It`s been a while...

I can`t remember when I updated on the blog last... I vaguely remember having last written something about a travelling clown troupe, a man with a dog mask, and a chubby kid in a red halter top singing background during a cover of an Eric Clapton song. Oh, that`s right: it must have been around Christmas time. Ah, nothing like that special charm of the holiday`s to get you in the spirit for a Christmas blog update for family and friends.

 

Unfortunately, I`ve got to say, the writing has trailed off a bit since then because it doesn`t really feel like much is happening around here anymore. It feels, strangely, like we`re just living in Japan. The last two months have really passed as though we were living anywhere, and life has been somewhat normal and boring; which, in its own way, is a really weird experience.

 

We`ve certainly had our struggles and our ups and downs, at one point in February we were really ready to abandon ship and get on the next flight home. But these kinds of days always pass, stubbornly, and the general feeling is such that it`s getting harder and harder to find those things that make me think "wow, I have to write home about this."

 

Here`s a poignant example, from another ALT three towns away. He had a cousin staying with him for some time in January. During this time they went to experience a Japanese "purikura," or photo booth. Basically, this is one of those places where you sit in a booth and pay like 2 or 3 bucks and it takes a series of pictures of you and your friends. You can then proceed to decorate the photo in interesting ways. It`s a really popular activity in Japan and you can find these booths just about everywhere lots of people congregate. So they did this one or two times during the friend`s stay and at the end of the trip, as the friend was packing for the return flight home, they wondered what they should do with all these random photo-booth purikura pictures they had. The ALT beamed about how they would make awesome souvenir presents to give to friends back home. The friend gave him a strange look in response and said something to the effect of, "Dude, these things are really weird. Adult men don`t do things like this back home. I don`t think I`m going to show these to anyone." At which point, the ALT realized Japan had changed the way he was seeing the world...

 

Basically, it`s getting hard to recognize what should feel weird and what should feel normal. WHICH IS SO FREAKING WEIRD! Seriously, take a second to imagine grown men in business suits tearing up as they huddle closely together around a karaoke box, drunk, belting out Michale Jackson`s "We are the world." Weird, right? Now...try to imagine what would have to happen to your mind for that to seem completely mundane... And that`s what`s going on in my mind, everyday. WHAT THE HELL!?

 

I was telling some friends the other day that I came here expecting to "learn about " another culture... What I meant by that was I expected to see all of these "interesting" differences between my culture and Japanese culture, review them, and then allow them to inform how I live my life, taking the parts I liked and leaving behind those I don`t. Something like this does happen in some small way, but for the most part what I`ve learned is that culture is hardly reasonable, you can`t review it, and you surely can`t decide much having to do with it. Culture washes over you everywhere, it`s always three steps ahead of you, and you are really left to decide relatively little within the context that your culture has already prescribed for you. Truly experiencing a culture other than your own, then, changes you in ways that you could never expect to change yourself. It changes you in a way that has little to do with your own thoughts and opinions and hopes and dreams.

 

Another interesting point I want to briefly pull from this is that each of us is a culture. We are all our own unique expression of values and norms and ways of being in the world. Experiencing a foreign culture has so much strength perhaps only because of the sheer number of differences, or the number of individuals with unique sets of worldviews that vary so dramatically from our own. But if each of us is our own culture, then merely interacting with, trully experiencing (the kind of experiencing we usually reserve for "unique" or "exotic" moments, which command our full attention and plenty of patience), even the people right next to us, has the power to change us in ways that we could never expect to change ourselves.

 

And now, for a list of the stuff we`ve done in the past few weeks:

went to Oshima island to watch our friend Tiffany run a half marathon, which she ran with a sprained ankle. dang.

On, Valentines Day, we went to Oshima Island to pick mikan (mandarin oranges) on our friends` small farm. 

We threw a small pizza party with some kids and friends who take lessons with Erin, and we played Uno. I think there`s some pretty funny video online from this party. 

naked man festival in okayama and little villiage. For a definition of "Naked Man Festival", see Erin`s new Facebook profile picture... This was an experience that still definitely felt weird. I think we`re only staying a year so that we don`t go again next year and find that even this seems normal now... You have to draw a line somewhere.

ballroom dancing and hiroshima day--> Best day trip EVER. Erin went ballroom dancing with friends and I wandered aimlessly through Hiroshima AND we found a BUFFET DINNER that evening. If America has made one contribution to the betterment of mankind, it`s the proliferation of the buffet dinner.

taking chris' parents to hiroshima--> this was Erin`s duty. The day went great from what I hear, minus losing the wallet and passport at the Shinkansen station (literally the best place in the entire world to lose a wallet, got it all back within minutes of learning it was missing) and then getting on the wrong Shinkansen train and being halfway accross the wrong side of Japan before realizing it. But what`s a trip to Japan without some fate-defying mistakes?

russian food--> Awesome meal at the Russian and Wine restaurant two towns away. We had our first Russian meal in Tokuyama, Japan...

u.s. military base--> Pacifist, anti-militaristic ideals be damned. There`s buffet breakfast to be had at the Iwakuni Marine Base on Sunday mornings! My first taste of biscuits and gravy in six months had me moments away from enlisting... I didn`t because Erin assured me she would find a way to make biscuits in our apartment. But my patience is limited...

yes party--> YES is the Yanai English Society that Erin and I, and a few other ALTs, participate in. We had a party, with a buffet dinner. America scores again.

brand new kimono--> Erin now has a full collection of kimono that she knows how to put on herself. Probably one of only a handful of white people in the world who can say that... How many other`s do you know?

Tiff bought ticket to come--> April 28, Tokyo, it is ON. We`ll meet Tiff in Tokyo and then take a two day ferry ride down to Kyushu for some volcanoe viewing! Whoah!

okinawa--> fun in the sun! In one week we get to escape to the Hawaii of Japan! Look it up on Google Earth Satellite and pray that little speck of land doesn`t just slide right off the edge of the sea-cliff it seems to be perched on. That`s a scary place to be for a couple of midwesterners who are used to being securely landlocked.

Easter Party!--> Erin mentioned in a previous email that we are going to try and hold an Easter Egg hunt/buffet lunch (cha-ching) for some of the kids we know. Care packages in support of this venture are much appreciated. Hooray cultural exchange!

Whew! See what I mean? Things are getting so boring and mundane around here :-P.

 

Love to you all,

 

 

 

Isaac and Erin

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http://loveandengrish.blogspot.com/