A Contradiction

AKA: The Silver Lining.

An Introduction is to introduce people, but Christopher Robin and his friends, who have already been introduced to you, are now going to say Good-bye, so this is the opposite. When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an introduction was, he said "The what of a what?" which didn't help us as much as we had hoped, but luckily Owl kept his head and told us that the Opposite of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was a Contradiction; and, as he is very good at long words, I am sure that that's what it is.

- A House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne

The night before my physics midterm, back when I was in high school, I was stressed to the breaking point. Physics, along with most math-based subjects, eludes my talent for aural learning. In a wild attempt to prevent my mental collapse, I pulled A House at Pooh Corner off of my shelf and opened up to the paragraph you see at the top of this entry. That alone was enough to break my tension and, without reading much further, I happily went to sleep.

Unfortunately, my stress-breaker for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) was not so happy and kind. My friend and I, due to some confusion, took a train going in the opposite direction. By the time we had corrected the incident, we were too late to take the first part of the exam. We were told by the proctors that missing the first part of the exam would result in an automatic fail, though we could take the next two parts and get our scores for those sections.

Frustrating? Beyond belief. I was in hysterics.
Disappointing? Hell yes.
An all-together bad thing? I don't think so.

I had devoted so much time and effort to studying for this test as it approached. I told my mother the night before that I couldn't wait for the test to be over so that I could "finally be a real human being again." But why? What was the reason behind it?

When I first arrived in Japan, I decided I wanted to take the JLPT. Not wanting to stress myself out too much, I decided to not take the most basic level, level 4, a few months after I arrived and instead would take the next highest level, level 3, the following year. That was the last time I really considered whether or not I would take the JLPT.

I'm not planning on staying in Japan; even if I were, I would have to pass the 2nd or 1st level exams - the 3rd and 4th levels are fairly meaningless as far as professionals are concerned. It's amazing, then, that a test that had no real value, outside of being a manner in which to test my level of Japanese, left me in hysterics when I was told I missed the first part.

This thought occurred to me as I sat outside of the testing location, waiting for the start of the second section. And, with it, came a wave of relief. Had I taken the whole test, would the general lack of importance of it have occurred to me? Probably not. At least, not for a long time. Nor would I have been relaxed enough to tackle the next two parts as effectively as I feel I did.

While it's still unfortunate that I can't have this accomplishment under my belt, I think I've learned a better lesson about evaluating my situation. Truth be told, it's a lesson I've needed the past month. And that, friends, is the silver lining.

あけましておめでとうございます！

AKA: Happy New Year!

The New Year is a big deal in Japan. Last year, I mentioned, briefly, the levels of politeness required when you meet someone for the first time in the new year. At that time, I was rather confused as to what to do - I hadn't prepared for saying "Happy New Year" several days after the new year had come. This year, I was ready.

So, steps for entering the workplace on the first day back:

1. Get there early. Fewer people, fewer greetings, and you can just stand up, bow, and mumble every time someone new comes in the office. Ahhh, how the tables have turned!

2. Enter through door closest to highest-ranking office member - principal, president...whomever. Say "Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu. Kotoshimo yoroshiku onegaishimasu" ("Happy New Year. Please be kind to me again this year"), bowing all the while.

3. Repeat for next senior member. And the next. And the next. In fact, repeat for every person you run into.

4. Sit down at your desk some 20 minutes later; faint.

OK, maybe not 20 minutes, but you can see how this would cause for some traffic jams when first coming into the office.

In other news, I'm awful about updating. I'm planning on spending most of my day today catching up on das Internet, so I will hopefully have more things for you soon.

So, to one and all - Happy New Year!

Let Them Speak Slang!

AKA: It appears that, no matter where I go, I will come off as being "manly."

Recently, I said something to Saito-sensei with a slang pronunciation that, I fear to admit, I picked up from my students. Another teacher looked up at what I said and turned to Saito-sensei, saying, "And Leslie used to speak such nice Japanese."

It seems the unfortunate case that the sort of slang I always hear happens to be that which falls under the "male language" category. It may be that female slang passes by my ears without notice, or that male slang is mostly using a different pronunciation of regular words - I really don't know. In any case, whenever I feel like being a little more natural in my word choice, I come off as manly.

To a certain extent, I hang out with the wrong crowd - I don't have many Japanese friends, and really have none that are my age. It's perhaps not surprising that I have a hard time knowing what slang to use and where. On top of that, I speak Japanese mostly in situations that should be at least slightly formal - at work, while speaking with strangers, and so forth.

Oh well, it can't be helped.

Expect a post later on the JLPT experience - it's mostly written and just needs one more glance-over before I post it.

We interrupt to bring you this important message.

Well, maybe not important.

The Japanese Language Proficiency Test is coming up this Sunday. While I'm trying to stop saying that I will assuredly fail, my confidence in my ability to pass is fairly low. Still, I'm studying my hardest and doing all I can to, as the Japanese say, 頑張る。* ("Ganbaru" means "to do to the best of one's abilities," but is used for a wide range of meanings, from "good luck" to "...deal with it!")

So, as I'm trying to commit myself to my studies, I'm not going to be taking the time to post until I'm all finished. Once that happens, mind, I have several things to write about (birthday parties for 14 year-old Japanese boys, for starters, and a long delayed account of Sports Day). In the meantime, entertain yourself as I have with this. I highly suggest downloading it. It makes me feel warm just listening to it as it runs in the background. And hey, who doesn't love Fahrenheit 451?

And, while I have you clicking links...
- I get the giggles every time I watch this.
- Silly Elvis Costello! We all know you can't play the piano.

(Clearly, I spend a lot of time on the Colbert Report website.)

Have a good week and I'll see you all again after Sunday!


*Sorry for the split infinitive, Mom!

Here's to You.

In Japan, any individual's absence from work, when it is not work-related, requires some sort of apology to the group. If one travels, for example, one should (read: must) bring back "omiyage," loosely translated as souvenirs, for those at the work place. In other cases, an announcement of what one was doing and throwing in a short "I'm sorry I've been gone lately" at the morning meeting seems to suffice.

Earlier last week, the school nurse's father died. She disappeared from school in the middle of the day, and the whispered explanation of her absence spread through the staffroom like a plague. Only the students were immune to it, not being privileged enough to hear such personal information. She was gone for several days, only reappearing today.

With puffy eyes and a tired demeanor, Sato-sensei apologized for her absence. She spoke for a few minutes, explaining her father's prolonged illness and the reason for her sudden disappearance in the midst of a school week. During the 2 minutes that she spoke, I thought of how I, as a 6th grader, burst into tears when a fellow student made a generic jest about my grandmother - both of mine, unbeknownst to my classmate, had died within the 3 days prior. I would not have had the strength then to stand up in front of my peers and state, calmly and coolly, that my mother's mother had been in a coma for a week or two due to a sudden stroke, or that my father's mother had been on a slow decline from disease for 5 years, a subject so taboo that I was not even aware of it until her condition had her knocking on Death's door. I don't know that I would have the ability to do so even now. I greatly admire Sato-sensei's strength.

So, here's to you, Sato-sensei.
Here's to you, her father, who has now been released from a 3-year struggle.
And here's to you, Anne and Mary, who passed away 13 years ago this week.

Ol' Man Winter

The first cold snap surprised everyone in Nitta. Teachers and students like rushed through the cold halls, repeating the mantra of the day: "It's cold! It's cold!" I, too, took to saying it, or agreeing vehemently with it when I heard it from others. Saito-sensei, one of my neighbors in the staffroom, found my dislike of the cold amusing. "Winter is coming," he responded in Japanese every time the word "cold" escaped my lips. I, too, had a stock response: "Don't say nasty things" in Japanese, paired with an icy glare.

For a while, the warm weather returned, and we could at least pretend that fall was going to last a while longer. Saito-sensei took to informing me of the season every day when I arrived, saying things like, "Today's winter, but tomorrow will be autumn." Friday, however, he informed me that we would be seeing nothing but winter from now on, laughing at my response of a groan.

It's not that I hate the cold; I hate the constant, inescapable nature of the cold here. Due to the lack of insulation in Japanese buildings and the expense of running the heaters, one never really feels warm. Those moments when one does get warm are soon followed by extreme cold - taking a bath is wonderful until one has to leave the bath water and stand, dripping wet, in the cold air of the apartment. It almost makes the moments of warmth not worth the shock of cold afterward.

At school, the individual classrooms are heated with kerosene - I find myself having a constant headache throughout the day from the fumes. Worse are the unheated hallways, though, whose cold is so intense that teachers often wear an extra jacket when leaving the staffroom.

Gunma also lays claim to a strong, fierce wind that makes traveling difficult for those of us without cars. I'm not the only one who has noticed that, often, it is quicker to walk than it is to attempt biking; walking is, at the very least, easier.

Of course, winter has its highlights. The onsen, or hot springs, are heated such that being half exposed to the cold is the perfect balance for those who are soaking. Winter fruits are delicious and sweet - manderine oranges, strawberries, and persimmons. The kotatsu, one of my favorite ways of staying warm, plays a prominent winter role. I've been told that the stereotypical image of winter is of huddling at the kotatsu, drinking green tea and eating mandarine oranges while a cat lies curled up at one's feet, a scene I can (and do) recreate on a regular basis.


Having survived one winter here, I feel better prepared to face the cold. In the end, though, I have to admit that this preparedness is also somewhat of a disservice; unlike last year, the hope of it not being able to get worse is instead replaced with the solid knowledge of just how bad it can (and will) get. In short, send me your warmest thoughts the next few months!

Getting Dressed (and What It Does)

AKA: Leslie Can Walk and Think at the Same Time!

I like to walk to the places near my house - to school, to the grocery store, to the nearby mall. It takes longer, but there's something relaxing in the slowness of it. The benefits are numerous, but now isn't the time or place to go into my exercise-and-general-wellness plan, so I won't. I will say instead that spending an hour or so walking every day gives me a lot of time to think.

As of late, I've been thinking about clothes. It's recently become cold, so I've retired my summer wardrobe and have been rearranging my closet to best fit my winter wear and trying to figure out what is missing before it gets much colder. In doing so, I realized just how much I've changed since I arrived here over a year ago.

Fashion was my enemy. Anyone who has seen "Mean Girls" may understand my dislike for fashionistas. (Imagine the Plastics being, not a group of 3 girls, but 90% of the school population.) I ran from the idea of being fashionable, which to me amounted to spending insane amounts of money on clothing only to find it out of style in a month. After going to a school for 6 years which required a uniform, I found myself at college with little more than t-shirts and jeans to wear. By the time I left WashU, I had shed my dislike for skirts and anything even slightly feminine, and even had a few cute outfits I wore entirely too often.

As soon as I arrived in Japan, however, I realized that I was playing a whole new game and on a completely different field. In the year I've been here, I've become immune to femininity, and my idea of what colors match has drastically changed. I've experimented with clothing in a way with which I never felt comfortable before, as I stand out no matter what I wear. It's been an interesting learning experience.

The result is that I no longer think of clothing like a checklist of things I need in which to be appropriately attired, as though there were a sign on my door similar to those at gas stations, saying, "No shirt, no shoes, no pants, no leaving!" Instead, clothing is like music, or a composition, or spices for cooking - getting dressed involves combining various parts into a cohesive, attractive whole. I no longer find myself thinking, "How long do I need to wait before I wear this outfit again?" ("How long until I have lemon-pepper chicken again?"*) I don't have set outfits anymore; I have, instead, the pieces to a self-expression puzzle.

My mom once told me the story of her meeting my godmother, Del Rae. A group of doctors and their significant others were on a skiing trip in Colorado, and my mom felt out of place among the women who had spent large sums of money on lavish, Southwestern wardrobes. Del Rae, a true Southwestern woman, offered to help my mom with her outfits. "All she did," my mom said, "was take what I had and rearrange it, adding a Southwestern embellishment here and there, but that in and of itself was enough. I was the best dressed there."

The moral of the story - "it's not what you have, but how you use it" - is something I've understood in many aspects of my life. It's just taken me this long to realize what it means for clothing, as well as what it doesn't mean. Being fashionable doesn't mean being rich and vapid; it means expressing oneself in a way everyone can see and comprehend. I must say that I rather like the change in connotation.



*I feel obligated to note that my roommate, hannah, would say that it is never too soon to have lemon-pepper chicken. (And, for anyone who wonders why I still refer to hannah as "my roommate" though we live in different countries, I offer you this bastardized Holmes quote: "To Leslie, she is always 'the roommate.' I have seldom heard her mention her under any other name.")