My Turn!

Hey Everyone! Konnichi-wa.

So, Isaac gave you the culture shock perspective so I am going to lighten to mood with some fun stories and adventures we have had. Forgive me for not reporting on everything we have done for that would take ages and I don't like to type that much. So far we are settling in, thank God because I wasn't sure at first how well this was going to go for us. As you may know I am currently without work and am thanks to Isaac living off of his hard earned cash. So to give myself some prupose and to help out in every way possible I have been cleaning this house from top to bottom, experimenting with cooking food, and working on some club activites in the community: namely Tai-Chi. To put it short, I have come to the Japan to play the role of 1950's house wife....? Well, here's hoping that something will come along and until then I am just trying to enjoy our new life here.

 

So far we have been able to go to the beach 3 times and we have been to Shimonoseki, Fukuoka and Oshima. Shimonoseki is the last big city in the Yamaguchi Prefecture. If you look on a map it sits right before the last large southern Island of Kyushu. Shimonoseki is a major port to and from S. Korea so there is a lot of Korean influence in this city. This city is also fairly large so it was my first experience of Japan city life. We went there with several other jets for a Fireworks festival!!!! It was so fun. We met a bunch of new people, made some friends as you will see in the pictures, and we got to see some awesome festival activites. You see August is the month of festivals, or "festival season" . Basically the Japanese pick a theme, i.e. floats, fish, water, and they dress up in their kimonos, eat squid on a stick, Octopus fried dough balls and a variety of things dipped in different flavored sugar and watch the biggest damn fireworks I have ever seen.

 

We did try the Octopus....not too bad actually. But the fireworks really were some of the biggest and most amazing I have ever seen. It was so funny too. First of all this particular festival was itself a fireworks festival where the city we were in was competing with the city across the water on the southern Island of Kyushu. So it was double the fireworks activity. The two cities were competing for the best fireworks display....they literally competed and someone won. Luckily for us, our side won. We still aren't sure what happens to the losing side, but we have heard it's something involving giant live fish and "swim for your lives". But those are just rumors.  

 

Next we went to Fukuoka which is on Kuyushu the last big southern island in Japan. It was a really big city and unfortunately we didn't actually see that much. We did see a temple which was my first time in a real Buddhist temple and we ate some really good noodles. I think the highlight however was the Shinkansen, or "shink" as Isaac likes to call it. You may have heard it called the
Bullet train. IT. WAS. AWESOME. Seriously. It took 4-4.5 hours to travel down to Fukuoka from our home in Yanai on the regular train. It took 45 mins to get home from Fukuoka on the Shink....You be the judge. Needless to say we were a little jet lagged when we got off the shink. We were completely befuddled for having made it home so quickly. We knew the shink was fast but holy crap! we had no idea. So that was definitely amazing. Ashley Caveda, if you're reading this: it's the closest thing to teleportation I have seen so far. Just FYI.

 

After this we attended another festival with a new friend also in our program named Tiffany. We went to her island Oshima that later hosted an English Summer camp and saw even bigger fireworks and a local Buddhist ritual and of course more festival food yummies! It was a lot fo fun!

 

Next I spent some sad days alone in the apartment while Isaac went off to English camp. The funny story from this pathetic 3 days of my life here was when I got Internet. You see getting things in Japan, or doing anything has at least 10 rules that come with it or 10 tasks or challenges if you will. So naturally internet was a 15 pages of insturctions rule jumping phenonmenon. Major things I needed to do : be at home when they deliver the modem because if I am not home then they will leave me a "message of no delivery" all in japanese and I will have to find a japanese-english speaker to help me call the company delivering my modem to set up a time for them to deliver the modem. If I do not know anyone- at the time I did not- then I should contact the english help line but it would take days to set up. There it was the internet at my finger tips and I had stepped out for a couple hours and came home to find the dreaded "message of no delivery" paper in out mailbox.

 

I was destated, and it was only enhanced by the rapidly blinking light on our home phone that indicated we have 3 messages, and becuase our phone is in japanese I could not figure out how to hear the messages......I tried though, for an hour to no avail.

The next day I was a little more than depressed realizing there was no way for me to spend my time here without some connection to the outside of Japan, or my apartment for that matter. I finally decided after gazing at the slip of paper that I would just call the phone number that was listed on the paper amongst all the japanese script,

A woman answered, "blah blah blah, Japanese words I don't understand....."

Me: "Uh....English?"

She: "Uh....no no. No I can help you. No English."

Well, she wasnt getting away that easily.

me: "Message of no delivery."

She: "Ah yes. Message of No delivery..... uh.....number?"

Well what do ya know, she could understand me....and she said she didn't know english! too modest.

Me: a bunch of numbers

She: "Time to deliver?"

Me: "Anytime! All Times! All Day!"

She: "Okay okay. hai. arigato gozimas."

Me: "Arigato arigato arigato arigato!" (thank you thank you thank you)

 

2 hours later I had internet!! It was a great day and very exciting if I do say so. So obviously internet has become our lifeline to the world and we are loving every minute of it. I am happily technology's slave.

 

After that I was invited to the next English camp at Oshima and treated just like Isaac and the rest of the native english speaking teachers. It was awesome and a ton of fun. We were put into groups to come up with skits......please do ask Isaac about his sometime.I will tell you what I saw:

 

It involves one japanese middle school boy with very limited english as aladdain. 1 canadian as the narrator. 1 Hawaiian as a race car and giant cemntipede bug called the mukade. 1 japanese 45 year old  man who announced to the men of the native english speakers that he was an alocoholic and proceeded to get sick form drinking too much at a the teacher's party on the first night there- this gentleman was the "genie of the lamp" and wore what I think were bunny ears and whenever he appeard made a "wooo wooo wooping" sound.....Isaac said the japanese gentleman came up with this all on his own. And lastly Isaac dressed in a hawaiian skirt wearing a wig as princess jasmine.

 

I think the story line was something like Jasmine (isaac) and Aladdain (middle school english boy) were in Indianapolis at a Indy 500 race and Aladdain got board, although Jasmine seemed to be really enjoying herself eating what looked like corn....Then Aladdain says he is going for a drink at the concessions but never returned. he found a lamp, and out wooping pops a rather peculiar and hung over genie who gave Aladdain 3 wishes. Aladdain wishes to go to Canada, but Jasmine followed and found him. So then Aladdain wishes to go to Hawaii, but Jasmine followed and found him. Finally Aladdin wishes to go to japan. And when Jasmine followed she was chased away by a giant Mucade bug...leaving Aladdin in peace. 

 

With that, I will leave you with your thoughts..... :o)

 

Please do look at the pctures if you have a chance. Maybe you will get to see Isaac as the lovely princess Jasmine. And besides that we have a new video of our various adventures here in Yanai. 

 

P.S. if you feel like sending us food packages we are craving and unable to find the following:

Dark Chocolate

PEANUT BUTTER

Cheddar Goldfish

Wheat Thins

REAL HONEY

Orbit Gum

 

We Love you guys! Until next time!

 

xoxo Hugs,

Erin 
--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/
http://picasaweb.google.com/EEHoug

August

Erin arrived in Japan on a Saturday evening, 6pm. We took a coach bus from the Hiroshima airport into the city where we could catch a late train for the two or so hour ride back to Yanai station. Erin had been travelling for nearly 24 hours by then, and I had walked all over Hiroshima that afternoon, so we were both plenty tired. We left the platform at Yanai just as it started raining a fairly dismal mountainy mist. Here, though, we`re not in the mountains, so it`s not that refreshing cool of a mountain mist. It`s something more like the humidity has gotten so thick in the stiff night air that it finally just chrystalizes into this gellatious myst that just sits there in the air and oozes overy your body as you push your way through it. The feeling is that your mind knows it must be cool, it`s night and it`s raining, but your body is on overdrive to stay ahead of the heat that`s pressing down on you. It can be hard to handle.

 

But, combined, the two of us had eight days of experience of living in Japan, which, as a foreigner, is the equivalent of being about two and a half years old. And two and half year olds can`t call for a cab. It`s a fifteen minute walk from the station to our second floor apartment, in Sunheights, but I`d never done it in conditions quite like these. We start out and knew almost immediately that this isn`t going to work. Erin had everything she was going to live with for the next year(s) there with her in her baggage, and as it was getting wet we realized we were in for a long haul.

 

Miraculously, a lone taxi appeared on the side of the street we had turned down and we began waving our arms frantically. As it often is when you find you need it most, fate was on our side as the cab slowed to a crawl and whipped a u-turn to come to a stop at the karaoke bar now accross the street from us. We clambered over our wet, sweaty, tired selves and our baggage to cross the street and get to the cab. Just as I got to the door, a smartly dressed woman, possibly in her sixties, staggered out of the backseat of the vehicle, mumbling in Japanese, paid the driver, and staggered into the karaoke bar for another round. We hopped in her place and in our best two and a half year old Japanenglish told the driver `Sunheights. Uuuuuuuhhhh, hmmmmm, sumimasen, sumimasen, ummmmmm, Sunheights?` I remembered I had brought a map with me that my predecessor had left, which had my apartment highlighted on it, so I pulled it out and we were whisked away for the short drive to our new home, like lost children at the mall, in the care of whatever passer-by happens to stop and ask what`s the matter.

 

There`s been a story like this everyday for us here in Japan, with nary an element missing. There`s always the oppressive heat; the somewhat desperate, impossible situation; the fortunate twist of fate; the shred of dark humor; and, so far, the unlikely satisfactory resolution, though sometimes lately we`ve even had some joyful successes (maybe these are becoming more common). I`ve been here now for 25 consecutive days, Erin for 19, which seems like it should qualify for the record for world`s longest emotional roller coaster, until you realize that some folks are going into their third year at this gig.

 

Unlikely as this may seem at this point, I`m not saying I don`t like it here. To the contrary, I`m in love with this adventure. To some degree, we knew what we were getting into when we signed up for this gig. That is, we knew we were getting into something that we knew absolutely nothing about. Still, you expect a roller coaster ride when you make that decision, and that`s exactly what we`re getting.

 

I guess the point that I want to make right now is that this country, these people, this geography, these streets, the menus, the currency, the service, the norms, the taboos, the culture, the physics of this place are more different on the whole than anything I could have possibly ever imagined before I stepped off that plane in Narita International Airport and had my first thick, steamy breath of (this was `air-conditioned`) Japanese air. And they're different in a way that is even different than anything I've ever experienced. Even the things that are the same are still different, sometimes mind-meltingly different. I don`t know if there`s anything you can do to prepare for that. Sure, I read some books (three or four, I think) about ``The Japanese,`` so I had an idea of when to bow for what, how the alphabet was contstructed, who was in charge, how I should act when and how not to stand out like an American. But no book or lesson or dialogue could ever prepare a person for how utterly foreign you feel from the moment you take that first breath of Japanese air. It`s like the entire country is in on some secret that I`ll never be able to understand.

 

You can find all kinds of writing about this in literature about Japan. People say it has to do with the island`s historical isolation, it`s geography has basically encouraged it`s growth into the antithesis of a melting-pot, so that there`s this entrenched, unbending concept of us vs. them, insider and outsider, moreso than is natural in every culture. That sounds weird to me, but it`s the best way I can make sense of it right now. Also, that is the very reason for the JET program at all. Someone in a position of power realized that the lack of inter-cultural understanding in Japan posed a lot of problems in the face of rapid globalization, and the JET program was one method developed to encourage internationalization. I can only imagine what it must have been like for those first ALTs, back in the 80s, placed in towns and schools where no one, literally no one they came in contact with, had ever had any exposure to people of a different race, culture, or even background. This is a cakewalk compared to that, and it`s still really hard.

 

I also want to make note of this experience that I`ve been having of feeling somewhat guilty for being here at all. Like I said, I feel like about a two and half year old here, with no parents and no one who`s responsible for me, so completley cut off from the ``grown up world`` of insiders. So I`m constantly imposing on random strangers for favors, and I have no idea what it means when I do that, or how to appropriately thank them, or even if they mind or not. I`m just so very cut off from the entire country`s shared reality. It is really, really isolating. And it`s something you can`t prepare for until you`re here, and by then it`s too late. The thing that I feel bad about is the fact that I saw that problem coming before I came here, but I didn`t worry about it very much, telling myself that things would just take care of themselves. I feel like this is a very western, probably very American attitude. That I`m somehow entitled to impose on other cultures and have them take care of me, no matter how ill-prepared I am to engage in meaningul dialogue with them.

 

In reality, this is probably where a lot the isolation that Erin and I feel is coming from. We came here with an attitude that we could "get by" because of our "industrious," much like we did for a time in Turkey. Indeed, we'll get by, and we'll thrive here, but it's painfully more evident here that when you're getting by it's not because of your industriousness. It's because someone is going out of their way to help you out. And in a country that values things operating according to "the norm" so highly, this can be a really stressful thing to do. In Turkey asking for help was a great way to get involved in the culture, here asking for help is more often than not accompanied with a feeling of being cut-off from the culture.

 

At the same time, people are just people, no matter where you go. Sometimes I can remember that, and the diffferences don't seem that intense. The differences then seem interesting and exciting. Hopefully this blog will be able to document the story of how we came to get more and more comfortable with these differences that seem so confounding right now.

 

All that being said, we are getting our footing here. The countryside is stunningly beautiful, and we`re short train rides away from a multitude of nice beaches. We can go to the grocery store now, and we know what are good prices and what are not so good prices.

 

PLUS, great news, we`ve finally got our apartment arranged so that it actually feels like a home, instead of a place that we`re staying in, where the person who did my job before me used to stay. I`ve learned that, for me, a comfortable, well thought out home is FIRST for feeling comfortable in general. It feels like we'll get more comfortable living in Yanai, Yamaguchi, Japan as a result of having a comfortable home to come back to. We`ll get up pictures of it online soon. The problem with the apartment was these tatami rooms. Our place is actually really big by Japanese standards, two tatami rooms, another room, a kitchen, dining room, a bathroom with a separate shower room, and an entry room. But we didn`t know what the rooms were for. We`d never decorated a tatami room, so we didn`t know how they were supposed to be used. Tatami is realatively fragile so you`re not really supposed to just pile furniture on it. When we got here it was used as a closet, and there was a western bed in the non-tatami room that is attached to the kitchen. We put the desk in it and tried to use it as an office, but that didn`t work. Turns out, tatami rooms are used for sleeping in on futon mats! So we got rid of our western bed and I`ll let the pictures explain the rest. Bottom line, we both really like it and just spent last night feeling quite relieved and comfortable about our new place. That was honestly the first time I`d felt completely comfortable since I got here.

 

That`s all from my end. It intense but it`s nothing to worry about. We`re as safe as we`ve ever been in our lives (small town Japan is like 1950s rural America, crime wise) and we have generally been enjoying ourselves. We`ve made a lot of trips and have a lot more in the works. We`re planning on buying some nice road bikes as soon as we can save up enough, because we have some beautiful countryside to explore and could ride to many of the beaches near us with suitable bikes. Also, Japan`s roads and drivers are all very bike friendly. Japan is definitely worth a visit and I definitely feel like what I`m doing here is worth all the effort it is taking. Plus, so far I do really enjoy my job a lot. I`ve been to two different summer camps and just enjoy teaching immensely. Plus, the teaching is about as easy as it gets for me, since I only have to fill in the blanks of other teacher`s lesson plans or come up with games, and Japanese kids seem pretty easy to keep entertained. It`s a long leap from kindergarten and public schools in the states, that`s for sure... For example, it`s been summer break since I got here and most of the teachers have come into school for eight hours every day, and most of the students still get here by 8AM to take part in club activities or various other school sponsored events, or just to hang out in the teacher`s room... It`s not like summer break in the states, that`s for sure.

 

One other thing, if you`ve possibly made it this far (sorry this is so long):

 

Here`s our address and our location on the map:

 

Sunheights 202

4711-19 

Yanai-shi, Yamaguchi-ken

742-0021

 

http://diddlefinger.com/m/yamaguchiken/yanaishi/447512/?ch=4711-19-202

 

If you feel like sending stuff, it would be awesome if I could get small, cheap 'America/Indiana/Indianapolis' memorabilia. For example, sheets of "Indy500" stickers or something along those lines. I meant to pack more stuff like that but never got around to it, and they're really useful for handing out in class and to general people I meet.

 

There`s obviously so much more to write, and so many stories to tell. Hopefully Erin will fill in a lot of them when she posts later. But those are my reflections from the first month.

 

 

 

Isaac

--
http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/

Pics.

New pics and comments on picasa page. Check it out. New blog posts to come soon. Nearly one month in Japan!!!