My school's 学際 ("gakusai", school festival) is next week, so we've started preparing for that.
There's going to be a dance contest in which all the classes do a synchronized dance, so naturally my class has been working on that and mostly ignoring the rest of the festival preparations...
This has been my view pretty much any moment of spare time during and after school for the past two weeks:
(this video specifically was taken today after school, when I stayed for a few hours to try to make myself helpful)
So I haven't really been saying much, have I? How about a flash flood of what's been going on:
(I'm not the best photographer or videographer, preferring to just hold the camera in front of me without much attention while I look at what's going on, so I can't claim much quality to this content. And I haven't trimmed any of the videos, so feel free to skip around them.)
The first or second week I got here, Sakura took me out with a friend of hers to a "DJ Event" in a really dodgy tiny club in some random building in the city. It was really loud and full of teenagers and people-who-used-to-be-teenagers and altogether not really my typical scene, but I did get to witness the odd clash between the reserved Japanese nature and the rebellious urges of hip-hop. And, even though I couldn't understand a word of it, you can't really beat the Japanese freestyle championship that went down:
Yeah, you say it!
Sometime later, when I had a day full of nothing and was feeling kind of down, my host mom took me to a nearby super-store to look at the cats in the pet section. It was the first time since I had been here that I had seen kitties up close, and I was surprised at how ecstatic and elated I felt after seeing their adorable selves. I guess I do need some cat in my life to be content...
So sleepy... so adorable...
This little guy was pretty energetic, though. Every time I go back, he's just as restless too.
A shot of my school from the bus stop:
Nice finger in the shot, ne?
A park a little ways from my house. It has this really nice waterfall-fountain and a man-made stream that runs down to this little pond, and is a really relaxing place to go to think. I stumbled across it on my way home from finding the library (and finding it closed), and it was a pleasant and much-needed surprise. One of the many things that have reinforced my confidence in my ability to wander into what I need or want.
In the distance you can see a sakura tree blooming. This was taken in early spring.
Of course, I got my haircut. I had been wanting to do it since I came, finding that dealing with my hair at school and picking it off my uniform constantly to be too much of a bother. My host mom got me an appointment at a fairly upscale salon, and the salon master had previously worked in New York so he spoke English. I showed him a picture on my iPod of what I was going for and then trusted his expert hands to a cut that anyone else probably would've freaked out about.
It was pretty much the best haircut experience of my life.
A few weeks ago, I had a week that started out pretty normal, except I kept picking up vague hints from what was going on around me that we wouldn't be having school or something that Thursday and Friday. On Wednesday night my host mom came to me and started asking me questions and then pointed to my school calendar, which had something I had (confusedly) translated to say something about athletics or something. I gave her a look and some gestures to say, "I have absolutely no clue what that is and what's going on," to which she replied, "Um... not Sports Festival," (because the Sports Festival is another thing that schools do) and my host dad started saying a bunch of stuff and, "Wooo! Go baseball! Fight!"
Turns out the Not Sports Festival was some multi-day all-school athletic meet thing where all the sports clubs from all the schools in the area competed against each other while all the non-sports-club-members and whoever else in the community who didn't have work lazed nearby and somewhat watched. My host mom had been asking me which sport I was going to watch, but of course I didn't know that, much less what there was and where that what would be.
So on Thursday morning I scraped myself out of bed like normal and stumbled my way to school, to be met with a classroom with only like a third of my class in it. We had our homeroom meeting (but with a sensei that wasn't our homeroom sensei) that lasted all of five minutes, then we were dismissed. Why we had to show up at all? I don't know. Japan.
I wandered out of the school, really confused and completely unsure of what I was supposed to be doing. My host mom was there in her car, though (I did know that she would be there because she had told me that she would be back to take me to the sport I wanted... but I was still overly confused), so I climbed in and sat there kind of like, "Uh..." Since she knew I had run track, she took me to the track and field facility and dropped me off with a "Ride the bus home!", and that was that.
I had run with the track club before then, so I attached myself to their manager and wandered around alongside her for a good few hours. It was unexpectedly cold and windy, though, and I had only worn my uniform (because I had no clue what was going on), so I ended up wearing one of the club member's oversized coats and feeling kind of like a mooch.
It felt like any other track meet, though, with teams lazing about in hastily-erected tents and with bleachers sparsely populated with people half watching. They only ran like three events, though, and repeated those throughout the day, which I couldn't understand why. I guess it was because they had to stretch their meet across all of the days of this multi-day Not Sports Festival.
I hung around for a few hours, ate the lunch that my host mom had packed, and then got bored, thanked the club, and left. Luckily I did know the way back to my school, which was about a 20-30 minute walk, from which I could use my bus pass to get home.
The opening meeting. After a bunch of old guys had their turns at saying stuff I'm pretty sure everyone only half-listened to, each of the teams called themselves to attention and then bowed before splitting off.
Before the girls' 4x100m relay.
"Ganba!!!"
The next day I went with the tea ceremony club to their event (which I did know about because someone actually told me). I don't have any pictures or anything from it, but it mostly consisted of several hours of sitting in a large room with all the clubs from other schools. All the schools had their own tables and we were supposed to keep ourselves occupied with studying or reading or whatever, so I took out my kanji studying materials and tried to focus on that for a while before just pretending to work and then inevitably falling asleep.
Eventually it was our turn to go, so we went to a little room and sat there while another school's club served us tea and okashi (traditional Japanese sweets... these ones were particularly delicious). Then we took our turn to serve tea and okashi to another school's club, and then took a group picture and parted ways to go home.
The next day my host family expected me to just do the check-in at the school and then come home, but this time I was the one empowered with knowledge of what was going on. I knew from a paper I got from one of my school's sensei that the kendo competition (whatever you call that) was that day, and I even had an address that I had looked up on Google and everything. So from the school I took my bike to another school where the competition was being held:
My first impression of kendo.
The kendo event was definitely the highlight of the whole Not Sports Festival, and it made me quite sad that the closest thing to a kendo club that my school has is a couple of kids that commute to another school to be in their club. Even though I understood exactly none of what was going on, I feel like this is definitely the activity I'd be doing if it were more available to me.
Kendo's both really cool and completely terrifying. The participants wear these masks that completely cover their faces and they have a thick band of armor around their waists. They stand tall and silent before striking with their sudden and sporadic screeches... it seemed like a great way to relieve pent-up stress.
I tried to get a video of one entire bout. I don't know the rules at all, but each bout seemed to consist of smaller rounds between two contestants, kind of like boxing I guess. I kept looking for the landed hits that mark a win, but I could never pick up on them.
The girls could be more terrifying than the boys because while they didn't seem to have quite as sure of technique, they liked to vocalize a lot more. And their screeches were a lot more blood-curdling than the boys' shouts.
Once I figured I had had a good hour or so of kendo-watching and I should probably check out other things, I biked off to the Obihiro no Mori (Obihiro Forest) facilities (with lots of different sports facilities; where the track is) and met up with one of the exchange students that was with her club helping the 弓道 ("kyuudou", Japanese archery) event.
Kyuudou's very focused and intense. From what I understand, most of the competitor's score comes from their movements (entering, knocking the bow, preparing to shoot, after shooting, and exiting) rather than from where the arrow actually lands on the target (which is far away and tiny).
You can't really see the competitors, but you can hear how their clubmates celebrate the rare target-hit.
A few weeks later (and still a few weeks ago), I went with Sakura to watch a sports festival at a nearby junior high school. We were there for a couple hours but still didn't see much because we came just before they dismissed for lunch break. We ate lunch from fancily prepared bentou boxes with one of Sakura's friend's families, and it was all very jovial and a great time. It was extremely hot, though, and sunny, and I was unprepared and ended up getting a sunburn that has left a clear, definable tan line that still remains.
We did get to see the different clubs compete in a relay race, each having something that defined their club as their baton (the baseball club tossed a baseball, the swimming club a pool noodle, the track club an actual baton, the band a pair of cymbals...). It was hilarious to see the baseball club take off in first, throw the baseball way too far, then scramble for it while the track club took an easy lead and all the rest of the clubs (most of them clearly unathletic) comedically followed behind.
After lunch we were able to stay just for the jump-rope event, which was both extremely admirable and completely adorable. You'd never get a group that size to jump a rope that successfully back in the States.
The best part is the kids operating the jump ropes.
Some day between then and now I went to Briar's (the girl from New Zealand) 琴 ("koto", Japanese harp) club's performance. My camera was out of batteries and my iPod was straining with a full memory, so I wasn't able to get a video of the best parts, but the whole performance was one of the highlights of my entire time here. It was such a serene and beautiful display of culture that I hadn't been able to see yet, my host family not being big buffs on Japanese culture. It was one of those moments that had me thinking, "You know, it's not so bad, being here."
A sample of koto music, performed by the club's sensei.
Japanese flute of some sort. I was jealous of the guy that got to play this. There was a point at which the koto and the flute played together and it was absolutely GORGEOUS, but sadly I have no video of that.
To occupy myself on days that I have nothing else, I've taken to wandering around the city on my bike. Ideally I'd like to stop in at little and secluded restaurants or cafes and sample a little of the city's culture and people, but as of yet I've just started familiarizing myself with the geography of the streets. I'm not sure AFS would be too enthusiastic about my solo adventures, but they worry too much (even in my imaginings of them).
Gotham City, a slots parlor. A shining example of the Flashpoint-esque strangeness that you sometimes encounter here in Japan. (adding to the strangeness is that the Slots-Parlor-Gotham-City resides in a Greek-style-facaded apartment building named "White Palace")
I found this in one of the mega-department-stores around here.
Just can't escape you, Utah, can I?
I especially like the little playgrounds I see around. They often have cool structures like this one's airplane, or are constructed really creatively out of hills or other not-typical-playground materials. This is the first one I've actually stopped at.
I've decided to declare myself on a quest to find the coolest playground.
One thing I do actually like about this area I'm in is that it seems that no matter where you are, what time it is, or what the weather's like, you can always hear birds chirping.
A long while back, after resigning from my week-and-a-half stint with the band club, I tried to explore around the other clubs the school had to offer. That's how I ended up in the tea ceremony club and half-in the track club. But one of the first clubs I checked out was the 書道 ("shodou", Japanese calligraphy) club. Sakura came with me for a bit and snapped some pictures for me. After she left, I got some for myself.
This is pre-haircut, obviously.
There's a lot to the technique of how to hold the brush and how to make the strokes and how to end the strokes and all that. I was pretty hopeless, but this poor girl was so good to try and help me out.
I used up a good amount of their paper making rudimentary marks like single lines and corners like this.
The more advanced students can get some pretty cool work done, and they're so swift and sure in their strokes.
The finished works hanging up to dry. Mine is the third from the right (with the disproportionate characters and the "テイラー" squeezed on the side). They allowed me two more gos at it, and it didn't improve much.
Also sometime early on in my time here, Briar, Leah (the girl from Norway), and I went with Leah's host family up to their cabin in the mountains. We did pretty literally nothing up there, but it was a good break from being around my own host family.
I wish I could've gotten out to take a real walk or just sit and breathe the outside air, but Leah was completely opposed to the bugs and wildernessness of it all and it was rather chilly and windy, so we spent most of our time in the cabin.
On our way back home we stopped for a brief moment at this beautiful lake and ate lunch at a tiny restaurant right next to it. There's a story to the mountains, too, but I'm not sure what it is.
Truly a breathtaking view.
The water was a pristine blue, but my pictures don't quite capture it right.
That's Briar taking a picture next to the sign.
And that's where my picture accounts end. Obihiro's not an incredibly stimulating place, being a small city surrounded by farmland, so the adventures of us five exchange students here aren't as Japan-iconic as what we're seeing from other exchangers in other parts of Japan. We have to look a little harder to find our small excitements, and we (well, me at least) feel kind of down at times about that. But looking back at this collective throw-up of events I've experienced, it doesn't look all so bad.
You'd kind of have to be living in a hole to not know that full-on uniforms are standard in Japanese middle and high schools. Anime and exported Japanese pop culture do pretty decent jobs of making sure that's one of the few images of Japan that foreigners hold. Still, though, you wonder... pleated skirts? Gakuran (those button-up, pajama-looking, old-military-style outfits the boys wear)? Sailor uniforms??? For reals?
Yeah, for reals. Sailor uniforms for the girls and gakuran for the boys are just as common as the more modern blazer-and-tie that my school sports. The American standard for school uniforms of "certain-colored polo shirt and certain-colored pants" is not a thing at all, and onlycertain special schools don't require uniforms.
I'd often wonder why such impractical uniforms were so standard. I mean, why sailors? Do they just want their girls to look all cute and stuff?
Uniforms are such an integrated tradition and part of the culture here that they're not given much thought. They're not strange or a nuisance because they're a part of life. When I was being fitted for my uniform, my host mother and sister were getting slightly exasperated with me and were confused when I wasn't sure how everything should fit and what was standard. When I saw the exasperation on their faces creeping into frustration, I explained to them that it was my first uniform and I didn't really know what was normal. They, and the lady working at the store, were amazed to hear that.
With as much American pop culture as Sakura consumes, I was surprised she didn't know that American schools don't have uniforms. But the uniform is so integrated into her idea of school that it didn't occur to her that it wasn't for me.
Being well-dressed and well-groomed is also the expectation in Japanese society. It's standard for everyone here to dress well, and the school uniform just fits into that mindset perfectly. Rather than just having a plain polo-and-pants approach to the school uniform that serves the same purpose practically, uniforms are carefully designed, each school having different patterns for skirts and pants, distinguishing adornments on jackets or blazers, distinctive bows or ties or scarves... They try to make the uniforms not only professional, but also fashionable and appealing. Schools want their students to be dressed well.
(With that, though, you'd think that they'd invest a little more in getting the uniforms to fit correctly. I mean, if you're going to wear the same thing every day all year for three years, you should want it to fit nearly perfectly. With only basic sizing and the only adjustments being to hem pants/skirts, there are a lot of students left with obviously ill-fitting clothes...)
Because I'm a lot taller than most of the girls here, everything that fit me halfway decently girth-wise was way too short. (Though my host sister is also really small, so her uniform fits rather big on her, and I feel like she and my host mother were trying to get my uniform to fit on me like hers fits on her...) So I'm left with a blazer with overly wide shoulders and all around-oversized shirts because of the attempt to get my sleeves to be long enough (the shirt sleeves are still too short). My skirt had to be let down to be made longer, too, and my socks aren't quite tall enough...
...So, while feeling awkward because I'm that lone white girl in a sea of Japanese kids, I also feel awkward because my clothes don't fit. But I'm not alone in that aspect.
without the blazer, and I've since gotten the more-popular knit vest
An important part of the uniform are the indoor shoes worn at school. My school doesn't use uwabaki, which are more slipper-like than shoes, but basic white sneakers that are still obviously designed for that purpose. Students enter our school through a side entrance, where there's the genkan (entryway) with shoe lockers for each student. We take off our outdoor shoes, put them in the locker, and slip on our school shoes there.
The color of accents on the shoe distinguish what grade the student is. Right now at my school first-years have black Mizunos, second-years have blue no-brands, and third years have green Mizunos. The school gave me, however, a pair of those no-brands... but with yellow on them. I'm the only student in the school with them, so I stand out even more and nobody knows what grade I'm in (and thus how to address me).
Getting to wear the school uniform and be a for-real Japanese student is one of the things most exchange students to Japan get really excited about. I was excited, too, and it's definitely one of the things about which I still have to tell myself, "You know, this is pretty cool." While I'm not glad that I had to buy mine rather than borrow from the school because the price of it was absurd, I am glad because I'll be able to take it with me and keep it.
At the same time, though, it gets to a point where you really just want to wear pants.
It's been terrible of me to not keep this updated. I have to fight urges to just curl up and do nothing to get anything done lately, and this is one of the many responsibilities of mine that have been suffering.
I do want to keep this updated, though. Things are happening that I want to share, and I want to express what I'm thinking and feeling. It's a matter of getting myself to type it. (as a note, this was actually written in a spare notebook during my Biology class at school, with the intention of typing and editing later)
So to catch up:
The first two weeks here were during spring break, so there wasn't any school. I posted some about that previously. Sakura had club activities and my host parents had work, so after the first couple of days I spent much of those two weeks alone at the house. It was kind of disappointing to arrive in Japan and still not really go out and see any of it. I was doing pretty much exactly what I would be doing in the US-- hanging around at the house and taking naps-- with minimal changes to accommodate a new family and house. Still, though, I treasured that time alone. I always wanted my host family to get out of the house quickly and to return late so that I could have that time to breathe.
Throughout those two weeks, I looked forward to going to school with the hope that I would be able to see other people and make my own friends, and where I'd be forced to speak Japanese. I was getting pretty downtrodden about how little I was speaking and interacting, and hoped the new environment would shake me into a new groove.
Things I had previously thought would excite me came and passed with relatively little reaction. Being dragged along to karaoke and purikura (standard Japanese teen entertainment, and a supposed must-do in Japan) with Sakura and her friends was pretty much just that: me being dragged. I tagged along willingly and openly, but it was very "meh", just glorified and overpriced selfies and singing, to my unastonished mind.
I really thought that getting my school uniform would be the excitement to cheer me up until the start of school. But it kind of passed like any other of the mundane errands we'd been doing, and only after when I sat down in my room with my uniform hanging in my wardrobe did I think, "Hey. I own a real-life Japanese school uniform. That's pretty cool, right?"
But, wow, this seems incredibly depressing. I am doing relatively well and I'm really glad to be here. Right now, though, I'm having to work through a lot of problems that exist within myself. I feel extremely restricted, for some reason, around my host family and talking is still a problem. When I'm away from them and from Sakura at school, though, I relax a little.
I still don't do a ton of talking, though, with me not knowing how to interact normally with teenagers and with them being shy and not knowing how to talk to a strange American person. There's a lot I feel like I should be doing, questions I should be asking, mistakes I should be making... I recognize the problem, though, and I know I need to work to find a solution, but for now I get by one little interaction at a time...
もったいない (mottainai) is a regret felt toward waste, a concept deeply rooted in Japanese culture. It applies to everything in life: energy, food, water, garbage... It's the reason why most Japanese homes have small space heaters and A/Cs rather than central heating/cooling to save energy. It's why Japanese cars are tiny and fuel-efficient (lots of Priuses!). It's why garbage is sorted into I-don't-know-how-many types, all collected on different days. To reduce waste.
Before coming here, I knew that Japanese people were, generally, more eco-friendly than their Western counterparts. At one of my orientations (gosh, I don't know which one. They all blur together.) I learned the name. I didn't really understand how it would feel, though, until coming to live with my host family.
もったいない is very important to my host family. They attempt to waste nothing. When meals are made, they either eat every scrap or save what they can for breakfast or lunch the next day. Even a single bite's worth of potato salad is saved, appearing on the side for dinner. My lunches are always made from pieces of previous meals. My host mother saves all the plastic bags, from grocery-store bags to used Ziploc baggies (after being washed out, of course), in a drawer in the kitchen. The family is very particular about which trash goes in which bin, but I have yet to figure out exactly what goes where.
I love the idea of waste-reduction, of attempting to minimize what we take from the Earth and what we put into it. I've always tried to live consciously of my waste, to recycle what I can, and to not use anything excessively.
But at some point it gets exhausting.
I worry what they think of me, if I'm being too wasteful for their standards. I went out with my host sister, Sakura, and her friend and we ate curry and rice. We were given huge dishes, and I was obviously slowing way down with mine about three quarters of the way through. I had stopped for a bit when Sakura said, "If you can't finish, Hinano will eat the rest of yours." At first I was a little bewildered and thought, "Okay, I'll gladly let her finish it..." It wasn't until later that I realized that that's it; that's もったいない. I'm left thinking, "Oh, crap... should I have actually eaten the rest?"
I think もったいない is also why my host family has labeled me as a 少食家 ("shoushokuka", a light eater) and gives me smaller amounts to eat than the rest of the family (except my host mother, who eats nearly nothing), so no food is wasted. This was established on my first night here.
They put so much effort into it, even scraping and attempting to eat all the sugar that had fallen off a donut onto a plate.
Like I said, I have yet to figure out the trash bins. Just throwing something away becomes a big worry for me because I don't want to put it in the wrong place, and I'm left standing in the kitchen unsure of myself for a good while before making a decision.
I don't know if my family is extreme or normal by Japanese standards, having no other family to which to compare them. But I do understand that the sentiment at least is common to most households here.
When we arrived in Tokyo, we were all already sick of orientations. The day and a part we had spent in Los Angeles prior to our departure was enough. But, alas, we faced three more days' worth. Our first night was spent in a pretty nice hotel with everyone who arrived the same day as us (I think that's what is was... there were a ton of different countries...). We were then split into three groups according to where we'd be living and sent to three different locations for orientation.
Our (those of us placed around [relatively] Tokyo or in Hokkaido) orientation was at the National Olympic Youth Center, which was some kind of multipurpose superfacility or hostel or something. There were a ton of dorm-like rooms in different buildings, different meeting rooms, a cafeteria, classrooms.... and a variety of groups were there, from high school sports teams to businesspeople to a group of African children... It felt kind of like a university campus, but not? I don't know; none of us were really sure what the place was. I do know the people who used it were the ones who cleaned it.
At this orientation we were separated into smaller groups by country and we had two Japanese AFS returnee volunteers to each group. Those volunteers would guide us around to our different sessions of being told the same information repeatedly and then eating. We all got pretty comfortable with each other, so leaving was like a real goodbye with hugs and all that.
For the two nights we were there, we stayed in tiny dorm-like rooms, one person per room, several dorms to a hallway and common lounge. We bathed at night in the facility's sentou, which is a public bath.
Pretty much our whole group was paralyzed when we were told that we'd be in a public bath. I didn't make a big deal of it, but another girl and I kind of got used to the idea by poking fun (in an entirely light manner) at one girl who was adamant about finding a way around the whole situation. Come to the actual moment, I didn't get too worked up. I mean, obviously I didn't want to go naked in front of a room of other people, but I also knew that it couldn't be that bad if it was such a deep part of Japanese culture and they're all like, "whatever" about it.
Walking into the changing room, there was the initial shock of "butt!", but after that I calmed down and it felt all remarkably normal. The actual sentou was very dark and steamy, so that helped, too. We all washed ourselves at the shower stations and then sat in the giant bath, then walked back to our dorms slightly refreshed and feeling proud of ourselves.
Saturday morning we dispersed to go to our host families. There are five of us in the Obihiro area, so we flew together. We left from a Tokyo airport that wasn't an international airport, so everything was slightly less English-friendly. Kind of scary, but things were still fairly clear and we made it to the tiny Obihiro airport safely.
We were met by our host families before we all went into another meeting, which was given in Japanese with a white guy who lives in the area (from the US; he's the guy who will be teaching our Japanese lessons) translating for us students. Then we dispersed and went to our homes.
I'm pretty comfortable here. It's all kind of awkward, with me not knowing what to do and them not quite sure how to show me everything, but I'm sure it'll smooth out. Sakura's really quite good at English, so she tells me things. I worry, though, that it's becoming a crutch. I need to start speaking Japanese, but I still don't feel forced to. (I can't get much more forced, though... bahh....)
They seem like a quite relaxed family. It hasn't been too strange for me. It almost feels like they could be relatives, like an aunt, uncle, and cousin. A different family with different habits and things, but nothing incredibly strange yet.
My host mother cooks three full meals a day. And I mean full. Always a salad, a main dish, usually something traditional Japanese on the side, and fruit for dessert. I'm always so full. I'm going to get so fat... ahhh...
Yesterday we went to the school to watch a basketball game (Sakura's a manager for the boys' team). I don't know if it was any sort of official game or a scrimmage. Ohtani (our school) was demolished by the other team, but the whole game was kind of sloppy. Lots of missed baskets and strange passes, and very few fouls were called. It was entirely student-run, though, from what I could gather.
After that we went shopping for a few things for me at a huge department store that was cramped, filled with signs, and nonsensical divisions between sections. Not even divisions, really, it was like a Walmart with two stories and when you walk across the aisle from appliances to home goods you're actually stepping into another store (? I think?). Like a mall without extra space or walls.
We also went to a DVD rental store. Lots of stuff.
Yesterday we went to some kind of Japanese-exclusive race where they race clydesdales pulling a plow-like contraption over what I think was gravel. I think Obihiro is known for it. Sakura's grandfather (I assume my host mother's father because we met her brother there) breeds horses for it. I didn't know whether to feel excited or horrible for the horses. It seemed excruciatingly hard to do.
In the first step of this long adventure, I flew out today to Los Angeles to attend my gateway orientation before I leave to Japan tomorrow.
I've been able to meet all the other students going to Japan from America, all of whom are very energetic and enthusiastic. We'll fly together tomorrow to Tokyo.
The orientation was very low-key, basic, "this is what to expect" information. A long lecture that put most of us very close to sleep.
It's late, though, and I've got a big day tomorrow. A more inclusive post can be expected soon.
