I was home.

On the other hand, I adjusted fairly quickly to life back home. The worst thing was hearing myself say, "In Japan..." every time I opened my mouth. It was reminiscent of my return from GHP, and I can't say that the memory of being an annoying, can-only-talk-about-one-thing teen is overly encouraging.

The return trip was long, made all the longer by my having to leave my home at 3 in the morning. I slept a lot on the way, but I still find myself exhausted today. Fortunately, today is the first day of school, so the schedule is very laid back - an assembly, lunch, and a staff meeting. Tomorrow are the post-vacation tests, so another day of relaxing in the staff room for me. Wednesday is when the real work will begin.

I'm glad I went home, but I'm also glad to be back in many ways. While Japan is weird and foreign, it's a weird and foreign I'm now accustomed to, and changing back will be hard. I'm glad I've another year to prepare for that eventuality.

A Blog-Matters Moment

I've added an email subscription function to the blog. Can I just say that this excites me tremendously? I have a hard time checking blogs regularly, so the idea of having it mailed to me instead of having to check it every day always makes me happy. I'm glad I can now offer this to my (sporatic) readership. Just check to the right of the screen for the sign-up space.

An Honest-to-Goodness Update

My last entry wasn't much of an update, something I'd feel worse about if I were under the opinion that anyone other than hannah read this blog on a regular basis. That being said, I should give a general update as to my life here ... for posterity's sake.

As of August 1st, I've lived in Ota for a year. Happy anniversary to me!

A little over a month ago, a friend of mine was hit by a small truck while riding her bike after school. She was in a coma for two weeks and will be in the hospital for another month at least, recovering from many broken bones and other injuries. With luck, none of this will be permanent damage. Here's wishing for the best.

Laurel, a friend and old suite-mate of mine from college, came to visit, traveling a bit and spending a long weekend with me. We went to the Ota matsuri (summer festival) together, went to karaoke with Amy, and visited Kamakura and Nikko (two of my favorite places in Japan). It was a lot of fun in general, and I was glad to have the company of someone who'd known me for more than a year.

Speaking of matsuri - I've been to several thus far this summer, and I have to say that there's something truly special about these festivals. I daresay they will be one of the things I miss the most when I leave. Last weekend was the Kiryuu matsuri, where I danced the Yagibushi dance with the locals, and the Ashikaga fireworks festival, where I ooohed and ahhhhed with the rest while looking stylish in my jinbei. Both were extremely fun, especially as I got to go with a pretty different crowd.


A few weeks ago, thanks to a week of many, many meetings, I got in contact with a few of the newer ALTs in my town. I can easily say that the best "discovery" within this crowd is Bob - he's become my new best friend in no time. (Between him and Clarissa, I'm a really happy girl...though, well, I guess I'm to the side of them in my above picture.) In addition, the new JET ALTs recently arrived; while this is sad, as it means I've had to say goodbye to good friends, it is allowing me to enjoy the company of new and different people.

I saw the latest creation of Hayao Miyazaki in theaters, which makes me extremely happy. Ponyo is an adorable movie - I even understood a good portion of it, even though it was all in Japanese (I'm still rather proud of that feat, though, as the main characters are only 5 years old, I probably shouldn't be bragging). I'm hoping that, like the last movie to come out of Studio Ghibli, the DVD will come with English subtitles and dub track even though it's only released in Japan. :D

All in all, I've been social and busy (though maybe not as busy as I should have been). Go, me!

And now I'll leave you with a quote I just heard while re-watching a Scrubs (season 1) episode. It rather sums up how I feel at the moment.

"At a certain point during your first year, things begin to feel a little different. You've arrived, you know? You just start to feel ... cooler. The point is, we found our stride. We know all the ins and outs. Let's face it - we've earned the right to be a little cocky."

Constant Vigilance

If you've read the fourth book and beyond in the Harry Potter series, you're familiar with the catch phrase of Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody: "Constant vigilance, Potter! Constant vigilance!" While Mad-Eye intended his warning for Hogwarts students who were unaware of the perils of the wizarding world, I do find the phrase coming to mind every so often during my daily-life activities in Japan. For your reading pleasure, my top 5 dangers to a foreigner in Japan (in no particular order):

1. Bathrooms
It's something I've become used to - the idea that "bathroom" means "porcelain-lined hole in the ground that just so happens to flush."

Of course, that's not all - two surprises wait for you outside of the stall:
A. No soap. I'll never understand why, in a country where cookies come individually wrapped instead of in sleeves for the fear that someone might get their cooties on it, there is not a shred of soap to be found in most bathrooms.
B. No hand-drying apparatus. This is a 75% inevitability - I'm occasionally pleasantly surprised by an air dryer that, unlike its American cousin, does the job quickly and effectively. In most places, though, you'd best hope you remembered to bring your handkerchief/wash cloth.

2. Pizzas
If you bring home a frozen pizza, expect it to have three toppings: cheese, pepperoni, and corn. Corn makes its way onto more pizzas than I can say, and I'm still confused as to why. Also, anticipate an encounter with a pizza that is topped with seaweed, egg roe, or mayonnaise...if not all three. (Yes, I have seen/eaten such a thing.)

Point in fact, anticipate mayonnaise to make a sneak attack on any dish you order. And, of course, Japanese mayonnaise is very different from the American kind, in that it is thicker and stronger in taste. (Read: Ew. Ew ew.)

3. Man Purses
Men will wear purses that in no way scream "manly." These man purses will also come in forms of man fanny-packs. To top it off, they will be name brands - as in, men spending small fortunes on their DG-covered purse. Do your best to not laugh.
Don't believe me? A picture's worth a thousand words.

4. Fashion and the Concept of Matching
I'm no longer scared or startled when I see a young woman wearing shoes a size too small (or a size too large) and an outfit with the coordinating colors of purple, gold, black, and either a blue somewhere between periwinkle and electric or some bright shade of orange. Fashion is just a different monster here, and (outside of affording some amusing Engrish on t-shirts) is in general just ... a frightening phenomenon you accept over time.

5. Katakana English
A lot of foreign words have made it into Japanese, and a good number of those words are from English. Great! I'll have an easier time understanding and being understood, right?
Wrong. Ooooh so so wrong.
Say "McDonalds" (even with a Japanese accent) and you'll get nothing but confusion. Say "Maakku" and suddenly everyone around you is thinking of burgers. "Beeru" means "building," whereas "beeeru" means "beer." (Do you hear the difference? I'm just barely able to, and it's rather a bad thing to confuse the two.) "Pah-so-con" means "personal computer" or "PC," and "depah-to" means "department store." In short, prepare for the most foreign of all languages to be your own.

Schoooooool's Out for Summer!

AKA: Goals and A Little Bit of Looking-Ahead

I've been rather quiet here as of late due to a number of things. That's mostly because I haven't been doing much that I find worth reporting. I had some trips planned, but the weather and circumstances haven't been helping me out on this score.

Life goes on, of course. I only have five [cue chorus of angels] classes left until summer vacation starts. Six glorious weeks of no classes - joy!

Of course, with so much time on my hands, I have a lot I'm hoping to accomplish. So, for your reading pleasure, I present my list of goals for the summer break (in roughly chronological order).


1. Travel a bit with Laurel (July 19th - 21st)
Laurel, a roommmate from college and a good friend, is coming to visit later this week. We're going to do some traveling and I'm really looking forward to spending some time with her. And, of course, being seen around Japan with a 5'10 blond hottie.

2. Say goodbye to the departing JETs (August 1st)
;_; Not really a goal, but something I have to keep in mind.

3. Celebrate my 1 year anniversary in Japan (August 1st)
Of course, this directly coincides with the departure of the non-recontracting JETs, so I may fudge the date a bit.

4. Participate in Kid's English camp (in the mornings of July 30th, 31st, and August 1st)
Elementary school students plus other ALTs plus games ... should be a fun time!

5. Welcome new JETs (July 30th, August 6th)
The new JETs will come in to town and I get to ride around with the supervisor and show them the "sights" (the bank, the cellphone store, Pink Street...)

6. Participate in the UNESCO English Camp (August 8th - 10th)
Woohoo, English! Woohoo, earning 2 days of vacation time! I've high hopes for this weekend being a fun one.

7. Go home!!
I'm going home for a week...it should be awesome. If you haven't heard about when I'm coming home, I'm sorry - since I'll only be home a very short time, I'm limiting who knows about the trip so as to be sure to spend enough time with my family. I still love you!

8. Study for the JLPT level 3
The test isn't until December, but I'm worried about my ability to pass this test. This level corresponds to some 300 hours of study, so I'm trying to think ahead and be sure to study enough for it. My JET Japanese lessons ended in June and I've been slacking off a lot the past month - I've been enjoying getting back into the groove of studying an hour or so every day.
...
I'm such a nerd.

9. Get ahead on the "teaching" thing
I have a lot of goals for preparing myself for the next semester - having at least one game for each chapter in each grade, for example, and scanning my worksheets to make an electronic database of my files. I also want to finish my lesson plans for the rest of the year in elementary school. (Fortunately, I've only 11 of an original 30 left to plan!) This should take up a lot of my "sitting at the office with nothing to do" time.

10. Prepare for applying to graduate schools
I have a lot of investigating I need to do on this front, and I want to start doing as much of it as I can now. I've already got a file going on most of the schools, but I want to get some correspondence going with the faculty members and figure out a little more of what I need to do before applying.


It's only 10 things, but, now that I look at it, it seems like I won't really have a lot of the aforemtnioned time on my hands.
Well, as the Japanese say, "FIGHT-O!" v ^_^ v

Earthquakes

A few people seem to have heard about the earthquake, and the resulting casualties, in Miyagi-ken*, and I've gotten a some expressions of concern from friends and family as to my safety. I blame a lot of this on the media, who say things like, "There was an earthquake in Japan" and do not go any further to define the location of the tremor.

To begin, Gunma-ken is one of the safer places in Japan as far as earthquakes are concerned. We have earthquakes around once a month, but they are rarely anything stronger than a 3. In short, it feels like the earth gets a sudden chill and shivers, or like a really large truck is driving by and shaking the house. Nothing falls, nothing breaks, and I don't even really react to them anymore. I've slept through earthquakes like this.

In regards to this most recent earthquake, I was on the phone (well, Skype) with my parents at the time. "Hold on just a sec; there's an earthquake" was my reaction. It was rather slow by the time it got to my area of Japan and felt rather sluggish.
I didn't know that there were casualties until the next day, when I got a couple of "hey, are you OK?" reactions from people who'd heard the bad news. Things have been rather bad up north in Miyagi-ken. There have been tremors every ten or twenty minutes and the quake registered as a 7.2. Nine people are confirmed as dead and another twelve or so are missing. It's a bad situation, and (unfortunately) one that will continue to occur again and again in Japan.

The interesting thing about this incident was the use of some new technology that predicted the oncoming quake before it arrived. An announcement was made on the NHK channels in the area some 3 minutes before the quake hit. It wasn't enough to save all of the lives, but hopefully the time between the predictions and the event will grow and incidents like this can become old-hat.

So...I'm safe, and am likely to be safe in the future. Thank you for your concern, and be sure to keep the citizens of Miyagi-ken in your thoughts.


*Note: "-ken" means "prefecture."

Canyoning, Centipedes, and Other Things of Interest

AKA: A Weekend of Unexpected Things

I learned quickly to just say "I'm going to Minakami" when people asked about my plans for the weekend rather than telling the whole, more specific truth: "I'm going to be sliding down rivers in a wetsuit."

Well, there's a little more to it than just that.

At around 8:30 Saturday morning, I and five others (Amy, our hostess, Scott, Abel, Lisa, and Monica) waited to be picked up by someone from Canyons, an outdoor activities group in Minakami. We set off and quickly found ourselves doing battle with wetsuits and preparing to go out and about on the river for the day.

We spent the morning white water rafting in a very, very cold river. Our group was lead by Sean, a well-traveled Irishman with a good sense of humor. For example, one of the first things he did while we were in his boat was go to the front, on the pretense of checking some things around Scott, only to suddenly grab Scott by the back of his life jacket and flip him over the side of the raft. The river was icy, as Scott learned first and we all soon learned ourselves ... again, thanks to the help of our trusty guide.

As we were riding down the river, Sean pointed out the number of cops on one side of the river and a circling helicopter. "See that bridge? People like to bungee-jump off of it, but last night we had someone who decided to jump without a cord." Apparently, the Canyons employees had gotten a call at 5:30 that morning from the police, asking if they would patrol the river in search of the body. (The cops, Sean explained, had no river training.) The search had not yet been concluded, hence the remaining presence of the officers.

We continued a little further down the river, being flipped out at one point by our tricky guide and being tumbled out by the river on several other occasions. At one point, however, we slowed to a crawl, and Sean was distracted by a boat off to the side, manned by a few guides and entirely empty of tourists. These guides were leaning out of the boat, pointing into the river and drawing the attention of another boat, similarly lacking in tourists. One guide looked up, made eye contact with Sean and nodded. At that, Sean turned in the boat, said "forward, everyone," and powered us away. The dead body was missing no longer.

We finished the river course with little else of note occurring, though I did manage to lose a boot at one point in the rafting and only managed to reacquire it at the very end of the trip (another boat had picked it up). We piled into the busses and headed back to the Canyons headquarters, where ate a delicious lunch and grabbed even more gear in preparation for our canyoning experience.

Canyoning involved hiking some 30 minutes along the river which would soon be our way back down the river. Our guides, Dean (I think...) and Takeshi, did a wonderful job of keeping us entertained during this hike, mostly with their upbeat banter ("Don't go down this way, or you'll probably break several bones, ok? [all said with upbeat tone and wide smile]"). In short, the method was to lay oneself out as flat as possible and then let the water carry you lightly over the rocks and whatnot until you reached a calm pool. It was basically like a waterslide, but with more opportunities to run up against painful obstacles. Despite this danger potential, it was fun, though not something I would want to do on a regular basis.

With the day done, we made our way back to Amy's apartment. Once everyone was clean and well-fed, we settled down to watch Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, as Monica hadn't seen it before. I was making a comment to Scott at one point when one of these scurried across the floor next to Scott. I can easily say that this thing was at least 6 inches long and DISGUSTING. On top of that, mukade (as they are called) are POISONOUS. Ew ew ew ew ew.
Ew ew ew.
Ew.
I'm not usually all that squeemish about bugs, but this thing just about had me running up the walls.
Scott grabbed the thing with a pair of chopsticks and disposed of it outside, but everyone was still a little too riled by it to stay downstairs. We relocated in the relative safety of the upstairs and shortly went to sleep.

The next day I made my way home, feet a little worse for the wear but otherwise intact. It was a fun experience overall, but I feel the only descriptor that truly fits the weekend is "unexpected."