[8/7]
I was reminded yesterday by one of the other ALTs that the JET Program frowns upon people posting anything about the people at our schools online, and if they find it they’ll get pissed. So I’ll have to limit the juicy personal details to individual emails. That will be easier once I have internet and can write individual emails better...Even though now I’ve been told I can use the computers across the street occasionally to check email, I still don’t feel comfortable sitting there for hours typing. Also, I know this is a bit silly, but it takes a lot of mental energy to type when my fingers aren’t used to the keyboard layout: things like apostrophes, the shift key, the backspace key, and many of the other little symbols (*^:;[]_@ and so on) are in different places that I have to look for each time because they’re not in my muscle memory. You don’t realize how convenient touch-typing is until you can’t do it. At least the letters are laid out the same way...Anyway, when I have to exert energy on the physical typing, it makes it less relaxing to just babble away.
Anyway, I’ll take the link to this site off my facebook page, but I should still censor what I post here a little bit. So I apologize if that makes it boring. Email me and ask for better stories and ye shall receive them. :-)
Yesterday I met the other new ALT, Alisa, a half-Japanese girl from Virginia whose Japanese is somewhat better than mine. Darn – I was hoping to finally not be the worst person around at Japanese. But she’s really sweet and I think we’ll be good friends. We chatted a bit in English on the way back from Yashiro while Jarryd and Mizuta-san chatted in Japanese up in the front of the car, so that was refreshing. She said she wanted to take classes in some of the traditional arts and stuff, which is awesome ‘cause I do too, so maybe we can look for those together. Then I went to Jarryd’s apartment, which is right next to hers, and used the internet for a while. His keyboard is Japanese layout and has one of those plastic coverings over it, which I am terrible at using, but it was very satisfying to be able to read everyone’s email. Keep them coming! I miss you all immensely. Then some of the other ALTs came over and we headed out to dinner, which Jarryd had organized. We ate at a restaurant called Taku Taku, which was a truly lovely place, with a beautiful garden. And, this sounds weird, but the bathroom there made me deeply happy. Maybe I’m just culturally intolerant, but I’m not a huge fan of Japanese style toilets. I tried using one in Yashiro, and.....well, it was a rather unpleasant experience. I don’t think I’m built like a Japanese person. (No, really??) Anyway, the toilet in my house is Western-style, and so were the ones at the hotel in Tokyo, so it’s not like it’s been a problem. But the one at the restaurant wasn’t just Western functionally, but aesthetically as well. And the bathroom was elegantly decorated, with colorful ink paintings lining the wall, a glass bowl sink, flowers. It was the most elegant and aesthetically satisfying place I’ve been since I got here. I know that sounds dumb. Maybe I was just relieved because of my experience earlier with the Japanese-style toilet, and because I was sitting there at the table in the restaurant with the mysterious Japanese headache medicine I’d taken earlier wearing off (but I hadn’t had a headache – I just didn’t feel like trying to explain “cramps” to Mizuta-san...), feeling like shit, trying to look happy and sociable, and desperately wanting to escape to the restroom for a few minutes, but fearing that I’d find another little hole in the ground. So it was really uplifting.
But in any case, dinner was quite fun. The restaurant people were very kind in bringing me vegetarian food – Jarryd had arranged some sort of set menu thing but warned them that we had one vegetarian. So in addition to a whole lot of stuff with shrimp and fish in it, they brought out some sort of chunk of tofu with sauce and a lot of mushrooms, and some egg with a weird sauce, and when they brought shrimp pizza, they made two slices with avocado instead for me. I won’t say it was great food...but I ate enough to fill me up. And it was sweet of them to help out with me being vegetarian. And I didn’t mind a break from rice and noodles. I also had a glass of wine, which made me giggly for a few minutes but then just tired. I’m reminded that this kind of socializing just isn’t my specialty. How to describe it...there seem to be some people who just have a certain kind of humor, a certain ability to tell jokes and stories to a small crowd, to hold their own in the banter, to be relaxed and exciting at the same time. I don’t have that particular ability. I can have conversations. I can even be funny sometimes, I flatter myself to believe. Maybe even interesting. But I don’t think I’m good at jumping in and making myself seem fun and interesting in a group of people I don’t know eating at a restaurant. I tried to smile and laugh a lot, to look interested in what people were saying. Of course the cramps didn’t help. And some of the jokes and stories were funny, and my laughter was genuine, but...I was trying to think how to describe this earlier. Like there’s some difference between my laughter at a gathering like this and how I laugh with my family and friends. Like I really do find whatever I’m laughing at amusing, but in some way I’m making myself laugh because I want to be engaged; it’s something I’m choosing to do. It reflects a desire to be having fun, and then, by laughing, I create the feeling of having fun, so it’s sort of self-fulfilling that way. But it sits slightly outside of me, it doesn’t burst out from anywhere very personal inside me. I have memories of laughing in my living room, or at Christmas, or around the math lounge, or on the phone with Andrew or Liz or Holly, or out at dinner in Media, where the laughter was something completely spontaneous, where I couldn’t possibly have stopped, where it came from something grounded in who I am. Does that distinction make any sense? The latter kind of laughter replenishes my energy; the first kind drains it. So after a couple hours of sitting there laughing and chatting, I just wanted to curl up in my house with my own thoughts.
That said, I liked all the other ALTs who were there (six of them) quite a lot. And of course, just because they’re strangers right now doesn’t mean they’ll remain that way; hopefully in the next years I’ll become real friends with at least some of them. But that process always daunts me so much.
After dinner Jarryd very kindly drove me and another guy, Aaron, who lives in Hamasaka (about fifteen minutes from me) back home, and on the way we were chatting and he encouraged me to not be shy about expressing interest in things like taking shodo or sumi-e classes, because I was sure to find someone interested in teaching me. Oh! And on the drive to Yashiro (Microsoft Word recognizes the word “Yashiro”? Why...? It’s some tiny, boring town in Hyogo...is it also the name of some big company or something?) Mizuta-san was talking about me doing adult conversation classes with some of the adults in Kasumi, and he said I would be doing that starting in April. Apparently they used to have them but, uh...somehow interest waned. So since I’m only planning to be here a year, I thought starting in April would be a shame, and I asked about starting earlier, and he said he’d look into it. I’m really excited about that; I think it’d be wonderful to get to know more of the people in this town. And at dinner people were talking about the Japanese proficiency test thingy – I forget what it’s called. But there are four levels, yonkyuu, sankyuu, nikyuu, and ikkyuu. The people at dinner said I could probably try to do sankyuu (the second lowest level) since I know some Japanese. But I’d have to study a lot of kanji, because that’s my weakness. But it sounds like the test is tailored to my abilities: there’s no speaking or writing, just listening, reading, and grammar. So that doesn’t sound too hard. They have classes at the Toyooka International Association, and they have special classes to help you prepare for this test, which I think you take in the spring. I don’t quite know what the point is...I guess if you pass a certain level, it’s something you can say to people to prove a certain level of Japanese proficiency, for future jobs or whatever. In any case, it’d be nice to have something to motivate me to really study. I’m getting a lot of practice speaking and listening which is great, and will probably slightly improve my vocabulary, and will certainly improve my ability to produce words without being too self-conscious or getting flustered. But it alone won’t kick me up any more notches in fluency; for that I have to seriously study vocabulary, kanji, and idioms. I’m good with basic grammar; that’s my strength. But I’ll never be close to fluent until I know more words and expressions. And I’ll never be able to feel really independent in Japan without being able to read, oh, a thousand or so more kanji. Heh. Once I get internet I can practice online, but I need something to motivate me. (Yeah, so much for intrinsic motivation...) So maybe some of y’all can threaten or bribe me (no emails until I learn thirty new kanji? Something like that), but the test will be good motivation as well. There’s a welcome thingy at the TIA on the 24th, so hopefully I can go to that. Although, I think there might also be a welcome thingy by the Kami-cho International Association that day...some guy mentioned it to me last week...and I don’t think they’re as big or offer as many classes, or at least no one’s told me they do. Dou shiyou kana...well, if they really do conflict, I’ll figure it out later. Maybe it was really the same event and I just misunderstood.
I knew before I came to Japan, if I’d bothered to think about it, but I didn’t really bother: there’s no grass here. Talk about something I take for granted! People were talking last night briefly about the lack of grass and it finally clicked in my mind. That’s it, that’s what I’ve been feeling the lack of! No little line of grass between the street and the sidewalk. No grass fields surrounding the schools. No parks. I suppose when I picture a small town it pretty much by definition includes at least a small park, an area just to walk around, lie in the grass, play frisbee, sit on benches and read. That just doesn’t seem to be part of life here. No grass to lie in. If I had to name something I missed most, right now, other than people, I think it would be grass.
Last night people said that if I put effort into it, I could make a really nice garden in front of my house. I would love to do that, but I feel completely helpless about it...I don’t know how to garden even when I can read the labels of things. But right now, although I’m coming to be quite fond of this house, I haven’t yet really gone through a process of making it my own. Zachary’s books and movies and things are still on the all the shelves. My first attempt at putting up those scarves on the wall failed miserably. Besides, they’re beautiful, but just tacking them up on the wall is....well, a little tacky. (Ha ha, I made a pun.) I want to make the house beautiful, to make it feel like mine. I want to take down the hideously ugly curtains in the living room and replace them with pretty ones. I want my students at Nichu to give me little paintings as presents that I can put up on the walls; I want to learn shodo and hang up my best pieces. I want to learn how to make plants grow outside. I want to buy cute little trinkets to put on top of the shelves. I figure that once I’ve been at school for a while, once I’ve found shodo classes to take, once I’ve gone to Kyoto and Osaka and Kobe and found little souvenirs, it will be natural for the house to become more interesting. But I’d like to at least do something in the meantime. Maybe this weekend I’ll try to put time into it.
Okay, MISERY had come up on shuffle and it just ended, and since it’s a hard act to follow, I’ll stop there and go over to the kouminkan and stamp things with my hanko. Yay! Oh yeah I got my hanko yesterday. Now I’m halfway to being an official person. Next Monday I get my ARC, and then I’ll be all the way there. And next Tuesday, I’ll get a car! And maybe a cell phone. Yippeee!!
Hmmmm....
Hi-ho, hoshi furu yoru, mado no shikaku ni tsukamareta uta.
Hi-ho, te o nobashite, kudaranai sekai ni BARA maichau no sa.
Say hi-ho!
I was reminded yesterday by one of the other ALTs that the JET Program frowns upon people posting anything about the people at our schools online, and if they find it they’ll get pissed. So I’ll have to limit the juicy personal details to individual emails. That will be easier once I have internet and can write individual emails better...Even though now I’ve been told I can use the computers across the street occasionally to check email, I still don’t feel comfortable sitting there for hours typing. Also, I know this is a bit silly, but it takes a lot of mental energy to type when my fingers aren’t used to the keyboard layout: things like apostrophes, the shift key, the backspace key, and many of the other little symbols (*^:;[]_@ and so on) are in different places that I have to look for each time because they’re not in my muscle memory. You don’t realize how convenient touch-typing is until you can’t do it. At least the letters are laid out the same way...Anyway, when I have to exert energy on the physical typing, it makes it less relaxing to just babble away.
Anyway, I’ll take the link to this site off my facebook page, but I should still censor what I post here a little bit. So I apologize if that makes it boring. Email me and ask for better stories and ye shall receive them. :-)
Yesterday I met the other new ALT, Alisa, a half-Japanese girl from Virginia whose Japanese is somewhat better than mine. Darn – I was hoping to finally not be the worst person around at Japanese. But she’s really sweet and I think we’ll be good friends. We chatted a bit in English on the way back from Yashiro while Jarryd and Mizuta-san chatted in Japanese up in the front of the car, so that was refreshing. She said she wanted to take classes in some of the traditional arts and stuff, which is awesome ‘cause I do too, so maybe we can look for those together. Then I went to Jarryd’s apartment, which is right next to hers, and used the internet for a while. His keyboard is Japanese layout and has one of those plastic coverings over it, which I am terrible at using, but it was very satisfying to be able to read everyone’s email. Keep them coming! I miss you all immensely. Then some of the other ALTs came over and we headed out to dinner, which Jarryd had organized. We ate at a restaurant called Taku Taku, which was a truly lovely place, with a beautiful garden. And, this sounds weird, but the bathroom there made me deeply happy. Maybe I’m just culturally intolerant, but I’m not a huge fan of Japanese style toilets. I tried using one in Yashiro, and.....well, it was a rather unpleasant experience. I don’t think I’m built like a Japanese person. (No, really??) Anyway, the toilet in my house is Western-style, and so were the ones at the hotel in Tokyo, so it’s not like it’s been a problem. But the one at the restaurant wasn’t just Western functionally, but aesthetically as well. And the bathroom was elegantly decorated, with colorful ink paintings lining the wall, a glass bowl sink, flowers. It was the most elegant and aesthetically satisfying place I’ve been since I got here. I know that sounds dumb. Maybe I was just relieved because of my experience earlier with the Japanese-style toilet, and because I was sitting there at the table in the restaurant with the mysterious Japanese headache medicine I’d taken earlier wearing off (but I hadn’t had a headache – I just didn’t feel like trying to explain “cramps” to Mizuta-san...), feeling like shit, trying to look happy and sociable, and desperately wanting to escape to the restroom for a few minutes, but fearing that I’d find another little hole in the ground. So it was really uplifting.
But in any case, dinner was quite fun. The restaurant people were very kind in bringing me vegetarian food – Jarryd had arranged some sort of set menu thing but warned them that we had one vegetarian. So in addition to a whole lot of stuff with shrimp and fish in it, they brought out some sort of chunk of tofu with sauce and a lot of mushrooms, and some egg with a weird sauce, and when they brought shrimp pizza, they made two slices with avocado instead for me. I won’t say it was great food...but I ate enough to fill me up. And it was sweet of them to help out with me being vegetarian. And I didn’t mind a break from rice and noodles. I also had a glass of wine, which made me giggly for a few minutes but then just tired. I’m reminded that this kind of socializing just isn’t my specialty. How to describe it...there seem to be some people who just have a certain kind of humor, a certain ability to tell jokes and stories to a small crowd, to hold their own in the banter, to be relaxed and exciting at the same time. I don’t have that particular ability. I can have conversations. I can even be funny sometimes, I flatter myself to believe. Maybe even interesting. But I don’t think I’m good at jumping in and making myself seem fun and interesting in a group of people I don’t know eating at a restaurant. I tried to smile and laugh a lot, to look interested in what people were saying. Of course the cramps didn’t help. And some of the jokes and stories were funny, and my laughter was genuine, but...I was trying to think how to describe this earlier. Like there’s some difference between my laughter at a gathering like this and how I laugh with my family and friends. Like I really do find whatever I’m laughing at amusing, but in some way I’m making myself laugh because I want to be engaged; it’s something I’m choosing to do. It reflects a desire to be having fun, and then, by laughing, I create the feeling of having fun, so it’s sort of self-fulfilling that way. But it sits slightly outside of me, it doesn’t burst out from anywhere very personal inside me. I have memories of laughing in my living room, or at Christmas, or around the math lounge, or on the phone with Andrew or Liz or Holly, or out at dinner in Media, where the laughter was something completely spontaneous, where I couldn’t possibly have stopped, where it came from something grounded in who I am. Does that distinction make any sense? The latter kind of laughter replenishes my energy; the first kind drains it. So after a couple hours of sitting there laughing and chatting, I just wanted to curl up in my house with my own thoughts.
That said, I liked all the other ALTs who were there (six of them) quite a lot. And of course, just because they’re strangers right now doesn’t mean they’ll remain that way; hopefully in the next years I’ll become real friends with at least some of them. But that process always daunts me so much.
After dinner Jarryd very kindly drove me and another guy, Aaron, who lives in Hamasaka (about fifteen minutes from me) back home, and on the way we were chatting and he encouraged me to not be shy about expressing interest in things like taking shodo or sumi-e classes, because I was sure to find someone interested in teaching me. Oh! And on the drive to Yashiro (Microsoft Word recognizes the word “Yashiro”? Why...? It’s some tiny, boring town in Hyogo...is it also the name of some big company or something?) Mizuta-san was talking about me doing adult conversation classes with some of the adults in Kasumi, and he said I would be doing that starting in April. Apparently they used to have them but, uh...somehow interest waned. So since I’m only planning to be here a year, I thought starting in April would be a shame, and I asked about starting earlier, and he said he’d look into it. I’m really excited about that; I think it’d be wonderful to get to know more of the people in this town. And at dinner people were talking about the Japanese proficiency test thingy – I forget what it’s called. But there are four levels, yonkyuu, sankyuu, nikyuu, and ikkyuu. The people at dinner said I could probably try to do sankyuu (the second lowest level) since I know some Japanese. But I’d have to study a lot of kanji, because that’s my weakness. But it sounds like the test is tailored to my abilities: there’s no speaking or writing, just listening, reading, and grammar. So that doesn’t sound too hard. They have classes at the Toyooka International Association, and they have special classes to help you prepare for this test, which I think you take in the spring. I don’t quite know what the point is...I guess if you pass a certain level, it’s something you can say to people to prove a certain level of Japanese proficiency, for future jobs or whatever. In any case, it’d be nice to have something to motivate me to really study. I’m getting a lot of practice speaking and listening which is great, and will probably slightly improve my vocabulary, and will certainly improve my ability to produce words without being too self-conscious or getting flustered. But it alone won’t kick me up any more notches in fluency; for that I have to seriously study vocabulary, kanji, and idioms. I’m good with basic grammar; that’s my strength. But I’ll never be close to fluent until I know more words and expressions. And I’ll never be able to feel really independent in Japan without being able to read, oh, a thousand or so more kanji. Heh. Once I get internet I can practice online, but I need something to motivate me. (Yeah, so much for intrinsic motivation...) So maybe some of y’all can threaten or bribe me (no emails until I learn thirty new kanji? Something like that), but the test will be good motivation as well. There’s a welcome thingy at the TIA on the 24th, so hopefully I can go to that. Although, I think there might also be a welcome thingy by the Kami-cho International Association that day...some guy mentioned it to me last week...and I don’t think they’re as big or offer as many classes, or at least no one’s told me they do. Dou shiyou kana...well, if they really do conflict, I’ll figure it out later. Maybe it was really the same event and I just misunderstood.
I knew before I came to Japan, if I’d bothered to think about it, but I didn’t really bother: there’s no grass here. Talk about something I take for granted! People were talking last night briefly about the lack of grass and it finally clicked in my mind. That’s it, that’s what I’ve been feeling the lack of! No little line of grass between the street and the sidewalk. No grass fields surrounding the schools. No parks. I suppose when I picture a small town it pretty much by definition includes at least a small park, an area just to walk around, lie in the grass, play frisbee, sit on benches and read. That just doesn’t seem to be part of life here. No grass to lie in. If I had to name something I missed most, right now, other than people, I think it would be grass.
Last night people said that if I put effort into it, I could make a really nice garden in front of my house. I would love to do that, but I feel completely helpless about it...I don’t know how to garden even when I can read the labels of things. But right now, although I’m coming to be quite fond of this house, I haven’t yet really gone through a process of making it my own. Zachary’s books and movies and things are still on the all the shelves. My first attempt at putting up those scarves on the wall failed miserably. Besides, they’re beautiful, but just tacking them up on the wall is....well, a little tacky. (Ha ha, I made a pun.) I want to make the house beautiful, to make it feel like mine. I want to take down the hideously ugly curtains in the living room and replace them with pretty ones. I want my students at Nichu to give me little paintings as presents that I can put up on the walls; I want to learn shodo and hang up my best pieces. I want to learn how to make plants grow outside. I want to buy cute little trinkets to put on top of the shelves. I figure that once I’ve been at school for a while, once I’ve found shodo classes to take, once I’ve gone to Kyoto and Osaka and Kobe and found little souvenirs, it will be natural for the house to become more interesting. But I’d like to at least do something in the meantime. Maybe this weekend I’ll try to put time into it.
Okay, MISERY had come up on shuffle and it just ended, and since it’s a hard act to follow, I’ll stop there and go over to the kouminkan and stamp things with my hanko. Yay! Oh yeah I got my hanko yesterday. Now I’m halfway to being an official person. Next Monday I get my ARC, and then I’ll be all the way there. And next Tuesday, I’ll get a car! And maybe a cell phone. Yippeee!!
Hmmmm....
Hi-ho, te o nobashite, kudaranai sekai ni BARA maichau no sa.
Say hi-ho!
posted by Ashila at 4:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home