In which I complain bigly (magnopere!) about IS

Remember how I keep saying ad nauseam that living in 五稜郭 is really convenient? I fell asleep on the bus on the way home from school this week and missed my stop...as well as maybe one or two more stops after it. Luckily, I got off at the next stop backtracked about 30 seconds, caught sight of Goryokaku Tower, and easily found my way home, mildly embarrassed but none the worse for wear. Win.

Our Independent Study projects were due this Thursday, so excepting the actual presentation of our projects on Tuesday, all the stress and sleep deprivation can cease, theoretically. I have yet to find a single student who finds the IS to be remotely beneficial, and more than a few are rather vocal about how IS is essentially the single most-hated aspect of HIF. Basically, every week we get into small support groups (assigned at the beginning of the program) for an extra hour after school and discuss what we've accomplished for our project over the past week, fill out a report that gets progressively harder to BS as you run out of original things to say that you've accomplished. Additionally, you have a weekly IS meeting with your sensei to discuss your weekly progress yet again, all building up to a final presentation (video, manga, whatever the heck, although most people opt for an easy powerpoint).

The whole point of IS is to get you to talk to locals and do interviews while immersing yourself in Japanese culture, but most people half-ass the project so much I honestly don't think it's remotely beneficial. If anything, it requires such a large time commitment that it causes undue stress and detracts from time that might better be spent studying Japanese or spending time with your host family or exploring Hakodate---i.e., cultural immersion. FAIL. It's worth 10% of your grade and it's a pass/fail where so long as you submit something, you can't go wrong. Juan was actually considering just taking the 10 point grade deduction and not doing the project altogether, but as it is he said he's barely done anything more for IS than he would have already been doing (martial arts stuff with his host-dad), although after much arguing with the sensei about his choice of project.

The really nice 人力車 who let me take their picture for my IS. Also note the hardcore thumbs up as opposed to the traditional peace sign flashed by all Japanese people in photos.

Anyway, I'll stop complaining now, I promise. Moving on to other things, we just learned a new grammar structure that involves appending -化 to words to add the meaning of "becoming" to it. The example used in our homework was 日本化, or, becoming Japanese. In order to very tangentially touch upon something from the Light Fellowship emails, I think that at least to some minor degree, a lot of us are becoming more Japanese-like in some respects. For instance, I often find myself staring shamelessly at any foreigner I encounter in my excitement to see somebody with whom I might possibly converse in English. Unfortunately given my appearance, I'm afraid I probably come across as yet another Japanese local rather than a fellow外人, since nobody here seems to be able to tell Asians part. You'd think that the way I dress or the perpetually confused look on my face (Victor admitted to calling on me in class solely for the purposes of getting to laugh at the so-called "panic face" that everybody says I have) would clue people in to my foreignness, but no. Occasionally, I even get asked for directions by tourists. FAIL.

In any case, the whole JJapanese tendency to shamelessly stare at 外人may seem insignificant, but when it happens so very often, it's very noticeable, and for some, extremely irritable. While I only experience this when I'm accompanied by other non-Asian HIFers, I find the situation amusing more than anything else, and I definitely laughed when tall, white Julia said some schoolboy caught sight of her and crashed his bike, but I know for some the whole situation is anything but funny. Sarah K. (grad student from UChicago?) gets extremely upset, and Thanu who is very obviously Sri Lankan and foreign has even overheard people talking about the scary looking インド人 which she found undestandably highly offensive, particularly given the fact that her Japanese is probably the best out of anybody's in the entire program. Sometimes it doesn't even stop at staring, but some people without any qualms point their cameras in your direction and snap photo after photo.

つまり, it isn't something that bothers me but then again I'm pretty tolerant and laidback (read: lazy and apathetic) until they reach an extreme, which according to David and Katie is why I end up having to deal with so many creepy stalkers and awkward situations so often. Katie says I have to "wear my tiara" and not be as nice and accessible (read: lazy and apathetic) so they don't get any foolish ideas. Oh well. More about Japanese culture later, including updates about culture classes (Tea Ceremony, Igo, and Ikebana-Flower Arrangement) to follow later once I've uploaded pictures onto my computer to supplement them.